The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

depth of thought put into the building—that one
could
expend such effort, and that she had been clever enough to note it. Miss Vandaariff glanced back at her again, now with a more anxious expression—almost as if some idea had occurred to her as well.
    “Yes?” asked Miss Temple.
    “It is nothing.”
    Mrs. Marchmoor turned to her as they walked. “Say what you are thinking, Lydia.”
    Miss Temple marveled at the woman’s control over the heiress. If Mrs. Marchmoor still bore the scars of the Process, she could only have been an intimate of the Cabal for a short time, before which she was in the brothel. But Lydia Vandaariff deferred to her as to a long-time governess. Miss Temple found it entirely unnatural.
    “I am merely worried about the Comte. I do not want him to come.”
    “But he may come, Lydia,” replied Mrs. Marchmoor. “You do well know it.”
    “I do not like him.”
    “Do you like me?”
    “No. No, I don’t,” she muttered peevishly.
    “Of course not. And yet we are able to get along perfectly well.” Mrs. Marchmoor threw a smug smile back to Miss Temple, and indicated a branching hallway. “It is this way.”

    The Contessa was not in the suite. Mrs. Marchmoor had opened it with her key, and ushered them inside. Miss Temple had removed her revolver in the hallway, once they were off the staircase and out of view, and she followed them carefully, her eyes darting about in fear of possible ambush. She stepped on a shoe in the foyer and stumbled. A shoe? Where were the maids? It was a very good question, for the Contessa’s rooms were a ruin. No matter where Miss Temple cast her gaze it fell across uncollected plates and glasses, bottles and ashtrays, and ladies’ garments of all kinds, from dresses and shoes to the most intimate of items, petticoats, stockings, and corsets—draped over a divan in the main receiving room!
    “Sit down,” Mrs. Marchmoor told the others, and they did, next to each other on the divan. Miss Temple looked around her and listened. She heard no sound from any other room, though the gaslight lamps were lit and glowing.
    “The Contessa is not here,” Mrs. Marchmoor informed her.
    “Has the place been pillaged in her absence?” Miss Temple meant it as a serious question, but Mrs. Marchmoor only laughed.
    “The Lady is not one for particular order, it is true!”
    “Does she not have servants?”
    “She prefers that they occupy themselves with other tasks.”
    “But what of the smell? The smoke—the drink—the plates—does she desire
rats
?”
    Mrs. Marchmoor shrugged, smiling. Miss Temple scuffed at a corset on the carpet near her foot.
    “I’m afraid
that
is mine,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor, with a chuckle.
    “Why would you remove your corset in the front parlor of a noble lady?” Miss Temple asked, little short of appalled, but already wondering at the answer, the possibilities disorientingly lurid. She looked away from Mrs. Marchmoor to compose her face and saw herself in the large mirror above her on the wall, a determined figure in green, her chestnut curls, pulled to the back and each side of her head, a darker shade in the warm gaslight, and all around her the tattered litter of decadent riot. But behind her head in the reflection, a flash of vivid blue caught her eye and she turned to see a framed canvas that could only be the work of Oskar Veilandt.

    “Another
Annunciation
…” she whispered aloud.
    “It is,” whispered Mrs. Marchmoor in reply, her voice hesitant and cautious behind her. Hearing it, Miss Temple had the feeling of being watched carefully, like a bird stalked by a slow-moving cat. “You’ve seen it elsewhere?”
    “I have.”
    “Which fragment? What did it portray?”
    She did not want to answer, to acknowledge the woman’s interrogation, but the power of the image drove her to speak. “Her head…”
    “Of course—at Mr. Shanck’s exhibition. The head is beautiful…such a heavenly expression of peace and pleasure lives in her face—would you not say? And here…see how the fingers hold into her hips…you see, in the artist’s interpretation, how she has been
mounted
by the Angel…”
    Behind them, Miss Vandaariff whimpered. Miss Temple wanted to turn to her but could not shift her gaze from the near-seething image. Instead, she walked slowly to it…the brushstrokes immaculate and smooth, as if the surface more porcelain than pigment and canvas. The flesh was exquisitely rendered, though the