Dead Ringers (36 page)

With the credits rolling, Kyrie only just managed to reach the remote control without waking the girl. She exited the on-demand menu and started surfing channels.

The knock at the door made her jump, a bit of tea sloshing out to dampen the leg of her pants. She swore quietly and glanced over her shoulder toward the front door. The knock came again and she grimaced as she slipped Maddie's head off her lap and set the mug down on the coffee table.

She took the chain off the door and was about to unlock it when an icy little tremor went through her. Nick and Tess had been angry and afraid. Ugly things had happened and she would be a fool not to be wary.

Kyrie looked out through the peephole in the door and exhaled, that momentary tension evaporating. Unlocking the door, she cast a quick glance over at a still-sleeping Maddie and then pulled it open, smiling at the woman who stood outside in the hall.

“What's up?” Kyrie asked. “Everything all right? I didn't expect anyone back this soon.”

The woman smiled. “Can I come in?”

Kyrie shrugged and stepped back to let her pass. “Sorry, what was your name again?”

The woman stood watching Maddie sleep for a few seconds before she turned around. “Audrey.”

“Right,” Kyrie said, closing the door. “Sorry.”

There came a rustling from the sofa. “Kyrie?”

Both women turned to see Maddie sitting up, sleepily rubbing her eyes.

“Hey, sweetie,” Audrey said, moving toward the sofa. “Your parents sent me to pick you up.”

“Whoa,” Kyrie said, digging into her pocket and tugging out her cell phone. “I'd think I would have gotten a call or a text, at least.”

Audrey shot her a hard look, edged with irritation. “Call Nick if you want.”

Maddie sat on one of the big cushions on the sofa, frowning at Audrey and scratching the back of her head. Kyrie hesitated. Nick and Tess—together—had asked her to watch Maddie tonight, and that alone had been strange and awkward, though Kyrie had been touched by the way Tess had spoken to her, the acceptance she had felt just before they had left. It had been a stressful couple of days, so it wasn't impossible that their plans tonight had changed, but if that was the case—

“Why send you?” she asked. “If they want her, why didn't they just come get her?”

Audrey sighed and cocked her head, staring at Kyrie. “I'm tired. Truly. Could you just call him if you're concerned?” She glanced at the little girl. “Maddie, get your things.”

Kyrie bristled at the woman's bitchy attitude. She enjoyed seeing Maddie but she had given up her night for this, dropped everything to come over and help out. Her hackles raised, she starting texting Nick.

“What's the password?” Maddie asked.

Kyrie looked up sharply, saw the confusion on Audrey's face.

“Sorry?” Audrey asked.

The little girl crawled forward to the arm of the sofa and knelt there, studying Audrey's face. “Mommy said not to go anywhere with anyone unless they knew the password.”

Audrey stiffened and the corner of her mouth twitched into something close to a scowl. Kyrie's throat went dry. What the hell was going on? She stopped in mid-text and hit Nick's name on her contacts list instead, moving around Audrey to stand behind the sofa. Holding the phone to her ear, she listened to it ring, waiting for Nick to answer and explain it all to her.

Kyrie reached over the back of the sofa and put a hand on Maddie's shoulder.

“He's not answering,” she said, turning to glance at the girl.

In her peripheral vision, Audrey looked dead. Rotting.

Kyrie let out a startled cry and whipped her head back around just as the dead thing leaped at her, wrapped both hands around her throat, and drove her to the carpet. Eyes wide with terror, Maddie began to scream. Kyrie beat at Audrey's hands and face but the woman's grip on her throat was impossibly strong. Black stars exploded across her vision as Kyrie tried to drag in even a single breath and found she could not.

If she could not get Audrey off her, there would be no screaming for her.

No scream. No breath.

No life.

 

FIFTEEN

As Tess screamed her name, she saw Lili's double drive her to the floor just outside the psychomanteum, and then they were rolling away. Two Lilis crashed into the legs of a table. One smashed the other's head against the carpeted floor. Tess ran toward her—toward them—and then she froze.

The clothes were nearly the same. The hair was identical now.

“Lili?” she said. “Lili, which is you?”

