"Speaking of entrances..." Lisette commented, nodding toward the couple who were just coming onto the dance floor. The woman wore a n.a.z.i SS officer"s hat, jackboots, black trousers and braces across her bare chest. She was astride the back of her male companion, who wore a saddle and bridle in addition to a few other bits of leather harness.

"I can"t decide whether that"s kinky or just tacky," Lisette said.

"Not like your little sorority teas back home, is it?" Midge smiled.

"Is there any c.o.ke about?" Danielle interposed quickly.

"There was a short while ago. Try the library-that"s the room just down from where everyone"s changing."

Lisette downed her champagne and grabbed a refill before following Danielle upstairs. A man in fishnet tights, motorcycle boots and a vest comprised mostly of chain and bits of n.a.z.i medals caught at her arm and seemed to want to dance. Instead of a mask, he wore about a pound of eye shadow and black lipstick. She shouted an inaudible excuse, held a finger to her nostril and sniffed, and darted after Danielle.

"That was Eddie Teeth, lead singer for the Trepans, whom you just cut," Danielle told her. "Why didn"t he grab me!"

"You"ll get your chance," Lisette told her. "I think he"s following us."

Danielle dragged her to a halt halfway up the stairs.

"Got toot right here, loves." Eddie Teeth flipped the silver spoon and phial that dangled amidst the chains on his vest.

"Couldn"t take the noise in there any longer," Lisette explained.

"Needle"s s.h.i.t." Eddie Teeth wrapped an arm about either waist and propelled them up the stairs. "You gashes sisters? I can dig incest."

The library was pleasantly crowded-Lisette decided she didn"t want to be cornered with Eddie Teeth. A dozen or more guests stood about, sniffing and conversing energetically. Seated at a table, two of the ubiquitous maids busily cut lines onto mirrors and set them out for the guests, whose number remained more or less constant as people wandered in and left. A cigarette box offered tightly rolled joints.

"That"s Thai." Eddie Teeth groped for a handful of the joints, stuck one in each girl"s mouth, the rest inside his vest. Danielle giggled and fitted hers to her cigarette holder. Unfastening a silver tube from his vest, he snorted two thick lines from one of the mirrors. "Toot your eyeb.a.l.l.s out, loves," he invited them.

One of the maids collected the mirror when they had finished and replaced it with another-a dozen lines of cocaine neatly arranged across its surface. Industriously she began to work a chunk of rock through a sifter to replenish the empty mirror. Lisette watched in fascination. This finally brought home to her the wealth this party represented: all the rest simply seemed to her like something out of a movie, but dealing out c.o.ke to more than a hundred guests was an extravagance she could relate to.

"Danielle Borland, isn"t it?"

A man dressed as Mephistopheles bowed before them. "Adrian Tregannet. We"ve met at one of Midge Vaughn"s parties, you may recall."

Danielle stared at the face below the domino mask. "Oh, yes. Lisette, it"s Mephisto himself."

"Then this is Miss Seyrig, the subject of your charcoal drawing that Beth so admires." Mephisto caught Lisette"s hand and bent his lips to it. "Beth is so much looking forward to meeting you both."

Lisette retrieved her hand. "Aren"t you the..."

"The rude fellow who accosted you in Kensington some days ago," Tregannet finished apologetically. "Yes, I"m afraid so. But you really must forgive me for my forwardness. I actually did mistake you for a very dear friend of mine, you see. Won"t you let me make amends over a gla.s.s of champagne?"

"Certainly." Lisette decided that she had had quite enough of Eddie Teeth, and Danielle was quite capable of fending for herself if she grew tired of having her b.r.e.a.s.t.s squeezed by a famous pop star.

Tregannet quickly returned with two gla.s.ses of champagne. Lisette finished another two lines and smiled appreciatively as she accepted a gla.s.s. Danielle was trying to shotgun Eddie Teeth through her cigarette holder, and Lisette thought it a good chance to slip away.

