Read Online Hard Light by Elizabeth Hand - Free Book Online Page A

into the sun. I could see it in the girl’s eyes, coruscating crimson within those turquoise irises, and in the nuclear-bomb glow of her bare arms and throat. Mostly I saw it in the dance of sun and skin and silk around her breasts, where her slip shimmered like a net filled with bioluminescence. You can’t get that effect with digital—it’s dependent on the granularity of film, the physical interaction of light with ferrous salts and gold chloride and glass or paper.
    The image was disturbing. Morven seemed barely past puberty. It reminded me of the notorious original cover art for the Blind Faith album—a nude shot of a very young teenage girl, heavy-lidded and with Pre-Raphaelite curls, holding a model airplane against a backdrop of blue sky and unnaturally green grass. A totally in-your-face photo. Polydor pulled it from the LP’s U.S. release in 1969. This Polaroid would have been taken just a few years later.
    I looked around and saw another photo propped on a shelf above the bed. Same vintage, same camera, same harsh sunlight: three young teenage girls with their arms around each other. One was Morven, dressed as in the other photo. The second had dark curly hair that obscured her face, so all I could see was a full-lipped grin. The third was tall, auburn-haired, her head turned as though someone had called to her from just outside the frame. The nagging sense of some lost, long-ago memory tugged at me, but I pushed it aside.
    I stepped away from the nightstand—Mallo’s side of the bed, to judge from the reading glasses set atop a copy of the Financial Times —and crossed to where the wall held three recessed doors. The first two opened onto his-and-hers walk-in closets. Despite his predilection for going barefoot, Mallo had twice as many shoes as his wife, most of them riffs on biker boots.
    Door number three opened on a bathroom that must have cost as much as a Tracey Emin nude. Heated terra-cotta tile floor. Gilt-framed mirrors on the wall. The twin sinks were Edwardian antiques retrofitted with nickel faucets. There were separate alcoves for toilet and bidet, and a celadon-tiled rain shower behind a glass wall. Bottles of Jo Malone bath scent, Orange Blossom and Pomegranate Noir.
    None of this interested me. I was looking for a medicine cabinet.
    There didn’t seem to be one. Glass shelves held towels and apothecary jars of soaps and toiletries, but I saw no cabinets. Maybe they kept medication in the bedroom?
    I wasn’t above rifling a gangster’s boudoir, but I wasn’t that desperate. Yet.
    I dumped my camera bag and returned to the wall beside one sink. I ran my hand across the wall, closing my eyes so I could focus on what was beneath my fingertips.
    About four inches from the backsplash, a vertical seam extended from the ceiling to the sink counter. I opened my eyes, splayed my hand across the wall, and pushed.
    A panel rotated outward, displaying an array of glass shelves, handily lit so I could see rows of prescription pill bottles and tubes of ointment. I picked up one bottle, turned to read the label, and in the mirror above the sink glimpsed a face. Not my own.

 
    10
    â€œWhat the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
    Mallo Dunfries’s soft voice might almost have been amused, but his face was bright pink, his bloodshot eyes icy gray. He strode across the room, grabbing my satchel in one hand and my throat in the other. The pill bottle clattered to the floor as he shoved me against the wall, pinning me there as he dug into my bag. Terror flooded me as I thought of the U.S. passport hidden in my boot.
    Mallo pulled the Swedish passport from my satchel, opened it, and stared at the photo. “Dagney Ahlstrand. You said you were Cass somebody.”
    â€œI am,” I choked. “That’s—”
    â€œShut up.”
    He rummaged in the bag until he found my wallet and driver’s license. “Cassandra F. Neary, New York,