Emma Bull - Bone Dance

Enough. I shook myself and went to Ego’s front door.

I could see the camera, watching from its bracket on the ceiling, and past it, the guard desk. I looked into the camera’s eye and nodded, schooling my face to something like confident blankness.

The guard was one I didn’t know, young, brown-haired, with a sunburnt nose. He looked up when I stopped in front of the desk.

“They know I’m coming,” I said.

“Can I have your name, please, to—”

“They don’t need my name. They just saw my face on the monitor upstairs.” I tilted my head toward the camera.

“I have to call to authorize—”

“Please do.”

He went into the little room with the window in the door, and I followed silently after. When I came in, he was on the intercom saying, “…didn’t give a name, sir.” I reached gently around his shoulder and took the desk mike away from him.

“Hello, Tom,” I said. It would come through clearly; I knew how to talk into a microphone. “I thought I was invited.”

There was a beat of silence. Then the drawling voice, saying, “Well, God damn if you aren’t. Come on up. You know the way.”

The guard stepped back, watching me. He seemed skittish. I handed him the microphone and headed for the elevator.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. We’d discovered, when we put our heads together, that the only thing we could plan was the lighting of Ego. Helping Dana, thwarting—or even avoiding—Tom, were too full of variables. I could only go, because I had to go, and stay alert, and do the next thing, whatever it was. Everything depended on what happened next, and what happened after that, and after that, and I had no idea what any of those would be. I was waiting, almost literally, for a sign. Improvisation wasn’t what I was good at. What was I good at? What was I made to do?

Theo would light the Gilded West, if he could, at the request of Sherrea’s gods. What was I here for? To bring Dana out. To stop Tom Worecski. I doubted I could manage either one. I was simply moving in the direction that seemed right, and hoping that at the appropriate moment, something would tell me I’d arrived.

“This isn’t just the power monopoly,” Sherrea had said before I climbed into the truck. “That’s just a symptom. D’you understand?” It had meant a lot to her, I could tell: her hands were closed hard on my shoulders, and her face was uncomfortably close to mine. She wouldn’t have forgotten if it wasn’t important. Once, I would have smiled and told her yes, I understood, sure. This afternoon, I’d stood quiet under her hands and finally shook my head. She’d remembered then, let go and stepped back. But I’d seen the fear in her face.

Oh, spirits, if Frances wasn’t John Wayne, I certainly wasn’t. Why hadn’t I just stood at the front door and cut my throat?

The elevator door opened on darkness. The elevator itself was still lit, so the power hadn’t gone off. I stepped out, holding the door open. It pinged furiously; I jumped and lost my grip. The door closed and left me in a perfect absence of light. I wish I’d thought to bring a candle. But how could I have expected that here, where electricity ran like water, there wouldn’t be enough light to see by?

I could find the office by touch; there weren’t that many doors. But I could probably find other things, too, if I was meant to. I took two steps, my fingers trailing along the wall. “Tom,” I said on a whim, “this is stupid. I can turn around and leave.”

In the ceiling, a speaker crackled. I’d been right. He’d seen too many movies. “That elevator ain’t comin’ back.”

“I know where the fire stairs are.”

“Sure, you do. But I’m awful sorry about the lights on those stairs. Seem to be on the blink. You sure you want to go down ‘em in the dark, nice and slow?”

That might mean that he had put something in the stairwell. Or it might only mean that, once I headed for it, he would.

“And speakin’ of fire, what did you think of the one I lit for you last time? Huh?” He laughed, a high, scratching giggle overhead. How about a little fire, Scarecrow, I thought, but didn’t say. The horse you rode in on, and your little dog, too, Worecski.

I found a light switch under my fingers and flipped it, but nothing happened. Shut off at the breaker box, probably located in Ego’s heels; and I was in her hair. Either he’d just ordered it done, or the paging system was on a separate circuit.

I reached the door that opened on Albrecht’s office. Would Tom be in it? Or Albrecht, or both? If the lamp was on, I’d be blind. I opened the door a finger width at a time.

The office was dark. And unnaturally silent—of course. With the power off, any fans or air-conditioning exclusive to this floor would go off, too. From the perfect lack of noise, I figured Albrecht’s floor must have had its own independent everything. If Tom was in the room, I ought to be able to hear his breathing, if I could only keep my own quiet.

I bumped lightly into the desk, and let my hands drift in the area where the lamp ought to be. It was there. I tried the switch because it had to be tried, but nothing happened. I worked my way around the desk, stopping to listen every two or three steps, holding my breath until the pulse in my head deafened me. In time, I made it to the door in the paneling that led to the big, bright room that had been the stage for Tom’s last drama.

It was as dark as the office. And the cool, dry air had been replaced with suffocating heat and damp. No venting, no air-conditioning. I could feel sweat springing to my skin already, like condensation on a glass. I took a step into the void, another—

And couldn’t quite stifle the sound I made when something brushed against my face. I staggered backward. Nothing happened. I reached out and found something between my fingers: plastic—long ribbons of it—hanging from the ceiling like loose-curled vines.

What I had to stifle then was a stream of epithets. It was videotape. Half-inch videotape pulled off its reels and draped like party streamers as far as I could reach.

Light fluttered through the room, and I thought at first it was a reflection from somewhere. But in the afterimage I realized what I’d seen. The blinds had been drawn back from the wall of window glass, and the first pale flickering of lightning had passed through. Lightning. What about wind? That wasn’t my part of the show. I couldn’t spare either hope or fear for the weather now.

But it had given me that moment’s illumination. In it, I’d seen thickets of tape, veiling the room from one side to the other. Albrecht’s collection, it must be, everything I’d found for him, everything he’d commissioned from anywhere else, all originals, because he’d insisted on that. I closed both fists on handfuls of tape and began, methodically, to pull it down.

The furniture was gone. When I reached the place where the two couches had been, I found only empty floor. A stab of lightning showed me the marks in the deep carpet left by the couches’ feet, and by the Chinese table. He might not be here at all, I thought suddenly, alarmed. A cluster of tape slipped through my fingers to the floor. He might have left this here for me, and be sitting somewhere below, imagining the scene, laughing. If so, he could have left something else as well, something lethal.

No, it felt wrong. Tom Worecski had a wonderful imagination; I had the proof of it right here. But I didn’t think he’d want to miss the effect he’d caused, even if he had to limit himself to judging by the noises I made. I gathered up an armful of tape and yanked.

Bleaching white light shot into the room from the window and was gone, with the crash of mangled air on its heels. I staggered and fell, and jammed my knuckles into my teeth to stop sound and air.