While Harvey Cawdor snuffled and grunted his way through his trough of food, his wife methodically began her preparations for doing the drug. Ryan and the others continued to eat quietly, occasionally beckoning to one of the silent servants for more bread or vegetables.
Rachel eased the cork from the narrow neck of the small tinted bottle, tipping a half gram or so of the spar-kling white powder onto the scored surface of the mirror. She concentrated on the task, oblivious to the glances of her guests. Gripping the thin section of surgical steel and using it to chop and grind the jolt into smaller grains, she eventually arranged the drug into a half-dozen, neat, or-dered lines across the glass.
“Anyone want a sniff?” she asked, two spots of bright color highlighting her spare cheekbones. When everyone had shaken their heads, she rummaged once more in her purse, triumphantly pulling out a narrow tube of carved ivory.
She carefully inserted one end into her right nostril and closed the other with a thin forefinger. Lowering her head over the mirror, she sniffed up one of the lines of jolt, moved quickly to the next line and then the next. Even-
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tually all six lines of the iridescent powder had been snorted.
Her body shook in the characteristic tremors that gave the drug its common nickname. Rachel’s breath came in sharp gasps, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets. Her husband totally ignored her convulsions, busy as he was with rending strips of meat off the carcass of an uniden-tifiable fowl.
“Oh, yes, yes,” she whispered, her breathing slowing down again. She licked the mirror clean with a long, fe-line tongue, then tucked all the jolt paraphernalia back into her purse. Looking up, she became aware that the eyes of the four strangers were on her.
“Good, my lady?” Ryan asked politely.
“Better than good, Master Thursby,” she replied, lick-ing her lips very slowly as she looked at him. “It is better than anything. Better than the most wonderful fucking you could imagine. Better than pain. Better even than death.”
“And we know how much you enjoy death, don’t we, dearest mother?”
None of them had heard the newcomer arrive in the hall. Ryan noticed immediately how the servants backed away, eyes cast down. The old man with the bread salver came within an inch of dropping it, face angled to the stone floor.
The light from the numerous beeswax candles danced off the polished orb of amethyst at the end of the gold chain around the young man’s slender throat. He was dressed in a coat and trousers of black velvet, and black boots. In his belt was a small high-velocity dart gun that fired a cluster of razored metal projectiles only a half inch long, their shafts barbed to make withdrawal difficult and damaging.
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“Jabez,” the woman said delightedly. “You have come to join us?”
“Of course. We have guests so rarely and they stay for such a short time.”
Ryan looked curiously at his nephew. Harvey’s son was in his late teens, of average height and build, with a face that seemed oddly unbalanced. The right side was higher and more angular, the corner of the eye twisted and pulled down as though the young man was continuously blink-ing. Jabez’s complexion had a deathly pallor, as if the light of the sun were never permitted anywhere near him. His hairline was receding, hair cut short and of a nonde-script brown color.
“Come kiss me, son of my loins,” Rachel Cawdor said, reaching out for her only child.
While the others lo oked on, Jabez strode the length of the table, stooped and kissed his mother on the cheek. A dutiful, filial kiss. As he straightened he caught Ryan’s eye on him and smiled-which sent a chill down Ryan’s spine.
“More, Mother dearest,” the boy said, leaning and gently lifting Rachel’s face to his. He lowered his mouth onto hers, pressing it over her parted lips. As he leaned across her, he allowed his left hand to drift over the front of her dress until it cupped Rachel’s right breast. Lady Rachel Cawdor made a helpless gesture of resistance, then gave herself up to him.