Shame filled her—how could she not know her dearest friend? One of them glanced at her, eyes desperate, and Tess cocked back her arms to bring her golf club down on the other one … when that other turned and said her name, pleading and full of emotion. Of
knowing
.

Tess lowered her arms, frozen with indecision.

“Just get them apart!” Nick said, racing past her and grabbing hold of Lili—one of them anyway.

Golf club in one hand, Tess dropped to one knee behind the two Lilis and wrapped her free arm around the nearest one while Nick grabbed the other.

“What are you doing, Tessa?” demanded the one she'd grabbed.

“Just let go!” Tess snapped. “We can't—”

Then Tess felt a tug at her hair, hard at first, and then so much worse. She cried out in pain and raged as she was yanked backward. Twisting on the floor, she got her feet under her, going along with the momentum of her attacker to relieve the pain. She drove her head upward and smashed her skull into the bastard's jaw, and only then—as his grip loosened and the veil of her own hair fell away—did she see the rotting corpse face of the dead thing who masqueraded as Aaron Blaustein.

The Aaron thing grabbed her throat, cutting off her air. Her eyes went wide and she felt the desperate need immediately, the screaming lack of oxygen. The dead were stronger than the living, but Tess did not want to be one of them. Holding the golf club ahead of her, one hand on either end, she drove Aaron backward into a table, smashed her knee into his crotch and then smashed the club upward three times before she broke his grip. His hands flashed out, so fast, and tangled in her hair again. She rammed the golf club crosswise into his throat, but he had her now.

He slammed her face onto the table and pain exploded as her nose buckled. Blood poured onto her lips and down the back of her throat as she tried to get away from him. She looked up just in time to hear the whistle of the aluminum bat as it whickered through the air. Nick stepped into his swing and the bat caromed off dead Aaron's skull with a satisfying crack.

The blow staggered the dead thing and it took two steps backward. Tess crushed its windpipe with a swing of her golf club, then Nick struck it again, and then they were beating it, shattering bones and driving it to the ground. Tess saw the fear in its eyes that it was about to die again, for the last time, but she tasted her own blood in her mouth and remembered the way her double had comforted Maddie that night and she kept swinging. The old pain sang in her shoulder and spine, but it had become just another part of a symphony.

“Audrey!” Tess called. “Help Lili!”

But as she and Nick kept beating the thing that had stolen Aaron's life, she got no reply. With a final swing that caved in part of the corpse's face, she stepped back, heart pounding and breath coming in short gasps, and turned to see Audrey trying to force the two Lilis apart.

Nick grabbed her arm, tried to twist her around. “Tess!”

As she shook him off she saw motion in the corner of her eye and turned to see herself approaching. Herself and Nick. Their doubles had just come into the restaurant, pushing aside the curtain that led out into the hotel, and Tess could hear ordinary voices out there as well. An employee in Victorian garb came rushing in after them and Not-Nick turned, grabbed the employee's skull in both hands, and rammed his head against the wall. The employee went down hard, moaning as he rolled onto his side.

“Audrey!” the real Nick shouted. “The mirrors!”

Tess faced her double as the woman stepped toward her. In the shadows she could see the woman's death face and wondered if this was what she herself would look like after she had spent time in the grave.

From behind her came the sound of shattering glass and she saw her double's gaze shift. Not-Tess gave Nick's double a shove, sending him rushing across the restaurant to reach the psychomanteum. Nick stepped in his way. Tess swung her golf club at her double, putting all of a mother's rage behind the assault. The woman sidestepped, reached in and grabbed her wrist and hurled her to one side with such force that Tess landed on a table, sliding off the other side in a clatter of silverware and side plates and a tangle of tablecloth.

No,
she thought, seized with panic. She couldn't let it be so easy. Fighting the dead would get them nowhere. They might have killed the Aaron thing but they were human and fragile and the odds were against them.

Stick to the plan.

Tearing loose of the tablecloth, Tess rocketed to her feet, already in motion. Her double came for her, confident and calm, and Tess dodged past her. She heard Nick grunt in pain as his double began to beat him, but she could not stop. She ran for the psychomanteum, where Audrey swung again, shattering more of the mirrored interior.

