The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

called, “how fine it is that you have …
joined
us. Mrs. Stearne, I am obliged for your timely entrance.”
    The woman in black sank into a respectful curtsey.
    “Mrs. Stearne!” called the rasping voice of the Comte d’Orkancz. “Do you not wish to see your transformed companions?”
    The great man gestured behind him and Svenson was jostled as his fellow guests twisted and craned to see two more gleaming blue women, also naked, also wearing collars, step slowly and deliberately into view, their feet clicking against the parquet floor. Each woman’s flesh was shining and bright, transparent enough to show darker streaks of murky indigo within its depths. Both women held in their hands a folded-up leash, and as they neared the Comte each extended her hand for him to take … and, once he did, stood gazing over the crowd with clinical dispassion. The woman nearest him … he swallowed … the hair on her head—in fact, as he looked, he realized with an uncomfortable frisson up the back of his neck that this was the only hair on her body—had been burned above her left temple … the operating theatre … the paraffin … he was looking at Miss Poole. Her body was both beautifuland inhuman—the splendid
tension
of its surface, glassy yet somehow soft—Svenson’s skin crawled to look at it, yet he could not turn away, and, appalled, felt his lust begin to stir. And the third woman—it was hard to read their features, but it could only be Mrs. Marchmoor.
    The Comte tugged lightly on Miss Poole’s leash, and she advanced toward the woman in black. Suddenly that woman’s head lolled to the side and she staggered, her eyes dulled. What had happened? Miss Poole turned toward Svenson’s side of the crowd. He inched away from her strange eyes, for it was as if they could see to his bones. At once his knees trembled and for a terrible moment the entire room fell away. Svenson was on a settee in a darkened parlor … his hand—a delicate woman’s hand—was stroking Mrs. Stearne’s unbound hair as, on that lady’s other side, a masked man in a cloak leaned over to kiss her mouth. The gaze of Miss Poole (the vision was from her experience, like the blue glass cards, or like the books … she was a
living
book!) turned slightly as, with her other hand, she reached for a glass of wine—her arm in a white robe like Miss Temple’s, in fact,
both
women wore the same silk robes of initiation!—but then the parlor snapped away and Svenson was back in the ballroom, fighting the first stirrings of nausea in his throat. All around him, the other guests were shaking their heads, dazed. What violation was this—the effect of the glass cards projected across the audience at large—into every mind!
    Doctor Svenson desperately groped to make sense of it—the cards, the Process, the books, and now these women, like three demonic Graces—there was no time! He thought he understood the rest, the Process and the books, for blackmail and influence were standard things, even on such an evil scale, but this—this was alchemy, and he could not comprehend it any more than he could imagine
why
anyone would give themselves over to such—such—abomination!
    The Comte was saying something else to Mrs. Stearne—and to the Contessa, and the Contessa was replying—but he could not follow their words, the insistent vision still muddied his brain.Svenson stumbled into the equally disoriented people behind him, then turned to force his way through the crowd, away from his enemies, away from Miss Temple. He did not get seven steps before his mind reeled with another vision … a vision of himself!
    He was back at Tarr Manor, facing Miss Poole on the quarry steps, Crabbé scuttling free, the men racing at him, beating aside his feeble blows and snatching him bodily up—and then hurling him over the rail. Again, he was plunged into Miss Poole’s experience—of watching his own defeat!—and so immediate that he felt in his nerves the ethereal glide of Miss Poole’s amusement at his pathetic efforts.
    Svenson gasped aloud, coming back to his senses, on his hands and knees on the parquet floor. People were backing away from him, making room. This is what had happened to Chang. She had sensed him somehow in the crowd. He scrambled wildly to rise, but was rebuffed by the hands around him and propelled against his will toward the center of the room.
    He slipped again and fell, flailing with the satchel. It was over. Yet—something