"Your roommate is tremendously talented," Tregannet suggested. "Of course, she chose so charming a subject for her drawing."

Slick as snake oil, Lisette thought, letting him take her arm. "How very nice of you to say so. However, I really feel a bit embarra.s.sed to think that some stranger owns a portrait of me in my underwear."

"Utterly chaste, my dear-as chaste as the Dark Rose of its t.i.tle. Beth chose to hang it in her boudoir, so I hardly think it is on public display. I suspect from your garments in the drawing that you must share Beth"s appreciation for the dress and manners of this past century."

"Which is something I"d never suspect of our hostess, judging from this party," Lisette considered. "I"m quite looking forward to meeting her. I a.s.sume then that Ms is a bit too modern for one of such quiet tastes. Is it Miss or Mrs Garrington?"

"Ah, I hadn"t meant to suggest an impression of a genteel dowager. Beth is entirely of your generation-a few years older than yourself, perhaps. Although I find Ms too suggestive of American slang, I"m sure Beth would not object. However, there"s no occasion for such formality here."

"You seem to know her well, Mr Tregannet."

"It is an old family. I know her aunt, Julia Weatherford, quite well through our mutual interest in the occult. Perhaps you, too...?"

"Not really; Danielle is the one you should chat with about that. My field is art. I"m over here on fellowship at London University." She watched Danielle and Eddie Teeth toddle off for the ballroom and jealously decided that Danielle"s taste in her acquaintances left much to be desired. "Could I have some more champagne?"

"To be sure. I won"t be a moment."

Lisette snorted a few more lines while she waited. A young man dressed as an Edwardian dandy offered her his snuff box and gravely demonstrated its use. Lisette was struggling with a sneezing fit when Tregannet returned.

"You needn"t have gone to all the bother," she told him. "These little French maids are dashing about with trays of champagne."

"But those gla.s.ses have lost the proper chill," Tregannet explained. "To your very good health."

"Cheers." Lisette felt light-headed, and promised herself to go easy for a while. "Does Beth live here with her aunt, then?"

"Her aunt lives on the Continent; I don"t believe she"s visited London for several years. Beth moved in about ten years ago. Theirs is not a large family, but they are not without wealth, as you can observe. They travel a great deal as well, and it"s fortunate that Beth happened to be in London during your stay here. Incidentally, just how long will you be staying in London?"

"About a year is all." Lisette finished her champagne. "Then it"s back to my dear, dull family in San Francisco."

"Then there"s no one here in London...?"

"Decidedly not, Mr Tregannet. And now if you"ll excuse me, I think I"ll find the ladies"."

Cocaine might well be the champagne of drugs, but cocaine and champagne didn"t seem to mix well, Lisette mused, turning the bathroom over to the next frantic guest. Her head felt really buzzy, and she thought she might do better if she found a bedroom somewhere and lay down for a moment. But then she"d most likely wake up and find some man on top of her, judging from this lot. She decided she"d lay off the champagne and have just a line or two to shake off the feeling of having been sandbagged.

The crowd in the study had changed during her absence. Just now it was dominated by a group of guests dressed in costumes from The Rocky Horror Show, now closing out its long run at the Comedy Theatre in Piccadilly. Lisette had grown bored with the fad the film version had generated in the States, and pushed her way past the group as they vigorously danced the Time Warp and bellowed out songs from the show.

""Give yourself over to absolute pleasure,"" someone sang in her ear as she industriously snorted a line from the mirror. ""Erotic nightmares beyond any measure,"" the song continued.

Lisette finished a second line, and decided she had had enough.

She straightened from the table and broke for the doorway. The tall transvest.i.te dressed as Frankie barred her way with a dramatic gesture, singing ardently: ""Don"t dream it-be it!""

Lisette blew him a kiss and ducked around him. She wished she could find a quiet place to collect her thoughts. Maybe she should find Danielle first-if she could handle the ballroom that long.

