Blood Spirits

I went to the door. “Honoré?”

  Was that a faint smoky haze?

  Panic ripped through me. “Think!” I said aloud. Fire drills are common in Southern California, where there is a serious fire season from August through November.

  If there was a fire, it might be small. It was possible that Honoré was busy putting it out. I had to make sure. Only which way to go?

  I carefully closed the door behind me, mindful of The Project, and slipped down the stairs.

  In my panic, all the rooms looked alike. I ran from room to room. No fire—good—but the stink of burning was getting stronger. So was that chemical smell.

  I dashed through a circular dining room and through one of three doors, and found myself in the formal salon I’d seen before. I backed up to leave, casting a last glance around. Something was out of place. I forced myself to take a couple of steps inside the room, though the odor of burning made my eyes water. I heard a faint, high keen.

  Was that a dog whining? I stepped in a little farther. There was Shurisko, shivering with his belly flat to the ground. He didn’t move. Was he injured? I stepped around a satin-covered loveseat and stopped in shock.

  Honoré lay sprawled on a beautiful rectangular carpet, the side of his head gory. A yard or so away lay one of those marble busts. It had obviously conked him on the head.

  Was he dead? No, the wound was bleeding sluggishly, and I’d learned through reading plenty of mysteries that the dead don’t bleed. Relief washed through me as I bent over him. His chest rose in a shuddering breath. He was definitely out cold.

  As soon as I crouched down, the dog leaped up and ran around the room, uttering sharp barks that hurt my ears.

  “Honoré, wake up!”

  The room seemed blurry, almost diffuse, and the reek clogged my throat. Smoke!

  “Hey, wake UP! I think a spark got loose in the next room!”

  He didn’t stir.

  Trying to ignore the frantically yapping dog, I grabbed Honoré’s arm, and hauled him to a sitting position. He slumped heavily, and one of his knees looked odd. What now? I knew that female fire fighters could get a guy twice their weight out of danger. The trick (so I’d read in those mysteries) was to get the guy over your shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  I got both hands under him and tried to lift. He flopped loosely, too heavy and too lanky for me to manage. I sneezed. The haze was worsening.

  I looked around wildly, wishing the poor dog would shut up, though I wanted to howl, too. Gray-white tendrils fingered under the nearest door, reaching up to dissipate in the gathering haze. I looked back in desperation at Honoré, lying there full length, framed by a beautiful rug in shades of crimson, scarlet, gold, and tiny hints of blue and green.

  Oh.

  He was lying on a rug. On top of a beautifully polished hardwood floor. Doh!

  I straightened him out, crossed his hands over his chest, and wrapped the rug around him. A couple of tugs and he slid along the polished parquet floor.

  Okay, so where to? Away from the door with the smoke, obviously. The door I’d come through led to that circular dining room. And . . . double doors on the other side.

  I threw them open. Another formal chamber—the sitting room from summer! Across it were the French doors I remembered that opened onto a terrace. I ran to them—and the door jammed against the piled snow outside. Some frantic digging and shoving on my part got one open wide enough for me to drag Honoré through. The black cat leaped over us and across the terrace toward the trees beyond. Shurisko followed, whining and running about.

  “If you were Lassie,” I muttered, “you’d be doing this.”

  Shurisko barked.

  Honoré bumped over the icy snow. I took him all the way to the other end of the terrace and stood there, my chest heaving, and sweat running down inside my clothes in spite of the bitter cold.

  Great. We were safe . . . but I should call 911. Did they even have 911?

  And then I remembered that secret room with the Project, and two cats I’d carefully shut in.

  FOURTEEN

  RUNNING BACK INTO A HOUSE with a room on fire is a stupid idea. You don’t have to watch TV or read mysteries to know that. On the other hand, there was no way in hell that I would leave live creatures to burn to death if there was a possibility of saving them. And so far, only one room was sending out smoke.

  I said to Shurisko, “Guard him.”

  The dog barked, ran around in a circle, then plunged off the terrace into the snow.

  So much for my animal command skills.

