Floats the Dark Shadow (30 page)

Then he took Casimir’s face in his hands, leaned forward and kissed him.

Shock seared through Theo like a bolt of white lightning. The pain was a blinding brightness in her brain, flashes of burning heat and burning cold in her body. Averill stepped back from the embrace and smiled at Casimir. He opened the door, slid his arm over Casimir’s shoulders and led him out into the night.

Theo fled down the hallway to her room. Once inside, she sank to the floor as demons of pain and anger rent her with searing claws, trying to rip their way out. Heart and belly and lungs and brain all screamed at her. She could not breathe, could not think.

But she must think. She must make sense of what she had seen. Pushing herself back on her feet, she began pacing. That kiss was utterly deliberate. She was sure Averill had kissed Casimir tonight to drive her away. Tonight. But that was not their first kiss. There was nothing hesitant in it. Nothing hesitant in the casual drape of Averill’s arm over Casimir’s shoulders as he led him out the door. They were lovers. If he had warned her, would her heart have been safer? Did he not trust her? Did he despise himself? Had it not been Averill’s secret but Casimir’s? That would be a double betrayal.

Bettine knocked, but Theo sent her away. She undressed herself and tried to sleep, but images tormented her unrelentingly, what she had seen—and more that she imagined. She rose and paced again, wanting to smash the mirror, the windows, Casimir’s smiling face.

Averill had tried to warn her when they joked about school crushes. When he said most boys experimented, she thought it a subtle way of confiding that he had too. But he also said most men turned to women. She knew he consorted with actresses and other disreputable beauties. So he desired women as well. The kiss he gave her had been savage, passionate. Was it only anger? Only desperation?

Even now, would he tell her the truth?

~

Exhausted at last, Theo fell asleep. At dawn she dressed and let herself out of the house. The morning was a morose grey, sky and air merged in a faint pervasive rain that was little more than mist. Wetness and misery swathed her like a veil as she searched for and finally found a carriage to take her back to Montmartre. It wasn’t until she stopped outside her door that she remembered what happened before that revelatory kiss—the conversation about the missing children and the mark left on the grave. Theo went farther up the street and turned onto the rue de la Mire. The image of Inspecteur Devaux examining the wall superimposed itself on the stairs. This was where Denis had been abducted. Theo descended a few steps and there, amid all the crude and ugly images, was the black cross. A cross with wings.

Even knowing what she would find, Theo was dumbfounded. Images and emotions swarmed, a black cloud in her mind. Back in her apartment, she splashed cold water in her face to try and clear her head, then ground coffee and put water on to boil. Anything to wake up. But she could not wake up to a different reality. Dread was like some horrid yeasty substance swelling inside her. Was it no more than bizarre coincidence? If several children had been killed, was it so very odd that they knew more than one?

Yes, it was very, very odd.

Could one of the Revenants be involved?

No. She knew them.

But last night had proved that the one she knew best, she knew least of all.

“No.” She said it aloud. None of her friends could slaughter a child. One of them must have an enemy who wanted to implicate them. But what enemies? Paul would have political enemies, of course, and an endless stream of rejected poets bent on revenge. Theo bit back a laugh that threatened to turn into a sob. What enemy would contrive these horrible murders because his poems had been spurned?

Theo saw the Tarot cards laid out before her, The Devil squatting in their midst.

She saw his nearby companion, the Page of Cups. So charming. So tormented.

“No.”

She felt the presence of evil envelop her, like a foul breath tainting the air.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The film of night flowed round and over us.

And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet….

~ Charles Baudelaire

MICHEL had
an assignation with Lilias tonight. For once, he felt more reluctance than anticipation. There was still time to send his regrets, but he had done so the weekend following the fire and the discovery of the linked murders. Lilias would not tolerate being taken for granted. He would be a fool to lose her.

And she might have news for him. He desired that more than he desired the escape of pleasure in her arms.

In a bistro near the Sorbonne he ate an oyster sandwich and sipped a brisk Beaujolais. At two, he went to his appointment at the university where he spoke to a history professor specializing in religion. Shown a photograph of the winged cross, the professor theorized at length about the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade. When the earnest academic began on the secrets of the Templars, Michel excused himself. He had a fortifying coffee across from Notre Dame, then sought out the priest who had been recommended to him. Unlike the professor, he did not pretend to any knowledge, only stared at the cross in bafflement.

