Bone Dance

I reached the door that opened on Albrecht’s office. Would Tom be in it? Or Albrecht, or both? If the lamp was on, I’d be blind. I opened the door a finger width at a time.

The office was dark. And u

I bumped lightly into the desk, and let my hands drift in the area where the lamp ought to be. It was there. I tried the switch because it had to be tried, but nothing happened. I worked my way around the desk, stopping to listen every two or three steps, holding my breath until the pulse in my head deafened me. In time, I made it to the door in the paneling that led to the big, bright room that had been the stage for Tom’s last drama.

It was as dark as the office. And the cool, dry air had been replaced with suffocating heat and damp. No venting, no air-conditioning. I could feel sweat springing to my skin already, like condensation on a glass. I took a step into the void, another -

And couldn’t quite stifle the sound I made when something brushed against my face. I staggered backward. Nothing happened. I reached out and found something between my fingers: plastic — long ribbons of it — hanging from the ceiling like loose-curled vines.

What I had to stifle then was a stream of epithets. It was videotape. Half-inch videotape pulled off its reels and draped like party streamers as far as I could reach.

Light fluttered through the room, and I thought at first it was a reflection from somewhere. But in the afterimage I realized what I’d seen. The blinds had been drawn back from the wall of window glass, and the first pale flickering of lightning had passed through. Lightning. What about wind? That wasn’t my part of the show. I couldn’t spare either hope or fear for the weather now.

But it had given me that moment’s illumination. In it, I’d seen thickets of tape, veiling the room from one side to the other. Albrecht’s collection, it must be, everything I’d found for him, everything he’d commissioned from anywhere else, all originals, because he’d insisted on that. I closed both fists on handfuls of tape and began, methodically, to pull it down.

The furniture was gone. When I reached the place where the two couches had been, I found only empty floor. A stab of lightning showed me the marks in the deep carpet left by the couches’ feet, and by the Chinese table. He might not be here at all, I thought suddenly, alarmed. A cluster of tape slipped through my fingers to the floor. He might have left this here for me, and be sitting somewhere below, imagining the scene, laughing. If so, he could have left something else as well, something lethal.

No, it felt wrong. Tom Worecski had a wonderful imagination; I had the proof of it right here. But I didn’t think he’d want to miss the effect he’d caused, even if he had to limit himself to judging by the noises I made. I gathered up an armful of tape and yanked.

Bleaching white light shot into the room from the window and was gone, with the crash of mangled air on its heels. I staggered and fell, and jammed my knuckles into my teeth to stop sound and air.

Dana was hanging from the ceiling. The afterimage was printed on my vision wherever I turned: head down, naked, her bare arms dangling among the twists of videotape, the ragged remains of her blond hair sticking out around her face, her mouth dark with dried blood, her eyes wide and empty. Her throat had been cut.

There was another flash, and I didn’t have warning enough to look away, so I saw her again. I would have to see her to get past her. I ought to get her down from there; but oh, gods, gods, I couldn’t do it. What did you burn candles to Erzulie for, Dana? To save you from someone like Tom Worecski? Had she been alive yesterday, when I held her hair in a box? I couldn’t tell, not from one lightning flash to the next. A broken ma

The need for stealth, it seemed to me, was gone. “Where are you, Tom?” I said aloud.

“This way,” he answered from behind a screen of tape, in the same tone I used: flat, stripped of frivolity or even character. It was his live voice, not another ceiling speaker. I moved cautiously forward through the plastic. It stuck to my skin where it brushed, to the glaze of sweat there. I could feel my shirt clinging wet to my back, the trousers catching damply at my thighs and calves. “Why did you send for me, Tom?”

“Mick told me your little story. He said you couldn’t remember being a Horseman, but I figured you for a liar.” He was moving; his arc was taking him toward the right, away from the windows, putting me between him and them. Did he think I had a gun?

“It’s true. I don’t. I never was a Horseman.”

“Oh, bullshit. The fuckin’ chevaux were just meatbags. Somebody’d have to operate ’em. So, are you Mitchell, that little ass wipe? He thought he was Mister C. I. fuckin’ A. He’d love to try to take me out.”

“I told you what I am.” There was no reason not to talk; the rustling of the videotape would have told him where I was. He’d invited me up. He thought I was a Horseman. He wanted another head fight, wanted to prove to another of his kind that he was the master.

“Or Scoville, maybe? Christ, what a pussy. And Chichenas hated my guts — are you Chichenas?”

On the other hand, if I’d run out of things to say, there was no reason to go on talking. When he was done playing with me, he’d strike. And then I’d see if my doppelganger worked.

Theo was in the Gilded West, right outside that window. If he got lucky and a toy cyclone danced on the vanes of his turbine, if it didn’t tear off the top of the building and crush him in the rubble, he would light up the night. It seemed terribly silly and distant. Why had we wanted to do it? What good was it going to be to anyone? I just hoped he could get away safe. Frances would help. I skirted another clump of tape.

“Sparrow, look out,” someone said, low and quick. In front of me I saw a movement, a lighter spot in the dark like a face. I ducked right. There was a spit of flame and a dry, deafening crack, and I felt something tear a hole through the flesh of my left shoulder. My scream and the gunshot reverberated together in the room and were gone.

I’d fallen to one knee; I stayed there, bent over and gasping. I clutched at my shoulder, but my hand wasn’t big enough to close over both the entrance and the exit wounds. Blood ran down my right wrist into my sleeve. So much for the clean shirt. Apologies to its owner when — no, it didn’t look as if I’d have the chance to make those. It had never occurred to me that he would have a gun, that he would choose to fight with something other than his head. I was an idiot. I was not good at this.

Lightning came and went in a quick, rhythmless dance. The room was pockmarked, in the flashes, with the image of the rain that patted against the window glass. The couches had been moved to this end of the room, and Mick Ski

“Surprise,” Tom said. Then he moved closer, and I heard the frown in his voice. “God damn — you’re not Frances. Shit, I didn’t figure she’d miss a chance like this.”

I sucked air in, quivering, uneven. It hurt, it hurt, and my stomach cramped with fear. I pressed my lips against my upraised knee to hold back whimpering and bile. Then I turned my head just enough to say, “No… I’m me. You didn’t… you didn’t send for her.”