Half a dozen bugs scampered from beneath one of the tables and looked at her with eyes that hung on stalks. Horribly intelligent eyes. Their mandibles clicked in a sound that was like laughter.

Hile, Mia! she heard in her head. An insectile buzzing. Hile, Mother! And then they were gone, back into the shadows.

Mia turned to the door and saw the pair of low men who blocked it. And yes, those were masks; this close to the door-guards it was impossible not to see how their sleek black hair had been painted on. Mia turned back to Sayre with a sinking heart.

Too late now.

Too late to do anything but go through with it.

SEVENTEEN

Sayre’s grip had slipped when she turned. Now he re-established it by taking her left hand. At the same moment her right hand was seized. She turned that way and saw the fat woman in the silver lamé dress. Her huge bust overflowed the top of her gown, which struggled gamely to hold it back. The flesh of her upper arms quivered loosely, giving off a suffocating scent of talcum powder. On her forehead was a red wound that swam but never overflowed.

It’s how they breathe, Mia thought. That’s how they breathe when they’re wearing their—

In her growing dismay, she had largely forgotten about Susannah Dean and completely about Detta. So when Detta Walker came forward—hell, when she leaped forward—there was no way Mia could stop her. She watched her arms shoot out seemingly of their own accord and saw her fingers sink into the plump cheek of the woman in the silver lamé gown. The woman shrieked, but oddly, the others, Sayre included, laughed uproariously, as if this were the funniest thing they’d ever seen in their lives.

The mask of humanity pulled away from the low woman’s startled eye, then tore. Susannah thought of her final moments on the castle allure, when everything had frozen and the sky had torn open like paper.

Detta ripped the mask almost entirely away. Tatters of what looked like latex hung from the tips of her fingers. Beneath where the mask had been was the head of a huge red rat, a mutie with yellow teeth growing up the outside of its cheeks in a crust and what looked like white worms dangling from its nose.

“Naughty girl,” said the rat, shaking a roguish finger at Susannah-Mio. Its other hand was still holding hers. The thing’s mate—the low man in the garish tuxedo—was laughing so hard he had doubled over, and when he did, Mia saw something poking out through the seat of his pants. It was too bony to be a tail, but she supposed it was, all the same.

“Come, Mia,” Sayre said, drawing her forward. And then he leaned toward her, peering earnestly into her eyes like a lover. “Or is it you, Odetta? It is, isn’t it? It’s you, you pestering, overeducated, troublesome Negress.”

“No, it be me, you ratface honky mahfah!” Detta crowed, and then spat into Sayre’s face.