Doctor Who: Big Finish - Bernice Summerfield [013] - Parallel Lives (3 Novellas) by Rebecca Levene & Stewart Sheargold & Dave Stone

Author:Rebecca Levene & Stewart Sheargold & Dave Stone
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 1844351548
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2006-01-17T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Bev found the dining room empty. A number of tables had been locked together to create one long one, which stretched the length of the room. Places had been set, with precisely positioned silver cutlery, dinner plates, bread plates, and intricately furled cloth napkins. The tables had been lavishly decorated with an ivy vine that twisted down its length, in and out among the candlesticks, the gleaming silver tureens, and the wineglasses. White clematis were scattered along the table length. Bev was impressed, especially as she had seen no maids, no waitresses, no hired help at all in this place. It was as though the hotel had simply desired it and so it had happened. She frowned at that thought, cautious. There was a delicious smell emanating from the tureens. Her stomach grumbled and she realised how hungry she was. She trailed her hand down the table, collecting the scent of the flowers, a melancholy in her.

She was evidently the first to arrive. She wondered where Adrian was. At the thought of him there was an irrational flash of anger. She wondered where that came from. His presence grated on her at the moment, a constant irritant to her; he was always there, lurking in the background with that terrible glowering visage. She was sure he must have done or said something to offend her. She had been avoiding him, and quite well, considering she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since the morning.

Jacob had sent out invitations to dinner. Someone had slipped the embossed card under her door, but when she had quickly gone to open it no one was in the long corridor. Another disquieting vagary of the hotel, she mused. What surprises would Jacob have to offer them over dinner? Why now? They had been here nearly a week.

She sighed. Where was everybody? She looked around and her attention was caught by the glass display cabinet against one wall. She peered in. It was filled to overflowing with all sorts of oddments. Faded gold coins, a key for an old-fashioned lock, a glass eye staring up at her; a crystallised egg sack, a board of transistors pitted with a spray of rust, the hollow shell of an alien claw; a snapped crossbow bolt, a salt-encrusted diamante headdress, a crushed and scarred piece of heavy chrome armour; the tangled strands from a film reel, ivory keys from a piano smoothed by the sea, faded barely legible photos; a garrotte slicked with black crusts of blood, a shiny, mirrored oval with a pained face cut into it, a wooden hand with slim, twiggy fingers that curled like a spider; an alien flipper, dried and dead, a bedraggled teddy bear, and… she stopped. A large brass ball that seemed to hold some great significance to her. And beside that, a pair of broken bifocal glasses, the frame twisted, lenses smashed, on a chain. She had an image of an old woman wearing these glasses, peering sternly down at her through them.

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