The Manor (27 page)

She'd been easy and eager, all right. Most women acted like the old in-out in the middle of the day was an affront to the gods. Lilith didn't even need to finish her first glass of filched wine before she was leaning on Roth, giving him that special happy smile, looking into those smoky gray eyes that no woman in her right mind could resist.

He reached in front of him, keeping one hand on the wall so he wouldn't lose his balance. He touched Lilith's hair. He slid his hand down to where her shoul-der should be, but she managed to stay a few steps ahead of him. She hadn't spoken since he'd made his suggestion, only smiled in submission and tilted her head to her secret door. She was one for games, she was.

Roth stepped off the creaking wood onto a hard, flat area. Then he heard a match strike a few feet away, and a tuft of flame erupted. Lilith's face was in the circle of light, but that was impossible, because she was beside him. Her black dress made her body invisible, and for a moment her face and hands appeared to be floating un-attached in the air. He let go of her hair, or whatever he was touching, and jumped back as she lit a candle.

"We should have a fire," she whispered, her voice husky. Roth looked down at his hand and saw that it was covered with cobwebs. He yelped, then wiped his hand on his pants.

She giggled. "Did that scare you, Mr. Roth?"

"I hate spiders, remember? Ever since I was nine and got one in me mouth when I was crawling around under the porch. Had nightmares for a week after."

"Poor boy. You're safe with me."

"I hope not too safe, eh? I live for danger, and you're looking pretty bleeding dangerous, love." As the candle caught and flared, he could make out the dim corners of the room, wondering if spiders lurked in the shadows. Six feet from anywhere, they said. As long as they
stayed
six feet away. He noticed an alcove that had another candle in it. How had she lit that one? He thought maybe the room led into another, but then saw Lilith's back and his own face. A mirror, as large as the bed beneath it, reflecting the room. Kinky bird. He licked his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. The room was smal and the wals were stone masonry, so thick that no sound would escape. Maybe she liked to get in full voice while having a go. That was fine with Roth. The room was empty of furniture besides the bed, and that bothered Roth for a moment. There were no blankets on the mattress, only an old linen sheet that looked like it could use a wash. The place was as dis-mal as a monk's cel. But he forgot al that when Lilith placed the candle on the hearth and sat on the bed, looking up at him with wanton eyes.

Black eyes. Deeper than a Newcastle coal shaft. He didn't see the things he wanted to see. He liked his birds to have a litle fear, or at least a litle performance anxiety. Made them try harder to please. But he wasn't going to get particular. One was the same as another, when all was said and done. And her skin looked creamy enough. He would have thought she might blush a litle, but she only smiled again, and something about the smile bothered him.

"You won't get in trouble, will you? Having it on with the guests?" he asked, more to break the suffocat-ing silence than because he cared.

"Miss Mamie says guest satisfaction is the key to re-peat business," she said, and again that devilish smile was on her lips. For a moment, Roth felt like the se-duced instead of the seducer. But that was ridiculous. It was his fame, his charm, his aura of power that had swayed her. His name on a thousand glossy photo cred-its. His heart pounded harder and he moved across the room to the bed. She lay back on the sheet, spreading her arms, opening herself to him.

"Am I as pretty as a picture, Mr. Roth?"

He gulped. Maybe it was all that wine he'd tossed back, but he was getting aroused too fast. He felt like an idiot schoolboy looking at a girlie mag. He didn't like to lose control. No bird could play with his emo-tions that easily.

Her breasts had flatened out beneath the neckline of her dress, and she raised her knees so that her legs were spread. Her dress slid along her thighs, and Roth couldn't tear his gaze away from the shadowy space between her hips. He'd never been this turned on.

Or maybe it was the house, the odd tingle he'd felt in the back of his head since. he'd arrived. The tingle seemed to grow more intense and spread through his limbs. Fire, that's what it was. A mild flush of warmth expanding into a glow.

