"Well you hold on, honey, because we want some answers. We've had years of waiting to go back into that room—"
"Then you can afford to wait a few hours more," Katya replied, and without waiting for Theda Bara to come back with a retort she turned and headed on up the steps to the top of the flight.
There was a moment—just a quarter of a beat, there at the top of the stairs—when she thought she'd misjudged her audience, and they'd come up the stairs after her, their patience finally exhausted. But they'd stayed below. Even Theda. Perhaps somebody had caught hold of her arm, to keep her from doing something stupid.
Katya opened the back door, stepping over the threshold. Occasionally, in the last several decades, one of the assembly outside had taken it into his head to test the power of the icons Zeffer had brought back from Romania and had personally hammered deep into the wood. The five icons were called, Zeffer had told her, the Iron Word. It was powerful magic designed to drive off anything that did not belong beside cot or hearth. Katya had never actually witnessed what happened when one of the phantoms had tested the threshold. She'd only heard the screams, and seen the looks of terror on the faces of those who'd goaded the victim. Of the trespasser himself, nothing remained, except a rise in the humidity of the air around the threshold, as though the revenant had been exploded into vapor. Even these traces lingered for only a moment. As soon as the air cooled, the witnesses retreated from the door, looks of terror still fixed on their faces.
She had no idea how the Iron Word worked. She only knew that Zeffer had paid a member of Sandru's scattered brotherhood a small fortune to possess the secret, and then another sum to have the icons created in sufficient numbers that every door and window be guarded. It had been worth the investment: the Iron Word did its job. Katya felt like her mother, who'd always boasted that she kept a "clean house." Of course Mother Lupescu's definition of moral cleanliness had been purely her own.
You could fuck her twelve-year-old daughter for a small coin, but you could not say Christ when you were shooting your load between her tiny titties without being thrown out of the house.
And in her turn that twelve-year-old had grown up with her own particular rules of domestic cleanliness. In short: the dead did not cross the threshold.
You had to draw the line somewhere, or all Hell would break loose. On that Mama Lupescu and her daughter would have agreed.
She got herself a cup of milk from the refrigerator to calm her stomach, which always troubled her when, as now, she was unsettled for some reason or another. Then she went through the house, taking her time passing from one room to another, and as she came to the front door she heard the sound of a car coming up the street. She stepped outside, and walked along the front path until she reached the pool of light from the car's headlights.
"Is that you, Jerry?"
A car door opened.
"Yes, it's me," he said. "Was I expected?"
"You were."
"Well, thank God for that."
She went to the little gate, and stepped out onto the narrow sidewalk. Jerry had got out of the car. He had a barely-suppressed look of shock on his face, seeing her step beyond the bounds of her little dominion for the first time.
'Are we actually going somewhere?" he asked her.
"I certainly hope so," she said, playing it off lightly. She could not completely conceal her unease, however. It was there in her eyes. But there was also something else in her glance, besides the unease: something far more remarkable. A kind of sweetness, even innocence. She looked like a girl out on her first Prom Night, tiptoeing to the edge of womanhood.
Amazing, Jerry thought. Knowing all that he did about Katya—all that she'd done and caused to have done—to be able to find that look in her memory banks, and put it up there on her face, so that it looked as real as it did; that was a performance.
"Where will I be taking you tonight, ma'am?" Jerry asked her.
"I'm not exactly sure. You see, we're going to be looking for somebody."
"Are we indeed? And may I take a guess at who?"
Katya smiled. "Too easy," she said.
"We'll find him for you. Don't you worry."
"You were the one who got him to come up here in the first place, Jerry. So you're the match-maker. And thank you. From both of us, thank you. It's been quite a remarkable time for me, Jerry. I never thought I'd ever fall in love again. And with an actor." She laughed. "You'd think I'd have learned by now."
"I hope it's a happy mistake."
"Oh it is, Jerry. It's perfect. He's perfect."
"Is he?"
"For me. Yes. Perfect for me."
"So will you be joining him somewhere?"
"Yes."
"But you're not exactly sure where?"
"That's right."
"Well, I'm going to hazard a guess and say he's at Maxine's, because I know she's having a big bash tonight. Do you want me to call her, and ask her if he's there? Maybe tell her I'm bringing a special guest?"
"No, I think it's best we just do this quietly, don't you?"
"However you prefer. Tonight's your night."
"I don't want any big hoopla," Katya said. "I just want to find him."
For a moment the illusion disappeared completely, and reality showed itself: the desperate hunger of a woman who needed to find the love of her life. Not tomorrow, or the day after, but tonight. She had no time to waste, this woman; no time for error or procrastination.
"Shall we go?" she said.
"Ready when you are."
She went to the car and started to fumble with the doorhandle.
"Please," Jerry said. "Allow me." He came round to the passenger side and opened the door.
"Thank you, Jerry. How nice. Old-fashioned manners," she said. She got into the car in one elegant movement. Jerry closed the door and went to the driver's side. She was trembling, he saw; just the slightest tremor.
"It's going to be all right," he reassured her when he was settled in beside her.
"Is it?" she said, with a smile too tentative to survive more than a breath.
"Yes. It's going to be fine."
"He's the one, Jerry. Todd is the one. If he were to turn me down—"
"He's not going to do that, now is he?" Jerry said. "He'd be a fool to say no to you. And whatever else Todd is, he's no fool."
"So find him for me. Will you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Then I can start to live again."
SIX
It had taken Todd a few minutes to get used to sitting behind the wheel of the old Lincoln sedan which Marco had chosen, many years before, as the vehicle in which he preferred to anonymously chauffeur Todd around. Sitting in the seat adjusted for Marco's huge frame made him realize—for the first time in the chaotic sequence of dramas that had unraveled since Marco's sudden death—how much he would miss the man.
Marco had been a stabilizing influence in a world that was showing signs of becoming more unstable by the hour. But more than that: he'd been Todd's friend. He'd had a good nose for bullshit, and he'd never been afraid of speaking his mind, especially when it came to protecting his boss.
There would come a time, Todd had promised himself, when he would sit down and think of something to do that would honor Caputo's name. He'd been no intellectual, so the founding of a library, or the funding of the Caputo Prize for Scholastic Achievement, wouldn't really be pertinent: it would need some serious thought to create a project that reflected and honored the complexity of the man.
"You're thinking about Marco Caputo," Tammy said as she watched Todd adjust to the spatial arrangements of the driver's seat.