Alabaster

"A needle and thread will do a better job, I think," Miss Aramat says calmly and gets up off her knees. She passes the handkerchief to Biancabella and then makes a show of smoothing the wrinkles from her dress.

Then Alma comes back with a silver serving tray, cups and saucers, cream and sugar, a teapot trimmed in gold and there are violets painted on the side. Porcelina's a step behind her, carrying another, smaller silver tray piled with cakes and tarts and a bowl of chocolate bon-bons.

"We were out of jasmine," Alma says. "So I used the rose hip and chamomile instead."

"What's she doing up here?" and Miss Aramat points at Porcelina. "I told you to call for Isolde."

Alma frowns, sets the tray down on a walnut table near the Bailiff. "I did," she says. "But Porcelina came."

"Isolde was busy draining the corpse," Porcelina explains, and she puts her tray down beside the other. "And I've never seen vampires before."

"Is it everything you always hoped it would be?" Dead Girl purls.

"Rose hip and chamomile sounds just wonderful," the Bailiff says, taking a saucer and two sugar cubes. "And are those poppy-seed cakes?"

Miss Aramat stares at Porcelina, who pretends not to notice, while Alma pours steaming tea into the cups.

"Yes, they are," Porcelina says. "Mary Rose baked them just this morning."

"Delightful. I haven't had a good poppy-seed cake in ages."

"Can I please have two of these?" Bobby asks, poking the sticky indigo filling of a blueberry tart lightly dusted with confectioner's sugar.

"I don't see why not, dear. They'll only go to waste otherwise."

And the sudden, swelling howl from Miss Aramat, rabid sound much too big, too wild, to ever have fit inside her body, her narrow throat, but it spills out, anyway. She turns and rushes towards the red fireplace, stretching up on tiptoes to snatch one of the swords from its bracket above the mantel. Broadsword almost as long as she is tall, but such grace in her movement, the silver arc of tempered steel, that it might weigh no more than a broomstick.

Alma shrieks and drops the violet-dappled teapot and the cup she was filling. They seem to fall forever as the sword swings round like the needle of some deadly compass, finally smashing wetly against the floor in the same instant that the blade comes to rest beneath Porcelina's chin. The razor point pressed to the soft place beneath her jawbone, only a little more pressure and she'd bleed, a thrust and the blade would slide smoothly through windpipe cartilage and into her spine.

The Bailiff stops chewing, his mouth stuffed with poppy-seed cake, the sword only inches from the end of his nose. He reaches slowly for the automatic pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers, and Bobby turns and runs back to Dead Girl.

The grin on Miss Aramat's face like rictus, wide and toothy corpse grin, and "Biancabella," she says, but already the fury has drained out of her, leaving her voice barely a hoarse murmur. "Remember last winter, when you wanted to do Salomè? Maybe our guests would enjoy the entertainment."

"She'll make a poor Jokanaan," Biancabella says, her eyes on the Bailiff's hand as he flips off the gun's safety and aims the barrel at Miss Aramat's head.

"Oh, I think she'll do just fine," and now the point of the sword draws a single scarlet bead from Porcelina's throat.

"Please. I'm sorry. I only wanted to see-"

"'She is monstrous, thy daughter, she is altogether monstrous. In truth, what she has done is a great crime.'"

The Bailiff swallows and licks his lips, catching the last stray crumbs. "You're very thoughtful, Aramat," he says coolly, politely, as if declining another cake or another cup of jasmine tea. "Some other time, perhaps."

"'I will not look at things, I will not suffer things to look at me-'"

"For fuck's sake," Biancabella hisses. "You know that he means it."

Aramat glances sidewise at the Bailiff and his gun, and then quickly back to Porcelina. Her grin slackens to a wistful, sour sort of smile, and she lowers the blade until the point is resting on the tea-stained carpet.

"I didn't want you thinking I wasn't a good host," she says, her eyes still fixed on Porcelina. The girl hasn't moved, stands trembling like a palsied statue; a thin trickle of blood is winding its way towards the collar of her dress.

"You understand that, Bailiff. I couldn't have you going back up to Providence and Boston, telling them all I wasn't a good host."

The Bailiff breathes out stale air and relief, and slowly he lowers his gun, easing his finger off the trigger.

"Now, you know I'd never say a thing like that, Miss Aramat." And he puts the gun away and reaches for one of the cups of tea. "I always look forward to our visits."

"I really wasn't expecting you until tomorrow night," she says, and Biancabella takes the sword from her hands, returns it to its place above the mantel. Miss Aramat thanks her and sits down in a salon chair near the Bailiff, but she doesn't take her eyes off Porcelina until Alma has led her from the room.

On the red sofa, Dancy turns her head and looks at Dead Girl and the frightened boy in her arms. Empty silver eyes in ageless, unaging faces. Eyes that might have seen hundreds of years or only decades, and it really makes no difference, one way or the other, when a single moment can poison a soul forever.

"Can I please have something to drink," she asks, and Dead Girl whispers in Bobby's ear. He nods his head, takes his arms from around her neck, and sits silently on the sofa next to Dancy while Dead Girl goes to get her a cup of tea.

Sometime later, though Dancy can't be sure how much later, no clocks in the red room, but an hour, surely, since they left her alone on the sofa. The contents of the leather satchel traded for a fat roll of bills, and the Bailiff turned and winked at her before he left. Miss Aramat and Biancabella followed him and Dead Girl and Bobby back out into the hall, shutting and locking the door behind them. There's only one small window, set high up on the wall past the fireplace, but if her hands weren't still strapped together with duct tape maybe she could reach it, if she stood on one of the chairs or tables.

"They'd only catch you," the black bear in the corner says. "They'd catch you and bring you right back again." She isn't very surprised that the bear's started talking to her in his gruff, sawdusty stuffed-bear voice.

"They might not," she says. "I can run fast."

"They can run faster," the bear says, unhelpfully.

Dancy stares at the bear, at the ridiculous hat perched between his ears. She asks him if he can talk to anyone or just to her, because sometimes there are things that can only talk to her, things only she can hear because no one else will ever listen.

"I talked to the man who shot me," the bear growls. "And I spoke to Candida once, but she told me she'd throw me out with the trash if I ever did it again."

"What will they do to me?" Dancy asks, and when the bear doesn't answer her, she asks again. "What are they going to do to me, bear?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Stupid bear. You probably don't have any idea what goes on in this house."

The bear grumbles to itself and stares straight ahead with its glass eyeballs. "I wish I didn't," he says. "I wish the taxidermist had forgotten to give me eyes to see or ears to hear. I wish the hunter had left me to rot in the woods."

"They're very wicked women," Dancy says, watching the door now instead of the bear. He doesn't reply, tired of listening to her or maybe he's gone back to sleep, whatever it is dead bears do instead of sleep. She gets up and crosses the room, stands in front of two paintings hung side by side above a potted plant. Both are portraits of the bodies of dead women.