Lussi parked Agnes’s Yugo around the corner from the Blackwood Building underneath a burned-out streetlight. It was nearly three in the morning. She had never stolen a car before and never planned to again. Tonight was turning out to be a night of many firsts—first time she’d drugged a friend, first time she’d been tied to a conference table, first time she’d become master of a demonic doll.
The drive into the city had been terrifying. She couldn’t afford to be pulled over. She’d kept the speedometer well under the speed limit. Not that she could go any faster—every time she approached fifty-five, the Yugo started shaking like it had caught the Holy Spirit. The AM radio only picked up talk this time of night, but it was loud enough to mask the sputtering engine. Larry King’s monotone also served to drown out any thoughts she might have had of backing out.
All the pieces had come together as she drove toward the East Village. Her coworkers seemed to understand that there was some sort of supernatural force at work in the building and that it could be bound with iron—hence the bells they’d tried to bind her with. Perhaps they had assumed that Xavier had been protecting them and that, without him, they were at the mercy of the spirit, made flesh in the form of a brand-new senior editor who seemed to be on hand for every maiming and death in the building for weeks now.
And they were right to suspect her. They just didn’t have the whole story.
Lussi pulled the Percht’s box from the trunk and marched down the street toward the Blackwood Building, her wrists jangling with silver bracelets she’d lifted from Agnes’s jewelry box. They weren’t iron, but—if nineteenth-century German folklore could be believed—they would offer some modicum of protection.
Every fiber in her body wanted to believe that Agnes was either delusional or an outright liar. But she knew, in her heart, that the woman had told her the truth. A person wouldn’t kill herself to protect a lie. If she believed Agnes, she also had to believe that Perky would seek out a new master even if Lussi never set foot in the building again. Someone who wasn’t ungrateful. Lussi couldn’t afford to wait weeks or even days to box it up and blunt its reign of terror. She only had until the first staffers began to roll in around eight thirty.
A chilling calm had come over the neighborhood. Fabien’s coat was plenty warm, as was the sweater she’s taken from Agnes’s closet, red and embroidered with snowflakes, Christmas trees, presents, and snowmen. There was something creepy about wearing a dead woman’s clothing and jewelry, but wasn’t that what a lot of thrift store finds were anyway? Plus, Agnes was the one who’d disemboweled herself by performing ritual hara-kiri, splattering blood all over Lussi’s white tank. What else was she supposed to do?
The park was quiet. An orange glow emanated from its deeper recesses. The blanket merchants had packed up long ago; the panhandlers were resting for the night until the world woke up again tomorrow. Three gutter punks were having a snowball fight in the street. As Lussi passed them on the sidewalk, she could hear their laughter echoing off the surrounding buildings. A taxi swerved around them and kept going, the driver leaning on the horn. The punks flipped him off.
Ah, to be young again.
“Hey, lady,” one of them said. A teenaged boy from the look of his pockmarked face. “What’s in the box?”
Lussi picked up her pace. She should have parked closer to the office, but she hadn’t wanted to try her luck in case anyone was watching for her. She ignored the punks’ taunts and turned down the alley that went past the back of the Blackwood Building. The fire escape was still her best bet to get into the building unnoticed.
“We’re talkin’ to you, little miss rich bitch,” another punk said, closer now.
Lussi paused only for a moment to look over her shoulder to see if it was time to kick into high gear. Too late. The three kids had caught up to her, encircling her like a pack of wild dogs. They were close enough that she could smell the whiskey on them.
“I don’t have money,” Lussi said. Her breath hung in the air.
“I asked what was in the box,” the first kid said. He was, like the others, wearing denim from head to toe. His jacket was decorated with hundreds of silver studs. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen. A runaway. An addict. A troublemaker. All of the above.
“Toilet paper,” Lussi said.
“Open it,” the third one said, a girl with a shaved head. She had so many piercings on her face that it looked like she’d been in a teleporter accident with a stapler.
Lussi lifted the lid, showing off what was inside.
Not toilet paper.
She’d cleaned most of the blood from the bowie knife except for some stubborn stains on the handle that refused to come out. The punks scattered, arms and legs pinwheeling. The two boys disappeared around the corner but the girl slipped on a patch of ice, faceplanting on the concrete.
Against her better judgment, Lussi helped her to her feet. The girl’s fingerless gloves exposed her frozen fingertips. “You got a winter jacket?” Lussi asked, aware of how much she sounded like her mother now.
The girl shook her head.
“You want this one? It’s real fur. Unless you’re one of those PETA types.”
The girl looked at her skeptically. The sable fur was worth several thousand dollars. It wasn’t Lussi’s to give away, but Fabien would forgive her. Maybe.
“C’mon,” Lussi said, shrugging out of the coat. “I’ll trade you. You could buy twenty denim jackets with this if you wanted.”
“You’re crazy, lady,” the girl said. She removed her studded denim jacket. “I like you.”
“All the best people are crazy,” Lussi said. Maybe that was true, and maybe it wasn’t. There was, however, a method to Lussi’s madness. She wasn’t being altruistic; this wasn’t the goodness of Lussi’s heart finally coming to light. Lussi was going into battle against an evil that may have been older than the city itself. She needed more than a half dozen jangling bracelets.
She needed armor.