There were cobwebs in her empty eye sockets. The flesh along her jaw was green with decay.
Melissa Cartwright. Catwalk model. Trophy wife of Sir Stephen Cartwright. Kidnap victim.
You let me down. Her mouth moved and he glimpsed her rotting teeth. You let me down. A tiny black spider dropped out of one eye socket and ran across her lap.
Clickety clack. Clickety clack.
No. He tried to speak, but his throat worked uselessly, no sound passing his lips.
Yes. Just as you let him down.
The head with the ghastly eye sockets looked at a spot somewhere on his right. As in a trance, Gabriel turned his head in the same direction.
Isidore…
His mind blacked out in horror.
When he came to, the conductor was shaking him by the shoulder.
"Waterloo Station. Last stop, sir. Time to wake up."
Gabriel looked stupidly around him. The compartment had emptied. The seat opposite him was empty. As was the seat beside him. He was the only one left.
He was feeling so cold. He stepped out of the brightly lit compartment onto the platform, and his back was gooseflesh. It was just the cold, he told himself. Just the cold.
As he took the escalator up, he kept glancing over his shoulder. The third time he spotted her. Black coat, blond hair. Cobwebbed eyes.
He started to push his way past the people in front of him. But it felt as though his legs were caught in quicksand. He tried to take the steps two at a time, but he could hardly move. His breath was leaving his throat in a ragged whistle. Again, he glanced behind him.
She had disappeared.
The taxi rank. He needed to find a cab to take him home.
The cab pulled up to the curb, the yellow sign glowing. As he opened the door and ducked to get inside, he spotted her reflection in the window. She was right behind him. If she stretched out her hand she would be able to touch his shoulder.
A strange sound escaped his throat. He fell into the cab and slammed the door shut behind him. The driver looked at him with surprise.
Just a hallucination. Your mind playing tricks. Keeping his eyes resolutely away from the window he gave his address to the cabbie, who was now watching him with open suspicion.
She's messing with your mind. She's planting these images of Melissa Cartwright and Isidore into your brain like toxic seeds. Don't allow her to do that.
Her.
Why couldn't he say her name?
Whenever he thought of her, he used the words "killer," "assassin," "intruder." It was as though by not saying her name, he could avoid the truth.
Minnaloushe.
Face it. Deal with it.
And work out how you're going to tell Morrighan that her sister was responsible for the death of three people.
At his front door, he fumbled for his keys. Once inside his apartment, he would be safe.
He flicked on the light switch. The living room was empty.
Except… the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling in that quiet, wind-still room were swaying gently. As though someone had passed by close enough to stir the air.
No. It was just a trick.
So cold. He looked at his hands and they were shaking. Had they ever been still?
He walked into the bathroom and turned on the taps of his bath. He took off his jacket and his shirt. Steam was starting to fill the room, pearling down the mirror like tears. His own face, pale with eyes unfocused, looked like the face of a person drowning.
Something stirred behind him. Hazily swimming into his vision was the face of a woman with hair like blond seaweed. The flesh of her face decomposing, soft as a sponge.
He screamed. He sprang to his feet, in his haste slipping on the bathroom mat. Running out of the room, he slammed the door shut behind him. His fingers gripped the knob of the door firmly, as though trying to keep whatever was inside the bathroom from coming out. He stared at his hand. Any moment now, the knob would start to turn inside his palm… Any moment now.
Nothing happened. From behind the closed door he could hear the water flowing from the taps.
Still he waited. The water continued to rush from the taps. How long he stood there, holding on to the knob with all his strength, he did not know. Water seeped underneath the bathroom door onto his feet, but he did not move.
Someone was watching him. He turned his head, stiff as a doll, and looked behind him.
Against the wall hung Minnaloushe's African mask. The wooden face with its empty eyes and empty smile. Protection against witchcraft.
His stomach heaved miserably. Swinging his arm, he struck the mask from the wall. It fell to the floor with a crash. A crack ran through one eye socket. The mouth was still smiling.
The doorbell rang. The sound paralyzed him, froze him to the spot. He glanced at the door fearfully. He suddenly thought of Isidore, buried only that morning, resting in his coffin in dank soil. Maybe his friend wasn't in his coffin. Maybe he was standing outside the front door right this minute, his hand raised to press the bell once more.
The bell rang again. After a few moments someone pounded the door with a fist. "Gabriel?" Frankie's voice was muffled. "Are you there?"
He scrambled to the door and unfastened the door chain with fingers that were weak from eagerness and recent panic.
"My God." Frankie's voice was appalled. "What's happened to you?"
CHAPTER THIRTY
The MRI scan looked like a work of art. A creepy work of art, but still art.
"Lovely, isn't it?" The man on the other side of the desk was beaming at Gabriel as though he had the same thought. "The detail is stupendous."
Gabriel looked back at the scan, which was clipped up against a light box. He still couldn't believe he was staring at his own brain. It looked like a splayed white mushroom floating in a well of black ink.
Next to him, Frankie moved her chair closer to his and took his hand in hers. She had hardly left his side since she found him in his apartment the night before. And it was her doing that he was now sitting in the office of one of the most eminent neurologists in Britain.
Earlier that morning he had undergone an MRI scan. Gabriel knew that a scan-even a private one-usually took time to schedule, but Frankie had gone into overdrive. She had taken one look at his bloody eye and the shaking hands and had called the consultant who had attended her husband while he was still alive. He, in turn, had made them the appointment with the neurologist. Gabriel had no idea what other wires were pulled, but within one day he had been scanned, prodded, examined and called in to learn his fate.
The neurologist, who went by the cheerful name of Horatio Dibbles, placed two plump hands on his desktop and looked at Gabriel with eyes that were colored angelic blue.
"Mr. Blackstone. We have good news and not such good news." Gabriel half expected the medic to ask him which he wanted to hear first, but Dibbles continued without pause. "You have suffered a transient ischemic attack."
"A stroke?" For a moment Gabriel thought of his uncle Ben who had collapsed with a stroke at the age of forty and afterward had spoken with a tongue that seemed dipped in tar, dragging his left leg behind him like a useless piece of wood.
"A temporary stroke. Now, the symptoms of a TIA are the same as for a full-blown stroke, you understand. Vision can be affected. Also behavior, movement, speech and thought. Mental confusion is quite common."
Mental confusion. No shit. Melissa Cartwright's wasted face washed into Gabriel's mind.
Dibbles coughed discreetly. "A TIA's symptoms are temporary. The majority clear within an hour. Although they can sometimes continue up to twenty-four hours. But what is important to remember is that in most cases permanent damage is unlikely."
"So what's the not so good news?"
"Well, you have to realize you've had bleeding in the brain. In the artery of your brain there's a weak spot, an aneurysm. It's like a small balloon or a worn spot on the inner tube of a tire and it leaked. What concerns me is that you seem to have had repeated leaks. Each time the leak has healed itself and the bleeding has stopped. But repeated leaks in the brain are not good news."