Dance with the Devil

take them to fix the lines?” Katherine asked.
        Lydia sighed. “They can't start until the snow stops and the roads are at least partially cleared. We're going to have to rough it for a couple of days.”
        “Isn't so bad, once the big fireplaces are in use,” Keene said. “And we have plenty of firewood to see us through. Yuri always made sure to keep a stock…” His voice ran out like an old-fashioned phonograph when he realized that Yuri was no longer among the living.
        As they waited in silence and darkness for Mason Keene to strike a match over a candle wick, Katherine thought that the entire thing was more sinister than either Lydia or the servant realized. Just possibly, someone had deliberately stopped the power flow into Owlsden. Just possibly, someone wanted a dark house in which to operate. And, just possibly, she was not slated to finish out the night here, let alone a couple of cold days ahead…
        A match lighted.
        Orange flame cast light upwards over Mason Keene's features, twisting them into a parody of a human face. When he turned to them and smiled, the smile more resembled a leer than anything more reassuring. That was only the fault of the distorting flame, of course.
        He touched the match to a candle wick and enlarged the circle of blessed light to include both of the women.
        In a moment, they each had a candle, looking strangely like the celebrants in some religious rite.
        “Let's go find Alex,” Lydia said. “He'll know what to do about this.”
        Unless, Katherine thought, he's the one who already did it…

CHAPTER 14
        
        “There we go!” Alex said, stepping back from the mammoth fireplace in the library.
        Blue flames leapt up from the pile of twigs and danced across the bark of the larger logs, their strange color attributable to the chemical starter that Alex had used.
        Katherine thought of the eerie blue flames that had soared out of the bonfire down by the woods when the Satanists had been engaged in their devil's dance…
        “Heat!” Lydia said, rubbing her hands together. “You know, despite its elaborate design, Owlsden holds heat no better than a cardboard box-maybe worse. The furnace went off no more than half an hour ago, and already the place is freezing!”
        “Imagine what it was like in the early days, before they even had an electric furnace,” Alex said.
        “Father was slightly crazy,” Lydia said, shaking her head and laughing. The laughter seemed genuine, as if the adversity and the feeling of camaraderie that it generated had perked her considerably.
        Everyone was in the room, except for Mason Keene who had found a flashlight and gone into the basement to check the fusebox. Now, he returned and said, “Power lines are down, unfortunately. All the fuses seem in order.”
        “I was afraid of that,” Lydia said.
        After a long moment of silence when everyone watched the bright flames beyond the hearthstones, Katherine said, “Is it really windy enough to bring the lines down?”
        “More than enough,” Alex said. “Why do you ask?”
        She shifted uncomfortably on the small sofa on which she sat and looked at him, trying to read the expression in his dark eyes. Then she said, “It occurred to me that someone might have cut the lines.”
        “On purpose?” Lydia asked.
        “Yes.”
        “But whatever for?”
        She shrugged. “Why would they want to use your drawing room to hold a Satanic ceremony? Why would they kill Yuri to keep him from identifying them? Nothing else these people have done makes a whole lot of sense.”
        Patricia Keene made a moaning noise low in her throat and cuddled closer to her husband. He cradled her awkwardly, but he really looked as if he would have preferred to have the roles reversed and let her comfort him.
        “It bears some thought,” Alex said, watching her intently.
        “Not from me,” Lydia said. “I don't want to dwell on anything that gruesome.”
        They sat for a long time in silence, while Alex nursed the fire and built it to a peak that was easily maintained by the regular feeding of dry logs into the yellow-orange mouth.
        “Mason and I can get a fire started in the dining room and kitchen hearths,” he said. “Pity we can't go into the drawing room and use that one as well. Even so, we ought to have the bottom floor fairly warm in a few