Vassa in the Night (22 page)

This close I can smell him, ashy and slightly rotten. He swats at me and then drops heavily onto the floor. Then he just stays there, weak and worn-out from attacking me, so I get a good look at his thumb. It's swollen as fat as a crimson leech and the inflammation has spread up past the joint; there's an edge of dirty green around the ragged imprint left by Erg's teeth.

Without thinking I bend down and grab him by the pinkie then saunter over to the register. He seems too sick to fight back effectively, and Sinister is still in a fluster of neatening up. Babs looks at me groggily, her head lifting up from her crossed arms.

“Hey, Babs?” I say. “I think poor little Dexter here needs a vet. He's looking pretty gross.” I hold him up as he twitches angrily and claws at my palm with his free fingers, then I plop him right on her sleeve.

With a quick, spastic sweep she sends him flying. He collides with the shelves behind her and tumbles down in a rattling mess of tiny bottles. I perch on the counter right in front of Babs, ostentatiously casual, as if I wanted to block her view of the store behind me.

“Vassa,” Babs hisses. “You're not a girl at all, are you? You're the noise of a car crash, perhaps. A broken toaster. Bea should know better than to send the likes of you. I'll be seizing the opportunity, though, since it's gone and stuffed itself into my store. I'll teach her how futile it is to harass me!”

I decide to ignore that; the name Bea does sound dimly familiar, but right now I can't place it. I peer around Babs to see Dexter wallowing among scattered stars of broken glass. He's bruised and there are flecks of fresh blood on his sallow skin; if he had a voice I'm pretty sure he'd be whimpering.

“I mean, Dex
is
your pet, right?” I say—and the funny thing is that I really mean it. Watching him flopping in that miserable way sends an angry flush through my face. “Don't you think you should take better care of him?”

She stares at me, maybe too irritated to speak, and I glance out the window. Of course every trace of snow has melted away—you know, now that it's served its purpose—and the parking lot is darkly glittering like a bald gray head in the vibrant sunlight. It looks like it's still early morning. “Dexter is an
employee,
” Babs snarls at last. She aims her rolling eye at my right hand where it rests on the counter. “Plenty more where he came from.”

“Oh, Dexter!” I say. “You hear that? There you are, injured in the line of duty, and Babs is already scoping your replacement. Poor baby, that must really hurt.”

From the back of the store behind me comes an unexpected sound, high and resonant. A weird fizzling noise invades that endless crooning pop song. I lean closer to Babs's face and take hold of her bony shoulders like I want to stop her from getting up. Dex is up on his wrist in the wreckage now, fingertips curled as if they're looking at me. I'm absolutely sure now that those painted nails function as eyes. Then he pivots toward Babs. For a disembodied hand, he does an outstanding job of looking plaintive.

“Dexter,” Babs snaps. “Get up here and remove this parasitic toilet plunger from my person.”

“You mean me, Babs?” I say. Erg did tell me to keep asking questions. “Aw, you used to think I was pretty! Who's this Bea you were talking about, anyway?”

Dexter dutifully hobbles over and starts climbing the wheeled base of Babs's chair, but he's obviously having a hard time of it. The music keeps getting more distorted, the singer's voice warping into a painful throb. Erg must be doing something horrible to the speakers. Then the store gives a little jump, and Dexter loses his grip and splats back onto the yellow floor. His infected thumb convulses. It's truly pitiful.

Babs cranes her head and shoots him a withering look. Then she stands, strength surging through her wasted-looking body, and shoves me hard enough to send me toppling onto the floor. By the time I'm back on my feet she's already swinging around the counter and heading up the aisle on the right. The speaker at the back emits a tortured squawk and goes dead. Dexter comes creeping after her, but in his battered condition he can't keep up. He's still way too near the door to Babs's rooms. I make myself walk slowly and calmly in that direction. The sound of running footsteps would be sure to bring Babs and Sinister down on me in a heartbeat.

