when I turned, no face I saw
For the shadow was my own
Death Angel’s shadow.”
That was certainly appropriate. The painting was by Schwabe, La Mort et le Fossoyeur , with the Death Angel shown as a slender dark-haired woman poised over the old gravedigger in the snowy cemetery, her wings making a beautiful curve like a scythe-blade against the willow-twigs and tilted headstones. Ellen had always liked it, as far as she liked any Symbolist work, and the reproduction was striking; it caught the cruel impersonal compassion on Azrael’s face beautifully. Then she looked more closely, reaching out to touch and then taking back her hand.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “Gouache, watercolor and pencil, that’s right. And it’s old , not just artificially aged. Look at the structure of the micro-cracks. And the frame is about a century old too! It isn’t a reproduction. My God, the Louvre would never willingly part with this, not for any amount of money!”
Inside her head she could hear: Oh, quite unwillingly, chérie . That didn’t need any spooky telepathy.
For an instant she sat on the bed, winded and gasping. After shock came a wave of anger; to have something like this hanging in your bedroom, exposed to all the possible accidents . . .
The BlackBerry beeped at her, a half-hour warning. She fumbled at it until it came up with a map of the route to the clinic, and ran—that was another thing she could do well, even in sandals—out into the hallway, down a service stair, out a rear entrance, down a long pathway, out through a boundary wall and gate into what looked like a smallish town or large village tucked under the hill where the casa grande sat. It wasn’t even far enough to raise much of a sweat, not in the cool springlike weather of a fine February day in the California lowlands.
The clinic wasn’t quite what Ellen would have expected; well-equipped, cheery, an efficient-looking receptionist, a waiting room with the usual magazines and a TV . . . Even the smell was nicer than usual, with flower-and-damp-earth scents wafting through an open window to cut the standard ozone and disinfectant. She had just enough time to stop breathing deeply before:
“Dr. Duggan will see you next, Ms. Tarnowski.”
A renfield doctor willing to sell his soul to the Devil , she thought, as David Cheung passed her on his way out, with a smirk and a nod and a fresh dressing on his neck. Or maybe . . . he’s more like a vet ?
The doctor turned out to be a her, a pleasantly plain middle-aged woman with a slight Scottish burr and a pile of faded ginger hair pulled back severely. She smiled ironically at Ellen’s relief as she ushered her into the examination room. That looked conventional too, if upscale, except for the two replica skeletons in opposite corners. One of the skeletons looked a little odd in ways she couldn’t name.
There were even family photos over the desk, a Chinese man and three striking hapa children, two girls and a boy, at various ages up to the mid-teens.
Connections , she thought. Everyone’s story has connections that spin out until they’ve got the whole world in the web. How did . . . they . . . buy or knuckle her? Why’s she working at Hacienda Literally Sucks?
“Dr. Fiona Duggan,” she said, and shook hands, a brisk no-nonsense gesture.
From her expression she guessed her new patient’s thoughts.
“Everyone at this clinic is a doctor, Ms. Tarnowski, and a good one. But even if we were no professionals . . . lass, you’re the safest person for miles around. Think it through.”
Oh. Don’t mess with the tiger’s bone.
“Bet there’s a low crime rate here,” she said slowly. “ Unauthorized crimes at least.”
“Ye’d win that wager.”
A thought struck her. “Except murder-suicides?”
A grim smile. “Here, murder or any other serious crime is a form of suicide. A slow, painful form.”
“Oh.”
“If it will make you feel better, I was recruited as a
For the shadow was my own
Death Angel’s shadow.”
That was certainly appropriate. The painting was by Schwabe, La Mort et le Fossoyeur , with the Death Angel shown as a slender dark-haired woman poised over the old gravedigger in the snowy cemetery, her wings making a beautiful curve like a scythe-blade against the willow-twigs and tilted headstones. Ellen had always liked it, as far as she liked any Symbolist work, and the reproduction was striking; it caught the cruel impersonal compassion on Azrael’s face beautifully. Then she looked more closely, reaching out to touch and then taking back her hand.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “Gouache, watercolor and pencil, that’s right. And it’s old , not just artificially aged. Look at the structure of the micro-cracks. And the frame is about a century old too! It isn’t a reproduction. My God, the Louvre would never willingly part with this, not for any amount of money!”
Inside her head she could hear: Oh, quite unwillingly, chérie . That didn’t need any spooky telepathy.
For an instant she sat on the bed, winded and gasping. After shock came a wave of anger; to have something like this hanging in your bedroom, exposed to all the possible accidents . . .
The BlackBerry beeped at her, a half-hour warning. She fumbled at it until it came up with a map of the route to the clinic, and ran—that was another thing she could do well, even in sandals—out into the hallway, down a service stair, out a rear entrance, down a long pathway, out through a boundary wall and gate into what looked like a smallish town or large village tucked under the hill where the casa grande sat. It wasn’t even far enough to raise much of a sweat, not in the cool springlike weather of a fine February day in the California lowlands.
The clinic wasn’t quite what Ellen would have expected; well-equipped, cheery, an efficient-looking receptionist, a waiting room with the usual magazines and a TV . . . Even the smell was nicer than usual, with flower-and-damp-earth scents wafting through an open window to cut the standard ozone and disinfectant. She had just enough time to stop breathing deeply before:
“Dr. Duggan will see you next, Ms. Tarnowski.”
A renfield doctor willing to sell his soul to the Devil , she thought, as David Cheung passed her on his way out, with a smirk and a nod and a fresh dressing on his neck. Or maybe . . . he’s more like a vet ?
The doctor turned out to be a her, a pleasantly plain middle-aged woman with a slight Scottish burr and a pile of faded ginger hair pulled back severely. She smiled ironically at Ellen’s relief as she ushered her into the examination room. That looked conventional too, if upscale, except for the two replica skeletons in opposite corners. One of the skeletons looked a little odd in ways she couldn’t name.
There were even family photos over the desk, a Chinese man and three striking hapa children, two girls and a boy, at various ages up to the mid-teens.
Connections , she thought. Everyone’s story has connections that spin out until they’ve got the whole world in the web. How did . . . they . . . buy or knuckle her? Why’s she working at Hacienda Literally Sucks?
“Dr. Fiona Duggan,” she said, and shook hands, a brisk no-nonsense gesture.
From her expression she guessed her new patient’s thoughts.
“Everyone at this clinic is a doctor, Ms. Tarnowski, and a good one. But even if we were no professionals . . . lass, you’re the safest person for miles around. Think it through.”
Oh. Don’t mess with the tiger’s bone.
“Bet there’s a low crime rate here,” she said slowly. “ Unauthorized crimes at least.”
“Ye’d win that wager.”
A thought struck her. “Except murder-suicides?”
A grim smile. “Here, murder or any other serious crime is a form of suicide. A slow, painful form.”
“Oh.”
“If it will make you feel better, I was recruited as a
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