The dance floor was far more crowded than when they"d come in. At least all these jostling bodies seemed to absorb some of the decibels from the blaring banks of amplifiers and speakers. Lisette looked in vain for Danielle amidst the dancers, succeeding only in getting champagne sloshed on her back. She caught sight of Midge, recognizable above the mob by her conical medieval headdress, and pushed her way toward her.

Midge was being fed caviar on bits of toast by Fiona while she talked with an older woman who looked like the pictures Lisette had seen of Marlene Dietrich dressed in men"s formal evening wear.

"Have you seen Danielle?" Lisette asked her.

"Why, not recently, darling," Midge smiled, licking caviar from her lips with the tip of her tongue. "I believe she and that rock singer were headed upstairs for a bit more privacy. I"m sure she"ll come collect you once they"re finished."

"Midge, you"re a c.u.n.t," Lisette told her through her sweetest smile. She turned away and made for the doorway, trying not to ruin her exit by staggering. Screw Danielle-she needed to have some fresh air.

A crowd had gathered at the foot of the stairway, and she had to push through the doorway to escape the ballroom. Behind her, the Needle mercifully took a break. "She"s coming down!" Lisette heard someone whisper breathlessly. The inchoate babel of the party fell to a sudden lull that made Lisette shiver.

At the top of the stairway stood a tall woman, enveloped in a black velvet cloak from her throat to her ankles. Her blonde hair was piled high in a complex variation of the once-fashionable French twist. Strings of garnets entwined in her hair and edged the close-fitting black mask that covered the upper half of her face. For a hushed interval she stood there, gazing imperiously down upon her guests.

Adrian Tregannet leapt to the foot of the stairway. He signed to a pair of maids, who stepped forward to either side of their mistress.

"Milords and miladies!" he announced with a sweeping bow. "Let us pay honor to our bewitching mistress whose feast we celebrate tonight! I give you the lamia who haunted Adam"s dreams-Lilith!"

The maids smoothly swept the cloak from their mistress" shoulders. From the mult.i.tude at her feet came an audible intake of breath. Beth Garrington was attired in a strapless corselette of gleaming black leather, laced tightly about her waist. The rest of her costume consisted only of knee-length, stiletto-heeled tight boots, above-the-elbow gloves, and a spiked collar around her throat-all of black leather that contrasted starkly against her white skin and blonde hair. At first Lisette thought she wore a bull-whip coiled about her body as well, but then the coils moved, and she realized that it was an enormous black snake.

"Lilith!" came the shout, chanted in a tone of awe. "Lilith!"

Acknowledging their worship with a sinuous gesture, Beth Garrington descended the staircase. The serpent coiled from gloved arm to gloved arm, entwining her cinched waist; its eyes considered the revellers imperturbably. Champagne gla.s.ses lifted in a toast to Lilith, and the chattering voice of the party once more began to fill the house.

Tregannet touched Beth"s elbow as she greeted her guests at the foot of the stairway. He whispered into her ear, and she smiled graciously and moved away with him.

Lisette clung to the staircase newel, watching them approach. Her head was spinning, and she desperately needed to lie down in some fresh air, but she couldn"t trust her legs to carry her outside. She stared into the eyes of the serpent, hypnotized by its flickering tongue.

The room seemed to surge in and out of focus. The masks of the guests seemed to leer and gloat with the awareness of some secret jest; the dancers in their fantastic costumes became a grotesque horde of satyrs and wanton demons, writhing about the ballroom in some witches" sabbat of obscene ma.s.s copulation. As in a nightmare, Lisette willed her legs to turn and run, realized that her body was no longer obedient to her will.

"Beth, here"s someone you"ve been dying to meet," Lisette heard Tregannet say. "Beth Garrington, allow me to present Lisette Seyrig."

The lips beneath the black mask curved in a pleasurable smile. Lisette gazed into the eyes behind the mask, and discovered that she could no longer feel her body. She thought she heard Danielle cry out her name.

The eyes remained in her vision long after she slid down the newel and collapsed upon the floor.

