T
hroughout the hectic day of preparing for the Brandt event, Willow had felt herself waiting. She had no rational idea of what she expected, but whether it happened tonight or at some other time very soon, the hidden enemy would burst into the open, and the idea of what that could mean terrified her.
Now the bizarre celebration of Chloe Brandt’s life had begun.
Minstrels wearing rich green-and-gold-striped tunics and bloomers, their legs encased in green tights, wandered through the grounds of the Brandt house. Full face masks hid their identities. Tassels on green velvet caps swung as they bent over their instruments, strumming medieval sounds. And fantastically costumed guests formed a grand, strolling scene.
“Perhaps masks should always be worn at memorials,” Ben said, joining her in his flowing black cloak over tight-fitting dark clothes. A white collar stood high at his neck with a white, austerely tied cravat. His white mask and the hood he wore pulled up disguised him, but not the character he played. Ben was a vampire tonight.
He mesmerized Willow, who looked past the mask
and into his fathomless eyes. “This is a celebration,” she reminded him. “Why do you think that about masks?”
“They’ll hide all the tears Chloe’s dear friends must be shedding. In this group, they’ll also hide anything else that could give us a clue to who killed her.”
“You really believe the killer is here?”
“I’m sure of it. There’s something showy about everything these Embran do. They pretend they want to move about in secret, but what they do is guaranteed to draw attention to them. They’re tired of anonymity. Now they want to come out into the daylight—or perhaps the spotlight.”
Acid burned in Willow’s throat. Ben echoed her own thoughts—and made her even more fearful.
Candles, hundreds of candles flickered from every area of the grounds. Even the pool lights had been turned off and more candles gave an eerie glow that didn’t penetrate the surface of the water. Inside the house, frescoes painted on hangings and carefully placed columns added to the medieval picture.
Vanity insisted everyone must be incognito and had sent the costumier to Willow, who detested what felt and looked like a Little Bo Peep outfit. The costumier said it was a seventeenth-century shepherdess rig. A tall white wig itched. A whalebone underskirt added an ungainly sway to every step she took. And a bright blue costume with laced white blouse showed more of her breasts than she ever showed in public. Her mask had the face of a young girl with tiny red lips and for some reason huge “diamond” earrings hung from her ears. A wide red slash painted around her neck didn’t make her feel less uncomfortable.
Ben bent close to her. “Did your head get chopped off and sewn back on, or did I do that?” His deep curdling laugh made her shiver. She enjoyed it.
“So much food,” Willow said. She had an army of staff on duty. “It’s obscene. So far I haven’t heard one ode to Chloe or even an, ‘I’m sorry she’s dead.’”
“But it’s a celebration of her life,” Ben reminded her.
Skirts of fabulous silver and gold fabric covered exaggerated panniers. Jewels slid into décolletage that overflowed tight bodices. Enormous beribboned wigs, shoes with gilded buckles, sequins, beads, tights and masks were everywhere. Several plague doctors in their black oilskins and linen, carrying staffs and wearing wide-brimmed top hats pulled down over their hook-beaked masks, passed among tricorne hats afloat with ostrich feathers, jesters and carnival magicians.
Othello and Desdemona giggled on their way past with a gaudy Harlequin. A couple in black-and-white were clearly supposed to be Casanova and a conquest. A Napoleon or two, Cyrano de Bergerac and Don Quixote and a sprinkling of devils were all part of the diorama.
Willow had always heard that a Venetian masquerade rivaled Mardi Gras in New Orleans; now she believed it. A gentleman in a close-fitting, black satin tuxedo with a gold cummerbund, cloak and top hat, sidled up to Willow. “Elegant affair,
signorina
,” he said. “Truly inspired.”
Willow frowned behind her mask.
“The lady thanks you,” Ben said, slipping an arm around her shoulders.
“How do you like my cravat?” the man said, lifting the tails of an intricately tied lace neck affair. “Venetian Gros Point needle lace. Authentic, I assure you.”
His mask was again full face, but Willow was getting good at studying eyes. “You are a show-off, Preston,” she said. “Will you be talking about Chloe, may we hope?”
“Of course.” He sounded completely serious, so serious he didn’t remark on Willow recognizing him. “I’ll find Val and see what he’s thinking about the schedule.”
Willow didn’t even know which of the parading figures was Val, and she watched Preston go, wondering if he did, either.
A woman in an ivory satin ball gown, also swaying from whalebone petticoats, came toward the center of the foyer. It had been decided to keep the event entirely downstairs. More accurately, the police had refused to release the upstairs yet.
“She looks agitated,” Ben said to Willow. “Do you know her?”
