Page 56 of If Looks Could Kill

I swung a wide berth around Spring Street and made my way north on Chrystie, crossing the Bowery at East Third and heading for Miss Stella’s. It was the last place I knew Pearl had been, though I dreaded facing Miss Stella, after what Freyda had said.

The day was fine and bright, with a bluer sky than the city usually offers.

Dustings of last night’s snow still swirled loosely on windowsills and rooftops.

The cold was sharp, the air clear. In such light, it was easy to tell myself that whatever fright Cora and Freyda had suffered at Miss Stella’s last night must have been a great misunderstanding.

At the splintered door to Lafayette Place, I used my key to let myself in.

“Hello?” I called down the corridor. “Miss Stella? Hello?”

Silence. I shut the door and ventured inside. “Miss Stella? It’s me. Tabitha.”

Clicking heels and the thump of a walking stick sounded on the tiled floor above.

“Who’s there?” came Miss Stella’s scratchy voice. “Pearl? Is that you?”

“No, ma’am,” I called. “It’s Tabitha. Pearl’s friend.” Only a small fib.

Miss Stella stood at the top of the stairs, a frail shape backlit by upstairs light.

“Who’s Tabitha?” she demanded. “Oh. You went out? With the gentleman friend?”

Quite the reputation I was acquiring. “That’s right.”

“What’s it been? Twelve hours? Wonder what you and your young man were up to.”

Oh, nothing; I just slept at his house, in his room. Nothing to worry about.

I reached the top of the stairs. Miss Stella leaned her walking stick against the wall and gripped both my upper arms with fingers like iron claws. “Where is she?” she demanded. “What have you done with my Pearl?”

My Pearl? “I haven’t done anything with her,” I told her. “May I come in?”

She stepped aside to let me pass into the main floor foyer. Dark circles rimmed her eyes.

“It’s your fault,” she said. “You left, then she left. If you’d stayed, she would’ve stayed.”

Another voice in the chorus of Fans of Tabitha.

“I’m here to find her,” I told her. “I’m worried about Pearl. I don’t know where she is.”

“You’re lying,” she cried. “You think you can take advantage of an old lady.”

The absurdity of this statement caught me off guard. “What? Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re jealoussss .”

Her thinning, forking tongue lingered over the word “jealous” while her features morphed. Her remaining teeth became fangs. The whites of her eyes turned red with angry veins.

I took a step backward, though she advanced to close the gap. She reached up and pulled the turban from her head. Her snakes slid to freedom and arched their necks at me.

Was she threatening me?

“Miss Stella,” I said, as calmly as I could, “why on earth would I be jealous of Pearl?”

She came closer. Her snakes hissed. Dizziness washed over me.

“Ma’am,” I said—keep talking, keep talking—“what are you doing?”

“She is my daughter,” she said. “She will inherit my fortune. You thought you could get her out of the way and take it all for yourself.”

I took another step back. My pulse raced, but my mind said, Aha, this is nothing more than a big misunderstanding. I’ll just explain, and—

“You can’t believe that,” I reasoned. “This is the first I’ve even heard of… any of that.”

“Liar,” she said. “You’ve always been jealous of Pearl. I can smell it on you.”

Her snakes punched the air. I kept sliding back, and she kept following.

“She is the beauty,” Miss Stella said, “not you. She has the ancient fire, not you. She is everyone’s concern, not you.”

She wasn’t raving. She was cold and sane and calculating. She had read me, then reached her claws into my heart and ripped it from my ribs.

Leave here, Tabitha. Get out. You need to go.

I hesitated. If I left… I needed answers. Yet the impulse, I thought, hadn’t come from me.

She snatched my wrist. I tried to pull away, but her grip was steel, small though she was.

I am alone in a house with a brokenhearted and wrathful Medusa, I realized. And nobody knows I’m here.

Close your eyes. I didn’t know why, but I clamped them shut.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tried to keep my voice even. “I’m trying to find Pearl. I came to see if you could tell me how she seemed before she left.”

“She loved me.” Miss Stella’s voice caught plaintively. “As a daughter loves a mother. She was ready to die to defend me.”

Still her grip held my wrist with supernatural strength.

Her words made no sense, but her intentions were crystal clear.

If I screamed, would anyone hear?

“Miss Stella,” I said gently, “would you please let me go?”

She yanked me closer. “Look at me.”

I heard her snakes hissing. I felt her sour breath on my face.

I turned my face away, but she grabbed my chin and yanked it back. “Look at me.”

The shock of fear felt like falling into cold water. This couldn’t be real.

“Why do you want to hurt me?” I wept. “What have I done to you?”

“You’ve robbed me,” she whispered. “How do I know you haven’t murdered Pearl?”

Such nonsense was unanswerable. “How have I robbed you? I would never hurt Pearl.” My voice was a plea if my words were not. Come to your senses, ma’am. “If I did… those things you said, why would I come back here?”

“Look at me.”

“No, Miss Stella,” I told her. “I don’t dare.”

She released my wrist and attacked my face with clawed hands, scratching at my eyes.

That one instant’s release let me throw my weight backward.

I stumbled back and tripped on something.

I fell hard on the floor, landing painfully on my tailbone.

Miss Stella fell with me, crying out as her bird-weight body landed atop mine.

Even as I fell, I managed to turn my head away, away.

My head fell back and hit the floor, and my eyes flew open.

I found myself face-to-face with the decapitated stone head and terrified face of the pimp and brothel strongman Joe.

She’d killed him. Like a Medusa from ancient times, she had turned him to stone.

Look at me, she’d said. If I’d clung to any doubt, now it was clear. She would kill me, too.

God, save me.

I clamped my eyes shut once more and heaved a disoriented Miss Stella off me, then stumbled to my feet and over more debris—more heads, more bodies—till I found the wall, the door, the stairs, and the downstairs entryway, and raced away to the sound of an old woman imprecating curses upon me for depriving her of her beloved daughter—her daughter ! — Pearl.