There were three other heartbeats in the house, pushing on her from different sides. They kept time in her eardrums, pounded through her soles. Three hearts meant someone had returned.
Mihály? But he would have come to see her.
Stay in bed, she told herself as the walls echoed.
She was in bed. She was sleeping peacefully, drifting in the blissful hazy cocoon the syrup had provided. She adjusted her face on the pillow, smoothing out a crease.
Her palm ached around the knife she was clasping. She tried to set it down, but her hand was cramped around it, refusing to obey. A black moment, and she was the door. Another, and she was at the top of the stairs.
But she was asleep. Perhaps she woke for a moment, wrinkling her nose at the intrusion of moonlight she hadn’t shut the curtains against. Nothing a sheet over the head couldn’t fix. She’d slept in far more uncomfortable circumstances at the church.
Tamas’ presence was heavy behind her. He reached out and brushed a hand through her hair, down her spine, to rest mid back. Through the thin shift the imprint of his palm was as clear as if on naked skin.
“Finish this.”
He pushed, and she took a half-stumble onto the first step, heel hitting hard. One heartbeat in the house began to slow, falling more and more out of time with the others.
She followed it like a dog tracking scent. Step after step, anticipation bubbling in every breath.
A dream. Csilla nodded to herself, even as her feet didn’t stop moving. Best to sink into it, let it run its course like a fever until a breaking point woke her. Because she was still in the bed. If she rolled her cheek, she could just feel the down, a hint of scratchy feather under the quilted cover.
She drifted down the stairs, where there was something other than cold wood under her feet. Deep, deep below, past dirt and hollow tunnels, there were traces of something gold and brilliant. The last echo of holiness. She smeared her foot across the wood as if it could be rubbed out like a dropped cigar.
Such drenching satisfaction at the thought.
In the parlor, Madame Varga sat on the sofa, rubbing her forehead. Her shoes had been kicked off, her hair half-unpinned and falling in graying waves. All her finery was gathered on the table, golden rings and necklace chains in a careless tangle. The slump of her shoulders spoke to weakness. Good. That would make it easy.
Make what? There was a block between her movement and her thoughts, like the dark curtain hiding hands pulling strings from the audience being entertained.
You’re dreaming, Csilla reminded herself as she approached. She couldn’t see the woman’s neck but a sudden image appeared, kissing it, whispering promises. A hand between her legs, saying not to worry, the girl is a child, show some charity. The voice speaking was deep and sweet and too familiar.
Her stomach turned. A nightmare, then.
The woman shifted, looking over her shoulder with tired eyes. The movement pushed the veins of her neck to the surface, the swell of a ripe fruit ready to burst under hungry teeth. Csilla’s mouth watered, her tongue against her lips.
“If you’re looking for Misi, he’s not here.” Her powder was clumping and the wax was bitten off her lips, already done with its night. “There’s been a fire, and...you’re ill?” She shifted, the wax further crumbling at the corner of her mouth with her frown. “You should go back to bed. You look feverish. Didn’t he leave you with some caretaker?”
But she was in bed. With every breath she took in the dried herbs Tamas had packed around her pillow. It was good of him to take such care of her.
The woman turned back to her discarded finery, muttering as she tried to unwind a knotted chain. Csilla stole closer.
She twisted in her sheets, pulling the quilt up against the sudden chill.
In the dim sitting room, she drew the knife across the woman’s neck.
Her arm was stronger in this dream, pushing through the resistance of flesh and muscle, the windpipe cartilage thick even as the corded veins and arteries spurted blood. The woman turned with her last bit of strength, leaning into the knife but digging her nails into Csilla’s face. There should be pain, but it was as if the woman were scraping clay as she spluttered through her sliced neck.
Flashes of other terrified eyes pulsed before her, and the settling knowledge all the others had been just as easy. They never really fought him.
So little time. She pushed the woman forward even as blood foamed at her lips, taking the knife and ripping down the back of her dress. She held her free hand to the neck and cupped blood from its fountain, smearing it across her canvas. In knifepoint, she began to write, whispering words she couldn’t know in a voice like the steady grind and scrape of a millstone.
The sacred thrumming deep beneath her stilled, the gold on the edges of her vision receding like the tide. The icy sigh that escaped her lips was hedonistic pleasure, joy in taking some control. She was never going to let go.
You can wake up now. Any time. Her inner voice was tiny, a candle in a cavern of darkness.
Everything was broken. That was what her gut had been anticipating.
Her scars burned fierce. Csilla dropped the knife as her breath left in a dark exhale, fast as if she’d been punched. The buzzing drowned her, pressing afresh at her eyes, her ears, pushing down her tongue, desperation seeking an opening.
She clamped her jaw even as her eyes widened in horror. She wasn’t asleep.
And she was glowing. A sharp light, not the warmth of Arany’s gold but the cold far-watching fire of starlight. The blackness clumped together, struggling to maintain form, unable to touch her. She moved forward with tiny steps, each somehow feeling like crossing a mountain.
The body. So much blood, and a torn-out throat, the white of the trachea startlingly clean among the yellow fat and red and broken veins. Every jagged detail was outlined in the unforgiving light, the gruesome feast of human matter lent a measure of divinity by the shine.
This couldn’t be real. The woman’s pale face, the blood smeared on her own hands. It wouldn’t be, it couldn’t be.
She wouldn’t let it be.
It wasn’t.
Madame Varga sat up in her soaked and shredded dress, her throat knitted back together, her back unblemished save a few spots and creased lines from where clothing wrinkles had set themselves into skin over the night of sweat and dancing.
Csilla looked down at her hands. They were ordinary hands, only sticky-wet and red. “Madame?” she whispered, willing herself to wake. She had seen herself asleep the whole time.
You can’t see yourself when you’re asleep. Not unless that’s the dream.
The woman clutched at the front of her dress, lifting a hand from the sodden couch. She touched her face, leaving a skeletal print in red. “Csilla?”
