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“What do you want?” Marion asked, her voice shaking now. “What do you want from me?”
The woman caught the attention of a passing waiter. He bent at the waist to listen, and she said something close to his ear, and then the man bobbed and hurried away.
“I don’t know anything,” Marion said. “Please. I’ve been living like a hermit for five years. I haven’t spoken to anyone.”
The woman was inspecting the basket of bread as Marion spoke. She picked up a white roll and sniffed it.
“What did you do to my sister?” Marion asked, although she didn’t want to know.
The woman met Marion’s gaze and slowly tore the bread roll in two down the middle. Then the corners of her mouth twisted up in a smile.
“I don’t have my book,” Marion said then, and the woman’s eyes again flicked up to her, as she put a piece of the bread in her mouth. The waiter reappeared with a glass of champagne and placed it down. The woman chewed the bread, watching Marion silently.
“I don’t have it,” Marion insisted. “I didn’t want it. I didn’t want you to come looking for it.”
The woman sipped her champagne and pulled a face of disappointment, inspecting the drink through the glass and smacking her lips, as if it didn’t taste like she had expected.
“You wouldn’t have wanted it even if I did have it,” Marion said. “What would you do with the Book of Joy?” Marion’s mouth turned down, her hatred finally overcoming her fear. “Joy is the last thing that you care about.”
The woman ate some more of her bread.
Marion watched her, waiting.
Waiting for something.
Waiting for the terror.
“I sent it to Drummond,” she said finally. “I sent it away over ten years ago to keep it safe, all right? That’s what you’ve done to this world. You made me hide the Book of Joy because that was better than you getting it.”
Marion was surprised by tears in her eyes. She didn’t know if these were tears of fear, tears for her sister, or tears for the world that this woman had created.
“That is what you did,” she said, wiping her eyes with her hand. “Don’t you have any shame?”
“Where is the Fox Library?” the woman asked, the sound of her voice so low that Marion had to lean in to hear what she was saying.
“I don’t know where the Fox Library is,” Marion said, suddenly panicked. “Why would I know? I wouldn’t want to know! Nobody wants to know because it just means you’ll come for them, doesn’t it?”
The woman was looking at the bread roll, but her eyebrows lifted as if asking:Really, that’s what people are saying?
“Only Drummond Fox knows,” Marion said. “If you want to find the Fox Library you need to find him. I don’t know why you are asking me!”
The woman said nothing. She was such a beautiful woman, Marion thought, such darkness wrapped up in such a lovely package.
“You’ll never find Drummond Fox,” Marion said, feeling her fear slip off her shoulders like a discarded coat. She was going to die, she knew, and it was incredible how freeing that thought was. She smiled to herself, and the woman dropped the uneaten part of her bread onto the table. “You haven’t found him in all these years and you’re not going to find him now, are you?”
The woman looked at her with her blank, beautiful expression.
“Oh, this is the best news I’ve had for years,” Marion said, clasping her hands together in a moment of delight. “Oh yes! If you don’t have him, you’ll never find the Fox Library, will you?”
Marion actually laughed, and with the release of tension it felt as if the air around her relaxed slightly too.
She looked at the woman and saw how empty she was, how lacking in any sort of human substance. She was like a portrait of a woman, Marion thought, beautiful but without life.
Then the woman reached across and laid a hand on Marion’s arm, her mouth a sudden, vicious sneer. A moment later Marion felt immediate, immense pain, as if a huge hand had grabbed her heart and was squeezing it.
She gasped and thumped forward onto the table, cutlery and glasses rattling. She died in moments, her eyes seeing her own contorted reflection in the metal water jug, the face of an old woman screaming.
The woman walked south from Covent Garden to the embankment along the Thames, caressing her quiet fury and hating the bustling, active world around her.