Two figures staggered across Tess's path. Both had Lili's face. With an anguished cry, one Lili drove the other backward into the psychomanteum, where they fell over the threshold and then scrambled to remain upright. Hands pressed into shards of mirror glass as they fell and rose and fought.

Audrey ignored them, shattered another mirrored pane.

Tess called her friend's name … and then froze, watching in horror as one Lili forced the other against the last mostly intact wall inside the psychomanteum.
Not against,
Tess saw,
but through
. The two Lilis swore and clawed at each other, but the one with the leverage kept pushing and Tess could only stare, open-mouthed, as the other slipped into the mirrored wall as if she were being lowered into a silver pool of water.

Lili whipped around. “Audrey! Give me that!” She snatched the golf club from Audrey's grasp and began to shatter that last full wall of mirrors. Her own reflection—doubled—screamed back at her from the other side.

Tess lowered her golf club. “Lili?”

Then she felt a cold draft whip around her, almost caressing, and she heard a scream that sounded hauntingly like her own. Tess spun and saw the predatory silhouette of the raggedy man crouched over the ruin of Aaron's double. She thought they had killed it, but the dead thing still lived, and now it screamed as the raggedy man dragged long, filthy fingers through its fading substance. The blindfolded thing that had been Cornell Berrige picked up the ghost and thrust it bodily into the shadows inside his jacket. The heavy coat hung open wide, a hungry maw of darkness, and when Tess got her first real glimpse inside that coat, her veins turned to ice. Sorrow like nothing she'd ever known came crashing down on her and tears spilled from her eyes, burning trails along her cheeks.

Inside the raggedy man's coat there were shapes, just hints of shadows, the faces of other ghosts. One of them might have been Berrige's own, and another was the real Aaron Blaustein. She saw his torment and heard his muffled cries and regretted every time she had ever thought ill of him.

“What have you done?” someone screamed. Her own voice.

The raggedy man flew across the darkened restaurant and landed upon Nick's double. The dead Nick cried out and tried to defend himself, but Berrige had the strength of cruelty in him and he began to feed the double into the suffering hell of darkness inside his coat.

A hand grasped Tess's arm and spun her around and she stared into eyes wide with unthinkable despair.

Her own eyes.

“What have you done?” her double asked again, crying the tears of the dead.

Two more employees came rushing into the restaurant, one in Victorian clothes but the other a security guard. They started shouting, but Tess saw their faces go slack with confusion at the chaos unfurling before them. Someone ran past Tess, then, and it took her a moment to realize it was Frank Lindbergh. She glanced over her shoulder at the door to the sidewalk and saw it slowly closing, a cold wind swirling into the room from outside. Frank ran toward the employees, gun aimed at them, snapping commands at them to silence them and make sure they did not try to interfere.

In the psychomanteum, Audrey and Lili kept swinging away, shattering pane after pane of mirrored glass. In her double's eyes, Tess saw defeat. The dead thing knew that the raggedy man had come for her and she had nowhere left to hide.

 

SIXTEEN

As the pressure built in her head, blood rushing to her face, Kyrie tried to find the strength to smash at Audrey's arms again. She twisted her shoulders, a primal effort to force away the hands that were strangling her to death. No air came in. Black pools formed at the edges of her vision as if her eyes were welling with shadows instead of tears. Her eyelids fluttered and she knew it was over for her. She flicked her gaze right and left, not wanting the last thing she saw to be the face of her murderer.

“Sorry, lovely,” the killer said. “You're just in the way.”

Kyrie's thoughts were leaves spinning in a dust devil. She tried to hold on to the few that remained. Her body went still but her eyes kept shifting, searching. Something moved to her right, blurry features that quickly resolved into those of a little girl. Maddie held a small lamp with a blue, stained-glass shade.

No,
Kyrie managed to think.
Run
.

But then her eyelids drooped and she knew she was about to die.

Blue glass shards showered down onto her face and neck and into her hair. For half a second she didn't realize the hands were off her throat because she had given up trying to breathe. Then she inhaled sharply, air rushing into her burning legs. Her throat felt ragged, airways compacted but still open enough to drag oxygen painfully into her chest. The rusty wheezing of her own desperate breathing frightened her as she rolled onto her side and saw the terrified eyes of the little girl who'd been left in her charge.