“Could it be a symbol for one of the angels?” the priest asked.

Frustrated to be questioned himself, Michel replied, “It’s not one used by the church?”

“No, except the obvious symbol of the cross,” the priest said. He looked relieved, no doubt guessing it was involved in a crime. Michel thanked him for his time and left. There was one more expert he meant to consult, but Huysmans had put him off till Monday.

Michel returned to the morgue to gather his officers’ reports. There were no new suspects though all of Paris continued to file past the display. He had to warn himself continuously that it might be only strange coincidence at work that connected the Revenants with the children’s killings. Like a savage clock, his brain ticked off cases where innocent men had died because of just such absurdities. Instinct told him to follow this trail, but he must guard against forcing the pieces to fit his theory.

If no new suspects had emerged, there was new evidence. Searching in a wider arc than before, Michel had discovered one more cross, and Inspecteur Rambert another. Alicia remained the only victim they had found, so also the only one with the symbol where her body was displayed. A discrepancy. But even in the chaos of the fire, it had been a great risk to snatch the girl. The killer dared not take time to scrawl his mark. With the cross on the grave and the remnant the baron had shown him, they now had five kidnappings marked with a cross. Five murders, Michel was certain. How many more remained a mystery. The discoveries had given Michel a brief surge of satisfaction, followed by a deepening depression at their failure.

Earlier in the week, Inspecteur Rambert had returned in a fury from the orphanage. The assistant who had been sent to identify the charred remains of the blind children had not even bothered to acknowledge that there was one child missing, but had simply told the officers to bury all the pathetic little corpses in a pauper’s grave.

“
Sac à merde
,” Rambert had fumed.

“He did not murder her,” Michel pointed out even though the callousness and incompetence angered him as well.

Rambert stalked off muttering, and Michel had quit for the day as well. Though he had been in the morgue only an hour, the smell overlaid the odors of the Paris streets and the lingering aromas of Notre Dame, incense, candle wax and lilies. Gathering fresh clothes from home, he went to the nearest public bath house and scrubbed himself until he was sure any lingering scent was in his mind, not on his skin. Later this month he would allow himself the indulgence of a lavishly tiled Turkish bath. The steam, a massage, would force him to relax.

Clean and somewhat refreshed, he ate a simple supper of brie and baguette in the waning evening light. After dark, he made his way through the quiet streets to Lilias’ home. He still had not brought his guitar. Choosing a song, practicing, would have given him a needed distraction. He tried to put the murder of Alicia out of his mind, but the ugliness preyed on him. A blind child raped, tortured, murdered. What torments had the other children suffered?

And if at the hands of a Revenant, which one? Charron still seemed the most likely, but it might only be happenstance or even some sort of misdirection. Jules Loisel seemed too emotionally weak to commit such havoc, but Michel had met other killers who used the power of death to counter their weakness. The baron was the most athletic, a duelist, someone far more used to violence than he appeared—but violence against men, not children. He had not feigned his surprise at the photograph. He had visibly paled. What of Noret? These were not political crimes. There was a sick passion in them. Had they been rich children, Michel might have constructed some twisted theory. But they were sexual crimes, and all of the children poor and vulnerable. Perhaps Noret’s sexuality was as twisted as his cold-blooded anarchist politics, but buried, a sort of self-loathing….

Michel made himself stop. The case was devouring him. He must push it away as best he could. He was grateful that he would not have to hide his concern entirely from Lilias, yet he could not go to her submerged in gloom. He must make an effort.

~

He should have known himself better. And Lilias. In her presence, all his reservations fell away and desire overwhelmed him, blazing out from his groin. He did not want to talk. If he started to talk, he would never escape the case. He was going to try to read her, to give her what she desired this night. But she read him too well. He supposed courtesans must have that skill even more than
flics
, if they were to triumph in the
demimonde
. She led him upstairs, the grip of her hand hard. In the bedroom, she kissed him. Just for an instant, slow and lingering. But it was not a seduction, more a reminder, for then she bit his neck, his lip. The metallic taste of blood trickled onto his tongue. He lifted her, carried her to the bed, stripped her. Her naked skin glowed on the moonlit sheets, nipples and mons enticing him.

