She sighed aloud and reached again for the mop. They were almost out of cleaner.
“Will I be able to finish my book on Ninon?” Brice asked.
“Yes. But not for this publisher.” He meant that they’d have to fake Brice’s death, and publishing a book from beyond the grave might be tricky. L. Ron Hubbard had managed it, but things were different for him.
Damien continued, “It might have to be under another name and for another publishing house, but you would be able to bring out that biography eventually.”
Brice sighed. “I’d really hate breaking my contract. I like my editor. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Yes.” Damien studied her. This time he didn’t smile. “Right now I am thinking that it would be best if we were away from here while the investigation is going on. They might believe that we didn’t hear any shooting since it happened several floors below us, but we were bound to notice that the power was out. We would be well advised to have some alibi that places us outside the city, in case anyone asks.”
“We have to take Ninon’s letters with us,” Brice said swiftly. That made Damien laugh, though he sobered almost instantly.
“We’ll take everything of value—just in case.”
“What? All the paintings and art?” Brice asked, startled and dismayed.
“No,” Damien answered. “I wasn’t speaking of things with monetary value. Though I suppose the thieves could have robbed me, too, if you have any favorites.”
“Oh.” Brice nodded approvingly. “That might work. Though you’d have to report stuff stolen and deal with the police then.”
“Maybe. Or Karen can do it. That would be more in character for Damien Ruthven. Ninon’s letters shouldn’t be a problem, though. No one knows I have them. And they may hold important clues,” Damien said, finally slamming the furnace’s iron door shut. He had to use a hammer. The whole machine was glowing hot. The high-rise was going to be very warm for a while. They’d have to hope that it cooled off before anyone investigated and found that the old, non-environmentally-approved furnace had been used. After all, what they were doing was not just frowned upon socially, it was also illegal.
Damien didn’t dwell on it, but their whole constructed alibi was a house of cards, that relied heavily on the police and insurance investigators being very careless. Brice would soon realize that.
“Clues? Of course they hold clues!” Brice said enthusiastically. “There may be facts about Ninon’s life outside Paris that no one is aware of. There could be—”
“No, that isn’t what I meant,” Damien interrupted. “I mean clues to her present whereabouts.”
“What?” Brice stared at him. She repeated: “What?”
“I truly believe that Ninon is still alive,” he answered. “And at one time she told her friend, the philosopher Saint-Evremond, that she was thinking of emigrating to the Americas—to one of the plantation islands. It would be the perfect place for her to go after her death. Especially if she wanted to escape the son of her dark man.”
“Alive? Really?” Brice knew she sounded stupid, but she was having trouble taking in the idea. She shouldn’t be surprised. Damien had hinted at this before. Then she understood the rest of what he’d said. “Saint Germain! She said that in her letters.
‘And I have a son who shall be called Saint Germaine.’
You think he’s alive too!”
“Perhaps. Certainly it is worth investigating. Not that it will be an easy task to find either of them,” Damien warned. “I’ve already tried a few times. The lady is very wary, very good at covering her tracks. But this time I have something that I didn’t before.”
“What?” Brice asked.
“A bloodhound,” Damien answered, smiling. “If anyone can find her, it’s you. As a researcher, you have no peer.”
“Maybe,” Brice answered, forgetting to be modest. Her mind was already racing, trying to recall who among Ninon’s friends had ever traveled to the Americas.
Damien watched her, his smile sad. He hoped her passion for the hunt and a chance to meet Ninon would be compensation enough when they had to leave their identities and lives behind.
It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us; a year impairs; a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory.
—From Lord Byron’s journal at Ravenna
“The snow finally has slowed. It’s time to fetch my car.”
“Your car?” she asked, surprised.
“It’s garaged nearby.”
“And it can get through this snow? The streets still haven’t been plowed, you know.”
