Alabaster

Porcelina turns her back on them, then, turning because she's afraid they might see straight through her eyes to the hurt and doubt coiled about her soul. She stares instead at the louvered window above Mary Rose's skulls, the glass painted black, shiny, thick black latex to stop the day and snooping eyes.

"Well, you have to admit, at least then we'd never have to hear about that fucking bottle again," Candida laughs, and, as though her laughter were an incantation, skillful magic to shatter the moment, the back doorbell rings directly overhead. A buzz like angry, electric wasps filtered through the floorboards, and Miss Aramat looks at Porcelina, who hasn't taken her eyes off the window.

"You told him three o'clock?" Miss Aramat asks.

"I told him," Porcelina replies, sounding scared, and Miss Aramat nods her head once, takes off her apron, and returns it to a bracket on the wall.

"If I need you, I'll call," she says to Biancabella, and, taking what remains of the burgundy, goes upstairs to answer the door.

"Maybe Bobby and me should stay with the car," Dead Girl says again, in case the Bailiff didn't hear her the first time. Big, blustery man fiddling with his keys, searching for the one that fits the padlock on the iron gate; he stops long enough to glance back at her and shake his head no. The moonlight glints dull off his bald scalp, and he scratches at his beard and glares at the uncooperative keys.

"But I saw a cop back there," Dead Girl says. "What if he finds the car and runs the plates? What if-"

"We can always get another car," the Bailiff grumbles. "Better he finds a stolen car than a stolen car with the two of you sitting inside."

"And I wa

Bobby leans close to the albino girl and stands on tiptoes, his lips pressed somewhere below her left ear. There's a piece of duct tape across her mouth, silver duct tape wrapped tight around her wrists, and Dead Girl's holding onto the collar of her Mi

"No, they're not," Dead Girl snorts. "Not real ghouls. Real ghouls don't live in great big fucking houses."

"You'll see," Bobby whispers to Dancy. "They dig up dead people and cut them into pieces. That's what ghouls do."

And the Bailiff finds the right key, then-"There you are, my rusty little sparrow."-and the hasp pops open and in a moment they're through the gate and standing in the garden. Dead Girl looks longingly back at the alleyway and the Monte Carlo as the Bailiff pulls the gate shut behind him, clang, and snaps the padlock closed again.

The garden is darker than the alley, the low, sprawling limbs of live oaks and magnolias to hide the moon, crooked limbs draped with Spanish moss and epiphytic ferns. Dancy has to squint to see. She draws a deep breath through her nostrils, taking in the sticky, flowerscented night, camellias and boxwood, the fleshy white magnolia blossoms. Behind her, the Bailiff's keys jangle, and Dead Girl shoves Dancy roughly forward, towards the house.

The Bailiff leads the way down the narrow cobblestone path that winds between the trees, past a brass sundial and marble statues set on marble pedestals, nude bodies wrapped in shadow garments, unseeing stone eyes staring after Heaven. Dancy counts her steps, listens to the Bailiff's fat-man wheeze, the twin silences where Dead Girl and Bobby's breath should be. Only the slightest warm breeze to disturb the leaves, the drone of crickets and katydids, and, somewhere nearby, a whippoorwill calling out to other whippoorwills.

A thick hedge of oleander bushes, and then the path turns abruptly and they're standing at the edge of a reflecting pool choked with hya-cinth and water lilies; broad flagstones to ring its dark circumference, and the Bailiff pauses here, stares down at the water and rubs his beard. An expression on his face like someone who's lost something, someone who knows he'll never find it again, or it'll never find him.

"What is it?" Dead Girl asks. "What's wrong?" but the Bailiff only shrugs his broad shoulders, and takes another step nearer the pool, standing right at the very edge now.

"One day," he says. "One day, when you're older, maybe, I'll tell you about this place. One day maybe I'll even tell you what she keeps trapped down there at the bottom with the goldfish and the tadpoles."

He laughs, an ugly, bitter sound, and Dancy makes herself turn away from the pool. She can hear the drowned things muttering to themselves below the surface, even if Dead Girl can't, the rheumy voices twined with roots and slime. She looks up at the house instead and sees they've almost reached the steps leading to the high back porch. Some of the downstairs windows glow with soft yellow light, light that can't help but seem inviting after so much darkness. But Dancy knows better, knows a lie when she sees one, and there's nothing to comfort or save her behind those walls. She takes another deep breath and starts walking towards the steps before Dead Girl decides to shove her again.

"You still got that satchel?" the Bailiff asks, and "Yes sir," the boy with silver eyes answers and holds it up so he can see. "It's getting heavy."

"Well, you just hang in there, boy. It's going to be getting a whole lot lighter any minute now."

And they climb the stairs together, Dancy in the lead, still counting the paces, the Bailiff at the rear, and the wooden steps creak loudly beneath their feet. At the top, the Bailiff presses the doorbell, and Dead Girl pushes Dancy into an old wicker chair.

"Where's your angel now?" she sneers and digs her sharp nails into the back of Dancy's neck, forcing her head down between her knees.

"Be careful, child," the Bailiff says. "Don't start asking questions you don't really want answered," and now he's staring back towards the alley, across the wide, wide garden towards the car. "She might show you an angel or two, before this night's done."

And Dead Girl opens her mouth to tell him to fuck off and never mind her "place" because babysitting deranged albino girls was never part of the deal. But the back door opens then, light spilling from the house, and Dead Girl and Bobby both cover their eyes and look away. Dancy raises her head, wishing they hadn't taken her sunglasses, and she strains to see more than the silhouette of the woman standing in the doorway.

"Well, isn't this a surprise," the woman says, and then she leads them all inside.

Through the bright kitchen and down a long, dimly-lit hall, walls hung with gilt-framed paintings of scenes that might have found their way out of Dancy's own nightmares. Midnight cemetery pictures, opened graves and broken headstones, a riot of hunched and prancing figures, dogjawed, fire-eyed creatures, dragging corpses from the desecrated earth.

"We can have our tea in the Crimson Room," the woman named Miss Aramat says to the Bailiff. Small woman barely as tall as Dancy, china-doll hands and face, china-doll clothes, and Dancy thinks she might shatter if she fell, if anyone ever struck her. The jewels about her throat sparkle like drops of blood and morning dew set in silver, and she's wearing a big black hat, broad-brimmed and tied with bunches of lace and ribbon, two iridescent peacock feathers stuck in the band. Her waist cinched so small that Dancy imagines one hand would reach almost all the way around it, thumb to middle finger. She isn't old, though Dancy wouldn't exactly call her a young woman, either.