The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) (8 page)

All I could do was wonder how April had gotten hold of
a pair of scissors – and where they were now. She has a real talent for
concealing contraband, but then again, so did I. That sort of thing was a basic
life skill, back at the Institute.

“Remind you of anything?”

April reached hesitantly for me, and I flinched. She
smiled at my reaction, stroking my cheek, letting her fingers linger across the
stubble. She must have felt me shiver.

“Where did you get the scissors for those dolls,
April? Do you still have them?”

One gnawed fingernail slid between the top buttons on
my shirt, undoing one and then another, leaving my collar wide open. April
circled around me like a shark, dragging her fingers through my hair. After
several revolutions, she came to a halt in front of me, standing between my
outstretched legs. She grabbed a handful of my hair and used it to force my
head back.

“Don’t change the subject, Preston.” My name dripped
from her lips like motor oil. “Did you do this?”

I knew the right answer, but perversity runs deep. She
walked circles around me, toying with what looked a severed power cord, taken
from the toaster in the kitchen.

“Do what?”

She wrapped the cord gently around my neck, fussing
over the symmetry like a lover gifting a necklace.

“Someone attacked Sumire,” April said, pulling the
cord taut across my throat. “Was it you?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Answer me, Preston.”

The cord tightened. My eyes stung and watered, and my
breath was labored.

“Is this my fault? Do you feel neglected? I have been
sleeping in Sumire’s bed, after all.” Her eyes sparkled with deceit and
cruelty, and I swooned. “Did you get lonely?”

“The last time Sumire was stabbed, you were the
responsible party,” I said, downplaying my own role in the incident. I grinned
despite the way she twisted my hair. “Did you cut that cord off the toaster?
Because there won’t be any more peanut butter toast if…”

The cord cinched tight.

“Be honest with me, Preston.” April pressed her knees
against the small of my back, and black spots appeared in my vision. “Did you
hurt Sumire?”

She allowed a tiny bit of slack, and my head swam as
the blood flooded back in.

“Not possible.” My voice was a croak. “She’s
invulnerable.”

She pulled it tight again. I’m not sure if I blacked
out for a second, or just thought that I did.

“Tell me the truth.” April demanded the impossible
imperiously. “Did you do this?”

I gasped and squirmed. The whole scene was like a
fever dream. I couldn’t decide how I wanted it to end.

“Don’t pretend.” April jerked my head back furiously.
“I know you, Preston. We know each other. Remember what you did to me?”

I couldn’t forget – and believe me, I wanted to.

“Remember the maid at the motel in the desert, the one
you caught listening at the door?” I did, but there were extenuating
circumstances. “Or that cute boy at the gas station – the first one, I think,
that we came to, after leaving the Institute – the boy with cowlick who made a
phone call?”

That one drew a blank.

“You are capable of anything, Preston,” April
whispered, rattling my brain in my skull. “That’s why you are so dear to me.”

The world was dim and distant by the time she let up.
The words trickled out of my crushed throat.

“Wasn’t me.”

I could not tell whether she laughed, or sighed. April
tossed the cord to the carpet, and then helped me to sit up.

“You are always worrying over other girls.” April
settled in my lap, putting her arms around my neck and resting her cheek
against my chest. “What do I have to do to get your attention?”

“You have all of it,” I whispered, touching my bruised
throat. “Don’t tell me you attacked Sumire out of jealousy?”

“Don’t give me such petty motives,” April said, yawning.
“If you didn’t touch her, then neither did I.”

We were both liars. This was part of the game. Resting
against my chest, April’s breathing slowed gradually.

“Okay. I was wondering...”

April tried to shush me, putting a finger to my lips.
I snapped my teeth at her fingertip, earning a giggle.

“...where was Sumire when you woke up? You slept at
her place, right?”

April nodded, all wide-eyed innocence.

“Do you remember her getting up in the night?”

If I had to guess, then she actually thought about it.

“I think so.” April rubbed her eyes. “Sumire doesn’t
sleep, you know.”

I grimaced and nodded. Sumire told everybody that one.

“When I stay over, she waits until she thinks I have
fallen asleep, and then she usually gets up and goes out to be a hero.”

