Lips Touch: Three Times by Lips Touch; Three Times

you!" he cried
    101
    when Pranjivan opened the door to him. With feigned solicitude
Vasudev asked, "Is Memsahib feeling unwell today?"
    Pranjivan gave him his customary stony stare and said,
"Memsahib is very busy and sends word she will come tomorrow at the usual
time."
    Vasudev laughed out loud. "She hasn't missed a day's descent
to Hell since Yama foisted her on me. Not for any illness, not for anything!
Busy? My teeth, Pranjivan, lying beggar that you are. If she isn't dying, she'd
better come tell me so herself."
    Pranjivan didn't even blink. "Have you brought Memsahib's
tonic?" he asked.
    What Vasudev resented most about the factotum was his stolidness.
Even Estella could be made to wince and scowl, but Pranjivan, never. His face
may as well have been cast in an expressionless mold. The demon found it
extremely unrewarding. Reluctantly he produced the flask and handed it over.
"Not that she'll need it," he said. "I imagine the next time I
see dear Estella in Hell it will be her soul alone, drawn like a moth to the
flames, just like any other pathetic human."
    Pranjivan started to shut the door in Vasudev's face and the demon
blurted, "And I wager she'll have a whole lot of British company on her
way, do you hear me? I'll see that curse through yet!"
    The door snicked shut. Vasudev stamped his foot and hollered,
"That girl's going to speak! Do you hear me? Any time now her voice is
going to burst out of her like a tornado and I'm going to win! She's in love,
Pranjivan old devil! Do you hear? A girl will do crazy things for love. Just
ask Estella -- she went to Hell for it!"
    There was no answer from within and Vasudev was left standing at
the servants' entrance, breathing fast through gritted teeth. "Damn
    102
    Pranjivan," he muttered, giving up and going away, trying to
console himself by dreaming up grim deaths for the beggar once Estella was
finally dead and not there to protect him. Something painful, he
thought.
    Something excruciating.
    103
    EIGHT The Stolen Shadow
    A namique's eighteenth birthday party was the following evening.
In his rooms, James slid a small velvet ring box into his pocket, put on his
dinner jacket, and took a deep breath. He couldn't afford much in the way of a
diamond, much as he couldn't really afford to support a wife, especially a
privileged heaven-born daughter like Anamique. It was madness, surely, but of
all the madness he had known, it was the sweetest. He patted his pocket and set
out.
    He had just bought flowers and was walking past the Palace of the
Winds when a man loomed up before him, tall, Indian, severe. For a moment James
thought he must be a cutthroat, he had such a look of intensity -- almost
savagery -- in his eyes, but then he recognized him by his fine English suit.
Here was the factotum of the widow called "the old bitch," the one
who had filled Anamique's head with fear and nonsense and blighted her young life
with silence.
    "What do you want, man?" James asked him, drawing
himself up to his full height, which, he was pleased to see, was a bit taller
than the Indian's.
    "Do you love the girl?" Pranjivan asked.
    104
    "It's no business of yours," said James, his voice
dropping to a growl.
    "If you love her, you can love her silence too."
    "Love her silence? What is this? Some kind of a
game?"
    "It is a game, but not a funny one. It's a demon's game, and
if you encourage the girl to speak, you encourage her to kill you, and the
demon wins. I especially wish the demon not to win."
    "Demon?" James said. "Are you mad? There are no
demons. There are no curses. There are only vicious jokes and vile people,
tormenting an innocent girl!"
    Pranjivan shook his head and said, "Are you really so
certain? Would you look at a rock in a field and claim no cobra lies beneath it
because you can't see it?"
    "And what is it I can't see? Demons?"
    "You can see demons."
    James looked around him at the throng of camels and rickshaws and
stern turbaned men with twirled mustaches. He cocked an