“My car can get through anything. It’s been modified—it has high-traction tires, a fortified body and bullet-proof glass. But I think we’ll walk to it instead of driving through this. It’s best not to leave tire tracks near the building. Of course, it will take a couple of trips to move all the stuff. We’ll look a bit odd staggering along with our bags of stolen loot, but, hopefully, if anyone sees us, the bags will be mistaken for Christmas presents.”
“Are we taking the guns?” Brice asked.
“Can you doubt it? Though we’ll have to stop somewhere for ammunition,” Damien answered.
Brice had found her pistol outside the bathroom’s broken door and now kept it close at hand. She noticed Damien did the same.
“Where are we going? Have you decided?” she asked, pulling her hair back from her face.
“Your place,” Damien answered. “We decided yesterday afternoon that we wanted to spend a romantic Christmas there.”
“I see, a romantic Christmas Day. Well, I suppose that’s just possible.” Brice thought about her house. It was cozy, though no one would think it a love nest.
“Remind me to call Karen once we’re on the road and casually mention that we did in fact leave for your place yesterday afternoon. I’ll ask her to come by the building and get some papers for me tomorrow.” Brice looked startled by his words. “Don’t worry. The guards’ bodies will have been discovered by then, and the place totally cleaned up. She won’t be the first on the scene.”
“The police will question her,” Brice said slowly, beginning to piece together his plan.
“Yes, along with everyone else. And they will eventually discover that we’ve been at your place since the afternoon of the twenty-fourth and couldn’t know anything about this.”
“You’re using Karen as a shield,” she chided.
“Yes,” he admitted regretfully. “Not the most gentlemanly of actions.”
“They might question our story anyway.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Damien said confidently. “They won’t. Why should they? Philanthropist Damien Ruthven—who shall be offering a huge reward for any information about this crime—might be eccentric enough to dash off and spend Christmas with his new love, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with criminal activity. Assuming anything else out of place is discovered.” He waved a hand indicating his apartment and how normal it again appeared. “It really is the best alternative.”
Brice, catching a glimpse of herself in the window, had to agree. Their twin sets of matching dark eyes—and their presently unseen golden scars—looked very suspicious to her. There was also the fact that she was an absolutely terrible liar.
She would also feel naked without a gun close at hand. Firearms could be explained away at home, where shooting vermin was quietly encouraged, but in New York? She wondered if Damien had a permit.
No, facing the police wasn’t an option. Yet it seemed there were a dozen or two holes in this plan. The largest of which was in the wall next to the service elevator.
“Your driver is loyal?” she asked, trying to think of flaws they would be able to correct.
“Yes. I saved his life, pulled him out of a hellhole in Nicaragua. He’s very grateful. However, I think that this time we will dispense with his services. He’s away with his family. I’ll call him later and tell him I took the car. He won’t ask questions. Fortunately, there are no attendants at the garage and no security cameras. I chose it for that reason.” After a moment Damien asked, “And on your end? Is there anyone—a housekeeper or gardener, someone who could contradict our story?”
“No. I always spend the holidays alone. And the house is somewhat isolated.” She thought for a minute. “There is the matter of my unused plane ticket. Won’t it look odd if I don’t use it?”
“I never fly,” Damien said. “It’s one of my well-known idiosyncrasies. No one will think it odd—or at least not unusual—that I insisted we drive. You can cash it in later.”
Brice exhaled slowly. “So, we have a plan.”
“Yes. Or at least the general outline of one. We can flesh it out as we go.”
“Do you like fishing?” Brice asked him suddenly. “We have excellent fishing at home.”
Damien permitted himself a small smile. “Yes, I still like fishing. If we have the time and the weather permits, perhaps we will indulge.”
Brice took a short stroll around the room—or at least that’s what she told herself she did.
Strolling
sounded much better than
pacing
.
“I should be worried about this. I mean
really
worried. But I’m not. Why is that? Has standing hip-deep in zombies while I commit a dozen felonies made me lose my mind? Can one become sociopathic overnight, do you think?”