The disturbing possibility of April faking sleep was a
new worry.

“Do you remember when she went out last night?”

April shook her head.

“Try to remember. It could be important. They think I
did it, you know.”

“You think
I
did it.”

“It’s not that unlikely, you know.” I risked bringing
up a bad memory. “Remember what you did in to that girl back at the hotel in
the desert? This looks a lot like that.”

“I like Sumire.” April shrugged, as if this were all
quite simple. “I would never.”

“Do you remember when she got up?”

April chewed her lip and pinched her brow. Her heels
kicked randomly against my thigh and the floor.

“I’m not sure. Late, though. After midnight.”

She threw her arms out in an exaggerated yawn, ending
it by throwing her arms around my neck and pulling me close.

“I’m tired,” she said, completely unconvincing. “Take
me to bed.”

The night devolved into another set of moral difficulties
requiring careful navigation. I’m not providing any details, sorry.

You’ll just have to trust me.

Purple memories, fingerprints on the soft skin of the
upper arms and inner thighs. Four days of bleeding, a week and a half picking
at scabs. New pink skin and glassy eyes, faded as a photograph abandoned in the
sun, fault lines of drought and wandering hands.  

“Mr. Tauschen? You look terrible. What happened?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said grumpily. “An accident.”

Yael leaned close, but she did it gingerly, the way
one might inspect an injured wild animal.

“It looks as if someone tried to strangle you,” Yael
said, scratching her head. “What sort of accident is that?”

“Unfortunate?”

“Keeping secrets?” Yael gave me a critical look. “That
is a bad way to begin our endeavor.”

I shrugged. Points against me in the invisible tally
Yael was keeping, but I didn’t have a clever story to cover my injuries. I was
too tired to bother with deception, and my throat was too sore to make excess
conversation. The buzzing of what might have been a fever flitted in and out of
existence in my brain stem, sending occasional chills down my spine.

“Fine. Be that way.” Yael shrugged. She rubbed her
hands together for warmth, which was lacking as the clouds concealed the sun. “You
said you wanted to show me something relevant to our investigation. What is
it?”

“Not what. Who. Someone I want you to meet.”

Yael took a pair of gloves from an interior pocket on
the windbreaker. I held the silver gate open for her on the way out to Leng
Street.

“Who, then?”

“You need to meet her for yourself. You wouldn’t
believe me if I told you.”

Yael’s eyes narrowed and she studied me through the
mist of her exhalation.

“Her?”

“Yeah. That an issue?”

“In a sense.” She laughed and flexed her fingers
within their wool confines. “You seem to have girl problems, Mr. Tauschen.”

“Would you please call me Preston? The way you say my
last name makes it sound like a joke.”

“Isn’t it?”  

Dunwich trotted past me to coil around his mistress’s
ankles, moving with the weightless silence that is a birthright of the feline
race.

“No. Deadly serious.”

Yael smiled.

“Sumire was right.”

I was having trouble following her tangents. The girl
was more frustrating in a good mood.

“About what?”

“You are funny,” Yael said, with an approving nod.
“You try too hard, though.”

For a modest girl, she had me rattled, all right.

“Better than not trying.” I headed down the hill,
motioning her to follow. “We should get going. This might take a while.”

Yael had to scramble to keep up, thanks to the
difference between our strides.

“Where are we going, Preston?”

I didn’t like the way she said my first name, either,
but at least she didn’t sound as if she was trying not to laugh.

“She was somewhere in Sarnath last I heard, down by
the factories. That was a couple of months ago, but we have to start
somewhere.”

“Why aren’t we going to the train station?”

There was suspicion behind the question, but it wasn’t
acute. I did my best to step lightly, in a conversational sense.

“It’s not that long of a walk, and there are a couple
other places I want to look. They aren’t very likely, but we should take them
off the list.” Yael found the answer wanting, so I decided to employ the truth.
“I also wanted to stop by the convenience store. I need caffeine.”

Yael seemed to have things on her mind, so we walked
down Leng Street in silence, listening to the dissonant songs of the wind
worming through fissures in the concrete and broken windows.