He knelt, wanting to touch her. He'd have to take it slow, or he'd become an animal. He didn't want to just have a slam, he wanted to go nice and easy. He liked that. He liked to hear them beg to be finished off. But now he was afraid he was slipping, that the power and control had shifted, that she was the one caling the shots. His hands trembled as he reached for her, and he was suddenly angry with himself. He never trembled. He'd taken photos of charging rhinos from thirty feet, with a handheld camera, and they'd come out as clear and focused as an eye chart.

So he did what he always did when he wanted to prolong or deny his passion: he thought about his work. The batch of negatives he'd developed that after-noon. Something about them bothered him, but he couldn't remember at the moment. Definitely the wine had gotten him. And his anger at Spence had clouded his thoughts, too. Well, only one way to drive out the devil.

He put his hands on her bare lower thighs. Her skin was tepid, the same temperature as the room. Odd, but he'd warm her up soon enough. Nothing like a bit of friction for that. But not yet.

Roth climbed onto the bed, thought about removing his pants, then decided to wait. Lilith's hands were on his shoulders, around his neck, puling his face to hers. What the hel, no use making her suffer any longer. For some reason, her lack of body heat excited him further. Maybe it was this blooming crypt of a room that chilled her. He took it as a personal challenge to stoke her fires.

His lips pressed against hers, her tongue uncertain in her mouth. For a bird with such a fast come-on, she was acting like she'd never kissed before. He hesitated, because something was wrong with the inside of her mouth. Roth pressed himself down on top of Lilith, her body molding to his even through the dress. Her breasts compressed under him and he liked the feeling. But he was careful not to like it too much. Nice and easy was the ticket, even though his blood pounded hard through his flesh. What was it about the inside of her mouth?

It was just like the rest of her, a litle too cool. What was the temperature under the ground, a constant fifty-six degrees or something? But surely her mouth should be hot, and not quite so dry. It was almost like shoving his tongue into a coat pocket. He hoped she wasn't this dry everywhere else.

Lilith moaned into his mouth. Didn't she have any juice?

She writhed under him, so he forgot about the awk-wardness of her tongue. He reached out for the shoulder of her dress. He started to pull it lower, to expose more of her flesh to the candlelight.

"Yes," she gasped.

"Yes," came another voice.

Bloody hel?

Probably just an echo off the stone wals. A trick of the acoustics.

But the dead air of the room gobbled sound and swal-lowed it whole instead of bouncing it back and forth. Roth caught a flicker of movement that distracted him from the blood rushing below his waist. Then he remembered the mirror and looked up at it. Maybe watching him and the lovely lass beneath him would rekindle his arousal.

In the mirror his face grew larger, as if he were watching himself through a fast-zooming lens. And why was that so wrong?

It was only a split second, but plenty of time for him to notice that the mirror was falling onto the bed, onto them, as if in slow motion. And that sheet of glass must weigh a hundred pounds. If it broke—

If it broke, he would be badly cut.

Badly.

But he couldn't move, Lilith had her limbs locked around him, and bloody hel, she was strong, he grunted as he tried to fight her off, but she had too many arms, too many, scratching and clutching at him, and he saw her reflection in the mirror and she wasn't Lilith, she was a black spider, squat and thick, pincers twitching near his lips, searching for a soul kiss.

Black widow,
his mind screamed at him,
she always eats her mate.
Looking up, he hardly recognized his reflection, eyes large, his mouth a black tunnel, the stems of Lilith's eight arms clasping him, the barbs of her fore-limbs in his flesh.

But before the pain could spin its web, the mirror was upon him, and as the glass shattered, it wasn't his face in the mirror, it was Korban's.

Then the silver shards sliced into his flesh and Lilith loosed her venom and he was in the long dark tunnel and Ephram Korban smiled at him, holding up a spoon that squirmed with the frantic scrabbling of spiders.

"Time for a spot of tea, Mr. Roth," Korban said.

"How is our statue coming along?" Miss Mamie hoped her impatience was buried deep, just as all her emotions were, except when under the naked gaze of Ephram.

"It's going to be lovely," Mason said, standing in the doorway of his room, eyes puffy, hair disheveled. "You want to come in?"

