The rabbit took a couple of hops towards her. She knelt to stroke it. It was warm and its eyes were round and pink. It hopped past her up the stairs.
‘Oh I don’t think you should go up there,’ she said.
For one thing it was dark at the top of the stairs. For another there was a sign that read ‘Private. Staff only’ on the wall. But the rabbit seemed determined, and the clever mite kept well ahead of her as she followed it up the stairs.
At the top it was pitch black, and the rabbit had gone.
Something else was sitting there in the rabbit’s place, its eyes burning bright.
With Lindi Lee illusions could be simple. No need to seduce her into a complete fiction like the boy, this one was already dreaming. Easy meat.
‘Hello,’ Lindi Lee said, scared a little by the presence ahead of her. She looked into the dark, trying to sort out some outline, a hint of a face. But there was none. Not even a breath.
She took one step back down the stairs but it reached for her suddenly, and caught her before she toppled, silencing her quickly, intimately.
This one might not have much passion to steal, but it sensed another use here. The tender body was still budding: the orifices unused to invasions. It took Lindi up the few remaining stairs and sealed her away for future investigation.
* * *
‘Ricky? Oh God, Ricky!’
Birdy knelt beside Ricky’s body and shook him. At least he was still breathing, that was something, and though at first sight there seemed to be a great deal of blood, in fact the wound was merely a nick in his ear.
She shook him again, more roughly, but there was no response. After a frantic search she found his pulse: it was strong and regular. Obviously he’d been attacked by somebody, possibly Lindi Lee’s absent boyfriend. In which case, where was he? Still in the John perhaps, armed and dangerous. There was no way she was going to be damn fool enough to step in there and have a look, she’d seen that routine too many times. Woman in Peril: standard stuff. The darkened room, the stalking beast. Well, instead of walking bang into that cliché she was going to do what she silently exhorted heroines to do time and again: defy her curiosity and call the cops.
Leaving Ricky where he lay, she walked up the aisle, and back into the foyer.
It was empty. Lindi Lee had either given up on her boyfriend altogether, or found somebody else on the street outside to take her home. Whichever, she’d closed the front door behind her as she left, leaving only a hint of Johnson’s Baby Powder on the air behind her. OK, that certainly made things easier, Birdy thought, as she stepped into the Ticket Office to dial the cops. She was rather pleased to think that the girl had found the commonsense to give up on her lousy date.
She picked up the receiver, and immediately somebody spoke.
‘Hello there,’ said the voice, nasal and ingratiating, ‘it’s a little late at night to be using the phone, isn’t it?’
It wasn’t the operator, she was sure. She hadn’t even punched a number.
Besides, it sounded like Peter Loire.
‘Who is this?’
‘Don’t you recognise me?’
‘I want to speak to the police.’
‘I’d like to oblige, really I would.’
‘Get off the line, will you? This is an emergency! I need the police.’
‘I heard you first time,’ the whine went on.
‘Who are you?’
‘You already played that line.’
‘There’s somebody hurt in here. Will you please – ‘
‘Poor Rick.’
He knew the name. Poor Rick, he said, as though he was a loving friend.
She felt the sweat begin in her brow: felt it sprout out of her pores. He knew Ricky’s name.
‘Poor, poor Rick,’ the voice said again. ‘Still I’m sure we’ll have a happy ending. Aren’t you?’
‘This is a matter of life and death,’ Birdy insisted, impressed by how controlled she felt sure she was sounding.
‘I know,’ said Lorre. ‘Isn’t it exciting?’