Damien shook his head. “No, of course not. But I don’t think that anything will ever be able to truly frighten you again. It’s one of those consequences of bravery that I was talking about before. And it’s a good one—as long as it doesn’t make you foolhardy. Life is to be
lived
.”
Dark eyes met dark eyes. Brice smiled a little.
“There is plenty of reason to suppose me a fool. Look at the last two days—and now I am running off with a stranger.”
“Am I any less foolish?” he asked, also smiling a little. There was something ancient and knowledgeable in the curve of those lips. This was a dangerous man—but not dangerous to Brice, she didn’t think.
She shivered. It was mostly in a good way.
“Have I not experienced the same two days?” Damien asked when she didn’t answer him. “Anyway, I don’t think you can say that I am a stranger. After all, you know me very, very well.”
“No,” Brice argued, shaking her head. “I knew who you
were
. The future is still a big question mark. For both of us.”
“An adventure,” he corrected.
“An adventure,” she agreed.
“Are you ready for it?” Damien asked, extending his hand.
Brice nodded slowly and reached for Damien. “Yes, I believe that I am.” Their hands laced. She said quietly, “I’ve always loved you, you know—at least for my entire reading life.”
“And I’ve waited all my life—all my
lives
—for you. You’re what will complete my heart and maybe my soul. How Heaven will laugh at this, but your being here now is enough to make me believe in a merciful God.”
Her smile was more radiant than the moon.
“We’re going to have a wonderful life,” he told her.
“I believe you.”
The golden opportunity Is never offered twice; seize then the hour When Fortune smiles and Duty points the way.
—Byron
The event on which this new fiction of Mary Shelley’s is founded has been supposed by some of the physiological writers of Germany to be an impossible occurrence. How wrong they are.
—From the journal of Johann Conrad Dippel
December 27, 2005
If it wasn’t one damned thing, it was another, Karl thought to himself as he rode down in the service elevator. First, there were those damn cops all over the place. And where there weren’t cops, there were friggin’ secondstring reporters in a feeding frenzy, looking for the story that would make them big-time. Worst of all, there were gawkers everywhere. Hell! A man couldn’t hardly find a quiet place to spark up. He’d finally had to pretend to Mr. Ruthven’s secretary that there was something wrong with the drainpipe and go up on the roof. It was barely worth it. He’d got his smoke but damn near froze his ass off in the snow.
Then, when he’d finally got around to hitting his locker, he’d found out someone had messed with his tools—even the paintbrushes! Hell, it was that damned Rodney, he’d bet. The guy had been liberating supplies again. That was the only way to explain why all the floor cleaner was gone. It’d serve the bastard right if he went out to the cops and told them. A little stay downtown would teach that lazy-ass thief.
“Shit.” Karl thought about spitting but didn’t. Not many people rode this elevator, but if he hawked one out here, someone would notice. Security was actually watching their cameras now.
And it wasn’t like Rodney would be along to clean it up. That sucker was on some hour-long coffee break down at the Memuria cafeteria. There was some hottie down there—April, he thought her name was—and Rodney was trying to make time with her. Which was fine for Rodney, but it left Karl doing all the work.
And now he was supposed to get up to the sixth floor and catch some rat a lady had seen behind the radiator in the women’s bathroom. That wasn’t in his job description. What the hell did they think he was—animalfuckin’-control?
Karl stopped outside the women’s restroom and knocked loudly. He’d learned to do that—and to keep knocking for a good long while. Ladies acted like he was some kind of pervert just because he went in and saw their feet under the door. What? Like they didn’t pee like everyone else?
After a good long pound, Karl decided it was safe to go in. He put out the
WET FLOOR
sign and then wheeled his cart inside. He shut the door behind him. It might be funny to chase the rat out into the offices—maybe it would run up some stuck-up woman’s dress. But there would probably be hell to pay if that happened, and Karl didn’t want to lose another job.
He heard a soft scrabbling and shivered. A rat, sure enough. And he hated the friggin’ things. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was scared of ’em. They were nasty-ass animals, always trying to get in the lockers and eat his lunch.
