Chapter 6

Incense and peppermint, crimson and cloves… rings on her fingers and bells on her toes… she will have sunlight wherever she goes…

John Keller rolled over into soft cloth and coughed, his throat sore and his nose throbbing. The foul taste in his mouth told him that he'd been sick, but his stomach seemed all right now that he was…

Where?

He pushed himself up on his elbows to check the room. He didn't recognize the bed or the furnishings, but they weren't hotel quality. This was someone's room, someone's house.

He had been stripped of his clothes and dressed in some sort of oversize white shirt that hung to his knees. He reached up to rub the last of the sleep from his eyes and saw a deep scratch on the back of his hand.

Hey, daddy kins. Want to go for a ride?

The red-haired girl who had bumped into him in the garage; somehow she'd managed to drug him. The man in the pale blue suit must have been a part of it. John remembered the strong smells of peppermint and cloves, and assumed the two had been Kyn. But why defy Michael Cyprien and risk exposing themselves to abduct a washed-out human priest?

A heavy, cloying scent wafted around him. "Good evening, John Patrick."

He flipped over to face a petite blond woman dressed in what appeared to be a ball gown made of apricot-colored lace. She stood at the foot of the bed, her hands folded demurely in front of her full skirt. Thin coils of golden braid made gleaming circlets around a face that Botticelli might have loved painting.

"Who are you?"

"You may call me 'my lady.'" She walked around to the side of the bed, drawing the coverlet up over his bare legs. "Your clothes are being cleaned—apparently you became very ill on the plane—but soon they will be returned to you."

The floral scent came from her, and it was growing stronger. John tried to focus on what she'd said. "You had me kidnapped and brought here? Why?"

"My lady," she prompted.

"Why, my lady?" John heard himself say.

"We often entertain special guests here." She reached out to toward his face, and pursed her lips when he scrambled out of reach. "There's no reason to avoid my touch, John Patrick. I look forward to the two of us becoming very close during your stay."

Her words sounded sweet, but they felt tinny inside John's ears. Her perfect teeth glittered, small and sharp and white. Staring at them reminded him of the damp, decaying cloy of rotting wood… old fruit crates in an alley, behind a produce warehouse where he had slept as a kid… and the rats that came out of the crates at night, looking for meat…

Her smile widened. "Sweet boy, don't be afraid. I'll look after you."

"No." Panic forced John backward again, until he half fell off the side of the bed. The cold floor under his feet cleared some of the terror out of his head. This wasn't Chicago. He wasn't eight years old anymore. He picked up a table lamp and pulled the cord free. "Is this the castle? Do you have my sister?"

"All of your questions will be answered in good time." The lady turned back the coverlet, giving the bed an inviting pat with her hand. "You should rest now. Or are you hungry? I can arrange to have a tray brought up to you."

Hungry. The way the rats had been. And she knew that, knew somehow that he had lived in fear of the street scavengers biting him or baby Alex. She knew, and he could see in her eyes that it gave her some sort of twisted pleasure to know his fear.

John knew fear better than most people. This woman was deliberately making him relive memories that brought out the worst of his emotions. To control me and make me do what she wants.

"You're Kyn." He backed away from the bed and eyed the single window in the room. It was closed, and there were copper bars securing it on the outside. "Tell whoever's in charge that I need to speak to him."

"Don't run away just yet, John Patrick," the lady said, her words curling into voracious squeals in his ears. "We have so much to discuss."

The stink of dead flowers seemed to be burning away all the oxygen in the room. The lady didn't move, but something about her changed, and John remembered how still the rats would go, only their whiskers twitching, just before they jumped on a leg and bit down into a child's soft, vulnerable flesh—

"Help me." He stumbled to the door and tried to open it at the same time someone pushed it in from the other side.

"Sorry, lad." A huge hand clamped on John's shoulder and guided him back as a shaggy blond head ducked under the low threshold. "You're not to go wandering."

John knew it was all a Kyn mind trick, but he still couldn't bring himself to look back at the lady. If he did he would scream.

"Please," he whispered, sweat chilling on his flushed skin. "Please don't leave me in here alone with her."

The giant man looked over John's shoulder and breathed in. "It's all right, lad. There's no one in here but you and me."

"She's standing right there, on the other side of the bed." John made himself turn and face her, only she wasn't there anymore. There was only the bed and the window. "She was in here. I swear—when I woke up she was waiting for me. I think she's making me hallucinate."

