True Grey by Clea Simon

Author:Clea Simon [Simon, Clea]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
Published: 2012-08-11T14:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-NINE

‘The essential ichor besmirched his raven locks. All life, all essence, lay there, turned now to cooling mass.’ Dulcie looked from the excerpt to her own note: ‘Cooling mass? Ick!’

Back at the apartment that evening, alone, Dulcie had decided to try to work – at least a little. But even as she read through her notes, she found herself concentrating on what wasn’t there, wishing she had copied down more and kept her editorializing in check. ‘What was I thinking, Esmé? It’s bad enough I don’t have access to the manuscript. Why couldn’t I have at least copied out the page from the printed book?’ The cat, whose back was pressed up against Dulcie on the sofa, didn’t respond.

‘As black as sable, his lifeless head lay upon the carpet.’ Why she’d written that down, she had no idea. Might as well have written ‘as black as Esmé’s back’. She stroked her feline friend until a soft purr started up. One yawn – a white bootie stretching out for a pink-toed yawn – and the gentle rumble subsided. Esmé was asleep.

Dulcie watched her for a moment, the epitome of peace. If only her own slumber could be so undisturbed. Or maybe it wasn’t: as she watched, Esmé’s pink nose twitched and one front paw flicked, as if in a dream.

What did cats dream about? Dulcie watched her pet stretch slightly and settle more on her stomach. She looked almost like an all-black cat from this angle. Even the pink of her nose was hidden.

Color. Did cats dream in color? In her own night-time re-imagining, the victim had had red hair, the ‘red-gold’ of the handwritten manuscript rather than the ‘raven’ black of the printed version.

But there was something else, too. Dulcie turned from her too-brief notes on the book’s page to the few she’d jotted down about her dream. ‘Her own raven curls descended, shielding her face from the inquisitive light.’ That was how the dream had started, as if narrated from the author’s own writing. Now Dulcie read aloud to the cat, who blinked at her sleepily. ‘Black as raven’s wings,’ she’d written. ‘Black as Melinda’s,’ she added, and then fell silent as her eyes moved on to the next passage. She must have been half awake by this part of the dream. All she had were vague memories of a chase. She’d jotted down a few impressions: the heroine was assumed to be the killer, though clearly she had been set up—

‘Wait.’ Dulcie sat up, causing Esmé to jump to the floor in disgust. Dulcie barely noticed: this was getting too close for comfort. This was her nightmare. It might also be a dramatization of a crucial scene from the missing novel. But it was also what had happened – what was happening – to her. And for all that she’d always felt a connection to this author, ‘her’ author as she’d always thought of her, finding herself stuck in one of her more lurid plots was not fun.

If only she hadn’t gone up to the visiting scholar’s suite.

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