The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

She flung it off and it clattered down. She clutched at her body, thinking to discover herself clotted with a sort of glue or slime, but there was nothing like that.

She was weak and dizzy and her heart drummed noisily, so she could not hear the silence any more.

"Let me speak to the house caretaker," snapped Jonquil at the obtuse machine. Outside the booth, the ruin of the great square seemed to sway on the wind, which was violent, ruffling the lagoon in flounces, whirling small scraps of coloured substances that might have been paper, rags, or skin.

"The caretaker is not available. However, your request has been noted."

"But this picture is an important find — and I want it removed, today , to a place of safety."

The machine had disconnected.

Jonquil stood in the booth, as if inside a spacesuit, and watched the alien atmosphere of the city swirling with bits and colours.

"Don't be a fool," said Jonquil. She left the booth and cowered before the wind, which was not like any breeze felt in civilized places. "It's an old painting. A bad old painting. So, you're lonely, you had a dream. Get back to work."

Jonquil worked. She photographed all the carvings she had decided were relevant or unusually bizarre — Venus the goddess riding the crescent moon, a serpent coiled about a planet that maybe was simply an orb. She put these into the developer and later drew them out and arranged them in her room beside the salon. (She had already moved the painting of Johnina into the salon — she felt tired, and it seemed heavier than before — left it with its face to the wall, propped under the mirrors. It was now about twenty-five metres from her inflatable bed, and well outside the door.)

She went over the house again, measuring and recording comments. She opened shutters and regarded the once hivelike cliffs of the city, and the waters on the other side. The wind settled and a mist condensed. By mid-afternoon the towers of modernity were quite gone.

"The light always has a green tinge — blue and yellow mixed. When the sky pinkens at dawn or sunset the water is bottle green, an apothecary's bottle. And purple for the prose," Jonquil added.

In two hours it would be dusk, and then night.

This was ridiculous. She had to face up to herself, that she was nervous and apprehensive. But there was nothing to be afraid of, or even to look forward to.

She still felt depressed, exhausted, so she took some more vitamins. Something she had eaten, probably, before leaving for the city, had caught up with her. And that might even account for the dream. The dreams.

She did not go up into the attics. She spent some time out of doors, in the grotto of the courtyard, and in the garden, which the manual showed her with paved paths and carven box hedges, orange trees, and the fountain playing. She did not watch this holostet long. Her imagination was working too, and too hard, and she might start to see Johnina in a blue-grey gown going about between the trees.

What, anyway, was Johnina? Doubtless Jonquil's unconscious had based the Johanus part of the dream on scraps of the astrologer's writings she had seen, and that she had consciously forgotten. Johanus presumably believed some alien intelligence from the planet he observed had made use of the channel of his awareness. For him it was female (interesting women then were always witches, demons; he would be bound to think in that way) and when she suborned him, in his old man's obsession, he painted her approximately to a woman — just as he had approximated his vision of the planet to something identifiable, the pastorale of a cool hell. And he gave his demoness a name birthed out of his own, a strange daughter.

Jonquil did not recollect, try as she would, reading anything so curious about Johanus, but she must have done.

He then concealed the painting of his malign inamorata in the trick chest, to protect it from the destructive fears of the servants.

Only another hour, and the sky would infuse like pale tea and rose petals. The sun would go, the star would visit the garden. Darkness.

"You're not as tough as you thought," said Jonquil. She disapproved of herself. "All right. We'll sit this one out. Stay awake tonight. And tomorrow I'll get hold of that damn caretaker lady if I have to swim there."

As soon as it was sunset, Jonquil went back to her chosen room. She had to pass through the salon, and had an urge to go up to the picture, turn it round, and scrutinize it. But that was stupid. She had seen all there was to see. She shut her inner door on the salon with a bang. Now she was separate from all the house.