The man steered John back to the bed. "The drugs they gave you, they play tricks on the mind. I'll bring you a bite to eat; that should settle your belly."

He had been hallucinating? John sat down, confusion numbing away the terror. "She seemed so real." He looked up. "Where am I? Why was I brought here?"

The guard only shook his head and left.

Nick had passed the butcher's shop on her information junket around the village, but this time she went down a narrow side street and came around the back of the shop. Light shone through one of the windows on the ground floor, and she peered in to see what was happening inside. The butcher stood with his back to her as he worked portioning and packaging various cuts of meat.

On the sill of the window was a small blue-and-white ceramic statue of the blessed Virgin Mary, her hands extended, her smile as modest as her downcast eyes.

Nick looked up the length of the building. No fire escape, but a drainpipe went up past the open window on the second floor. She could pull herself up by grabbing the strips of metal anchoring it to the building. An electrical panel and a good-sized exhaust fan unit beneath the upper window would provide some footholds.

Nick pulled off her boots and set them out of sight behind a stack of empty wooden crates before she tested the drainpipe with a hard tug. It didn't part company with the building, so she climbed atop the crates and swung over onto the pipe. After waiting another few seconds to be sure it would hold her weight, she reached up for the edge of the exhaust fan unit.

She was halfway to the upper window when a delivery bell jingled, and the back door of the shop opened. The butcher stepped outside, two full trash bags in his hands. Nick went still, hoping the shadow of the building concealed her. The butcher dropped the bags into a can and came back to the door, then paused.

Don't look up don't look up don't—

The man below sat down on the edge of one of the crates, took out a cigarette, and lit it.

Nick didn't dare breathe. She felt her weight dragging at the drainpipe, and measured the space between her and the window. Four feet might as well have been forty; even if she moved fast he'd hear her and look up before she could crawl into the window.

It took the butcher ten minutes to finish his smoke before he went back inside. Nick gradually unlocked her stiff limbs and hauled herself up to the window. Another, larger statue of the Madonna stood in one corner of the window; this one had been draped with a gold-and-white-beaded crucifix. The full moon illuminated the bedroom beautifully, and Nick made sure the woman inside was sleeping soundly before she climbed over the windowsill.

White scrolled furniture picked up the moon's glow, filtered as it was through the fine lace curtains. Nick eyed the heavily ruffled bed skirt and feather-stuffed satin comforter neatly rolled up at the foot of the bed; also pure white. Milk-glass lamps with fussy lace shades and a creamy-looking carpet made her feel as if she'd stepped into a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Statues of the Madonna in various sizes had been placed on virtually every flat surface in the room. Lettice favored the standing Mary, but here and there were small reproductions of Pietàs and the Annunciation. A benevolent portrait of the Blessed Mother beamed down from elaborate frames hung in the center of each wall. Some of the frames were antiques, but not one of the Madonnas was golden.

Lettice's light snores sounded regular, and as Nick moved to the side of the bed she was surprised to see that the woman's pretty face was covered with what looked like a bad case of the measles under some opaque, dried skin lotion. She wore a plain cotton slip for sleeping, and had pushed the sheet covering her down to her waist. The same type of rash as on her face also marked her arms, neck, and chest. Under more of the skin lotion, the tiny red blisters formed a vee just below her collarbone, marking her in the same way that a sunburn might if she had been wearing a blouse with an open collar.

Nick silently searched the room, but found nothing. She then leaned over the woman, inspecting her welts. With the amount of lotion she had applied, it was hard to tell, but Nick saw no signs of puncture wounds, gashes, or tears. On a patch of skin Lettice had missed while applying her topical medication, Nick noted that the rash was not made up of pustules, but rather something more like insect bites.

She's stung, not bitten. Nick felt perplexed. If they're not tapping the locals, then how are they feeding it?

Unless they weren't feeding it.

The sound of a dead bolt being turned below her feet made Nick hurry. She bent as close as she dared to the woman and sniffed her skin. All she could smell was soap, dried herbs—likely from a sachet in the drawer where the slip had been kept—and the chalky scent of the rash lotion. Not a hint of flowers.

Something's not right.

Footsteps thumped; the butcher was coming upstairs. Nick looked out the window before climbing out and onto the drainpipe. It shimmied a little this time, so she slid down as fast as she dared, hopping off and grabbing her boots. She didn't pause to put them on, but carried them tucked under her arm as she hurried around the corner. Only when she was out of sight of the butcher shop did she halt and push her feet into them.