“What a night,” she said.
“And I haven’t even mentioned my run-in with cutters.”
“How close did they get?” She put her hand lightly to her chest and shook her head.
“There were three of them. I tripped trying to get away and they got damn close. This one I’d seen earlier. A creepy old guy hiding in the corner of a young couple’s bedroom while they were engaged in sex.”
“They’re known to be attracted to scenarios happening in the waking world like you mention.”
“Sex?”
She nodded. “If they can’t find likely sleepers to unhook, they will crowd, invisible, into the bedrooms of the living and watch as life is conceived and the silver cord is set.”
“What’s the chances there will be an unseen cutter around any time anyone has sex?”
“About ninety percent. And usually more than one.”
“Kind of off-putting,” said Owen.
“To say the least,” she said.
They headed downtown, bounding down the center of the street as Owen had done the night before.
10
THE WEATHER WAS MUCH nicer that night, a soft breeze instead of a driving wind and rain. The sky was clear and the constellations looked like illustrations in a star chart. As Owen and Melody bounded along past the Busy Bee, toward the center of town, he remembered how he’d seen the miasma at a distance the previous night. When he told her, Melody said, “You were probably better off being on your own last night. Look how well you handled all of it. You need more nights like that and then I can leave you to explore alone.”
“The incident with the cutters was almost fatal,” he reminded her, feeling a pang that one day, she’d no longer travel the night world with him. He felt it might be too lonely to endure solo.
When they reached downtown, he showed her Margrave Street, and upon seeing the entrance to it off Cobb, the main street of Westwend, she mentioned that she once had a friend who’d lived in the house on the corner.
“What did you have in mind for when we get there?” asked Melody.
“I just wanted you to see it. Tell me what you think. Tell me how I can warn the old man, if it’s not too late.”
She nodded. “I agree with your assessment of what you encountered.”
They reached the spot where Owen and Feit had stood the night before. Again, the lights were on in some of the rooms and music drifted out. “Barber, Adagio for Strings, Opus Three,” she said.
“You’re full of surprises,” said Owen as they crossed the street.
“I listen to classical music all day long,” she said. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
He nodded and then ascended the steps to the front door. Before he could take a breath, he and Melody were standing in the dimly lit foyer, peering down the hallway. They proceeded through the rooms. He told her that the mural adorning the wall in the children’s section of the library had supposedly been painted by the old man. She stopped walking when he said it, but then quickly continued as if she didn’t want him to catch her hesitation.
“What is it?” he said to her.
“Nothing really. Just sometimes, when you fall into a situation in the night world where coincidences stack up, it could be a warning of danger.”
“Are you saying that about this situation?” he asked as he stopped at the entrance to the next darkened room.
“No. That’s why I tried to hide my reaction to what you told me. There isn’t enough of a conspiracy of reality here to warrant it. I’m offering a heads-up for the future. I don’t want you to get lost in that mental morass. Stay clear. We have to help this poor guy.”
When they found the old painter in the same room Owen had encountered him in the previous night, he was sitting in the same chair, holding the brush so it hovered just above the canvas. He could be perceived to be conducting the music, much sharper in the room than it had been out on the street. With his free hand he was petting a tiny black cat that lay on the arm of his chair.
“Oh, Henry,” he said to the cat, gently scratched its head. “What do you think about this piece?”
The cat made a miniscule peeping sound, and Crenshaw said, “You always think I should add a small black cat. I’ve done five pieces with cats since you’ve come to stay with me.” He laughed softly.
“He’s adorable,” said Melody.
“I’m not really a cat fan,” said Owen.
“I meant the old man,” she said. “The cat is too obviously adorable to have to say anything.”
She walked around behind Crenshaw and watched him work as he added a moon to the nightscape he was creating. In the painting, there was a woman in a full-length white muslin dress, standing on the shoreline. Her eyes were closed, although she was facing the light of the newborn moon come to life in white, lime, and pale yellow. A few yards out in the surf, something was rising up out of the waves—an anthropomorphic form with horns and monstrous features. “It’s weird but not really frightening,” she said to Owen, who joined her, standing behind the artist.
“It’s beautiful,” he said.
She nodded.
Crenshaw had turned to some detail work on the woman’s face, and was moving in with a dab of dark blue on a different brush that appeared to have but three bristles. He was just about to strike a mark of shadow on the chin when there came a loud pounding noise from the front entrance.
“My new customer,” the painter said to the cat. He stood and removed the maroon robe he wore. Under it he had on a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of black dress pants. He adjusted his glasses, smoothed down his sparse hair, and headed for the door. The cat leaped down from the chair arm and followed him.
“Come on,” said Melody, and they followed a few feet behind the cat.
They arrived at the house’s front door just as the artist was opening it. Standing there, smiling, with his hands clasped behind his back, was a young man with short hair and a dark suit and red tie. He bowed to the old man and Crenshaw invited him in. The identity of the fellow at the door wasn’t clear at first, but when he laughed and introduced himself there was no doubt it was Feit, with a haircut and shave.
“That’s him,” he said to Melody. That’s the guy I followed here last night.”
“My secretary told me you prefer to do business at night,” said Feit.
“Yes, come in, Mr. Feit. She told me you were interested in whatever I was working on currently. I can tell you I just added a moon to the scene. I hope you like moonglow.”
“I’m excited to see it.”
He led the young man down the hall and through the rooms. Along the way, Feit made admiring comments about the art on the walls and stacked in the corners. “If he threatens to kill the old man, is there something we can do?” he asked Melody.
“Nothing we wouldn’t have had to prepare for well in advance. Basically, we can watch.”
“I hope he lets Feit have whatever he wants.”
They returned to the room with the fireplace, where the painter had been working. The music still played in the room next door, something slow and quiet from a piano. The artist showed his prospective customer to a comfortable chair a few feet away from his own painting throne. No sooner did Feit take the seat than the tiny black cat leaped into his lap. The movement startled him and his left hand moved to his inner jacket before he saw what the assault was and could quell his actions.