*IX*

The Catherine Wheel was a pub on Kensington Church Street. They served good pub lunches there, and Lisette liked to stop in before walking down Holland Street for her sessions with Dr Magnus. Since today was her final such session, it seemed appropriate that they should end the evening here.

"While I dislike repeating myself," Dr Magnus spoke earnestly. "I really do think we should continue."

Lisette drew on a cigarette and shook her head decisively. "No way, Dr Magnus. My nerves are shot to h.e.l.l. I mean, look-when I freak out at a costume party and have to be carted home to bed by my roommate! It was like when I was a kid and got hold of some bad acid: the whole world was some bizarre and sinister freak show for weeks. Once I got my head back on, I said: No more acid."

"That was rather a notorious circle you were travelling in. Further, you were, if I understand you correctly, overindulging a bit that evening."

"A few gla.s.ses of champagne and a little toot never did anything before but make me a bit giggly and talkative." Lisette sipped her half of lager; she"d never developed a taste for English bitter, and at least the lager was chilled. They sat across from each other at a table the size of a hubcap; she in the corner of a padded bench against the wall, he at a chair set out into the room, pressed in by a wall of standing bodies. A foot away from her on the padded bench, three young men huddled about a similar table, talking animatedly. For all that, she and Dr Magnus might have been all alone in the room. Lisette wondered if the psychologist who had coined the faddish concept of "s.p.a.ce" had been inspired in a crowded English pub.

"It isn"t just that I fainted at the party. It isn"t just the nightmares." She paused to find words. "It"s just that everything somehow seems to be drifting out of focus, out of control. It"s... well, it"s frightening."

"Precisely why we must continue."

"Precisely why we must not." Lisette sighed. They"d covered this ground already. It had been a moment of weakness when she agreed to allow Dr Magnus to buy her a drink afterward instead of heading back to the flat. Still, he had been so distressed when she told him she was terminating their sessions.

"I"ve tried to cooperate with you as best I could, and I"m certain you are entirely sincere in your desire to help me." Well, she wasn"t all that certain, but no point in going into that. "However, the fact remains that since we began these sessions, my nerves have gone to h.e.l.l. You say they"d be worse without the sessions, I say the sessions have made them worse, and maybe there"s no connection at all-it"s just that my nerves have gotten worse, so now I"m going to trust my intuition and try life without these sessions. Fair enough?"

Dr Magnus gazed uncomfortably at his barely tasted gla.s.s of sherry. "While I fully understand your rationale, I must in all conscience beg you to reconsider, Lisette. You are running risks that..."

"Look. If the nightmares go away, then terrific. If they don"t, I can always pack up and head back to San Francisco. That way I"ll be clear of whatever it is about London that disagrees with me, and if not, I"ll see my psychiatrist back home."

"Very well, then." Dr Magnus squeezed her hand. "However, please bear in mind that I remain eager to continue our sessions at any time, should you change your mind."

"That"s fair enough, too. And very kind of you."

Dr Magnus lifted his gla.s.s of sherry to the light. Pensively, he remarked: "Amber."

*X*

"Lisette?"

Danielle locked the front door behind her and hung up her inadequate umbrella in the hallway. She considered her face in the mirror and grimaced at the mess of her hair. "Lisette? Are you here?"

No answer, and her rain things were not in the hallway. Either she was having a late session with Dr Magnus, or else she"d wisely decided to duck under cover until this b.l.o.o.d.y rain let up. After she"d had to carry Lisette home in a taxi when she pa.s.sed out at the party, Danielle was starting to feel real concern over her state ofhealth.

Danielle kicked off her damp shoes as she entered the living room. The curtains were drawn against the greyness outside, and she switched on a lamp to brighten the flat a bit. Her dress clung to her like a clammy fish-skin; she shivered, and thought about a cup of coffee. If Lisette hadn"t returned yet, there wouldn"t be any brewed. She"d have a warm shower instead, and after that she"d see to the coffee-if Lisette hadn"t returned to set a pot going in the meantime.

