The Skeleton Key (16 page)

I
had a little spring in my step all day at work on Friday. It would be a lucky day, I'd decided.

An influx of beautiful people came and went from the office through the afternoon, hoping to be cast for the upcoming fashion shoot. Some of the models were quite interesting to look at, with incredible Eurasian features, or blue eyes and dark skin, and some had tattoos. I helped Pepper manage it all, and I have to admit she was quite civil to work with. I was pretty hyped on caffeine, having sampled one of my own coffees, but mostly I knew I was just plain excited about what I would be doing after work.

Finally Jay and I would be going on a date. A real date that he would not have erased from his memory. That little thing, a simple date, was something nice and normal to look forward to in a world that felt increasingly dark and strange. Perhaps afterwards I'd have the opportunity to ask Dr Barrett some more questions, just outside the safety of the penthouse (that seemed best, all things considered), but I wouldn't worry about that yet.

First, I deserved this little slice of normality. And it was only hours away.

I said goodbye to everyone, and at five past five stepped onto the pavement outside the
Pandora
office. I noted the skeleton next to me, in front of the Evolution store, swaying on its joints, and something about it triggered a ripple of anxiety beneath my veneer of calm optimism. The sale sign in his bony hands caught the wind from time to time, spinning him around to look at me. The spring breeze had a bit of a chill as the sun went down, and I had my long camel-coloured coat from Celia buttoned up to the collar to keep warm. It was time to get going.

What shall I change into?

I had enough time to take the subway home but, sure enough, in seconds Celia's black car was there on Spring Street. It pulled up next to me smoothly, like a long shadow, and in no time Vlad had the rear passenger door open for me. I'd just
known
Celia would send him and that he would drop me off at Jay's place, too, when the time came.

The thought of returning to Jay's house gave me a little shiver of excitement.

‘Thanks Vlad,' I said as I slid inside the car and strapped myself in.

The Friday evening traffic was even worse than usual but when we entered the fog down that little road at Central Park, I checked the time on my phone and saw that we were doing just fine. I'd have an hour to get ready, which was probably forty minutes too long, I was so eager. When we emerged from the foggy tunnel onto Addams Avenue I sat forward and gazed out the windows, searching for activity on the street. The lights were on in Harold's Grocer, as always. Mist clung to the buildings. The streetlamps glowed. All was normal – or Spektor-normal, anyway.

I noticed Vlad did not drive away when I let myself into the mansion. He would be waiting for me when I was ready to head to Park Avenue. Something about that made me feel a bit special, like I was going to a prom or something. (Except that my limo driver didn't breathe a whole lot.)

‘Please let me in,' I whispered to the heavy mansion door, and pushed it open. I entered the cool lobby, satchel in hand, and saw that once again I was not alone. ‘Hello Athanasia, Skye . . .' I said, stopping just inside the lobby. I looked at the third Sanguine. ‘I'm sorry but I never did get your name.'

The heavy door shut behind me.

My fanged nemesis, my former boss and the one I knew as Blonde were all gathered, posed elegantly around the mezzanine area, smiling at me once more. Athanasia had scrubbed up well. Her raven hair was glossy, now without dirt or twigs, and she was dressed in a stunning, skin-tight black corset and skirt, unsoiled. Blonde had evidently gone for contrast, swathed in not-so-virginal white. My ex-boss had raided their wardrobe and chosen something quite over the top to suit her new lifestyle – a fire engine red, lace shift dress with wide bell sleeves. Very 1960s Dracula's bride.

‘Hi, Pandora. Gee, you look just great tonight,' Athanasia said in a particularly insipid voice.

Hmmm.
‘Uh, thanks,' I replied. ‘I have to be somewhere, so . . . Well, you gals have a good night.'

All three of them nodded in unison. ‘Bye,' they said.

I walked briskly to the old lift and pressed the call button. It was on the ground level and opened right away. The door squeaked shut once I was inside, and I pressed the button for the penthouse, noticing my new ‘friends' wave at me as the elevator ascended. The sight disturbed me to the core.

Ugh
, I thought. I almost liked Athanasia better when she was bitchy. It seemed more honest, at least.

The old lift rattled as it went up, and I absent-mindedly watched the landings pass, once again focused on the exciting evening to come. Where would Jay take me? Was it near the restaurant we dined in last time? What would our conversation be like? Had he thought I was joking when I'd asked if he came to Rockwell Mansion often? I'd have thought that was a deal breaker, right there.

It wasn't until I neared the top floor of the mansion that my guts told me something was very wrong. My stomach grew as cold as ice and the lift lurched, stopping just before opening on the penthouse level. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the fourth member of Athanasia's vicious little gang – Redhead. I hadn't thought about it before but, yes, I should have noticed she wasn't with the rest of them. They usually moved in their nasty little pack, but here Redhead was, just a few feet away from me, leaning on the railing and grinning at me through the iron lacework of the lift. There was something in her hand: a piece of something mechanical, or a tool of some kind. Her fangs hung way out over her lower lip and there was something very, very wrong with her expression.

Oh no.

The lift lurched beneath me again and something above me snapped, loud as a gunshot. The elevator plummeted.