“No.” Gems glittered all over the woman, who was fluttering—there was no other word for the way she moved—and flapping an ivory fan. She kept swinging her head to look behind, sending ringlets at her neck bobbing wildly.
The candles cast an eerie glow, but they didn’t do a lot for making anything easy to see.
“Are you all right?” Willow said to the woman.
“Of course.” She tittered. “A little indiscretion in the conservatory is all. These gentlemen can be so forward when they think they’re disguised.”
Dressed as Cleopatra, Zinnia from Willow’s office approached Ben. “Could you help with the gondola?” she asked. Behind her gold mask she rolled her eyes at Willow. “The thing keeps trying to turn over. Our boatman says it needs tying down or something.”
Ben said, “Come on,” to Willow, and followed.
The woman in ivory stepped in front of Willow to follow a line of revelers toward the kitchen. Willow noticed a long tear in the sleeve of the woman’s gorgeous gown and tapped her shoulder. “Was your sleeve torn when you got the costume?” she said. “I hope so or they’ll be charging you for it. They’re so fussy.”
The woman pulled the sleeve to take a look and then she backed into the round table in the foyer. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “But people should watch what kind of pets they keep.”
“Pets?” Willow shrugged, mystified.
“They’ve got a bird in that conservatory. It got all bent out of shape because I was close to his damnable cage. I thought he tried to peck me.”
“Hold on,” Willow said and hurried the woman into the office, where she produced a roll of tape and cut off a piece. She quickly patched the frayed sleeve edges together. “No one’s going to notice anyway, but you’ll feel better.”
“You noticed.”
“I’m a details person.” She was, and it could be crazy making.
They parted in the foyer, the woman heading for the kitchen again, Willow too curious about the bird not to take another look.
Some of the couples “celebrating” Chloe’s life were lip and body locked in the doorways and alcoves Willow passed. These people had the depth of sidewalk puddles. Their lives had long ago become more rumor than reality. She just didn’t like the way they lived.
Even the conservatory hadn’t escaped the candles,
although Willow noted that ground lights remained on in various places.
She approached the gilded cage, but stopped on the way. The air was heavy with the scents of rich earth and flowers. Orchids were everywhere, but they weren’t known for their aromas. The gardenias and jasmine climbing over the cage were. She thought she smelled honeysuckle, although it didn’t seem to belong in here. Willow closed her eyes a moment and breathed in. It was beautiful.
And familiar.
Her eyes snapped open, and she looked at the nearest gardenia bush. This had been what she smelled in the Court of Angels early that morning. Glad of the mask to hide another frown, she walked much more slowly to the cage where the little green bird sat well back on a perch as if unaware of all the noise in the house.
“Are you a bird lover?” a man asked beside her. This was a courtier in lush, dark purple velvet piped with black. The feathers flowing from his tricorne were white enough to look luminous in the odd light.
“Not really,” she told him. “This is such a lovely conservatory, though. It makes me want to have one of my own.”
He wagged his head. “You mean Marie Antoinette
doesn’t
have her own conservatories? I could have sworn I saw them at Versailles. How good of you to wear your best earrings—not that you may think them anything at all.”
Marie Antoinette?
Yuck.
“I’m so glad they gave your head back,” he said, laughing and indicating the red slash around her neck.
“Why, thank you.” She bobbed. Of course, the poor little queen playing in her shepherdess costume. How nice that this was the costume chosen for her—she hated the thought.
The man swept off his hat and made a deep leg, sweeping the feathers in his tricorne across the floor, then wandered away.
Willow stared at the little bird again. She stepped closer to the cage. Its beak wasn’t petite the way such a small creature’s usually was. The upper part hooked over the lower in a nasty-looking point. Willow raised her brows and thought that it could take a nasty hold on something or someone. That woman had been fortunate that only her sleeve was torn.
For an instant she thought the bird stared at her with eyes as green as his feathers, but bright, sharp, piercing.
She couldn’t blame herself for being fanciful tonight and smiled. Actually, she was remarkably sane, considering what they were all going through.
Moving from foot to foot, the bird opened its mouth wide, showing a thick, black tongue. The eyes closed slightly. Hateful, she decided and prepared to move on. If she didn’t get outside, Ben would notice her absence and come rushing to the rescue whether she needed it or not.
In one corner of the cage an open-fronted cupboard reached from top to bottom. What looked like supplies for the bird and garden items were lined up on shelves.
Willow was grateful she didn’t have to confront the little green monster to reach anything on those shelves. The bird had sidled all the way to the end of its perch, the end closest to Willow, and inclined his head to stare
at her some more. Its thick tongue darted from its beak, and she thought she heard a hissing sound.
Time to go.