Dexter turns to watch me as I slip up to the dull orange door just past the counter. There's no way I can stop him from seeing me go in there. Then I notice the axe hanging on a hook just to my right: the same axe he was ready to swing at my neck when I first arrived here. Given his weakened state, I could probably chop him in half without even trying that hard. Bring the sluglike chunks along with me and tuck them under Babs's pillow for the dead hand fairy. Maybe Babs will get a dollar!

He looks at me with his hazy lilac nails, somehow managing to seem sad and sheepish. Then he raises his nails toward the axe. It wouldn't be like killing a person or even a squirrel. Whoever Dexter came from was hacked to bits long ago. Probably the head once associated with Dexter is decorating a pole right now. I take the axe off its hook, balancing the weight of it in my grip. When I glance toward the back of the store I see Babs oozing up the shelves like an inchworm to get at that malfunctioning speaker. I can get away with this.

Dexter waits, his skin tone even grayer by contrast with the screaming yellow floor. Mournful and resigned. Maybe he misses the person he once belonged to. Maybe, for a hand, losing your person is the loneliest thing that could possibly happen.

I hang the axe back up. Dexter flexes a little in surprise.

“Can you keep a secret, Dex?” I whisper. “Tell her I went back to bed, okay?” And I open the door, skimming through without even looking where I'm going. As it closes behind me I have just enough time to see Dexter bobbing his nails up and down.

Like he's nodding.

 

CHAPTER 14

It's dark inside—no surprise there—but the darkness is prickly and uneven. It seems to shuffle and rearrange itself like a deck of cards as I turn to face it. Fine; I didn't expect this place to feel comforting. I can't make out the floor so I slide my feet along, my hands stretched wide to hold the shadows. There's nothing anywhere that hints at walls; I could be on a football field, albeit a field shrouded in ash-clouds from a convenient volcano. My breath is fast and shallow and I keep half-jerking back, sure that I'm about to fall. After a moment, as if on cue, a light appears in the distance. Small and amber, an antique star floating all alone. Beckoning me. Probably the smart thing would be to go in any direction but that, but
smart
doesn't appear to be my outstanding characteristic these days.

It feels like I'm shoving my boots along shag carpeting. The light waits patiently in a dim expanse. Once I get closer I can see amber reflecting off the sharp point supporting it, angled lines sweeping below. It's incomprehensible until I'm right in front of it, running my hands down its beams, looking it over in the dull orange glow. My eyes must be adjusting to the dimness, because suddenly I can see it fairly well.

Why, of course. It's a five-foot-tall tin model of the Eiffel Tower with a twinkling bulb on its summit. A placard on its front reads
Ooh La La!
in garish pink enamel script.

Gosh, Vassa, what
else
would it be?
I let out a sputtering laugh—a little hysterical sounding, honestly—and turn away fast enough to stub my webbed toes against something lower down.

On inspection the something looks like a glass ashtray, except bigger. It would be the perfect size if you were smoking kitchen sinks, maybe, or kindergartners. In the middle I can make out the words
Las Vegas
in gleaming gilt letters surrounded by chaotic images of dice, shooting stars, playing cards.

Now I'm definitely getting hysterical, but I can't seem to stop the gasping, manic laugh in my throat. I'm not moving nearly as cautiously now and I stagger into a waist-high, porcelain blob painted to look like the Brooklyn Bridge. Babs has quite the souvenir collection.

On the far side of the bridge I suddenly notice a wall trying to pretend that it was there all along. And in the wall, another door with a welcoming golden light just above it. “Yeah, right,” I say aloud. “Like you're not a trap?”

Maybe it's my imagination, but I could swear the wall looks offended.

“Don't worry,” I tell it. “I'm coming in anyway.” I don't see how I stand a chance of finding Picnic and Pangolin—or Mr. Night-Doll-Monster-Beast for that matter—unless I explore every last possibility. Even the possibilities that are just here to mess me up, since in a place like this that's probably all of them. I leave the bridge and walk over to the door.

