The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

deep breath—his chest seizing in pain—and stepped to the bed. He pulled the curtain aside.

    The bedclothes were heavy and tangled, kicked into careless heaps, but Chang could see a woman’s pale arm extending from beneath them. He looked to the pillows piled over the woman’s head and pulled the topmost away. It revealed a mass of dark brown hair. He pulled away another and saw the woman’s face, her eyes closed, her lips delicately parted, the skin around her eyes displaying the nearly vanished looping scars. It was Margaret Hooke—Mrs. Marchmoor. Chang realized that she was naked at about the same moment she opened her eyes. Her gaze flickered as she saw him above her, but her face betrayed no lapse in composure. She yawned and lazily rubbed the sleep from her left eye. She sat up, the sheets slipping to her waist before she absently pulled them up to cover herself.
    “My goodness,” she said, yawning again. “What is the time?”
    “It must be near eleven,” answered Chang.
    “I must have slept for
hours
. That is very bad of me, I’m sure.” She looked up at him, her eyes dancing with coy pleasure. “You’re the Cardinal, aren’t you? I was told you were dead.”
    Chang nodded. At least she had the manners not to sound disappointed.
    “I am looking for Miss Temple,” he said. “She was here.”
    “She
was
…,” answered the woman somewhat dully, her attention elsewhere. “Is there no one else you can ask?”
    He resisted the impulse to slap her. “You’re alone, Margaret. Unless you’d prefer that I take you to Mrs. Kraft—I’m sure she’s worried sick over your disappearance.”
    “No thank you.” She looked at him as if she was seeing him clearly for the first time. “You’re unpleasant.” She spoke as if it were a surprise.
    Chang reached out and took hold of her jaw, wrenching her eyes to face his. “I haven’t
started
to be unpleasant. What have you done with her?”
    She smiled at him, fear fretting at the edges of her expression. “What makes you think she didn’t do it to herself?”
    “Where is she?”
    “I don’t know—I was so sleepy—I am always so sleepy…afterwards…but some people find they want something to eat. Did you ask in the kitchens?”
    Chang didn’t reply to her vulgar implication—he knew she was lying to provoke him, to buy time, but her words were nevertheless a spur to lurid thoughts flickering impulsively across his inner eye…the image of this woman’s mouth flinching with surprise at her own pleasure—and then with disturbing ease that face became Celeste’s, her lips curled in a desperate mixture of anguish and delight. Chang was startled and stepped away from Mrs. Marchmoor, releasing his grip. She threw back the covers and stood, walking toward a pile of discarded clothes on the floor. She was tall and more graceful than he would have thought. Quite deliberately she turned her back to him and bent over at the waist for a robe—rather like a dancer—exposing herself lewdly in the process. As she stood—glancing back to confirm Chang’s appreciation with a smile—he noticed a lattice-work of thin white scars across her back, whip marks. She slipped into her robe—pale silk with a great red Chinese dragon across the back—and tied the sash with a practiced gesture, as if her hands were marking the well-known end, or the start, of some arcane ritual.
    “I see your face is healing,” said Chang.
    “My face is of no consequence,” she answered, nudging her foot through the pile of clothes, finding a single slipper as she spoke and stuffing her foot into it. “The change takes place within, and is sublime.”
    Chang scoffed. “I only see you’ve left the service of one brothel for another.”
    Her eyes became sharp—he had offended her, he saw with great satisfaction.
    “You have no idea,” she said, affecting a lightness he knew was false.
    “I’ve just watched another undergo your hideous Process—quite against his wishes—and I can tell you now, if you’ve done that to Miss Temple—”
    She laughed—contemptuously. “It is no
punishment.
It is a
gift
—and the very notion—the very ridiculous notion that—
that
person—your precious Miss Inconsequent—”
    Chang felt a moment of profound relief, a reprieve from a fear he hadn’t realized was with him—that Celeste would become one of them…almost as if he would rather she were dead. But Mrs. Marchmoor was still speaking. “…cannot appreciate