Bride of the Rat God Read Online Free PDF Page B

had neither taste nor judgment—nor kindness. It used to drive his mother frantic when he’d bring home these... these doxies. They all had voices like parrots and awful Scouse accents. I think one of them stole my engagement ring—it disappeared when I’d had it off to polish glasses, because the diamond scratched. But of course I hadn’t any proof.”
    She paused, keeping the quake of anger out of her voice with an effort, then bent her head quickly down over Buttercreme’s sleeping form so that her companion wouldn’t see the sudden quiver of her mouth. Why she should still be angry nearly three years later, she didn’t know; it hadn’t been the worst indignity of those years by a long shot.
    “You can take comfort in the fact that if she was keeping company with this toad Pendergast, she probably got what she deserved somewhere down the line.”
    Keith Pelletier and Charlie Sandringham emerged from the back room, each laden with two big green bottles. Norah watched them through the wide plate glass window as they got into the Dusenberg.
    “Thank God,” she murmured. “At least that boy’s driving.”
    “Any sane person would if they’d ever ridden in a car with Charlie.” The waiter refreshed Mr. Mindelbaum’s coffee, but he only cast a doubtful glance at Norah’s rapidly cooling tea. “Even stone-cold sober he forgets which side of the street Americans drive on, not that he’s been stone-cold sober since the McKinley administration. A lot of the older stunters can’t stand the kid—the old barnstormers and the Gower Street cowboys—but I won’t be surprised if he parlays himself into leading roles if he meets the right people.” He shrugged. “That’s Hollywood for you.”
    Sitting like a king in the passenger side of the car, Sandringham turned his head and saw Norah through the lighted window. He blew her a theatrical kiss and raised one of the champagne bottles in a gesture midway between a wave and a toast. Norah smiled in return and lifted her mug.
    “‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” quoted Mindelbaum. “‘It’s safer, with bootlegged liquor supplies.’”
    The lights of Pickford Studios flashed across the Dusenberg’s silver-gray bonnet as the car pulled into the thin traffic on La Brea, gleaming on the young stuntman’s dark hair. That was how Norah always remembered Keith Pelletier afterward, graceful as a young prince, deft and sure and arrogant as he gunned away from the curb.
    Certainly it was how she described him to the police when they showed up on Christine’s doorstep the following afternoon to ask her questions about his murder.

THREE
LAKE OVER HEAVEN
    Cries of warning—it is auspicious to
    go somewhere...
    A warning of danger in the night...
    Dogs barking...
    T HE WIND ROSE as the night deepened, blowing gusts of rain. Dozing on the divan in the parlor, Norah heard it even in her dreams.
    They were not easy dreams. She saw Christine running again through the rocks and darkness of that cinematic landscape, stumbling in her diamond-heeled shoes and slithery dress, the pale jewels of her necklace gleaming in ghostly eldritch light that seemed to come from nowhere.
    But there was no fog in this film. Wind lashed wildly at the trees and branches, tore at her dark skirts, snatched wild handfuls of her hair as she fled. In spite of the rain, the night smelled somehow of deserts, of dust, underlain with a half-familiar sweetish stink. Somewhere dogs were barking like the gruff coughing of lions. Dimly Norah could see their eyes shining like amber moons in the dark.
    They are lions, she thought. Wild-maned and terrible.
    But there was something else in her dream. Something worse. Something moving in the wind, scuttling half-seen in the corner of her vision, something waiting in the darkness beneath the thrashing boughs of eucalyptus and oak that covered the hillside that rose so steeply on the other side of Ivarene Street. Something whose silent, greedy patience