“Now,” she said, opening her legs to him, and he entered her fiercely. He felt the warmth and wetness of her sex close around him.

It was ruthless, violent, but not quick. He buried himself in her heat, but every time climax approached he stopped. She helped him there, sometimes with stillness, sometimes with a touch that eased the building pressure in his balls rather than inflamed them. He took her legs over his shoulders for a deeper angle and plunged into her over and over. He used his finger to penetrate her other orifice and felt her hand moving between them, rubbing her clitoris. She came suddenly and violently, her vagina gripping him in rippling spasms. He cried out and lost himself finally, like a bullet flying into darkness.

After, they shared pâté and caviar, and drank a bottle of lush Cabernet Sauvignon. In the soft candlelight, the rich wine looked almost black.

“You have news?” he asked. She arched a delicate brow, and he silently cursed the concern that had swooped from his brain without thought. He should have taken time to offer well-earned praise of her skill. “I’m sorry. This case is consuming me.”

She said nothing about his lack of courtesy but answered the question. “Yes, of a sort. I still know nothing about your missing children, but there is news of the Black Mass.”

“What news?”

“I now know the time but not yet the place. This mass will be held two weeks from tonight, just after midnight—not Saturday, but Sunday morning to profane the Sabbath.”

“Vipèrine will conduct the ceremony?”

She gave a little shrug. “Supposedly he has a defrocked priest to do it.”

Michel was dubious. “He’ll let someone else take center stage?”

“Much of this is only a step beyond rumor—but it is difficult to imagine him surrendering the spotlight. Perhaps he will play the summoned Devil.”

“When will you learn the place?”

She lifted a hand. “I cannot promise to deliver this information. I have pretended to have a client who is interested in such things. But a client who is not yet willing to give his name. Perhaps my refusal to give a name will exclude me.”

“I know you do not want to be implicated.”

“A little implication will not harm me, but I draw the line at attendance.”

“That is understood.”

“In case my source decides not to confide in me, you should shadow cabinet minister Williquette.”

“Williquette?” Michel scoffed. “He is a mouse.”

“Some mice dream of becoming lions. Instead they become rats. The minister is ambitious enough to seek power however he can, including black magic.”

“True.” Michel frowned. “He is influential enough to have had my previous charges against Vipèrine discarded.”

“Gossip says the snake is playing pimp to the minister, who has a penchant for pubescent girls.” He sat up at that, but she pushed him back. “He prefers
jeunes filles
older than your victims, thirteen or fourteen.”

“Still, it is suspicious.”

“Very suspicious.” She gave him a feline smile. “I have gleaned a bit more. Before he moved on to grander schemes, your wily serpent used to be a pimp in Rouen. One of the courtesans with whom I spoke remembers him working for a madam she knew in that city, l’Anguille.”

“L’Anguille? I wonder what particular eel-like talents she possesses.”

“Who knows? But I am told her house catered to clientele with more aberrant tastes.”

“Then my instincts were right. He has the soul of a pimp.”

“Your instincts are quite excellent—a snake consorting with an eel.” Then her smile faded. “Michel, there is talk of a virgin sacrifice at this Black Mass. I doubt they would seek witnesses to murder, but I do fear a true rape rather than a staged one.”

“Vipèrine is perfectly capable of the rape.” He fought a surge of disgust. “He is a leading suspect in the cemetery murder but I find him too obvious in many ways.”

“Being too obvious can be a sort of protective coloration,” she said.

“True. And if he did not kill Alicia, he is still capable of murder.” Michel told her about Vipèrine’s visit to his apartment and his presumption of poison.

“You’re sure?”

“Only Vipèrine wears that abominable cologne. He threatened me. He broke into my home but tried to leave no trace. Poison is what makes sense.”

“There will be people at this Black Mass that might kill rather than be revealed as Satanists. So take care,
mon ami
. I would prefer you did not die.”

“I am always careful. And I am quite alive.”

Her fingertips teased down his torso, whisper soft but with the hint of nails here and there. “Ahhh,” she said. “Alive, most definitely.”

“Long enough to share the little death.”