The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) (12 page)

Holly proceeded to bustle about in the kitchen,
preparing tea, her impeccable composure restored. When she smiled at me, I
noticed she had refreshed her lip-gloss. When she leaned in to set the table,
her chest brushed against my shoulder. The skin beneath her linen dress was
warm, and smelled pleasantly of cinnamon and cognac. Before she returned to
puttering in the kitchen, she gave me an amused look that told me she knew
exactly what was on my mind.

“Not exactly. Just generally,” Holly said cheerfully,
taking the kettle off the flame, and then turning off the burner. “Men are
fairly predictable in that regard. No offense.”

I laughed.

“None taken.”

She crowded the table with plates of sugar cookies, a
round of soft white cheese, green grapes, and a pair of toasted muffins with
butter, jam, and marmalade. A moment later, Holly poured tea for both us, which
I sniffed suspiciously.

“Green,” she said, reassuringly. “With a little bit of
jasmine.”

“I wasn’t suggesting…”

“I have no intentions of drugging you, Preston. Not
this time,” she said, sitting down across from me. “I like to think that we are
friends, after all.”

“I like to think that, too.”

She giggled, her fingers hovering thoughtfully over
the cookie plate.

“You say the sweetest things, dear.”

I ate a grape to have something to do.

“I hate to ask, but why did you want to talk to me?
Did you have something you wanted me to do?”

“Yes, actually.” She settled on a bar of sugar-flecked
shortbread, picking it up carefully with tapered nails the color of a
nosebleed. “Before we get to that, though, I have something to confess.”

I perked up.

“Oh?”

Holly nodded, biting into the shortbread with apparent
joy.

“About the case. You know, about Sumire.”

Hopes dashed.

“Oh.”

She swallowed, wiped powdered sugar from glossy lips.

“You don’t want to hear?”

“No, I do.” I sighed and tried my tea, which was
entirely too hot. “Go ahead.”

“Sumire was looking into a rumor for me,” Holly said,
abruptly melancholy, “the night she was attacked. It was…personal business.
Private. Nothing that should have attracted any sort of attention.”

“It did, though.” I tried one of the cookies. They
were buttery and delicious. “Why are you being so reticent?”

“It was family business,” Holly admitted, her
shoulders slumping. I nodded and pretended to relate. “Have I ever mentioned my
family?” Holly sighed and dipped a cookie in her tea. “Two sisters, one younger
and one older; and a big brother whom we all adored who doted upon all of us.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was.” Holly’s eyes were far away, clouded by the
sort of nostalgia that leaves a mark. “For a time. The Nameless City then was
only marginally more hospitable than its current incarnation. The curse our family
labored beneath was as vast and heavy as the sky.”

I gnawed on a cookie and listened. It was a solo
performance, anyway – Holly wasn’t looking for more than an audience.

“My brother followed the family trade, and went
looking for secrets.” Holly sighed bitterly into her tea, the wound raw and
obvious. Despite what everyone says, time is an inept healer. “Eventually, he
found what he was looking for. We lost him in the process.”

“That’s sad. And abstract.”

“Exactly.” She nodded seriously. “Relations between my
sisters and I grew strained. Words were exchanged; things said that ought not
to be said. My little sister went mad; became convinced that my older sister
was sneaking into her dreams at night, and poisoning them.”

That sigh, like mist coming in off the water on a cold
night. She crossed her legs, her tan slightly faded by the rainy spring, and
curled her toes.

“And perhaps she was. Who knows?” Holly sipped her
tea, and I did the same. It wasn’t bad. “I attempted to soothe their tempers,
but failed. There was violence, and then a great deal more violence.”

Holly took another cookie, swirled her tea with it,
and then munched on it joylessly.

“What happened to your sisters?”

“We tried living apart, but they wouldn’t leave each
other alone, or forgive each other.” Holly picked up a grape, and rolled it
between her fingers. “You have hardly eaten, Preston,” she scolded. “Have a
muffin.”

I moved to obey, reaching for the butter and current
jam.

“They did each other harm, but my younger sister was
more successful. My older sister was maimed in the conflict and
remains…poorly.”

Holly appeared crestfallen, so I gave her a moment to
collect herself. She hesitated, lost in contemplation of the ripples and
currents created when she swirled her tea. Impatience got the best of me, and I
tried to talk around a mouthful of buttered muffin.

“That’s terrible…what happened to her?”

Holly was jarred from her melancholy by the question.
She looked up at me from her tea as if she were surprised to find me there.

“Oh.” Holly shrugged, and then dragged her forefinger
across her lovely throat. “Decapitated.”

“What?”

“My younger sister decapitated my older sister,” Holly
explained, sniffling. “Family is so difficult.”

“Particularly yours. I’m sorry you lost your older
sister that way, though. It must be hard.”

“It is hard, but I didn’t really lose her, Preston.”

I set my partially eaten muffin aside, appetite lost
in confusion.

“What does that mean?”

“We are witches, Preston.” Holly dabbed at her eyes
with a napkin, careful not to smear her slightly-too-intense eye makeup. “We
don’t die that easily.”

“I see.” I toyed with my teacup. “Does everyone in
this building have a skewed view on mortality, or just you and Sumire?”

Holly put a finger to her lips thoughtfully.

“No,” she said slowly, after serious consideration.
“I’m certain that it is just the two of us.”

