The House That Death Built (11 page)

Kayla had a weird impulse to push
Tommy over the side of the stairs.

The stairway curved upward in a
graceful sweep, hugging on one side to the wall, on the other ending in a white
banister.

I could do it. Just shove, and
he'd fall and his head would splash all over the stone floor.

She didn't hate her brother. She
loved him – at least as much as she was capable of love. She suspected sometimes
that what other people called love might in actuality be beyond her grasp, that
something inside her mind was broken in some basic way. But she couldn't ever
quite manage to care about that fact.

It actually made life easier. She
didn't have to worry about other people's feelings, about their fears or
worries. Or about their pain.

The way she saw it, she was free
in a way that no one else who was "broken" could ever be.

But there was the occasional
downfall. That awful feeling when she didn't get her way, the knowledge that
when she didn't get what she wanted the rest of the universe died a bit inside.

The periodic urge to toss Tommy
over a rail, or to run him over or shoot him or any of a handful of other ideas
that flitted into her mind from time to time.

But she didn't hate him. To
paraphrase a movie she hadn't seen – she didn't like movies, they were too long
and complicated – he completed her.

She knew deep inside that her
periodic urges to kill him were born of the simple fact that he knew her. Not in
the basic way Rob or Aaron or the men she occasionally picked up at bars knew
her. He had seen her as a child, beaten by their mother before being turned
over to a father who had much darker impulses than simple violence. He had seen
her broken and bruised, bleeding on the floor of the closet where she always
took refuge after such events.

He had seen her cry.

Had seen her weak.

And for that, she knew, he would
someday die. Because she wasn't weak now, and the only thing that tethered her
to that time of fragile vulnerability was him. His very existence reminded her
of the simple fact she wasn't perfect, because she'd come from an imperfect
birth, to an imperfect home.

Just toss him over.

But that would screw up the job.
And the job mattered enough to her that she continued to allow his life.
Besides, the knowledge that someday she'd kill her own brother made everything
just a bit sharper, a bit clearer, a bit more
delicious
. The knowledge
of his someday-death was like perpetually staring at a Christmas present that
you knew was exactly what you wanted.

The waiting was painful, and
maddening… and so, so sweet.

With every step up, she pushed
the urge to murder a bit farther down. When she reached the top of the stairs,
which became a balcony with a balustrade that would prevent anyone from
tripping –

(
but not from being pushed
)

– over to a painful death on the
stone floor below, the feeling was almost gone.

She loved her brother. And she
wasn't going to kill him. Not tonight.

She looked down the hall. There were
five doors on the left side of the hall, and four on the right. A lamp hung
from the ceiling, a bit closer to the back of the hall than the front. It was
one of the only things she'd seen in the house that wasn't either elegant or
expensive-looking: just an inverted hemisphere hanging from an iron cord that
looked clunky and thick and wholly out of place.

Beyond the lamp, though, beyond
the doors to each side: a single door on the end.

That's where they'll be. The
master bedroom, the safe.

She had the urge to run forward,
to tear down the hall and throw the door open and get to the real business of
the night.

But it was like the urge to kill
Tommy. It wasn't useful, it wouldn't get her what she wanted, so she'd put it
away.

She took point this time, moving
past Rob on the way to that beautiful door at the end. Just as had been the
case downstairs, most of the doors were all open.

They should just put out a sign:
"Open for business…. Thieves welcome!"

Though, of course, the door at
the end of the hall was closed. So was the last door on the right, and the
second on the left.

The first doorway to the left led
to a guest bedroom that was every bit as nice as she expected based on the rest
of the house. Empty, though, and clearly not the kind of place where anything
important would be stowed. She flitted past it, to the first closed door.

She opened it.

The door led to a landing, then
stairs that proceeded up in complete darkness. Clearly leading to the attic
she'd seen on the plans.

It was surprisingly spooky. The
kind of dark staircase that wouldn't have been out of place in a haunted house.
The kind of stairs an idiot would run up when followed by a chainsaw-wielding
maniac in a lacrosse mask.

She re-closed the door, then
turned to see Tommy standing rigid in the middle of the hall.

She drew close to him. "What
is it?" she whispered. She could feel tension pulsing out of him.

Rob joined her, looking up and
down the hall, nervous eyes glinting like those of a cornered animal.

Weak.

I'll kill him someday, too.

Fun.

"You see something?"
whispered Rob.

Tommy remained still for a
moment, then his head turned from left to right and back again. He hesitated,
then asked, "Don't these kinda doors usually swing
into
the
rooms?"

Kayla looked. He was right: all
the doors were swung outward, flush against the wall so it was less noticeable,
but even the ones that were closed had hinges on the outside.

Rob looked like he had down in
the kitchen: unsure, trying to put his finger on what it was that mattered
about this little tidbit.

He's gonna back out.

Kayla didn't want that. Not only
was this job going to be incredibly lucrative – she believed Rob in his
assessment of that – but it was getting kind of exciting.

Exciting was good.

