Dance with the Devil

CHAPTER 7

Wednesday morning, she ate in her room again, dressed and was downstairs by a quarter of ten. Lydia had left word that she would be in town, talking to the constable about the night patrols to be initiated and that Katherine was free until lunch at one.

Back in her room, she changed into her skiing outfit and went downstairs again, intent on visiting the site of the previous night's bonfire. She wondered what the cultists might have left behind. She did not think this had been a bloody ritual and besides, she was by now rather numbed to the remains of blood sacrifices.

In the kitchen, Patricia Keene was making a fruit salad out of strawberries, fresh peaches, fresh seedless grapes, apples, mandarin oranges and bananas.

“That looks delicious,” Katherine said.

The woman smiled and thanked her. “Going skiing?” she asked. The effort of conversation, on even such a small scale, made her uneasy. She was used to being quiet and left alone and preferred that.

“No,” Katherine said. “Just out for a walk.”

“Not to the woods, I hope.”

Surprised, Katherine said, “Yes, down to the woods.”

“There was a dance there last night, you know.”

“Does Yuri tell you his stories too?”

The woman immediately sensed the skepticism in Katherine's voice and, apparently hurt, lapsed into silence once more. Then she said, in a barely audible murmur, “Just be careful.”

Outside, the air was perfectly still, undisturbed even by the smallest breeze, the snow lying at her feet like a burial shroud.

A flight of dark geese crossed the calm, quiet sky, heading north in a clearly defined wedge formation. They looked so free and aloof that she wished, for a moment, she could be one of them.

Even in daylight, the woods at the end of the lawn looked dark and foreboding, the trunks of the trees packed tightly together, forming pools of shadow so deep that they made the snow seem whiter by contrast.

Katherine started walking toward the place where the bonfire must have been and had gone a dozen steps before she realized that she was walking in another pair of footprints — footprints which lead from the trees to the back of Owlsden, marching in the opposite direction. Stooping, she examined the white crust close by and saw that there was no other set of prints that lead from the house to the woods. Besides, the edges of the prints were slightly drifted in — which meant they must have been made the previous night when there had yet been a ghost of a breeze to stir the snow… Standing, she placed her hand over her eyes to cut down on some of the intense snow-glare, but she could not see any prints leading from the house. Someone, then, had come out of the woods and entered Owlsden last night.

She looked back at the mansion.

It appeared deceptively calm, smoke curling lazily out of a couple of fireplace chimneys.

Pondering the significance of her unsettling discovery and more than a little ill-at-ease, Katherine stepped aside of the second set of prints and followed them down the curve of the lawn to the perimeter of the woods where she found the site of the bonfire. The snow had been melted in a ten-foot radius, and nearby pine boughs had been badly singed. In the snow surrounding the bare circle, a dozen or more pairs of booted feet had tramped in agitation or excitement.

In the cold morning, with the harsh, snow-reflected sunlight behind her, Katherine found it difficult to believe that primitive rituals had been enacted here. Indeed, it was easier to believe that the bonfire was only a campfire and that the ceremony had merely been a hotdog and marshmallow roast.

She came across red-brown stains in the snow.

Blood.

She looked away from them and went on, slowly circling the site of the fire, staring intently at the ground for something less gruesome but ultimately more interesting.

The branches of the trees above her began to rustle slightly as the stillness was broken by cool breezes from the northwest.

When she had nearly gone all the way around the charred circle, she found something that stopped her cold and made her want to turn and bolt for the house: in the snow, in full impression, were the paw marks of some animal — a wolf or, more likely, a large cat. The prints lead on for a couple of yards, nine marks in all, then disappeared among the mass of other prints, human prints. She stared at them for a long while, remembering Yuri's warnings. Then since she could not establish any satisfactory explanation, she tried to forget them. It was better to dismiss them altogether, she decided, than to allow herself even to consider Yuri's absurd stories.

On her way back to Owlsden, she carefully quartered the large yard, striking first to the left and then back to the right, searching for a pair of footprints other than her own that lead from the house and into the forest. She gained the kitchen door without locating them, and she went reluctantly into the deserted kitchen.

It seemed fairly obvious to Katherine that one of the cultists had a key to the kitchen door and had come there directly after the conclusion of the Satanic ceremonies the previous night. That could indicate that a member of the household was a devil worshiper who had gone to the fire site by a different route in the company of his strange companions, but who had taken the more direct route home again when the ritual was over with.

But she didn't want to believe that. As she mentally reviewed the list of people who lived in Owlsden, she felt certain none of them could be cultists.

The only other possibility was that one of the devil worshipers had illegally obtained a key to the house and had come here last night on some private mission without the knowledge or consent of anyone in the household. A stranger with a key to Owlsden could be more easily dealt with than a member of the household who was also a cultist. One was simple criminal activity, open to the usual rules of deduction, while the other was a problem of psychology completely beyond her ken. She much preferred it to be this way — and, therefore, in her mind at least, it was.

She took off her wet boots and stood them on the rubber mat just inside the door, went upstairs and changed clothes again. As she stood at the full-length mirror, brushing her golden hair over her shoulders, she decided to tell Yuri what she had found at the earliest opportunity. He would know how to handle it without upsetting Lydia — unless the role he was playing required him to respond differently than she expected…

Later, when she started out of the room to keep her luncheon engagement with Lydia, she found that she had unconsciously locked her bedroom door, even though it was the middle of the day. She shook her head, silently berating herself, unlocked it and went on her way. Was she beginning to put credence in Yuri's tales?