  I ran back inside. The smoke haze had increased, but I didn’t see any flames. Somewhere crystal rang on a high, sweet, yet almost painful note, or maybe it was merely my brain gibbering at me.

  I shoved my nose into the elbow of my coat sleeve and plunged off in the direction I’d first come, stopping long enough to scan each table or nook for a telephone so I could try to call for help. If Honoré had one, it wasn’t anywhere obvious.

  I’d taken a couple of false turns before I spotted that narrow stairway. Up the stairs four at a time, and into the little room, where I found the cats going crazy, yowling and scampering about. When I tried to pick one up, it hissed at me and leaped up onto the desk to get away, skittering on papers and sending them flying.

  Papers. I promised on my life . . .

  I grabbed up the diary, the carbons, and everything else on the desk, and stuffed them down inside my shirt. “Come on, cats, follow me.”

  Not that I expected them to listen any better than their dog friend had, but I dashed to the door—and backed up as a huge billow of smoke whooshed up the stairs. What? I was just there!

  I crouched low, and crept out onto the narrow landing, but as soon as I put my foot on the first step, I saw the orange flicker of flames in the doorway at the bottom of the steps. The cats scampered back inside the secret room.

  I backed after them and slammed the door. What now? The room had no windows. It was a secret room—it was a secret room.

  I moved to the short bookcase with the prince’s bust on it. I hefted the bust, which caused the papers in my shirt to crackle warningly, and dumped it onto the desk. Then tried to pull the bookcase out. It didn’t budge—it was nailed in!

  I picked up the bust, held it over my head, and threw it at the wall with all my strength. It made a huge dent in the plaster. I picked it up again, and smashed it into the dent. It crashed through the plaster into blackness, and clunked down a stairway.

  I swooped down on the big tortie, which promptly tried to bite me, and tossed the cat through the hole. The Persian leaped up onto the bookcase in front of the hole. “Go on, Kitty,” I said, and shoved it through. I heard it land lightly and skitter off. Good. Passage intact, at least for cat feet.

  Using both hands, I pulled at the plaster until there was a humansized hole. Smoke was now streaming under the door. I climbed up onto the bookcase, and swung my feet through the hole. Back to tunnels with spiders, I thought as I felt around with my toe . . . and found purchase.

  I got through the hole, and felt my way down a stairway, hoping that whichever room it led to (assuming that the other end was not blocked off) wasn’t on fire.

  I almost tripped over the bust, which I picked up and cradled against me like a football. When the passage dead-ended, I felt around for a latch or knob. Nothing. I hefted the bust and bashed at the wall. This time it was more difficult: I was smashing through wood as well as plaster.

  The wood splintered in slats. I yanked and kicked my way free, emerging into . . . a closet stuffed with clothing, smelling of mothballs and a florid perfume. I fought my way past the clothes into a room full of swirling smoke. A cat yowled at my feet. Coughing, my eyes streaming, I fell to hands and knees, groping for a wall. When at last I found one, I swept my hands up and down, up and down until my knuckles bruised painfully against a window sill.

  I reached behind me for anything, found a lamp, and heaved it through the window glass. The ai
r rushing in caused a roaring behind me, but I didn’t stop to look. The younger cat leaped through, no more than a blur. I found the big tortoiseshell puffed up to the size of a small car, running back and forth in a tiny space against the wall below the window. I grabbed the cat and tossed it outside, hoping it would be all right, but I couldn’t stop to look.

  Tiny zaps of hot pain needled me as I picked up a rug from the floor, flung it over the jagged glass in the window, and climbed out. I was on the second story, but there was a tree branch not far away. I did my best to launch for the tree branch—and missed.

  Snow and wet, twiggy branches slapped at me. I bounced painfully off something, then landed on my back in a snow bank. My coat hissed.

  I was safe. I was alive. I lay there sobbing for breath and coughing up acrid smoke, until the snow began to melt around my neck, making my skin numb. All of a sudden I was cold all over, my body shivering violently.

