The shadowy figure at the end of the hall and the outline at the rain-streaked door…both times the impressions had made her think of Colin. And now, on the street, he had been with her when the bizarre illusion had assaulted her. Her pulse began to pound in her temples. Her thoughts whirled. Get hold of yourself. She really was losing it. Trying to tie Colin in with the aberrations of her mind was utterly ridiculous. She felt herself coloring under his measuring stare.
“I knew…I knew I was too tired to go out tonight,” she stammered. “You should have gone to the dinner without me. It’s still early. You can still make the meeting…”
“Damn the meeting,” he said gruffly. He quickly paid the bill and they left.
Silence built a wall between them on the way back to her hotel. When they reached the front door, he took the key from her trembling hands. Ignoring her pointed “Thanks…goodbye,” he followed her into the lobby.
Della sent a frantic look at the staircase. Empty. No painted ladies. No bright lights. Nothing. If she took him upstairs, there would be nothing to show him there, either. No harlots parading in and out of rooms in their gaudy satin dresses, no voluptuous redhead taking a bath in an old tub.
He stood behind her and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. A sob caught in her throat and hot tears spilled into the corners of her eyes. He put his hands on her arms. Gently he eased her against his strong firm body. “Tell me. Whatever it is, we need to share it.”
The last fiber of her resistance melted away. She took a tremulous deep breath. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Tonight on the street…everything changed,” she said in a strangled voice. “The buildings. The people. I heard horses and carriages.” She turned to face him. “And in the hotel, I see women. Old-fashioned harlots. Painted faces, low-cut gaudy dresses, hair piled high on their heads. Wandering up and down the stairs. In the halls. Taking baths.”
“Good God.” His voice cracked.
“Nobody else sees them…only me. I don’t know—” She broke off. Like an explosion, a raucous noise vibrating down the halls and ricocheting off the high ceilings shattered the silence of the empty hotel. A cacophony of laughter, tinny music and clinking glasses rose and fell in waves and vibrated through the echoing building.
“What the hell—” Colin swore.
“You hear it, too?” Suddenly, she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. The bewildering onslaught of noise wasn’t just in her mind. She wasn’t alone.
Colin strode to the bottom of the stairs, listened and then shook his head. “It must be coming from somewhere at the back of the building.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let’s find out what the hell is going on.”
The racket grew louder as they reached a back entrance and the stone stairs descending into the basement.
“Oh, no!” Della shot an apprehensive look at Colin. She knew where their search would end. “The tunnel.”
“Didn’t you close the damn thing up?” He strode angrily down the stairs.
The basement was dank and drafty with a bare electric light hanging from the open-beam ceiling. At one end of the room, a crude opening yawned in the rock wall. Cold air swept out of the passage and Della hugged herself against the chill. The loud thumping of piano, laughter and singing created a deafening din.
“It’s coming from the tunnel, all right,” Colin said.
“But how can that be? There’s only a vacant lot across the street.”
Colin’s eyes burned into hers. “Then none of this is happening. We’re both hallucinating.” His voice lowered to a growl. “Maybe you buy that but I don’t. All my life, I’ve been shackled to the past. This is my great-grandfather’s mean spirit calling to me.”
In one frightening second Della knew that he was going to rush into the black tunnel.
“Go back upstairs,” he ordered.
“No,” she screamed, grabbing his hand and trying to pull him back.
He gave her a shove and turned toward the tunnel. In the next instant, he was gone. Della had not intended to follow him, but before she could move back from the opening, a blast of cold air sucked her forward.
“Colin!” she cried out, twisting and turning, unable to free herself from the propelling force driving her into the tunnel.
In the darkness of the passage, he reached out and grabbed her hand. A gale like the intense sucking force in a wind tunnel swept them both forward. Caught in a whipping, swirling hurricane, they clung to each other as they traveled through the passage.
A split second? An eternity? Della never knew. Flashes of bright lights. The brilliant hues of rampant flowers. Almost imperceptibly, the dank smell of the tunnel was replaced by a sweet floral perfume. A kaleidoscope of colors blinded her with stabbing intensity. The wind died and Della felt the ground beneath them level out.
They clung to each other. When they regained their balance and could see again, they were standing in the foyer of Maude’s Pleasure House on Market Street, dressed in the fashions of the 1880s.
Chapter 3
T he bordello blazed with lights. Fiddle and piano music, crescendos of laughter and the din of high-pitched voices floated out into a center hall from several arched doorways. Della’s throat tightened and the palms of her hands beaded with hot sweat. The same kind of women she had seen wandering around her hotel paraded up and down the staircase on the arms of purposeful-looking men. They were not vague and shadowy figures but horribly real.
Even as Della fought against the reality that bombarded her senses, a plump woman in her forties with a homely face, sharp nose and double chins paused at the top of a center staircase. She rested one bejeweled hand on the polished banister and looked down at Colin and Della as if she could reduce them to dust with one wave of her gnarled hand.
Della stared in disbelief. Rounded hips and full breasts stretched the fabric of her low-cut gown. An elaborate twist of false red hair held in place on top of her head by feathers and jeweled pins added to her height. Her complexion was sallow even with rouge and powder and there was a hawklike sharpness to her gray eyes, cold and impaling. She had nostrils that flared and a mouth that showed large ugly teeth. Della wanted to turn and run but her legs wouldn’t move.
The woman lifted the train of her deep blue taffeta gown, came down the steps and crossed a wide entrance hall to the foyer where they stood. The reek of cheap perfume touched Della’s nostrils with familiarity.
“I’m Maude Mullen,” she said in a guttural voice. “It’s about time somebody answered my ad.” She eyed Colin up and down like someone judging horse-flesh. “The job is part-time handyman and bouncer. Pay is a dollar a day. Be on the job by ten in the morning and at the bar by seven in the evening, except on Sunday. You keep your hands off the merchandise. Got it? Well, do you want the job or not?”
Colin hesitated for a moment and then nodded. He didn’t know what else to do. The woman had obviously mistaken him for someone else. He could use the precious time to figure out what in the hell was going on.
Maude turned her sharp calculating eyes on Della. “As for you. Not much to look at…too thin. But that don’t matter. Vinetta Gray was with me for twenty years. Best damn bookkeeper I ever saw. Kept the cleanest set of books on Market Street. You do the same…or else—got me? Any juggling with the numbers, I’ll know it. I don’t tolerate liars or cheats.” Her nostrils quivered and she set her painted lips in an ugly line. “If I find you’ve been less than honest with me, you’ll wish you never set foot in this place.”
Della opened her mouth but Colin put his hand on her elbow and gave it a warning squeeze. Don’t say anything.
She wanted to argue with him. They were making a mistake, she was certain of it. Surely it would be better to tell this madam that they weren’t