It sounds like there's a seriously wild party going on behind it. And they're playing that damn song with the cascading piano, the whispery girl's voice. It's the same melody, piercing and relentless, but somehow more beautiful than ever.

If there's one thing Zinaida's daughter should be able to handle, it's a party. My clothes are stiff with dried blood and my hair is so ratted I might end up cutting off half of it, but that never would have stopped her from raging. On Zinaida, swan blood would have been a
statement
. After a moment's hesitation I turn the knob and strut right in like I own the place, tossing my head the way she used to do.

The instant the door opens the music vanishes.

The room in front of me is better lit than the last one, and it appears to be perfectly empty. There's a faint receding babble of drunken voices and then that fades out, too, like tumbleweed rolling into the distance.

“Fine,” I say aloud, but my heartbeat is careening through my head and waves of cold prickle my skin. I force myself to walk forward. Apart from the uncanny disappearance of the guests it does look like a party, the kind where Zinaida would have been right at home. The room is huge and high-ceilinged. There's one wall of exposed brick and another with dramatic squiggly wallpaper, old gold and caramel and violet. Half-drunk cocktails are perched precariously on velvet sofas with slithery curves. Confusing chandeliers with stuffed exotic birds flying among the crystals sway overhead. BY's must be a whole lot more profitable than it seems, if Babs can afford this stuff.

When I was seven I would have been left in the corner with a plate of stinky cheese and a comic book. Somebody would have given me a glass of champagne as a joke. Now and then I'd glance up to watch my mother, fascinated by how lovely and vivacious she was, the way everyone stared at her. If you'd asked me at the time, I'd have said that all I wanted out of life was to be as much like Zinaida as possible.

Then by midnight I would have been asleep on the floor, and at three a.m., one of her coked-out admirers would have carried me down to a taxi.

I wish I could go back to being scared. Even frenzied terror would be an improvement over what I'm feeling now. Just for an instant I close my eyes, trying to will away the icy sickness in my stomach.

When I open them again the room seems distinctly bigger, its ceiling higher, its furniture bloated. A long buffet table has materialized on the far side; it looks picked over and abandoned, with oysters slopping in half-melted snow. And hanging over it is a huge oil painting, all sweeping yellow waves and small purple figures caught in tidal swirls. I know that painting.

It's by my mother. I personally
posed
for those teeny drowning people by rolling around her studio floor. It seemed like a blast at the time and it never occurred to me to wonder why she always painted me dying.

Traps don't get more obvious than this. And they don't get more irresistible.

I'm halfway across the room before I even have time to notice that my hands are trembling.

“Champagne?” someone says when I'm still fifteen feet from the painting. I take the proffered glass by reflex—the bubbles look strange, knife-bright—and only then twist around to see who's there.

Ah. No one. Just that serpentine wallpaper and a Venus de Milo completely covered in scarlet glitter on a pedestal. Even that's pretty far away, and what with the lack of arms she'd make a rotten waiter. I can't repress a yelp.

“Nice touch,” I tell the air once I've recovered a little. “Really, you're doing a great job!” I'm a long way from legal drinking age, of course, but on the other hand I'm a lot closer now than I was the last time someone offered me champagne. I lift it up, inhale its scent. It smells intoxicating, fresh and deep and floral all at the same time. My nostrils dilate and saliva floods my mouth.

Even I'm not stupid enough to fall for this one. I let the glass drop, dreamily, as if it had just slipped from my fingers.

There's no tinkle of breaking glass on the polished floor. No sound at all. I don't let myself look. Doing my best Zinaida, I pretend I'm not shaking and saunter toward the buffet. I wish I wasn't so hungry suddenly. That platter with the oysters is right in front of me, next to a cake that would be gorgeous if it didn't have a crater in the top. Was there a meteor shower just now?