“Fine. Have it your way. If your older sister…”

I made a pained face. It took Holly a moment to notice
the prompt.

“Oh. Yes. My elder sister is Constance, and the
younger is Madeleine.”

“Constance and Madeleine Diem? That’s terrible. You
got lucky, Holly.”

“Perhaps. It’s hard to be certain of anything, when it
comes to my family,” Holly mused. “Growing up, it was never very clear how many
of us there were. Sometimes we were three sisters, or four, or seven…I think
even nine, once. Eventually, though, it settled down to just the three of us.”

“Holly, you’re losing me here.”

She ignored me, lost in reverie.

“We lived beside an orchard that grew the most
beautiful golden-skinned apples. Our reasons changed – sometimes we were
guarding the orchard, or tending to it. Sometimes we lived within it, and hosted
guests. Other times were very lonely, as if we were on an island at the end of
the earth. We weren’t supposed to eat the apples, but they were delicious, so
we would steal them on occasion.” Holly smiled fondly. “Maybe that’s why we had
to leave. I don’t really recall, just that it was very sad.”

Lovecraft watched me from the corner, his eyes barely
open, sprawled on the kitchen tile. I coaxed him over to curl up on my shoes,
so that I could stroke his bony back.

“When we first came to the Nameless City, we were too
frightened to do anything other than stay together. The orchard, the apples,
and ourselves – that had been the extent of our world, until the day it
wasn’t.” Holly chewed on her merlot-painted lower lip. I watched, breathless,
transfixed by the uncomfortable eroticism of her distress. “I think it was my
fault. My sisters were always nicer to me than they were to each other; I was a
bridge between them, and also a buffer. I never realized how poorly they
understood each other until they started to fight in earnest. They had always
bickered, but in the way of sisters.”

Holly stirred her tea with her finger.

“Constance was old when I was a child, after all,
before Madeleine was born. I suppose that might have been the root of the
misunderstanding. Not long after we came to the city, Madeleine became obsessed
with the notion that it was impossible for herself and Constance to coexist – as
if her sister’s presence made her own presence impossible. She started passing
notes through me, and timing her comings and goings for when Constance slept.
Constance was confused at first, but her confusion turned quickly to hostility.
The notes I carried dutifully between them grew ever bitterer. Constance
refused all food, fearing that Madeleine would poison her, while Madeleine
complained that Constance had taken to tormenting her in dreams. Eventually
they crossed paths, and a fight over dinner turned violent. Madeleine attacked
Constance, stabbing her in the stomach with a pair of scissors. Constance was
injured and enraged. She took the scissors from Madeleine, and cast me aside
when I sought to intervene. She marred Madeleine’s face – and Madeleine was
beautiful, more so than Constance or I – and cut out her eyes.”

“With – with scissors? That’s terrible!”

Holly nodded gravely, putting her hand on the table
and looking at me plaintively. I covered her hand eagerly with my own, which
felt huge and crude by contrast.

“Madeleine struggled and spat, enraging Constance
further. Constance severed her arms and legs, and then threw them into the
fire, and walked out, leaving us forever.”

Holly sniffled and squeezed my hand.

“I nursed Madeleine as best I could, though she would
be forever blind and reduced. I did what I could to try and mend the
relationship between them, but Constance refused my entreaties, and Madeleine
nursed a hatred of her sister that I could not diminish, even as she returned
to a sort of health.”

At this point, I was feeling sympathetic to Madeleine
on that particular score. Holly seemed to view the incident as an unmitigated
tragedy, however, with no right or wronged parties. I suppose, as sister to
both women, she had little choice.

“Madeleine was always the most daring. She was the
death of the night, and the night feared her. She had paramours and suitors
from the Outer Dark, and they were dismayed at her maiming. Many offered
recourse. I suppose that Madeleine chose one of their solutions, eventually, or
perhaps all. What do I know? She spat at me at the front door, cursing me as one
of her suitors carried her away. She warned me that she would return, that
Constance and I both would be sorry for it.”

Beneath the table, her foot came to rest against mine,
bare toes brushing my instep.

“I heard that she found her way to the Empire of the
Deep, to the Drowned Empress and her forges and armories in the undersea
trenches, to join her endless war with Dagon and his children. They say that,
somewhere in the cerulean abysses, the Drowned Empress fashioned her terrible
new limbs from the ivory of the internal tusks of the Dhole, strung together
with a pliable wire of unknown metal, and made her regent, while the Empress
slept. One heard all sorts of rumors, in those days.”

If her expression was to be taken as any sort of
indication, then “those days” had not been nice.

“One winter night, when the tide swelled and the sea
trespassed above the docks and flooded the lowlands, Madeleine returned. She
came hunting for Constance, and found her at her home in Iram, among the unruly
gardens and rundown mansions.” Holly recited the story dully, as if reading
from a book toward which she was indifferent. “My baby sister returned with
limbs carved from animal bone, acting as regent for the Drowned Empress. She
had eyes crafted by the Outer Dark, and rode upon the back of an Elder and
blasphemous thing from the depths. Constance was cunning and resourceful, but
did not stand a chance. I rushed to Prospect Hill to stop them, but by the time
I arrived, Madeleine had already…Constance had lost her head. Madeleine was not
pleased to see me.”

Holly took her hand from beneath mine, and I watched
her chew her thumbnail instead, with appropriate regret.