My hair went up, my stomach in my throat, as the elevator hurtled down to its destruction, taking me with it. The floors of the house whipped past in a blur. My feet rose off the lift floor and I reached up with both hands to keep the roof from collecting me.

‘
Stop!
' I screamed at the top of my lungs, and a flash of heat radiated through me.

And everything stopped.

Suddenly, I was no longer falling. The elevator had paused just above the lobby floor and it hovered there as if I'd hit the brakes. And
I
was hovering, too. Though the lift had stopped falling my feet had not touched down on the floor again.

‘Holy moly!' I cried, realising what I'd done, and suddenly the spell I'd cast was broken and the lift fell the final two feet to the ground, taking me with it. I crashed sideways in the iron cage, and grabbed the lacework of the sliding door to keep myself from slamming down onto my knees, scraping my arms. A thick cloud of debris blew up, cables and ironwork crunching above me. Dust spat out into the lobby.

Thank goddess the elevator didn't connect lower, to the basement level. Still gripping the door, I lowered myself to my knees and closed my eyes.

Okay. So that just happened.

With some considerable effort, I yanked open the lift doors and stepped unsteadily onto the lobby tiles with scrapes up my forearms and knees that wobbled. The Sanguine audience was still there by the mezzanine, gaping, all having turned a whiter shade of undead.

Athanasia, in particular, looked positively aghast. ‘She
is
the Seventh,' I thought I heard her say under her breath, and she brought a hand to her pretty, deadly mouth.

‘Pandora!'

We all looked up. It was my great-aunt, calling from the penthouse landing. She'd doubtless heard the crash. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if all of upper Manhattan had heard it. At the sound of the mistress of the house, the three Sanguine snapped out of their shock and scrambled out the door of the mansion and into the night, scurrying like rats.

I stood in the lobby for a moment, holding my satchel and trying to process what had just happened. I noticed that the elevator itself had survived the tumble surprisingly well, probably because the fall had been broken rather effectively. It would nonetheless take a fair bit of work to get it operational again. Had the winch snapped? Or the cables?

Someone knocked on the mansion door before opening it, and I stood wide-eyed as Celia's chauffeur Vlad walked in carrying a large axe that I preferred not to believe he kept in the boot of the car. Without a word he climbed the mezzanine stairs and chopped down the door at the top with the skill of a firefighter. A few minutes later it fell and my great-aunt emerged from behind it, with a torch in her hand. She walked down the stairs, frowning and surveying the damage to me and to her house.

‘They tried to kill me,' I said plainly, standing beneath the crooked chandelier. ‘One of them was waiting at the top . . . she'd done something to the lift . . .'

Celia closed her red lips into a tight line. Though she said nothing, I could feel the quiet rage coming off her. She would make them pay. Somehow. ‘You are okay and that is the main thing. Come upstairs, darling,' she said, and touched my still-trembling elbow.

She exchanged a look with Vlad, who seemed to receive some sort of unspoken message from her. He turned and walked back down the stairs, carrying his rather terrifying axe, and disappeared silently into the night.

‘The stairs are a disgrace, I'm afraid,' Celia told me apologetically. ‘It's been like this for ages. Watch your step.'

Shining the torch ahead of us, she led me up through the house on the creaking wooden stairway, alerting me to steps that were rotting or had fallen away altogether. The wallpaper and wood panelling throughout the stairwell may once have been beautiful, but was now in need of serious repair, some sections missing, wallpaper peeling down in long strips. It seemed to take forever to reach the penthouse level and when we did we stepped onto the landing, puffing. I saw with mixed relief and anger that Redhead was gone. She'd scurried away guiltily, like the rest of them.

‘That redheaded vampire – uh, sorry –
Sanguine
. . . She was here,' I said, pointing. ‘I saw her just before the lift fell. She had something in her hand, like a tool or . . .'

Celia's lips went into that tight line again and something passed behind her eyes. ‘Let's get inside and fix you up,' she said.

It took a bit of antiseptic and a couple of bandaids to sort out my battered forearms, but thankfully I hadn't broken any bones and there was not so much as a bruise on the rest of me. My brain, however, felt pretty rattled.

‘I don't know quite what happened after the lift fell,' I said, running through the blur of events in my mind as Celia gave me a glass of refreshing ice water. ‘I yelled stop, and then . . .'

‘And then the lift stopped falling,' my great-aunt said, watching me carefully.

‘Yes,' I said.

Her right eyebrow went up, and then the corners of her delicate mouth. ‘Well, you are progressing then.'

A melting ice cube popped in my glass and Freyja meowed loudly. ‘Progressing? What do you mean?' I asked.

‘Your mastery of mind movement is becoming quite impressive, don't you think?'

‘
Telekinesis?
That's what that was? You mean I did that with my telekinesis? Is that even possible?'

She nodded. ‘Whatever else could it be? First a sword,' she said, referring to that night on the roof, just over one month earlier, when I'd seized Luke's weapon to save myself. ‘And now a whole elevator.' She patted me on the shoulder. ‘You did well, Pandora.'

And I'd been worried that I couldn't move a pen on command.