Brimstone Seduction. Barbara J. Hancock

ivory stockings from her costume rinsed out and long since dry on the bathroom rack—tightened Kat’s lungs until each stale breath hurt. The air tasted bitter on her tongue.

      If Victoria had been free to sing and build a reputation under her own name, she would have been a much bigger star than a regional theater would hope to hire, but Vic loved to perform. It didn’t matter how or where. She could almost feel her sister’s anticipation for performance in the air.

      Gone.

      She’d known it. But seeing it was too final, too real. She sniffed the faint, weeks-old hint of Victoria’s perfume, and tears prickled.

      She stopped in the center of the room and willed them away, widening her eyes. She was not going to hide behind tears. She was here for a reason, and grief wouldn’t help her sister now. Katherine waited until her eyes were so dry they hurt. Then she forced an inventory of every detail.

      What had happened?

      There was no evidence of violence. All was painfully normal and undisturbed. Victoria could walk in at any second complaining about the lack of honey for her tea. But as the seconds ticked by, Katherine knew waiting for her sister’s familiar tread was in vain.

      Gone.

      On the bed, nestled on Victoria’s pillow, was a pair of opera glasses. They were the only item in the room that seemed out of place. Kat walked to her sister’s bed and picked up the binoculars. The opera glasses were white porcelain with gilded edges. The handle she used to flip them over and hold them up to her eyes had a grip on the end of a brass extension that matched the porcelain around the lenses.

      The lenses were meant to bring the action onstage closer to the viewer’s perceptions. They distorted her view of the room.

      She lowered the opera glasses and opened her hand on the grip, where she could feel a brass plate. It was engraved with a letter and a number corresponding to the box and seat from which it came. Each seat in every private box at l’Opéra Severne had a slot in the right armrest where the opera glasses rested when not in use.

      It wasn’t normal for one of the company to have taken a pair back to her room.

      Suddenly, fatigue was a more solid barrier to press through than emotion. She’d been driving for hours. With her travel-fogged brain, she would surely miss important clues if she tried to ransack the room tonight.

      Other than removing the opera glasses that were an intrusion of the room’s hushed normalcy, she couldn’t go through Victoria’s things yet. She couldn’t snoop in the closet or the drawers. The room waited for her sister’s return. She would let it wait one more night. It wasn’t rational, but she had a sudden fear that if she disturbed the room’s silent vigil, her sister would never come home.

      * * *

      Her room was as perfect as Vic’s was messy. And much more ornate. Decorated in French rococo style, the whole space was full of white and gilded furnishings and etched glass. Butterflies, thorny vines and rose petals decorated the mirrors in white, only to spring to vibrant, noisy shades of color on the walls in one large continuous design. Plush creams and pale pink with splashes of scarlet and lush green were echoed in the heavy damask bed coverings and carpets on the floor.

      She told herself she’d return the opera glasses to their rightful place in the private box high above the auditorium when she had the time. For now, she placed them in the drawer of her bedside table.

      She was startled again and again as her movements were reflected in the glass wall panels in jagged interrupted pieces because of the etchings. She showed up as a disjointed leg or arm, a flushed cheek, or a quick glimpse of shadowed eyes. Her equilibrium might never right itself in this place. She couldn’t find her footing, mentally or physically. Every thought, every move needed to be carefully calculated. Which meant the evening was going to be a test. Severne threw her balance off even without the aid of strange surroundings.

      Finally she was unpacked and changed for dinner.

      She’d brought no tulle and satin this time, but she did wear pearls with a pink shell of shimmering crushed silk and a long ivory pencil skirt with matching heels. The boy might be afraid to see her. He might instinctively fear the woman responsible for his mother’s death. Dressing for dinner might be inadequate preparation to face him, but it was the least she could do in this aged atmosphere.

      She unclipped her hair and let it fall in heavy curls around her shoulders, hiding the pallor of her cheeks behind chestnut waves.

      It was stalling and she knew it, but curiosity was a good excuse to pause in the quiet hallway and step closer to examine the wainscoting. In the dimly lit corridor of l’Opéra Severne, the elaborate carved murals were a jumble of faces and forms. From the grotesque to the sublime, on the walls beautiful angelic figures embraced mystical beasts and monsters, all entwined. The artist had been both mad and brilliant. So lifelike were the figures, Kat blinked against the feeling that they peered into her face as she tilted it closer to examine them.

      Around her, all was silent. The whole opera house was expectant and still. The building along with everything and everyone in it waited for noise to rise up and fill its grand salon with music.

      But something pricked at her senses...

      Kat held her breath as she pricked up her ears to pick up a distant murmur. There were likely hundreds of rooms and chambers in l’Opéra Severne. Closets and offices, attics and catwalks, scaffolding beneath the stage for trap doors to allow entrances, exits and costume changes. This must account for the murmur. Not gas or air conditioning, but people. Many people going about some manner of business, but respecting others who slept at odd hours to accommodate schedules kept during the opera season.

      The great swirl of carvings was still and silent. In spite of the trick of her eyes that brought it to life as she stepped closer, it was as immobile as it should be. Hundreds of faces were frozen in wood even as they cried for a hundred years. Cried or screamed. She could also discern lovers embracing amid the chaos of passionate battle. Murder, kisses, tears.

      So many tears.

      The mural in front of her was filled with weeping. Why hadn’t she seen that at first? Face after face contorted by poignant emotion. Kat moved even closer, drawn by the pain. Why, she couldn’t say, but she was compelled to see, to...hear?

      The distant murmur was no longer a hollow echo from the dark reaches of the opera house. There was a whispering quality to it now. A sibilance. Gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. The close, still, dusty air of the theater had gone suddenly chill. The hallway darkened and then lightened in turn as if a shadow passed in front of light after light. The dimming and lightening progressed closer and closer to where she stood.

      There must be a thousand eyes in this mural. And suddenly they all shifted their focus to her. Staring. Beseeching. Drawing her closer.

      Kat lifted her hand, ignoring the strange behavior of the lights and the tremble in her fingertips. She would touch the mural. Prove it was nothing but inanimate art created long ago. As one shaking finger neared the closest face—a masculine angel perfectly captured in the gleaming shine of carved wood—a very real and immediate noise superseded the whispered murmur.

      A low growl sounded behind her, and Kat dropped her hand to turn and face its source.

      Adrenaline warmed her goose bumps away as a flush of blood flowed to her extremities from the sudden leap of her rapidly beating heart.

      The murmur had stopped. Her pulse rushed in her ears.

      A black dog stood with its feet braced apart and its head down. Though its teeth weren’t bared, a growl rumbled from deep in its chest again, and its bushy black hair stood on end at its hackles, showing paler pewter beneath.

      The dog was out of place. The opera house around her—while vintage—was all slumbering opulence. He was a nightmare hallucination from a dark fairy tale where wolves appeared larger than humanly possible.

      “Okay,” Kat soothed. The shaky syllables scared her more than the growl. Instinct