On her way to meet Fabien, Lussi took a quick detour to the office to pick up the Bible. Gail wasn’t at the front desk, but Lussi could hear someone pecking away at a typewriter upstairs. She took a deep breath in the lobby, staring up at the third floor. Her plan was to get in and get out. A covert operation. The sun had already set, and the shadows cast by the wall lamps would conceal her as she slipped into her office.
Cal emerged from the hall into the third-floor foyer. “Oh, hey, boss,” he said with a wave. When he raised his arm, his crutch fell to the side. They both watched it tumble down the spiral stairs like the world’s loudest Slinky. It came to a rest on the second-floor landing. “It’s okay, I’ve got another one,” he shouted down to Lussi.
She walked up the steps and picked up his wayward crutch. So much for being covert. “What are you still doing here?”
“Trying to make up time from this morning. The funeral was really long.”
“Catholic service?”
His brow jumped. “How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess,” she said. She was about to tell him that since he was an unpaid intern, “making up time” was a moot point. But she’d hold her tongue for now. She had more important matters. She offered to help him down the stairs but wasn’t surprised when he declined. Definitely a try-hard if she’d ever met one.
She went to her office and opened the top drawer of her desk. It was empty. Frederick’s Bible was missing.
She heard a light knock and glanced up to see Rachael standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway lights. Lussi glanced at her watch; twenty past six. She had to be at Union Square Station in fifteen minutes if she wanted to get to the New York Public Library in time. “Hey, Rachael. I need to head out in a minute. Anything I can help you with?”
Rachael had been to St. Vincent’s to see Stanley. His wife wanted to pass along her thanks to Lussi. “Another hour or two and the hemorrhaging in his brain would have killed him.”
Lussi placed her hands over her heart. “That’s a relief. How soon will he get out? I might stop by to see him.”
“He’ll be in there for a while. Like, a really, really long while.”
Rachael explained that the pencil had drilled deep into the soft tissue of his frontal lobe. Three-quarters of an inch. It didn’t sound like much to Lussi, but it was enough to cripple his ability to speak. He could understand you—you could tell by the knowing look in his eyes. He couldn’t verbalize his thoughts, though. He couldn’t tell you his name or where he was born. He couldn’t tell you that Bush was vice president. Every answer was there. Every answer, on the tip of his tongue. Just out of reach.
“He can’t even write. There’s only one thing he can do,” Rachael said. “Draw pictures. And none of them make any sense.” She reached into her slacks and unfolded a scrap of notebook paper. “This is the one he gave me. What am I supposed to do, stick it on my fridge?”
Lussi looked it over. The horns, the fur…the teeth. He’d sketched Perky. Was this because he’d been in his office staring at the doll all night as he bled out?
Lussi handed the paper back. “Do they know how the accident happened?”
Rachael motioned for Lussi to draw nearer. “You didn’t hear this from me, but they’re saying it was a suicide attempt,” the designer whispered in her ear.
—stick it where the sun don’t shine—
Lussi glanced out of the corner of her eye at the doll, perched on her bookshelf, thin legs dangling off the edge. Rachael obviously hadn’t seen the doll yet, but she would. It was unmistakably the four-horned creature in Stanley’s drawing. This would invite questions…questions that Lussi didn’t know the answer to. Who had gifted her the doll, and for what purpose? The idea of her Secret Santa being a prankster seemed less and less likely by the hour. There was evil in this building. Whether it was Xavier Blackwood’s ghost or something else was up for debate. All Lussi knew was that Frederick hadn’t been exaggerating when he said she was in danger. She could have easily fallen victim to the slush pile instead of Cal; Stanley could have turned his rage on her instead of on himself. Had Perky been protecting her all this time? Was its magic real?
—do not bring detestable things into your home—
There was a loud ping at the window. The blinds were drawn shut, so she couldn’t see what had hit it.
Another ping, this time louder.
“Snowballs,” Rachael said. “The kids run wild in this neighborhood. A bunch of animals. All from divorced homes, of course. That’s how those people live.”
Lussi’s field of vision was shrinking, the wallpapered walls closing in around her. More pings against the windowpane, one after another after another. Faster. Faster. Faster.
“What…what are you talking about?” she asked. “What people?”
“Oh, you know,” Rachael said, marching to the window. The barrage was so loud now, it sounded like the building was under attack. “You just have to bang on the window and they run. Watch this.”
Rachael yanked on the cord, sending the blinds shooting up. Lussi couldn’t see past her reflection, but Rachael was close enough to see through the windowpane. Suddenly, she began to scream long and loud, with the pitch and vibrato of a castrated Luciano Pavarotti. When her voice gave out, she crumpled to the floor.
Lussi rushed over to Rachael to find she had fainted dead away. The pinging came to an abrupt halt. Lussi crouched and slowly peered through the window, just over the sill, dreading the sight of whatever had made Rachael collapse.
The window was plastered with blood-streaked feathers, illuminated from behind by the streetlights. A stained-glass window in the devil’s church.
Lussi’s nostrils burned with a thick, cloying sweetness. Lavender? Not Rachael’s perfume. The fragrance enveloped her, overwhelming her senses. Okay, I go night night now…she thought as she drifted off into a deep sleep.