I considered my options. Coffee would have been
helpful, but I purged our kitchen of anything that could cut, grate, blend, or
heat water several months ago, after a series of incidents. That pretty much
made me Elijah’s bitch, but it beat having a pot of boiling water dumped on my
chest while I slept.

The parking lot around the convenience store was
deserted. I have never seen a car parked there, as none of the residents of the
Estates own a car, to the best of my knowledge, and I have never encountered a
customer who wasn’t also one of my neighbors. I wasn’t sure how the place stayed
in business, Sumire and April’s love for ice cream bars notwithstanding. It
took a titanic effort to force the door open.

Elijah’s face fell when he saw me, but brightened as
Yael followed me inside.

“Good morning, Elijah!” Yael said, with a demure bob
of her head. “How are you?”

“Could be worse, Yael. What brings you here?”

I poured myself a cup of the surprisingly palatable but
scorching hot coffee. I listened to Yael gossip about Carter affairs, and
commiserate over the unfortunate Sumire, while I picked out an energy bar and a
bag of trail mix, neither of which I like.

“That’s terrible!” Elijah looked mortified, and also a
bit like he hadn’t slept recently. “It does remind me of a story that I heard, though,
from a recent arrival to the Nameless City…”

“Oh, good.” I put the snacks and the coffee on the
counter. “Another story.”

“Please be quiet.” Yael gave me a cold look. “Do
continue, Elijah.”

“According to legend, a doom has always hung over this
city,” Elijah proclaimed, relishing every word. Weirdo. “Before the ocean
receded to the expose the city in sea, before the first human inhabitants, the
Nameless City was lost.”

“Okay,” I muttered. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Both of them glared.

“What?” I snarled defensively. “How can you have a
city with no people?”

Their reaction implied that this was a very foolish
question indeed. Elijah laughed, while Yael shook her head, as if saddened by
my intellectual weakness.

“The Empty District, and the Unknown Kadath Estates
within it, is particularly forsaken,” Elijah explained, studying me with watery
brown eyes that seemed decades older than the man himself did. “Even the gods
have forgotten it.”

“I think you mean God,” Yael said brightly. “And I
doubt that very much.”

Elijah grinned broadly as if Yael had told him a joke.

“Unknown? I live there,” I grumbled, thoroughly
puzzled. “The Estates are hardly unknown.”

“Are you certain?”

He and Yael exchanged a knowing look. I was getting
real tired of not being in on whatever everybody else was in on.

“Pretty damn certain, yeah. I mean, we get mail.”

“Language, Preston,” Yael snapped. She glared in my
direction, then returned her attention to the clerk, who still made no move to
scan my purchases. “Ignore him, Elijah. Please finish your story.”

Elijah gave me a victorious sneer before continuing.

“As I mentioned, this story dates from the earliest
days of the Nameless City. In those days, the moon was not so close, and the
Old Ones were still buried by the sea. The night was shorter, and there were
more stars.”

I sighed loudly, but everyone ignored me.

“Three sisters lived in the city at this time. They
were remarkable from the time they were children, but each was renowned for a
particular attribute – the eldest, for her penetrating wisdom and foresight;
the middle for her beauty and cunning, and the youngest for her wit and…” Elijah
hesitated, then licked his lips and glanced at Yael nervously, as if reluctant
to finish his sentence. “…prowess in the bedroom.”

Yael winced. I smirked.

“Eventually, the house they shared became too small
for their ambitions. The fighting between them grew worse, and their hearts
hardened toward each other. In particular, the youngest and the eldest came to
despise one another, the elder envying the youth of the younger, and the
younger desirous of the elder’s secrets. One Friday night, during the evening
meal they had all shared for too many years to count, words between the sisters
became particularly harsh. Then, words were not harsh enough, and the conflict
became physical. The middle sister pleaded with them to stop their madness, to
no avail. Before that morning, each of the sisters had left their cottage in
the Enchanted Forest, to take up residence in different parts of the Nameless
City.”

Elijah’s fairy tales bored me, but Yael was captivated,
as if all of this came as a revelation. Yael wasn’t as practical as I thought
if she went for the Gothic romanticism of Elijah’s parables.