There were bottles on the shelves in the cage.
She stood like stone, staring at them.
Some had labels. They appeared to contain orchid food of various kinds and colors.
Her heart speeded up to a painful hammering in her throat. Leaning closer, she pressed her mask to the bars and stared at those bottles with their thick, wavy glass and the sandy-looking stuff, or bigger, brighter granules inside.
Gasping, Willow looked over her shoulder, but she was alone now.
Again she leaned her face to the bars and tried not to blink.
At last, in a square bottle with several inches of shockingly turquoise granules inside, she saw a movement.
A tiny, almost transparent but pinkish, shrimplike creature revolved through the medium. She couldn’t breathe. Gasping for air, she whispered, “I’m going for help now. Don’t do anything,” even though she doubted she could be heard.
A vicious crack against her mask all but knocked her backward. She straightened, but not before the bird came at her for a second time, its beak wide-open and its purplish-black tongue flashing through the bars, as long as the body of a garden snake.
W
here was Sykes? Where were any members of her family who had wangled invitations tonight?
Willow rushed through the house to the gardens as fast as her bustles and bows would allow.
Surrounded by disguised strangers, and some people she must know, but didn’t recognize, she searched for help. Specifically she wanted Ben. There was no time for long explanations, and he already knew everything. Relief brought a rush of blood to her face. He stood with Rock, alias the boatman from the gondola that stretched from one end of the pool to the other. It listed toward the cabana side of the pool.
She wanted to call out Ben’s name, but ran faster instead, and waved.
He saw her and waved back, indicating the line he held, one end attached to the gondola while he waited for someone to finish driving a hefty stake into the nearby grass with a large mallet. The line was one of three at the stern.
Willow avoided a milling group sharing bottles of champagne. She wondered how long ago they had given up on using glasses. If they weren’t careful, they’d end up in the pool and they weren’t dressed for swimming.
She saw Ben bend over, his cloak flying out behind him, to thread the line through a hole at the top of the stake. Barrels blocked her path and she dodged around them and some flanking shrubs.
Violent blue light caught her squarely in the eyes.
Willow gasped, threw her hands in front of the mask. Strong hands whipped her around, pulled her against a solid body and forced her into the pool with him.
Flailing, desperately grappling to turn and face her attacker, she sank. The wig dislodged and she managed to tear off the mask. Her feet met the bottom and she tried to push off, stretching toward the surface and the flicker of candlelight above the water.
He held her where she was until she fought mindlessly, threw out her arms and kicked.
Her lungs ached.
She would drown.
Willow struggled not to draw in water. Her nose stung and she winced at bubbling in the bones of her face. With all the strength she had left, she grappled to tear herself free.
The painful blue light gouged at her eyes once more. She couldn’t see.
Something hard slapped over her face. A diving mask. There didn’t seem to be any tanks, yet she heard sudden hissing before air surged into her punished lungs.
She couldn’t tell which way she had to go to get to the top and she still couldn’t see properly.
Quiet
, she told herself.
Willow let herself bend and crumple. She dropped until her knees met the tiles. The arms had let her go, but she didn’t know where that maniac was. He had tried to drown her, then put a mask and air tank on her? There
was no way to make sense of any of it. She slitted her eyes, searching for him.
Darkness fell over her and she looked up.
Above her head a shadow spread.
The shadow took shape, coming at her through the water. Wings spread wide, grotesque body gliding; it was the creature that had appeared to her on the night she’d spent with Ben at Sykes’s house.
The huge beak snapped open and shut. Flaps of gray tissue waved from pointed ears. A feathered coat lay thick and oily against its sinuous body and balloons of opaque yellow slime slipped free of its beak, slid down its loose, fatty beard of flesh and sank.
It ducked its head and charged. The collision knocked her backward, but immediately the bird creature took her hair in its talons and towed her. Willow shot through the water and felt a force she was helpless to resist dragging on her body as if it would turn her inside out.
Another blast of blue glare made her blind again. She thrashed around and began to spin. Faster and faster, she spun. Her ankles crossed, the bones crushed together by velocity, her shoes long gone.
Nausea brought bile into her throat.
She let her eyes close and wanted only to be quiet. At last she stopped fighting and let herself revolve, like an electric top gone mad.
Her shoulders and the backs of her hands scraped hard surfaces. One last time Willow struggled to open her eyes and looked out through a visor. Streams of bubbles whirled past.
She shot through a chute, its dark sides visible through
churning water. Sucked down and down, she was as helpless as a minnow going over a massive waterfall.
Completely numb, Willow didn’t care anymore. Inside her head was quiet, and she slipped into a soft, cold, black space that waited for her.