The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

separate the knowledge of her body from that of her mind, or the sensations she now knew. If she allowed herself the room to think—a dangerous luxury, to be sure—she must face the truth that her confusion was nothing less than the inability to distinguish her thoughts from the world around her—and that by virtue of this perilous glass her access to ecstasy might be as palpable a thing as her shoes.
    Miss Temple had taken out the card as a way to prove to Miss Vandaariff in one stroke the wicked capacity of her enemies and the seductive dangers they might have already offered, to warn her by way of frightening her and so win the heiress to her side, but as she watched the girl gaze into the card—biting her lower lip, quickening breath, left hand twitching on the table top—and then glanced to the end of the table to see Mrs. Marchmoor studying the masked woman with an equally intent expression—she no longer knew if the gesture had been wise. Faced with Lydia’s intensity of expression, she even wondered if somehow she had done it to gain perspective on her own experience, as if watching Miss Vandaariff might be watching herself—for she could too readily, despite the need to pay attention, the obvious danger, imagine herself again in the lobby of the Boniface, eyes swimming into the depths of blue glass, hands absently groping her balled-up dress, and all the time Doctor Svenson knowing—even as he turned his back—what was passing with a shudder through her body.
    Miss Temple recalled with shock the words of the Comte d’Orkancz—that she would fall prey to her own desire!
    Her hand darted forward and she snatched the card away. Before Miss Vandaariff could do anything but sputter in mortified confusion, it had been stuffed back in the green bag.
    “Do you see?” Miss Temple cried harshly. “The unnatural science—the feeling of another’s experience—”
    Miss Vandaariff nodded dumbly, and looked up, her eyes fixed on the bag. “What…how could it be possible?”
    “They plan to use your place of influence, to seduce you as they have seduced this man, Roger Bascombe—”
    Miss Vandaariff shook her head with impatience. “Not them…the glass—the
glass
!”
    “So, Lydia…” chuckled Mrs. Marchmoor from the end of the table, relief and satisfaction in her voice, “you weren’t frightened by what you saw?”
    Miss Vandaariff sighed, her eyes shining, an exhalation of intoxicated glee. “A little…but in truth I don’t care about what I saw at all—only for what I
felt
…”
    “Was it not
astonishing
?” hissed Mrs. Marchmoor, her earlier concern quite forgotten.
    “O Lord…it
was
! It was the most
exquisite
thing! I was inside his hands, his hunger—groping her—” She turned to Miss Temple. “Groping
you
!”
    “But—no, no—” began Miss Temple, her words interrupted by a glance to Mrs. Marchmoor, who was beaming like a lighthouse. “There is another—with
this
woman! And your Prince! Far more intimate—I assure you—”
    Miss Vandaariff snapped at Miss Temple hungrily. “Let me see it! Do you have it with you? You must—there must be many, many of them—let me see this one again—
I want to see them all
!”
    Miss Temple was forced to step away from Miss Vandaariff’s grasping hands.
    “Do you not
care
?” she asked. “
That
woman—
there
!—with your
intended
—”
    “Why should I care? He is nothing to me!” Miss Vandaariff replied, flapping her hand toward the end of the table. “
She
is nothing to me! But the
sensation
—the submersion into such
experience
—”
    The woman was drunk. She was troubled, damaged, spoiled, and now yanking at Miss Temple’s arm like a street urchin, trying to get at her bag.
    “Control yourself!” she hissed, taking three rapid steps away, raising the pistol—though here she made the realization (and in the back of her mind knew that this was exactly the kind of thing that made a man like Chang a professional, that there
were
things to learn and remember about, for example, threatening people with guns) that whenever one used a gun as a goad to enforce the actions of others, one had best be prepared to use it. If one was not—as, in this moment, Miss Temple recognized she was not prepared to do against Miss Vandaariff—one’s power vanished like the flame of a blown-out candle. Miss Vandaariff was too distracted to take in anything save her strangely insistent hunger. Mrs. Marchmoor, however, had seen it