Silent Doll (21 page)

I was cut off by a loud knock on the door, and frowned. I didn’t get unexpected company often. I put my finger to my lips and pointed her toward the spare room; I didn’t open the front until I heard the click of the spare room door shutting.

I stared at the two women standing in the hallway. Both were about my height, both were dolls, just like Trinket. The one on the left had severe black hair, pulled away from her face with several clips. She had on a black pinstripe trouser suit with a blue silk shirt underneath and black pumps on her feet. The redhead next to her was far more eye-catchingly dressed: a green dress with only one strap, edged with green stones and covered in green sequins. It showed a lot of leg on one side. Her red hair was in an elaborate, bird’s-nest teased style. I couldn’t imagine two more unlikely characters to show up on my doorstep, except with Trinket having run away I should have expected it.

“Can I help you?” I gave them a polite, questioning smile.

Slowly, a smile came to each of their faces. Their reaction times were even slower than Winter’s.

“We’re sorry to bother you so late,” said the black-haired one. She gestured to herself. “I’m Prima, and this is Ember.”

I scratched my chin thoughtfully. “Yes, I remember, I saw your show. Very good.”

“Thank you, but we wanted to talk to you about our sister.”

I gave my best blank face. “Sister?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ember said. “Trinket.”

I tapped a finger to my temple as if thinking it over. “She was one of the small blonde ones, right?”

The smiles vanished. “We think you know very well who she is.” Ember crossed her arms over her chest.

“What gives you that impression?”

“Louis told us he saw her talking to a woman that matches your description outside this building.”

“Yes, I remember, she’d gotten turned around and needed directions. So, what about her?”

The two of them exchanged a glance. They’d dropped the friendly pretense, but I wasn’t going to, not yet.

“She’s gone on one of her little walkabouts again and we thought that she might have come here.”

I gave a gentle lift of my shoulders. “Why would she do that? We don’t really know each other or anything.”

Prima stepped forward so that her toe touched the edge of my doorway.

“Trinket is very predictable. She came here once, she would come here again.” Ember took a step closer as well. I eyed them both levelly.

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I haven’t seen her since that night. I do hope you find her though. Now if you’ll excuse me, I was going to bed.” I started to close the door but one black pump prevented me.

“We’re not done,” said Prima, giving me a stony glare. Her eyes were cut smaller and made her face more sinister. Perhaps that was the reason their creator had made Winter’s and Trinket’s eyes larger.

“Yes, we are. I told you, she’s not here.” I let all friendliness and good will drop from my voice.

“We’d like to check that for ourselves,” growled Ember.

I raised one eyebrow. “Let me get this straight. You knock on my door in the dead of night, ask me questions that I in good nature have answered, choose not to believe me, and then demand to enter my home without an invitation. I don’t think so.” I tried to shut the door again but Ember forced it back open with her hand on the edge. I could no longer keep the annoyance off my face.

“I don’t think you can stop us.”

“Oh,” I said, bringing my arm up straight, palm facing forward, “how little you know.”

I called power, pushed it up through my body down my arm to my hand, and shoved my palm against Ember’s chest. She went backwards, flying through the banister and careening downwards to crash four floors below in the foyer. Prima stepped back, watching her sister’s abrupt departure with a close approximation of horror.

I said, “I tried to be polite. I’ve told you that she isn’t here. Now I’m giving you a choice. Show yourself out or I can send you to land on your arrogant sister’s head.”

Prima backed into the elevator, closed the cage and pressed the down button.

“Smart choice.”

I slammed my front door and rested my back against it, taking deep breaths. My temper seemed to be getting harder to control of late. I seemed to have a wrathful streak in me that I’d never known about before. Then again, there had been a lot in me that I’d not known about before. It took me nearly a minute of steady breathing before I felt calm again.

Trinket came out of the spare room, looking worried. I looked at her directly and raised a single finger.

“One night. You can stay one night, and I’ll figure out what to do with you in the morning. Right now all I want is bed.”

I locked and latched the door and activated my ward. Trinket clapped her hands together in apparent joy at being allowed to stay.

“You can stay in the spare room.” The bed was still made up from when Incarra had stayed over. I headed for my bedroom. “Good night.”

“Good night, Miss Cassandra.”

I pushed my bedroom door to and continued with my earlier plan, except that instead of the late movie, I just crawled into bed and closed my eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I woke to the smell of bacon, eggs, and sausage. It was such an unusual, homey smell that I jolted in bed, smashing the top of my head into the wooden headboard. I sat up slowly, rubbing the sore spot and grumbling. I was about to throw back the covers when Trinket looked into the room.

“Oh, good, you’re awake. I’m almost done with breakfast. Stay right there.”

I sat still, curious, laying the covers back in place as I waited. A few moments later, Trinket pushed the door wider with a ruby toed shoe and came into the room carrying a tray laden with greasy goodness. My stomach growled appreciatively.

She placed the tray on my lap. The eggs were scrambled, the bacon crisp, the sausages just starting to curl up and a wonderful golden brown. Two triangles of toast were tucked behind the eggs, each spread with a thin layer of butter that was melting into the bread.

“Thank you; I don’t know what to say.”

I really didn’t. No one had ever made me breakfast in bed before, not even my boyfriends. Jareth made me a grilled cheese sandwich once, admitting it was the limit of his culinary skills; but no one expected vampires to be great cooks.

A cynical part of my mind registered that she was sucking up to me, but I told that part to hush up because I was hungry. Trinket perched on the end of my bed just beyond my feet as I picked up a piece of the toast.