She and Ephram had spent many precious nights here, hours that seemed even sweeter with the distant years. But the room disturbed her because it always bore the stink and taint of Sylva, as if the walls still harbored the memory of Ephram's sin. She could for-give, al right. Al women could forgive, that was how love worked, but she would never forget. Even if Ephram let her live to be a thousand. Mason held open the door, and she peered past him to the fireplace, the dew drying on the windowsill, the smiling face of Ephram on the wall.

"I only have a moment," she said. "I'm busy prepar-ing for the party."

"Party?"

"The blue moon party. It's something of a tradition at Korban Manor. Your presence is required."

"Sure. I guess I could spare the time."

"Not too much time, I hope. I know you're dedi-cated to your work."

"That reminds me. Do you know anything about that painting of the manor in the basement?" Rage filed Miss Mamie, burned her, scorched her like her dead husband's love. She no longer cared if Mason saw the flames in her eyes. He couldn't escape anyway. He was as trapped here as she was. She forced a smile, the good hostess. "Master Korban, I'm afraid. He once fancied himself a painter." The anger opened a dark tunnel in her heart, the conduit through which Ephram kept his hold over her. An icy wind blew from the mouth of the tunnel, freez-ing her chest. Ephram's threat and Ephram's promise. He needed her fear as much as he needed the emotions of the others. She only wished her love was all he re-quired. But love by itself was never enough.

"He was gifted." Mason must not have noticed her torment. She was good at hiding it, after all these decades.

"One of his greatest sorrows was that he never fin-ished it," she said. "There's something melancholy about an artist's final work, even when the artist's tal-ents are ordinary and mortal. One always hopes to make an impression that wil live on after death."

"Our vanity," Mason said. "And I reckon it's what drives us crazy. Because we know we'l never achieve perfection."

"Perfection." Miss Mamie didn't need the painting before her in order to remember. She could close her eyes and see the house, the lighted windows, the low clouds, the widow's walk. She could taste the breeze that had blown from the northwest, crisp from its jour-ney over Canadian tundra. String music quivered in the air, smoke poured from the chimneys as it rose into the round eye of the moon. And Ephram called them up, fetched his spirit slaves, and sent them after Rachel Faye Hartley.

Ephram didn't like his own family keeping secrets from him. Rachel had fled, leapt to her death from the widow's walk. Rachel had taken her secrets to the grave, but carried them back from the grave as wel. The hurt rose inside Miss Mamie, consumed her in a blaze of hatred. Ephram and Sylva were bound by blood. His ilicit family would always hold the biggest place in his everlasting heart, no matter what sacrifices Miss Mamie made. No matter how deep her devotion. And that painting, the one Ephram called his work in progress, was an eternal reminder.

She turned away, into the hal, the portrait of Ephram close enough to touch. "That painting should have been burned long ago," she said.

"Anna said her mother was in the painting."

"Forget Anna. You're to think only of your statue."

"Anna says she's never been here before. How could Korban have known? He's in the painting, too. And somebody who looks like you."

"Ilusions," Miss Mamie said. "Never trust an artist, because dreams lie and visions are temporary."

"Can I trust
anybody?"

"Trust your heart, Mr. Jackson. That's the only thing worth believing in."

"My heart is getting pulled in three different direc-tions."

She studied the young man's face. He was a lot like Ephram in some ways, stubborn and proud, afraid of weakness and failure. But Ephram had taken matters into his own hands, determined to leave none of his work unfinished. Obsessed with controling his world. "I guess you'll just have to tear your heart into enough pieces to go around. As long as the biggest piece goes into your statue."

"Don't worry. I'll make you proud. I'll make them all proud."

"I'm sure you will. See you tonight. Don't be late."

The door closed. Miss Mamie touched the locket that hung around her neck. When Ephram wore flesh again, he would prove that love never died. Sylva, Rachel, Anna, Lilith, and all the others would be for-gotten, would be the embers of memories, fading, dying, and at last, lost to darkness. While Miss Mamie and Ephram burned on, together forever.