A lot of people thought Kayla was
a daredevil; a reckless woman who took risks when others refused to move. But
she knew the truth: it wasn't that she was reckless, she was simply invincible.
Nothing could hurt her, because the universe wouldn't let that happen. And in
her deepest dreams, the dreams of her parents, her father and mother and the
pain they visited on her, she knew why: the universe
owed
her.

She would never be hurt – for all
she knew, she might never even die, she might be immortal. And knowing that,
she could move forward, enjoy life to the fullest.

It wasn't acting reckless if you
knew you were safe.

But Rob didn't know that. And
looking at his eyes she could see that he was getting thoroughly creeped out.
She didn't know why – it was just
doors
.

Had he lost his nerve? Had one
too many bad jobs soured his ability to ever be successful?

No. Not tonight.

She moved. Headed forward toward
that door at the end,
the
door.

She passed the rooms to her right
and left. Other than the guest room and the now-closed door to the attic, there
were also doorways that led to a bathroom and a game room. The game room had
comfy couches, a dart board. A big TV with game and sound equipment stacked in
the cabinet beneath it. An air hockey table hunkered in the center of the room.
Beyond that….

The final room on the left made
her pause, and for a moment the uneasiness that had gotten to her brother and
Rob gripped her as well.

The room itself was
unthreatening, from the point of view that there was nothing dangerous in it.
But that was the point: there was nothing dangerous in it, because there was
nothing
at all
in it. Four white walls, the cold mouth of an unlit
fireplace. A mantel hung over the fireplace, as bereft of ornamentation as the
rest of the room.

Kayla could feel Rob looking in
the room behind her, and could feel an unease that matched her own.

I'm not scared though. Not at
all. What's there to be scared of in a universe that owes me so much?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

(
Just like what's in the room.
Nothing at all.
)

She turned away. Left Rob staring
in for a moment before she joined her brother. He was casing the rooms on the
right: a billiard room with a beautifully-appointed pool table in the center, a
stained glass lamp hanging above it; a media room: theater-style seating facing
what had to be the biggest HDTV on the market, ninety-eight inches if it was a
foot, probably thirty grand to buy something like that, even a genuine theater
popcorn maker that sat quietly in the back of the room.

And closed door number two.

Tommy moved quickly to it. He
turned the knob slowly, so quietly it didn't make so much as a whisper in the
hall. Pushed the door open a crack, then a foot, then all the way.

A bedroom. Pink enough to
practically scream, "teenage girl!" but not so pink as to be tacky.

Tommy drew up his mask, revealing
most of his face. Kayla wondered for a moment why he would do such a dumb
thing, then she saw what he was looking at, and understood.

There was a girl on the bed.
Probably sixteen or seventeen. She wore boxers and a tank top, though the top
had drawn up high enough that it concealed little and revealed much. The sheets
were rumpled around her, and the outline of a young man on the bed with her –
turned away, so his back was all that could be seen of him – left little doubt
exactly what had happened in here. Recently.

The girl was what Tommy was
staring at. What he had pulled up his mask to see more clearly. Or if not to
see, to
enjoy
.

The girl was young, but that was
the way Tommy preferred them. Young and unblemished, unbroken. He liked to ruin
beautiful things, and if that beautiful thing was a girl, so much the better.

He licked his lips. Actually took
a step toward the bed.

Kayla would have grabbed him.
Would have stopped him. This wasn't the plan, and doing it wouldn't be much
benefit to her – the only thing that mattered. Before she could stop him,
though, a hand snaked out of the darkness of the hallway, pulling on Tommy's
bicep.

Aaron. The smaller man shook his
head, a quick whip back and forth.
No way
.

Tommy looked for a moment like he
might just lose it right there. Kayla didn't like Aaron – Rob had called him a
buzzkill on more than one occasion, and she agreed – but Tommy despised him.
Aaron actually daring to touch him might be the thing that finally put him over
the edge.

She could see her brother
contemplating it: one quick motion, a single jerk, and Aaron would fall
lifeless to the ground, his neck snapped and all his whining and bellyaching
about "right and wrong" would be silenced forever.

Kayla didn't want to do it. It
would screw up the job.

But wouldn't it be
fun
?

The choice was taken from her.
Rob leaned into the room. Looked around. Two forms on the bed, and Kayla noted
that Rob's gun was pointed directly at the girl.

As though sensing something
amiss, the girl moaned. Just slightly. She turned toward her boyfriend,
throwing one arm over his side.

Aaron was watching the whole
thing unfold. Hand still clamped on Tommy's arm, eyes pleading with Rob not to
do anything.

Kayla's breath quickened. This
was an exciting development, and even if the job didn't turn out the way she
thought it would, this moment would make it all worth it.

Finally, Rob's gun lowered a
hair. He looked at Tommy, jerking his head toward the hall and the door at the
end.

Tommy cast a last longing look at
the girl on the bed. Then he slowly drew down his mask and followed Rob. Kayla
went next, leaving Aaron to close the door. He was a pro in that respect – it
made less noise than it had when Tommy opened it. He was trying to keep the two
in the room unaware and alive.