Karl knelt reluctantly and peered under the radiator. Something was there, sure enough. He couldn’t exactly tell what he was looking at, but something was definitely there, way in the back where the light didn’t reach. It was pale and kind of fleshy looking. Maybe all the rat’s hair had fallen out. Wouldn’t that suck—especially in winter? Being a rat and being bald?
Then the smell hit him.
“Shit!” Karl reeled backward. The damned thing smelled bad enough to knock a starving buzzard off a garbage truck.
He fished out a broom. He’d try chasing the rat out and catching it with a bucket. That would be less messy than beating it to death, and he’d probably get in trouble for killing the thing. He could just imagine: Somebody would claim it was a rare kind of smelly bathroom rat, and that he’d killed some endangered species.
“Come on out, you smelly, bald sonuvabitch,” Karl said in what he imagined to be a gentle voice. He poked the broom handle at the creature a couple of times. The third time, the broom stopped abruptly and then jerked hard enough to nearly be torn from his hand. “What the hell?”
The damn rat had grabbed the handle!
Shocked and a bit frightened, though he couldn’t say exactly why, Karl snatched at his broom with both hands. He jerked the thing out, dragging the creature with it.
“Oh, shit!” Karl flung the broom against the wall, and the rat hit the window with a rubbery splat. Karl only caught a glimpse before it scuttled for a hole in the wall under the sink, but what he saw…For sure his eyesight was going and he’d smoked a little too much weed—but that rat had looked like a hand. One torn off just above the wrist.
Karl stood for a moment, trembling and trying to convince himself of what he had seen.
It had looked like a hand—a damned ugly one with long fingernails and a ragged stump that ended about a third of the way up the arm. But that couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. The lady had seen a rat, hadn’t she? It must have just been a bald rat who’d gotten its tail cut off. Maybe lost it in a trap.
Do you care? If it’s a rat, it’s a friggin’ mutant. You don’t want to be touchin’ it. What if your hair falls out too? Or something more important?
Karl wanted to run. He wanted to take off like every friggin’ bull in Pamplona was after his ass. Hell, he wanted to run faster than that—rats scared him senseless. And this thing?
“Shit.” Karl finally pulled out his radio. He didn’t like looking like a pussy, but he wasn’t dealing with this shit alone.
“Rodney—you there? Rodney? Answer me, damn it!” Karl didn’t like the way his voice sounded, all squeaky and afraid, not his usual tone at all.
Apparently, Rodney thought the same thing because he actually answered. “What’s up, Karl?” His voice was thick, like he was chewing on something.
“I think we got us a rat problem here on six. You better call someone and then come on up.”
There was a pause.
“Call someone?” The gears did another slow turn. “Like an exterminator?”
“No, I mean call the f—” Karl recalled others might be listening in and changed his mind about using his favorite profanity. “The flippin’ Pied Piper.”
“Who?” Rodney sounded puzzled.
Karl took a deep breath and prayed for patience. He thumbed the button on his radio again. “Yes, call the exterminator. Right now. And then get up here. I need some help.”
“Okay, unbunch your panties, man.”
Karl wiped his face dry, then clipped the radio back on his belt. “They ain’t payin’ me enough to deal with this shit,” he grunted.
He went over to the cart and got out his largest mop, jammed it against the hole the rat had used and then drove the handle into the opposite wall, hard enough to dent the plaster near the electric dryer. It was an imperfect fit, but it would have to do.
He shuddered and wiped his face again. It was a weirdlooking hole. Rats must have chewed through from the hallway, though it looked a lot like the digging had come from this side of the wall. That was where all the shredded sheetrock and lathe had landed, at any rate.
Well, it wasn’t in his job description, but Karl decided he wouldn’t mind going down to the basement and getting a board and some nails to shut up this hole. He’d do it right away. Whatever the heck it was on the other side of the wall, he’d just as soon it stayed there until the exterminator arrived.