“The eldest went to Sarnath, and there she built a
sanitarium, with high walls and extensive grounds planted with flamboyant and
bizarre plants that no one could recall ever seeing elsewhere. The guests
arrived swathed in robes and scarves, their faces hidden but the bizarre shape
of their bodies obvious even under layers of cloth. She never emerged again
from the sanitarium. According to one rumor, she remains there to this day,
sequestered in a concealed room deep within the bewildering halls and corridors,
kept alive by strange machines brought by the black-sailed ships that come from
the moon. According to another, the sanitarium has only her body, as the
younger sister took her head as a prize after mounting an attack on the
sanitarium.”

I decided to reclaim my coffee before it went entirely
cold. Elijah still hadn’t made a move to ring me up, his eyes far away, as
consumed by the story as Yael.

“The youngest went to Iram, and lived in a palace
beside the pillars, bounded by marble walls and lush gardens. There she was
visited by the Lithurge, who live and die in the course of a single night; the
Thake, who live on the other side of mirrors; and the veiled and turbaned
travelers who navigate the black-sailed ships. Some say that she, too, was
never seen again, but that her voice could be heard regularly at night, crying
out in an unknown and unintelligible language. When the moon is swollen and
close, other claim that she joins the Toads in hunting stray cats across the
Nameless City, daring to hound them to the very borders of Ulthar. In some
stories, she commands the legions of the Drowned Empress. In others, she
carries the severed head of her elder sister like a lamp, the skull hollowed
and a candle placed inside, illuminating her aged skin like weathered
parchment.”

“Ugh.” Yael made a face. “That’s gross.”

“These legends tend to be rather crude,” Elijah said,
by way of apology, scanning my food and then manually pounding in the price of
my coffee. “The Nameless City’s history is replete with brutality.”

“It’s present, as well,” I said, forking over exact
change, which seemed to annoy Elijah. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve
been stabbed since I came here.”

“I don’t think you get to complain too much when your
companion is doing the stabbing,” Yael reminded me pertly. “What about the
middle sister?”

A shadow flitted across Elijah’s face.   

“She remains,” he said, something shifting behind his
eyes. “Remind me on another day, and I will tell you of her mysteries.”

“Yeah,” I said, nudging Yael’s shoulder. “We should
get going, anyway.”

Yael was studying Elijah closely, which seemed to make
him uncomfortable. I didn’t blame him – the girl was intense.

“Okay.” She frowned, thrusting her hands into the
pockets of her windbreaker. “Let’s talk again soon.”

“Of course,” Elijah said, suddenly very involved with
something on the other side of the counter. “Until then.”

The sun was lost behind a layer of bright mist. Ashen
clouds choked the horizon, and the cold air made my sinuses ache. My coffee tasted
like nothing in particular in my burned mouth. We walked on opposite sides of
the sidewalk, me against the buildings, while she followed the curb. It was a
bit of a walk to Sarnath, so I racked my brain for a topic.

“Kid tells some crazy stories,” I said, with a
friendly grin. “Eli, I mean. Do you think he makes that stuff up?”

Yael looked at me, first in surprise, gradually
mutating into a superior sort of pity.

“Oh, Preston,” she said, with a rueful smile. “You are
impossibly dense.”

***

Nothing on the banks of the Skai, nothing underneath the pedestrian
bridge to Ulthar. Not that I expected anything, given the temperature, but it
didn’t hurt to look.

Not unless I found her, that was.

We cut across the fringe of Ulthar, the shortest way
to Sarnath. We didn’t even make it off the bridge before the cats spotted us,
and we picked up a couple less than discrete tails within a block or two. The traffic
was sparse, due to the cold, but there were still more cats on the icy streets
than people. Ulthar was the only place in the city that I was sure I wouldn’t
find her.

She hates cats.

I half-wondered if Dunwich would peel off at that
point, to find that mangy stray, Snowball, and report in or whatever, but the former
stray showed no inclination to be anywhere but near his mistress’s feet. He
exchanged looks with some of the cats we passed, which appeared to me to be no
more than a casual acknowledgement. The affairs of cats are beyond those of
men, however, so I had to assume that whatever message was required had been
sent.