Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [152]
So much different than the last time she’d stood in Spyder’s yard, that day in the snow and everything so vanilla-icing white, that day with Keith; a sprawling shadow garden now, bare-tree shadows and unkempt shrub shadows, a million weedy shadows crowded around her feet. Standing at the edge of the porch, she looked back but couldn’t see Mort, nothing but more dark behind the windshield. And at the farthest corner of her vision, sudden movement, and she faced the porch again, stared into the junk shadows waiting for her and nothing else.
Christ, I’m still wasted, and that was almost reassuring, almost sufficient, and Daria took the steps one at a time.
Back in the parking deck, she’d thought about trying to find Walter, finding him and letting him talk out whatever he’d wanted to tell her. I’ll wait a day or two, he’d said, and then I’ve gotta leave. If you want to talk, so maybe they could’ve found him, if they’d tried. And she’d decided it was a lot sillier than just having a look for herself. Seeing that Niki was all right and getting some sleep, and later they could talk about Spyder and the marks on Niki’s arms. The marks that had looked like someone had tried to copy Spyder’s tattoos onto Niki’s skin with a soldering iron.
Loud and woodsy porchboard complaints, and Daria stepped over the spot where she’d sat with Keith, between the broken machinery and cardboard rags to the door. Raised her hand, cold knuckles, and then the movement again, subtle disruption somewhere past the corner of the porch, something big, there and gone again before she could turn to see. A rustle in the bushes, and she knocked hard, so hard it hurt.
But no one answered. No sound of footsteps coming to open the door, nothing but the van grumbling unevenly in the driveway, and so she knocked again, harder. “Come on, guys. I’m freezing my butt off out here,” and that was true, the cold and her teeth beginning to chatter, but she knew it was also a surrogate, a shoddy excuse, not the real reason for the way her heart was beating or the dryness in her mouth, the dizzysick surge of adrenaline.
“Get a grip, chick,” and she hammered at the door until her hand ached and little flakes of paint had peeled away and fallen at her feet. “Fuck this,” reaching for the doorknob and the movement, again, closer this time, as she turned cold metal in her hand and the door opened.
The house was full of light, silver-white light strung in shimmering garland strands or floating lazy on the air, lying in tangled drifts on the floor. And Daria opened her mouth, to call for Niki or just in amazement, and she heard the scrambling, the hurried noises at her back, coming up the steps, crash as something tumbled over, and she didn’t look this time, stepped across the threshold and slammed the door shut behind her.
Mort watched Daria cross the short space to Spyder’s porch, waved when she paused once and looked back, but Daria made no sign that she’d seen him. And then she went up the steps and was lost in the deeper night shrouding the porch. Theo had climbed into the front, sat beside him now, holding his hand across the empty space between the bucket seats.
“This is so stupid,” she said, and he nodded in agreement. No doubt about that. He strained to catch a glimpse of Daria, a hint of her reflected in the faint yellow-orange light from the window.
“I can’t see her anymore,” he said. And Theo said, “It’s too goddamn dark to see anything out there. You’d think they’d put a streetlight up here.”
“Theo, I’m gonna go see if she—” and a flash of light from the porch, painful bright, Daria silhouetted there, paper doll cutout in the brilliance. And then it was dark again, twice as dark as before. Theo whispered, “Jesus, Mort.”
He shook his head, reached for his door handle, and then she screamed, screamed and was thrown into his lap as