“More of the same here,” Eric said, walking beside the ice boxes and flipping open lids, waiting for Marley to draw level, and closing them again. The only male had been Eustace, the rest were young women—when they were still recognizable. Signs of the “hunger” Eric mentioned were everywhere.
“We’ve got to go,” Sidney said. “Hurry up.”
“Mother’s gone,” Eric said to his sister, completely confusing Marley. “She wasn’t in her body when I thought I killed her. Bummer. Now we’ll always have to be on the watch for the old bat.”
“How could you make a mistake like that?” Sidney said.
“You know Belle,” Eric said. “She always liked those little travels of hers. So she just traveled when I locked her in the box to suffocate.”
“Her body—”
“Gone,” Eric said. “I’m sure she thinks she’s very clever.”
Eric looked at Marley with a knowing grin. “Our father isn’t human, only Belle. But she’s supposed to be dead and she doesn’t count anyway. Bolivar is our father, not our grandfather.”
He used a heavy metal ring to pull a stone flag out of the floor. “Down,” he said, giving Marley a shove.
She calculated her chances of disabling him and managing to deal with Sidney at the same time. She could do it, but best wait and keep looking for the best opportunity.
Soon the four of them bent over to walk along a tunnel with gravel beneath their feet.
Eric went ahead of Marley. As he passed, he grinned. “Don’t feel bad. We’ll make sure you come back to your friends.”
Her skin felt several sizes too small for her body.
“Marley?”
She almost stopped walking. Gray’s voice came to her again. She answered. “Where are you?” and willed him to hear her. “I’m coming. Where are you?”
“The Garden District…” She felt them separate and wanted to shout out for him to come back. They had communicated. She would keep working at it.
“Come on,” Eric said. He was really hurrying now.
Marley considered calling for Sykes. But if he came—and he sometimes dropped from the system—and stopped the Fourniers now they might miss finding other victims still alive. And she didn’t have Pipes’s little girl yet. Sykes was pretty cool, but she had also seen him lose it when he was really angry.
“Gray. I’m under the Fourniers’ house in a tunnel. I think we’re walking away from the house.”
She focused on the center of her mind, but Gray didn’t answer.
A gust of air whipped along the tunnel into her face and she turned her head aside. The disgusting odor she’d smelled on that creature was carried on that air—coming from the direction in which they were headed.
Pipes began to cry again.
They reached the end and Eric said, “Keep Pipes here, Sidney. And don’t touch her.”
He held Marley’s arm and pushed her ahead of him up several steps to a door. A small, mostly white building stood there, its door recessed. There were no windows that Marley could see.
Eric reached past her, brought his face so close to hers, their skin touched. She shivered and he laughed—and slipped his tongue along her jaw.
Marley straightened her back and looked straight ahead.
He knocked on the door and a noise came from inside. One push and the door swung inward.
Eric had to force her to keep moving. She tried to whirl around in his arms, but he had her wrapped tight. His strength was a shock. Up they went to a raised room with silk-covered divans on all sides and lush hangings—and a table like an altar on a raised area in the center. An elaborate casket stood there, large and with the front open to show black velvet inside.
Marley stared. She saw an image hovering there, an image of the chinoiserie house. It faded, only to return with varying amounts of strength. It was like a hologram, not at all real.
“We have work to do, you and I.”
She stood quite still while, from behind one of the hangings, a distorted shape swathed in a hooded cloak appeared.
“Wait outside, whelp,” it hissed at Eric who scurried from the room and shut the door.
Marley’s fingers stiffened. She felt what she had been told she would if she was ever mortally threatened—but only if her death was imminent.
This was it, then. She flexed her hands, widened her stance and allowed her entire being to come to full alert. If there was to be a fight, she must be ready, watchful, able to find the points that could disable her foe.
“You have what’s mine,” the thing said. It pointed a long, curved talon toward the shivering image of the red house. “You have that. Now you will take me to it.”
She stared, uncomprehending.
“You could invade my secrecy through what you stole, and then return to it. This time you will take me there.”
Marley knew that if she would ever consider taking this creature to Royal Street and into the place where her family was, she could not.
“Come,” he said. “Take my hand.”
She swallowed to stop herself from retching at the sight of the repulsive claw held out to her.
And she didn’t move. Couldn’t move.
“Do as you’re told,” he thundered.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You can and you will. You did it when you wanted it for your own purposes, now do it for mine.”
“I can’t, I tell you.”
He swung toward her, grasped her wrist in cold, thorny, yellow-gray talons and pulled her closer.
The stench weakened her knees.
“What is it?” he said as he must have seen her expression of horror.
“Nothing,” she choked out.
He made a wailing noise, clutched at his body and convulsed, but gripped her arm tighter. And the cloak slipped to the floor.
Chapter 48
He had to get inside the Fournier house.
A yellow sheen showed through a gap in draperies at a side window. Hunched over, Gray crept up the sloping lawn and peered in. The light came through an open door from somewhere deeper in the house. This was what he preferred. If possible he would always choose to go from dark to light areas to give his eyes time to adjust.
The windows were the sash kind that opened from top to bottom—and they were locked, dammit.
He grasped the top of a frame and pulled, and the entire window lifted away effortlessly.
Gray frowned. It shouldn’t have been that easy, but he put the window aside, hauled himself up and inside the room.
He’d been there before—on the occasion when he’d entered through the front door.
Quickly, he crossed the room, making sure no one passing outside would see him.
His spine tightened, not in the way it did when Marley was near, or a premonition started, but an old-fashioned sensation of being watched. He turned around slowly.
A bamboo screen behind one of the purple chairs wobbled ever so slightly.
Gray pulled his gun and dropped into a crouch. “Come on out,” he said quietly.
The screen wobbled again.
“Now!”
A wave of sniffles erupted. Gray took a second to realize his enemy wasn’t a big, bad guy and rushed the screen. He snatched up a small girl huddled there, put a hand over her mouth—as gently as possible—and lifted her out.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re fine. Safe, honey, you’re safe. Are you Erin Dupuis?”
Very carefully he took his hand an inch away from her face.
“Of course I am,” she whispered with a fierce frown. “Who do you think I am?”
Gray tried a little grin and shrugged. “Of course. I should have known.”
Her body shook. The sharp comeback had to be a reaction to fear. The kid would do well. “Who are you?” she said. “You’re big.”
“I’m Gray,” he said, seeing no reason to lie. “And big is good when you need to get some things done.”
She considered that. “I can’t find my mom,” she said very quietly. “I can’t find anyone. Guess how I got out of that room?”