“You just going to sit there while I eat?” I asked, pausing with the edge of the toast against my bottom lip. She nodded. I shrugged. I had no problem with her watching me eat—which I found funny, as I really minded when Aram watched. Perhaps the difference was that Trinket had never eaten food herself. I bit down on the toast and scanned the tray. Something was missing.

“Oh,” Trinket squealed, springing up and rushed out of the room. She came back with a steaming mug of rich brown coffee, cream still swirling around the top in lazy circles. “I forgot your coffee.”

She put it on the bedside table next to me and went back to sitting at the end of the bed. I dug in with gusto and was four or five mouthfuls in before a thought hit me. I had the eggs and maybe half a loaf of bread. Where had the bacon and sausage come from?

“Trinket? Where did you get the meat?”

“Oh, I went down to the grocery store after you’d fallen asleep. I took your keys, locked up behind me and let myself back in later.”

I swallowed. “Did you steal it?”

As far as I had been aware, she had given all her money to DJ for the lock.

“Of course not. I took one of the small bills in that jar you have in the cupboard labeled “food money”. I found it when I was cleaning.”

“
Cleaning?
” I pushed the tray off to the side and got out of bed, padding barefoot to look out into the rest of my apartment.

The floor had been swept and polished. The kitchen surfaces gleamed. No dust covered any of the surfaces and the stain that had been on the rug was gone. “What did you do? Stay up all night and clean house?”

“Yes,” she said in a pleasant, matter-of-fact voice. “What did you expect me to do all night? I don’t sleep.”

I stumbled back to bed and stabbed a sausage with my fork. I wasn’t sure how I felt about what she had done. On one hand, it was nice to have a clean apartment, as cleaning was my least favorite chore. On the other hand, she’d taken a liberty, made herself more at home then I liked. I told myself to get over it and be grateful as I chomped down on the sausage.

“Thank you.”

As I ate, I watched Trinket out of the corner of my eye; she was stroking her fingers through one of her curls, tugging on it, in an almost nervous way. Her dress had a heart shaped neckline and burgundy puffed sleeves, and split, at a bow on her right hip, to show three layers of white skirt underneath, the last of which was delicate and lacy with some kind of floral pattern.

I liked it. It was a lot more down to earth and less elaborate that any of her other outfits that I’d seen so far. The others had all seemed very showy to me, designed to be noticed.

I thought of another question. “Did anyone see you when you went out?”

She shook her head. “Well, the clerk at the store, but that was it. I wasn’t followed, I promise.”

I nodded my head to indicate that was good, as my mouth was full. Despite her lack of an appetite, Trinket could cook.

Trinket went back to stroking that same lock of hair. I swallowed and washed the last of breakfast down with the coffee, then I sat with my back against the headboard, the coffee cradled in my hands and my legs crossed Indian style.

“What’s up? Is there something more that your aren’t telling me?”

She looked at me and there was a flash of something on her face, the start of an emotion that she cut dead. She turned her head back and tugged on the curl more insistently.

“Trinket.”

“It’s difficult. I was trying to think of a way to lead into it, but it’s really so strange that I can’t think of a way to.”

I put my coffee down and focused on her. She wasn’t making sense. I had half-expected that as soon as I finished my food that she would start listing reasons I should let her stay with me. She’d demonstrated that she could cook and clean, two things that I was not inclined toward, either for a lack of time or a lack of willpower.

“Just tell me what it is.”

“Well,” she said, placing her hands in her lap; realizing, I think, that the tugging of her hair was giving her nervousness away. “I told you I went out, you were sleeping, so I assume you didn’t hear me go.”

I nodded and made a “speed it up gesture” with my hand. I had a dreadful feeling starting in my stomach, and I wanted her to get to the point.

“When I got back, there was a man here.”

She blurted it out in a rush. I fell back against the wood of the bed. There had been a man in my room. It couldn’t have been Aram, he was still barred. I’d never re-invited him in after the last time I’d gotten mad at him. Jareth had access, but why would he return so soon after speaking to me? I reached for my cup to take a sip of the coffee and realized that my hand was shaking.

“A man? What did this man look like?” I abandoned the attempt to reach for coffee. I hoped she was going to describe Jareth to me and, I could call him and sort it all out.

“I couldn’t see him very well, it was very dark, the shadows seemed to collect around him. I think he was bald or that kind of shaved head where the hair is real short. I didn’t see what he was wearing more than, y’know, shirt, slacks and shoes.”

Coldness crept right down into my stomach. I knew no one who matched that description.

“What was he doing?” My throat was dry despite the coffee I’d just been drinking.

“He wasn’t really doing anything. Just sort of stood at the end of the bed, watching you sleep. He didn’t seem to care that I saw him either.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I was about to yell at him when he turned and kind of dissipated. Like the moonlight hit him and he was gone. He had an awful smile.”

“Bad teeth?” I asked. It was the only question my shocked brain could give me.

“No, no, not like that. It was wide and full of teeth, like an evil Cheshire cat. It was as if he was made of shadows and his teeth were moonlight shone through a gap. It gave me the creeps, but I did wonder…” She trailed off.

“What did you wonder?”

“Well, if maybe he was your boyfriend or something. Then I remembered that you were with the vampire that came to the show with you.”

“We’re not,” I sighed. “It’s complicated.”

I brought my knees up so I could wrap my arm around and press my forehead to them. Trinket reached over and patted my head to show her sympathy, although I was pretty sure she didn’t understand why it was complicated.

I thought about the man she had seen instead. The grin like a Cheshire cat, a mouth wide with teeth that were scary and sharp. I wondered if this was the same presence I’d felt in the shower, the one I’d felt caress my naked back.