Night Film

73

When Nora and I stepped outside under the pale gray awning onto Park Avenue, I was surprised to find it raining quite hard. I hadn’t noticed it upstairs with Olivia, probably because I’d been so absorbed by what she was saying. Unless her apartment was so elegant it simply edited out bad weather as if it were a terrible faux pas.

The doorman handed me a golf umbrella and, opening one for himself, raced into the street to hail a taxi.

“She wasn’t what I expected,” I said to Nora. “She was frank and fairly convincing.”

Nora shook her head, breathless. “All I could think about was Larry.”

“The tattoo artist?”

She nodded vigorously. “Remember what happened to him?”

“He died.”

“Of a brain aneurysm. Don’t you see? It’s a trend. Olivia had one, and Larry. Both after they’d encountered Ashley.”

“So, what are you saying, she’s the Angel of Death?” I meant it facetiously, though suddenly I recalled the incident Hopper had described at Six Silver Lakes — the rattlesnake found in the counselor’s sleeping bag, the widespread belief that Ashley had put it there. And, of course, her appearance at the Reservoir.

“Olivia described the same thing Peg Martin did,” I said. “A visit to The Peak. But their experiences were so different. One was petrifying. The other was some kind of childhood fantasy dream sequence.”

“Wonder which one’s true.”

“Maybe both. The incidents occurred almost twenty years apart. Olivia said she went in June 1977. That’s a year after Cordova had purchased The Peak with Genevra and a month before she drowned. Peg Martin’s picnic at the estate was in 1993.”

“It was scary how Olivia described Genevra, his first wife, don’t you think?”

“The prisoner too terrified to speak.”

She nodded. “And what about that witch-pricking needle?”

“It actually corroborates what Cleo back at Enchantments suggested, that Ashley comes from a dynasty of black-magic practitioners.”

Nora nibbled her fingernails, apprehensive. “I bet if we ever broke into The Peak, that’s what we’d find up there.”

I knew exactly what she was thinking; somehow Cleo’s words had engrained themselves in my head when she’d described the lurid realities of those working with black magic. Old leather-bound journals filled with spells written backward. Attics stockpiled with the really obscure ingredients, like deer fetuses, lizard feces, baby blood. This stuff is not for people with queasy stomachs. But it works.

The doorman had found a taxi, so we raced out from the awning, scrambled into the backseat. I saw I had a missed call from Blumenstein and two from Hopper. He’d also sent a text.

I’m out on bail. A million thanks. Heading to your apt

Good. I couldn’t wait to ask him what he’d seen inside the townhouse — not to mention the question How in the hell had he known how to break in?