He emerged from the elevator, pausing to regard himself in a gilded mirror. The top half of his uniform shirt was flapped down, hidden medals hanging heavy. He licked his lips and fixed his hair to look more full upon his head, smoothing out his goatee and generally assuming a look of inebriated dignity before venturing into the kitchen.
The wide, L-shaped room was empty. A pan of cookies lay cooling on a rack on the long central island, a pair of red oven mitts
next to them. In front of the liquor cabinet, a bottle of cognac and an unsealed pitcher of cream stood next to measuring cups and an open jar of nutmeg. The phone receiver hung on its wall-mounted cradle.
“Hello?” Barnes called.
First came a rattling sound, like a shelf being bumped.
Then two female voices at once: “In here.”
Intrigued, Barnes continued along the center island to the corner. Rounding it, he saw five of his staff of female domestics—all well-fed, comely, and with full heads of hair—restrained to the end poles of a shelving unit of gourmet cooking tools with flexible zip ties.
His mind-set was such that his first impulse, upon seeing their wrists bound and their full, imploring eyes, was pleasure. His brandy-steeped mind processed the scene as an erogenous tableau.
Reality was slow to part the fog. It was a long, floundering moment before he realized that apparently someone had broken in and restrained his staff.
That someone was inside the house.
Barnes turned and ran. With the women calling after him, he slammed his hip into the island, the pain doubling him over as he groped his way along the counter to the doorway. He rushed out, moving blindly across the first-floor landing and around another corner, heading for the front entrance, his addled mind thinking, Escape! Then he saw, through the violet-tinged glass panes framing the double doors, a struggle outside, ending with one of his vampire guards being struck down by a dark, brute figure. A second figure closed in, slashing with a silver blade. Barnes backed away, stumbling over his own feet, watching more guards from other positions around the grounds moving to engage the raiding party.
He ran as best he could back to the landing. He panicked at the thought of becoming trapped inside the elevator cage and so mounted the curling staircase, pulling himself hand-over-hand along the broad banister. Adrenaline neutralized some of the alcohol in his blood.
The study. That was where the pistols were displayed. He threw himself down the long hallway toward the room—when a pair of hands grabbed him from the side, pulling him into the open doorway of the sitting room.
Barnes instinctively covered his head, expecting a beating. He fell sprawling, thrown into one of the chairs, where he remained, cowering in fear and bewilderment. He did not want to see the face of his attacker. Part of his hysterical fear came from a voice inside his head that most closely resembled that of his dearly departed mother, saying, You’re getting what you deserve.
“Look at me.”
The voice. That angry voice. Barnes relaxed his grip around his head. He knew the voice but could not place it. Something was off. The voice had become roughened over time, deeper.
Curiosity outstripped fear. Barnes removed his trembling arms from his head, raising his eyes.
Ephraim Goodweather. Or, more reflective of his personal appearance, Ephraim Goodweather’s evil twin. This was not the man he used to know, the esteemed epidemiologist. Dark circles raccooned his fugitive eyes. Hunger had drained his face of all cheer and turned his cheeks into crags, as though all the meat had been boiled off the bone. Mealy whiskers clung to his gray skin but failed to fill out the hollows. He wore fingerless gloves, a filthy coat, and faded boots under wet cuffs, laced with wire rather than string. The black knit cap crowning his head reflected the darkness of the mind beneath. A sword handle rose from the pack on his back. He looked like a vengeful hobo.
“Everett,” Eph said, his voice hoarse, possessed.
“Don’t,” said Barnes, terrified of him.
Eph picked up the snifter, its bottom still coated and chocolaty. He brought the mouth of the glass to his nose, drawing in the scent. “Nightcap, huh? Brandy Alexander? That’s a fucking prom drink, Barnes.” He placed the large glass in his former boss’s hand. Then he did exactly what Barnes feared he would do: he closed his fist over Barnes’s hand, crushing the glass between his ex-boss’s fingers. Closing them over the multiple shards of glass, cutting his flesh and tendons and slicing to the bone.
Barnes howled and fell on his knees, bleeding and sobbing. He cringed. “Please,” he said.
Eph said, “I want to stab you in the eye.”
“Please.”
“Step on your throat until you die. Then cremate you in that little tile hole in the wall.”
“I was saving her … I wanted to deliver Nora from the camp.”
“The way you delivered those pretty maids downstairs? Nora was right about you. Do you know what she would do to you if she were here?”
So she wasn’t. Thank God. “She would be reasonable,” Barnes said. “She would see what I had to offer to you. How I could be of service.”
“Goddamn you,” said Eph. “Goddamn your black soul.”
Eph punched Barnes. His hits were calculated, brutal.