  I forced myself to sit up. Then I got my feet under me. Dizzy, coughing, I made my way around the side of the house. It seemed a thousand miles, but I found the terrace. There lay the rug with Honoré inside. There were foot prints all over, like little wells with soft edges. How had I made so many? Dog prints dappled the entire terrace, though the dog was nowhere in sight. Neither were the cats—which was good, I thought, as I looked around. No cats meant live cats.

  The terrace reflected an orange glow. I lifted my head, and froze in shock: every window showed bright orange. A window cracked, glass tinkling down as flames gouted out.

  A surge of adrenaline got me moving again. I grasped the rug, and discovered that my gloves had ripped—my hands were bleeding.

  Grunting and yanking, I dragged Honoré’s rug out into the snow, and toward a stand of enormous cedar and spruce and fir. Once or twice there were loud cracks like rifle shots. Sparks whirled out of the windows, some flying far enough to land in the trees. In California, that would torch the greenery, but here the sparks fizzled out in the snowladen boughs.

  When I reached a little space between two spruce, I let go and dropped beside the rug, breathing hard as I coughed up more smoke. I checked Honoré. He was still out, but at least he was breathing. What now?

  He’d had no phone that I could find. Cell phones didn’t work. From the total lack of response, my guess was that the neighbors were too far away to see the smoke in the blizzard—if I peered away from the fire, I couldn’t even see the next house.

  His car! The garage was attached to the house, but the fire seemed to be burning upward.

  I pulled his papers out of my shirt before I ruined them completely, and laid them on the rug next to Honoré. Then I got to my feet and lumbered back into the snow, past the terrace, and to the other side of the house. The garage was still intact. I shouldered the door open. Heat blasted out—and flames licked at the door to the inside. But the car was right there!

  I dashed in, yanked the car door open . . . and sure enough, the keys were in the ignition. I turned it on, threw the car into gear, and backed out into the snow as the flames ate through the door and hungrily spread. I backed up until the car was well away from the house. It plowed up some of the fresh fall. I was afraid it would get mired, so I stopped it, yanked the keys, and flailed my way back to Honoré through wind-whirled snow.

  Shurisko had returned from wherever he’d been. He crouched down beside Honoré and licked his face.

  The rug had a thin ridge of snow on it, which slid off as Honoré began to shift about. He groaned and made a vague swipe at the dog’s muzzle.

  Then he opened his eyes, and stared at me uncomprehending. “Gespenstisch, Ruli,” he observed in a whisper.

  “I’m not a ghost,” I said in German back to him. “I’m Kim.”

  His eyes closed. He seemed to be processing. I could imagine how bad his head hurt by how long it was taking to grasp this fact.

  “You got clocked by one of your marble poets. There was a fire.”

  “A fire?” he repeated voicelessly, then struggled up on an elbow, his fine hair dark against his pale forehead. Thin, brittle lines of blood had matted into his hair, frozen into reddish-brown wires.

  My stomach heaved, and I looked away. “Maybe you should lie down again.”

  “I have to . . .” He lay back, his face pale and moist. He swallowed several times, obviously fighting nausea. “Shurisko?”

  “He’s right here. And three cats got out. I hope that’s all you had,” I added.

  “Three.” He winced, then made another effort, checking when he inadvertently put his elbow on one of the papers. It crackled, and he jerked his arm up, then fell back with a groan, his fingers scrabbling restlessly. “Tell me. What . . . happened.” He closed his eyes.

  “A marble bookend fell on your head, I think. At least, I found it lying next to you, and you’ve got a huge knot right there behind your ear.”

  He tried to shift, and halted when one of the papers crackled again. His eyelids flashed up and he froze. “What . . .”

  “It’s your sources. And the Project. I grabbed them when I went back for the cats. I had to stuff them in my shirt. Got kind of messed up. Sorry about that. Look, I couldn’t find a phone, so I should go find someone, but I wasn’t sure who I should get. I’m not even sure where your neighbors are—I don’t want to get lost in the snow.”

  His hands brushed over the diary, and touched a couple of the carbons, now creased and rumpled, a few, regrettably, from melted snow. His jaw lengthened with pain.

