Spectacle(92)

Blood.

She shivered. “I see. Thank you, Abbé.”

Nathalie stepped past him and walked down the aisle. She slipped into a pew halfway to the altar and settled onto a kneeler.

She buried her head in her hands and prayed. For the Dark Artist’s victims and their loved ones—for everyone had them at one time, she believed, even if they died alone or, like the second victim, unknown. She prayed for Sébastien and Mathieu and all the policemen who’d stood guard for her. She prayed for Céleste. She prayed for her parents and Aunt Brigitte. For Simone. For the man she’d mistakenly thought was the Dark Artist, weeping for his daughter in Père Lachaise. For Christophe and M. Patenaude and Louis and the hypnotist and his wife and the nun who’d wanted to help her. She prayed for everyone else who’d touched her life these last few months.

She prayed for Agnès, whose lyrical voice she’d never again hear. She thought about their smirks in class and their secrets in the schoolyard. Nathalie would treasure those letters forever but never read them again; it would be too painful, a year from now or fifty years from now. But she’d always keep them close.

After losing herself in prayer for some time, she picked up her head. Placing her chin on her folded hands, she leaned forward on the pew. As the choir finished a hymn, Nathalie heard rustling behind her. She glanced back to see a woman holding a prayer book and donning mourner’s garb—a black hat, black veil, a black dress, and even an old-fashioned mourning brooch—shuffle into the pew and kneel.

Once again Nathalie buried her face in her hands. She wondered who the woman mourned, whose lock of hair was in that brooch. She prayed for both the woman and the person for whom she grieved.

The choir began their next hymn, a quiet piece in a minor key. It was soothing to be contemplative here, in this sanctuary of peace. Nathalie wished she’d thought to come here for solace weeks ago. Why had it taken so much pain for her to seek this comfort?

After a few minutes, she slid back into the pew.

And found herself sitting on something. She reached back and her fingers felt something small, solid, and angular.

A box.

It hadn’t been here before.

Had it?

She’d come in and knelt right away, so she couldn’t be sure.

No, she was sure. This was new.

She peeked behind her. The woman was gone.

Nathalie picked up the box, wooden and masterfully crafted, and lifted the lid. Two jars were inside. She knew these jars. She’d seen them an hour ago.

Both jars had notes inside. One jar was otherwise empty, and the other was full of blood.

She turned around, every sense sharpened. No sign of the woman. Nothing out of the ordinary.

With clumsy, quivering fingers she pried open the lid of the blood jar and took out the note. She put down the jar and unfurled the note, her thumb unraveling the bloodied half. The word impaled her.

Agnès.

Nathalie stifled a cry and rolled the note back up; her fingers trembled so violently she was afraid she’d let go of the bottle. She put the note inside and the lid on, blood smearing on her hand as she tightened the lid.

She took out the empty jar and pulled out the note. Again, one word.

You.





43


Nearly in a trance, Nathalie dropped the note back in and put the small bottle on the pew. It clinked, startling her. Blood rushed through her ears.

She couldn’t hear.

Couldn’t think.

Instinct. That was all she had.

Wild-eyed, she looked in every direction for the woman.

She detected movement in the rear of the church. She turned. A figure in partial shadow scurried between columns.

The woman. Zoe Klampert. Mme. la Tuerie. A malevolent trinity.

Nathalie bolted from the pew. Mme. la Tuerie dashed out the exit before Nathalie made it down the aisle.

“HELP!” she yelled as she ran past some people coming in. “Get her! She—she attacked me!”

They spoke German among themselves and stared at her.

She got outside in time to see the woman run across a bridge to the left. Nathalie began to race after her but lost her footing on a wobbly stone; she tumbled and rose up in almost one motion. Mme. la Tuerie, weaving in and out of the crowd, extended her lead.

“She’s insane!” Nathalie yelled, pointing as she ran. “Woman in black! She attacked me!”

Over and over and over again.

And no one helped, not one.

Everyone either ignored Nathalie or regarded her with alarm.

As if there was something wrong with her for screaming for help.

“What’s she going on about?” someone asked.

“She’s chasing a widow!”

“I bet she’s from the Home for Wayward Girls.”

The words struck her like bullets as she continued the chase. She stopped, crestfallen, when Mme. la Tuerie boarded a steam tram. Not until it turned the corner did Nathalie finally find a policeman.

It was, of course, too late.



* * *



Nathalie called out to the policeman. “A woman on that tram! She attacked me in Notre-Dame!” Gasping for air, she looked over her shoulder, as though the steam tram might derail and return the woman.

The policeman didn’t seem much older than Nathalie. “Attacked you how?”