ZITCHI - CHAPTER 23

And here's a thing: the face of the girl is changing. From a certain angle and a certain light, she could be anyone. But it's not about her face, and it's especially not about a picture of her face made out of paint in another century. The force that made him paint the picture, ah, it might be about that. The voice of the woman standing beside him now, the epitome of truth and goodness, the deep honeyed throat of her voice - it might be about that too.

And he lifts his eyes from the painting, knowing where it is that they have to go now. And as he takes her hand she has a new peace about her. She follows him home, goes into the drawing room where together they put the lights on and shut the curtains against the cold, but she can't shut out that aching down in her bones. It's November, true. Yes, that must be all it is.

And he talks. And he talks and he talks. About Zitchi, about everything he knows about her, about everything there is to know or might even possibly be surmised, about the things he doesn't know, about his hopes and his fears and the ways in which he's let her down twice already, and about the terror he feels in his heart at the possibility of maybe fucking up for a third time. As he talks, he drinks a gallow-glass of blood-red wine, and then another.

Vanna doesn't drink because frankly, he's creeping her out. She knew he was obsessive, but this? What if he doesn't get his way? What if there is no Zitchi, or what if there is, but he can't bring her back? What then?

And what if there is, and what if he can? What will happen to Vanna?

Again, the overtiredness is seeping in, and it's almost like she hears the distant wail of the banshee the same way a bat would: under the skin. He's sounding maudlin now, she thinks, but she does as she's told and she refills his glass. The bottle is empty but he bids her go down in the cellar for another.

"There is no cellar; you live in a flat, Henry!" she says. But his face has clouded over and he waves his hand at her, dismissively.

"That's what you think," he says, but he's thinking of another house; he must be? "All right, in the bedroom then. There's a wine rack in the bedroom - you've seen it? And while you're in there, bring me my statue of Sekhmet."

This can not end well, thinks Vanna, not if he's going to invoke Sekhmet: Scarlet Lady, Avenger of Wrongs, Goddess of Blood. Apart from anything else, he can't possibly know what he's doing. But all right, I'll do what he says. Once more, and then I'll go to sleep. And off she trots, into the bedroom.

But: he must have been in here before her, when they got back from the library, maybe? There are candles burning on every surface; on the bedside tables, the bookcase, the tallboy, two candles either side of Sekhmet's statue on the dressing table. Candles gloating in finger-bowls. Someone's pulled the sheets back on the bed; it waits for an incumbent. The curtains are drawn back too; on either side of the Georgian sash windows dark red velvet pools, where they've been cut too long for the drop. And a moon wanes silently outside the window, casting its shaft of sepia light onto the brazen whiteness of the bed.

Vanna has seen this before. She's in the painting.

So, all I have to do here is wait, she thinks, but she's wrong. She'll have to do a whole lot more than wait before the night is done. For a psychic, she's pretty dense at times. In other words: this cannot end well.

Vanna sits on the edge of the bed, starts thinking about Zitchi. Wonders whether she's coming through by herself this time, or whether she has what it takes to deliberately channel her. And in the continued absence of Henry she wonders whether she should grab the nearest bottle of wine and get back into the drawing room before he realises she's dallying.

At the same time she's having these thoughts, she's got a sense of it all being unreal again, and of none of this mattering. In a moment, she thinks, destiny is going to get changed, dragged kicking and screaming in the blink of an eye into the tomb of all hope.

Yeah. But that's just melodramatic. Gothic hogwash. And she starts to chuckle softly to herself at her daftness. OK, you silly moo, just get him his wine and then we can all go to bed

kicking and screaming

we can all go to bed

And he's here, framed in the doorway. "What are you doing? You've been gone forever."

She giggles. "I was just getting you your wine. I've not been gone that long. Here it is - oh!" She looks down at her right hand but the bottle's not there because she's not actually picked it up from the wine rack. Thing is, thinking hard about doing something's not the same as actually doing it.

He glowers, leaning against the door jamb, his right hand in his pocket, almost casually. "I've come for you, Zitchi."

She looks up from her hands and into his face, and she realises he's not looking at her, but beyond. Or - he is looking at her face, at the space her face and her body occupies in this room, but it's as if his eyes are flickering like black flames, shifting back-and-fore between here and the abyss.

And then she looks at his hands, or tries to, but she can't see them, because they're in his pockets. And in that instant, she knows. She knows that inside his right pocket inside his right hand he has the pink pearlised gun.

face pockets face pockets

And she knows she has to get out of that room before he shoots her.

"What's the matter?" he says.

There's a quaver of delight in his voice. He knows she knows, is savouring the moment in its long, drawn-out glory. This is better than the especial pulling-out of fingernails.

And she looks into his eyes and she thinks, arbitrarily, that he's quite, quite mad. Not that that matters either way.

"What's the matter? Do tell..." he says.

And she knows - she doesn't know how she knows - but she knows that she absolutely MUST NOT mention the gun or allude to it in anyway, because if she does, it'll be like she's summoning it, and then he'll use it, or the Banshee will.

"Nothing," she squeaks.

"There clearly is! Come on, what can it be, I wonder? Are you afraid, perhaps, of some Little Thing?"

And she absolutely must not mention... or even think about... so in a tiny voice she says, "I need to go to the bathroom."

He grins. "Of course! Hurry up then, and come back soon, won't you?"

So she moves towards the doorway, but he makes no effort to move out of the way. This is an old building with big doorways, but Henry's a big chap. There's enough of a gap between him and the door frame for her to squeeze through without too much trouble, but then -

- but then, oh my god, she'll have to turn her back on him. Oh. Shit.

She has an idea. It's not even a half-bulb idea as ideas go, but it's all she has. "After you!" she says to him, her voice bright with hope.

He chuckles, like he'd anticipated her. "No, after you - I insist." And he still makes no move away from the doorway.

"No - you first."

"No, you; I insist."

What would Zitchi do? She has no idea.

Come to that, what would Bathory do?

Vanna doesn't really want to go to the bathroom, but by this stage she's almost pissing herself in terror. She knows - that word again - that he has the gun, that he's gonna shoot her as soon as she turns her back and quite possibly even if she doesn't, that he knows that she knows, and that above all, the bloody bastard is bloody enjoying every bloody minute of this.

And then - then he does something she wasn't anticipating. He takes his right hand out of his trouser pocket, unfurls it slowly and rests it flat against the top panel of the door. He looks at her looking at his hand, and he smiles like a lizard.

And she's barrelling out of the bedroom, elbowing him in the guts as she goes, rushing to the front door where bizarrely she has the foresight to grab her handbag, and down the two flights of stairs, round and down, out to the Jag and get in and start the engine up first time lovely well it's a Jag after all...

And as she leapfrogs backwards out of the drive she looks up at the big picture window at the front of Henry's drawing room. Henry is there, gazing out into the night, his face contorted into the staring eyes and open mouth of the Banshee's scream.

She knows the only place she can go this late at night is Pete's house. It's not until she pulls into his road with its derision of burnt out cars and detritus that she realises: Fuckfuckfuck but Henry is left-handed.