  “Here. Let me help with that,” I said, and began to pick up the scattered papers. They were all still on the rug, but I didn’t know how much longer it would stay dry. The snow beneath us had to be melting from our combined body heat. I scrambled the papers together then said, “Let’s go. Your car is waiting.”

  His voice was slightly stronger. “Garage?”

  “Gone. But your car is in the driveway.”

  He began to move, then fell back, his face blanching. He brushed his fingers over one knee, which was so swollen his jeans looked like a tube.

  “I can’t bend it,” he whispered.

  “Get the other under you. I can pull you to your feet,” I said as I picked up the papers and once again stuffed them inside my shirt.

  It took a couple of tries, his face so pale it was nearly green. He hauled himself up, and I pulled his arm over my shoulder. For a step or two he tried not to lean on me, but that changed fast. We staggered clumsily into the snow, followed by the anxious dog.

  It seemed to take forever. Honoré’s pace was slow, and a couple of times he stopped, either from dizziness or because he was compelled to look at the stone shell of his house, smoke billowing from every window and blending into the heavy snowfall.

  At last we reached the car. He eased into the front, teeth gritted as he maneuvered his leg in. That knee had swollen into sausage-like distortion, and the cut on his head was bleeding again from his efforts. I hoped his skull wasn’t fractured.

  Shurisko leaped into the back, filling the entire space as I fell into the driver’s seat. I cranked the engine. Warm air blasted from the heater. Within a minute the car began to smell like wet dog. “Where should we go?”

  “Ridotski House. Go this way . . . past second house . . . left turn onto Mathilde Street.”

  During the summer, it would have taken maybe a minute to get there. Possibly two. But the journey seemed endless, with me crouched white-knuckled over the steering wheel, as if proximity to the windshield would improve visibility. The car bumped over the snow well enough, but my progress was slower than an amble, I was so afraid of ramming into another car or a tree or even a house. I was so flustered it took forever for me to figure out how to navigate by the street lights. They seemed miles apart.

  I wasn’t sure I’d recognize the Ridotski place when we reached it, but Honoré took care of that. “Turn here,” he said, his voice slightly stronger. “Up the hill.”

  I remembered that steep little hill. The car was a good one
, but not a sleigh pulled by animals with sturdy hooves. It shuddered in the mass accumulation of white, then slid gently back down the hill as I spun uselessly at the wheel, until we came to rest against a snow bank that blocked the entire driver’s side.

  I killed the engine and clambered out the passenger door. Shurisko leaped past Honoré, prancing about anxiously. The car heat had wakened up the cuts all over my hands, which were stinging in little jabs of red heat.

  Getting Honoré out of the car was tougher than getting him in. I wanted to leave him there and get help, but he insisted on going with me, so together we plodded grimly up the long white-shrouded driveway. The house seemed miles from the road, emerging at last from the white curtain. A puff of wind stirred the snow, and there was the front door, not twenty feet away. Fifteen. Thirteen. Nine. Trudge, trudge, and at last I reached for the knocker. My throat hurt. I discovered I was crying.

  The door opened, and there was the shocked face of a housekeeper. A few moments later Beka appeared.

  “What is this?” she exclaimed, then threw the door wide. “Enter!”

  Shurisko galloped in, shedding snow in every direction.

  A crowd of servants appeared behind Beka. At a gesture from her, two men took over from me. “Upstairs,” she said, “the yellow room.”

  They helped Honoré toward the stairway to the left, leaving us to follow up in a long spiral. At the top, the housekeeper opened the door to the first room in a long hall, then yanked an embroidered satin bed-cover off the bed as the men eased Honoré down.

  Beka gave me a questioning look.

  I rejoiced at every sign of normalcy and got control of my shuddering breathing. My lungs still burned, and my breath smelled smoky. Or maybe it was my clothes. “There is a fire at his house.” I moistened dry lips. “Something fell on his head.”

  Beka said quickly, “How bad is the fire?”

  “Very.”

  Beka turned to someone behind me. “Call the brigade.”

  Footsteps ran off. The housekeeper had produced a cloth from somewhere and bent over Honoré. He clapped the cloth to his head and lay there, shivering. “Let me be.”