“We’ll go then,” Joaquin said.
“Wait a minute.”
“What is it, Cawdor?”
“This the whole of the collection?”
“What do you mean?”
“Simple question. This building. What we’ve seen here. Is this all there is?”
“Sure.”
“What’s through that other exit, down at the far end? Double-locked sec doors?”
“Mind your piss-ant business, outlander!”
“More of the collection?”
The sec man shook his head, hand dropping to the butt of an indeterminate revolver on his hip.
“Nothing for you to see,” he insisted.
Ryan decided not to push it.
“All right, stay cool,” he said, turning to lead the way toward the main exit.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The air outside the thick-walled building tasted like the finest nectar. J.B. hawked and spit, again and again, trying to clear his mouth and throat from the vile taste and smell.
Doc waved his hand in front of his face. “If only one could obtain such a thing as a pomander, scented with fresh cloves. But one cannot.”
Ryan looked up at the sky, seeing that heavy clouds were again hanging over the ville, carried on a gentle northerly wind. Though it was still only the midpart of the afternoon, the light was dismal, fading fast.
“Could do with a drink to wash that filth out of my mouth,” he said. “Water in your rooms.” Joaquin locked and bolted the doors. “Supper’s at six. You got chrons? Yeah, I saw them. Don’t be late. Baron doesn’t care for late.”
Dean was the only one who didn’t seem to have been at all affected by the horrors that dwelled within the baron’s zoo, and he kept up a ceaseless flow of chatter, all the way back into the main house.
“That lizard with about a dozen tails, Dad! How about that? Not as good as the beavers, though. Way all those sets of teeth came sliding out like on gear wheels. That thing in the sand that chilled those rabbits. What about that, Dad? Huh?”
Ryan gave the boy back mumbled monosyllables, locked away into his own thoughts. His uneasy concern about the collection was made stronger by the sec man’s refusal to allow them to see the rear part of the big building. He wondered whether it would be worth the risk to try to get into it that night, or safer to play the cards close to the chest.
Should they get away from the ville at the first opportunity?
He couldn’t decide.
KRYSTY WAS WAITING for them in the corridor, looking anxiously to see if any of the sec men had kept them company.
“Trouble, lover,” she whispered.
“Where?”
She beckoned them all into the end room of the corridor, which had been given to Jak, Doc and Dean.
Emma lay on the bed, as waxen as a corpse, eyes closed tight.
She was barefoot, her dress spread out over her legs. Jak sat on the bed at her side, holding her right hand in his left.
“Bad, Ryan,” he said.
“What’s happened? She fainted?”
Mildred had been bathing the young woman’s forehead with water from the flowered china washbowl. “Not a faint. Been talking but not making sense. Could have been going close to that disgusting building and those freaks inside it.”
“She’s a sensitive.” Krysty carefully closed the door behind them, having checked that the passage was still deserted. “Easy to lose balance.”
“Oh,” Jak gasped, as the fingers tightened around his, turning his flesh even whiter.
“The waxwing has been slain, brethren,” she said in a piercing whisper.
“Fever?” J.B. asked.
“No, John. Pulse is slow, around forty. Temperature feels a tad low, if anything.”
Her eyes flicked open, the golden light seeming to illuminate the whole room with their intensity. For a moment they weren’t focused, then they sought out Ryan, settling on his face. Emma sat up, without any help from Jak.
“Feeling better?” Ryan asked.
But she ignored him. Though her eyes drilled into him, Ryan had the uncomfortable feeling that the dark-haired woman wasn’t actually seeing him.
She was looking through him, past him, within him, beyond him.
When she began to speak, Emma’s voice was oddly flat and strained, as though she were being forced by someone to deliver a speech that she’d barely managed to learn.