TWENTY-THREE
Shadows spread across the walls and the faces of those who looked down on the man who knelt before them—the Saints, the Blessed Mother, and the Child.
Flames quivered on the candles at the altar as ancient prayers whispered in the waiting stillness of the Church.
“Eternal rest grant unto Thy servant, and may perpetual light shine upon him.”
She took two more steps, then suddenly stopped. His eyes were open, staring, and the blood...
Kris fought her way up out of the nightmare.
The image followed her, slipping out of the box like scattered pieces of a puzzle, other memories:
The freezing cold on the tarmac on a windy day...
A flag-draped casket...
The crumpled wreckage of a car in the French countryside...
She leaned her forehead against bent knees in the shadows of the room and kept breathing, forcing the nightmare back into a box.
She had no idea how long she sat there, eventually aware of the sounds of the house—the hiss and pop of the gas jet in thefireplace, the rain on the arched windows, an automobile in the street below. She glanced over at the bed beside her.
He was gone.
How long had she been asleep? And where was James? Had the bleeding started again?
She pushed back the comforter, and pulled on jeans and the sweater, dark stains—his blood— streaked across both.
She followed the smell of coffee and the sounds of conversation—low, intimate in the way of friends or lovers, another memory coming back from the night before…late, finally reaching the house in the Marais, uncertain what they would find.
Daenerys, with her long platinum-white hair, a flesh-and-blood version out of one of those internet games, the huge dog at her side.
“I have friends in Paris....” Innis had told them.
She reached what had once been the grand salon, and blinked, certain she was still dreaming.
“Innis?”
He sat at the long table that looked like it might be original to the residence— long, dark wood, massive, and the bank of computer screens—in all his colorful, vivid, tattooed glory. He came away from the table, wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, then held her away from him.
“Bloody Christ! You look like hell!”
She glared back at him. “Your eye shadow is smeared.”
He hugged her again. “You're all right, then?”
As all right as anyone could be after the night before.
“Drink this,” Daenerys crossed the room and handed her a mug of steaming liquid. Not coffee, but some other fragrant blend.
“Tea?”
“It's good for mornings after,” Daenerys explained, not going into detail about what sort of 'mornings after.'
“I blend it myself from leaves I purchase at a shop in Montparnasse, and there are croissants from the bakery.”
Eat me. Drink me. It felt like she'd fallen down the rabbit hole.