"Lisette?" Their bedroom was empty. Danielle turned on the overhead light. Christ, it was gloomy! So much for long English summer evenings-with all the rain, she couldn"t remember when she"d last seen the sun. She struggled out of her damp dress, spread it flat across her bed with the vague hope that it might not wrinkle too badly, then tossed her bra and tights onto a chair.

Slipping into her bathrobe, Danielle padded back into the living room. Still no sign of Lisette, and it was past nine. Perhaps she"d stopped off at a pub. Crossing to the stereo, Danielle placed the new Blondie alb.u.m on the turntable and turned up the volume. Let the neighbors complain-at least this would help dispel the evening"s gloom.

She cursed the delay needed to adjust the shower temperature to satisfaction, then climbed into the tub. The hot spray felt good, and she stood under it contentedly for several minutes-initially revitalized, then lulled into a delicious sense of relaxation. Through the rush of the spray, she could hear the m.u.f.fled beat of the stereo. As she reached for the shampoo, she began to move her body with the rhythm.

The shower curtain billowed as the bathroom door opened. Danielle risked a soapy squint around the curtain- she knew the flat was securely locked, but after seeing Psycho... It was only Lisette, already undressed, her long blonde hair falling over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Didn"t hear you come in with the stereo going," Danielle greeted her. "Come on in before you catch cold."

Danielle resumed lathering her hair as the shower curtain parted and the other girl stepped into the tub behind her. Her eyes squeezed shut against the soap, she felt Lisette"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s thrust against her back, her flat belly press against her b.u.t.tocks. Lisette"s hands came around her to cup her b.r.e.a.s.t.s gently.

At least Lisette had gotten over her silly tiff about Eddie Teeth. She"d explained to Lisette that she"d ditched that greasy slob when he"d tried to dry hump her on the dance floor, but how do you reason with a silly thing who faints at the sight of a snake?

"Jesus, you"re chilled to the bone!" Danielle complained with a shiver. "Better stand under the shower and get warm. Did you get caught in the rain?"

The other girl"s fingers continued to caress her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and instead of answering, her lips teased the nape of Danielle"s neck. Danielle made a delighted sound deep in her throat, letting the spray rinse the lather from her hair and over their embraced bodies. Languidly she turned about to face her lover, closing her arms about Lisette"s shoulders for support.

Lisette"s kisses held each taut nipple for a moment, teasing them almost painfully. Danielle pressed the other girl"s face to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, sighed as her kisses nibbled upward to her throat. She felt weak with arousal, and only Lisette"s strength held her upright in the tub. Her lover"s lips upon her throat tormented her beyond enduring; Danielle gasped and lifted Lisette"s face to meet her own.

Her mouth was open to receive Lisette"s red-lipped kiss, and it opened wider as Danielle stared into the eyes of her lover. Her first emotion was one of wonder.

"You"re not Lisette!"

It was nearly midnight when Lisette unlocked the door to their flat and quietly let herself in. Only a few lights were on, and there was no sign of Danielle-either she had gone out, or, more likely, had gone to bed.

Lisette hung up her raincoat and wearily pulled off her shoes. She"d barely caught the last train. She must have been crazy to let Dr Magnus talk her into returning to his office for another session that late, but then he was quite right: as serious as her problems were, she really did need all the help he could give her. She felt a warm sense of grat.i.tude to Dr Magnus for being there when she so needed his help.

The turntable had stopped, but a light on the amplifier indicated that the power was still on. Lisette cut it off and closed the lid over the turntable. She felt too tired to listen to an alb.u.m just now.

She became aware that the shower was running. In that case, Danielle hadn"t gone to bed. She supposed she really ought to apologize to her for letting Midge"s b.i.t.c.hy lies get under her skin. After all, she had ruined the party for Danielle; poor Danielle had had to get her to bed and had left the party without ever getting to meet Beth Garrington, and she was the one Beth had invited in the first place.