Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alora only just managed to maneuver her way into Door Zero before the door closed with a resounding click. For all the world, it felt like a padlock had been secured from the outside. She tried not to dwell on it.
Her heart beat wild as a hummingbird’s, and she tried to keep her breaths silent.
Still, she thought surely they could hear both.
Merridon sat at his customary place behind the desk, his legs stretched out before him, and his head leaned back.
He spared one glance toward the door, where Alora now stood, and away again.
His eyes trained upon the ceiling, he threw a weathered ball into the air and caught it. Over and over again.
“Which son, Patrice?”
Alora’s eyes welled before she could quell it.
“Don’t take that long-suffering tone with me, Brother.
You don’t seem to remember most of the time that it is due to my responsibilities that Opulence runs so smoothly.
” When Merridon only scoffed, she continued, “It’s William.
And another transgression against Miss Pennigrim, I’ve come to find out. ”
The ball fell to the floor, and Merridon swung upright. “Against Miss Pennigrim? What has he done now?”
Alora’s mouth fell wider than it had already been since Madam Feebledire’s use of the word ‘brother’. There was concern in her tone, and it sounded genuine. What in the world?
“He attacked her while she was working behind Door Twenty-five. It seems as though he held certain aspirations for the two of them, which she didn’t reciprocate. Anyway, she struck him. He has a nasty head wound to go along with what his brother bestowed upon him, and his nose is cracked.”
“Did he now…” Merridon trailed off, his thumb and finger tracing the curve of his mustache. The silence stretched, one in which Alora didn’t dare breathe, certain they’d hear her. “Send the healer to him.”
“He’s already been.”
Merridon curled his lip as if offended by her forthright thinking, but he didn’t admonish her for it.
“Fine. I will speak to him once he’s rested.
Miss Pennigrim is without a doubt a strong, young woman, and quite a burgeoning success.
I hope she is well. See to it that she understands no further harm shall come to her while upon Opulence’s grounds.
Even though they’re far more temperamental as of late.
How that god-awful wind happened, I’d love to know. ”
Even Madam Feebledire appeared caught off guard by Merridon’s praise.
She blinked at him slowly, the wrinkle between her eyes growing more pronounced with time.
“I will see to it,” she said, at last. “As for the wind, the old man is probably dead now. That one who enchanted the estate. We will have to find another to fix the problem or adjust.” Madam Feebledire turned toward the door, which Alora panicked over and immediately lurched away from. But the older woman turned back.
“Marshall,” she began. “About Miss Pennigrim—”
“That’s enough, Patrice,” spat Merridon, with a fierceness that startled Madam Feebledire and Alora, both. “See that it’s done. All of it.”
Madam Feebledire allowed herself a loud huff, but nothing more, as she spun back toward the door and threw it open.
Alora had chosen the wrong side and was nearly struck by it.
She rushed to catch up with the head of management when she swept through the doorway.
The door closed all on its own at their backs.
“That insufferable man,” muttered Madam Feebledire.
“He thinks he can manage me like a lowly employee? I am his elder by six years. I used to change his soiled drawers. And now I am the one ordered about like a child? I think not.” She paused in the great hall, turning first one way and then the other.
“Where has that girl gotten to? I swear, if I have to search the place for her… If I so much as find her with a toe outside of where it should…”
A cold sweat formed on Alora’s palms. She ran to the front door, and while Madam Feebledire made to continue down into the depths of the corridor, Alora opened it, closed it, and took off her coat, all in a breath.
“Madam Feebledire,” she said. “I’ve a request.”
The woman jolted before turning on her heel. “Devil take me, girl. Where did you come from?”
Alora’s brow dipped in false befuddlement. “From just outside, of course. I’ve finished for the day and was only making sure I had everything accounted for. But I require transportation again. Tomorrow, in fact.”
Madam Feebledire nodded at this, her mind clearly occupied by other things. “Fine. I’ll arrange it. Leave me the name of the shop outside of which to meet you.”
“Thank you.”
“Another thing, Miss Pennigrim.”
“Yes?”
“I would like to formally apologize on behalf of Opulence Mansion for what has transpired between you and William. Master, specifically, would like it known that you are quite respected by him, and that no further harm shall come to you while upon our illustrious grounds.”
Alora had heard it all before, of course, but still, a breath of relief rushed past her lips. Madam Feebledire, for all her prickliness, seemed sincere. “Thank you, Madam Feebledire.”
The older woman said nothing more, waiting while Alora dug through her satchel until her fingers enclosed around an imagined card. She handed it over, the calligraphy reading Ichibald’s Fanciful Furnishings with an address printed in bold beneath. “This is the place.”
Madam Feebledire sniffed her understanding, and tucking the card into her vest pocket, said, “I don’t care if you can turn things to stone, Miss Pennigrim. Don’t stray from the lane.”
***
So Opulence management and its owner were both convinced of her enchantment.
Oh well. It wasn’t as if Merridon would find any use for it, and even if he could, she was bound and determined to refuse anything else he might offer her.
She’d never work for him again. Hell, if she got her way in the end, the whole of Enver would never see him again.
The wind whispered through the hedges like a heartfelt sigh, gusting overtop the topiaries.
Alora wondered what Merridon planned to do about it.
If he was sincerely angry over nature taking back control from what he’d commandeered for himself or not.
She allowed the breeze to play against her hair, closing her eyes to feel it better against her skin.
She hadn’t realized how stale the air had become within the grounds until it wasn’t.
For the first time, she wondered if the grass was even real.
She blinked open her eyes again upon nearing the bell. She reached up and rang it.
The gilded gate swung in, but not by any mechanism. Instead, it was pushed open by a guard. His painted face was strained against the effort, and he scowled at her when she only stood there. “Hurry up now! This gate isn’t made of twigs!”
Alora rushed through, and the gate shuddered closed behind her with a resonating ring. She glanced at the lever, still bent in an unusable angle, and the metalsmiths at work over it. The branch had been cleared away.
She pondered over whether she should fix it herself—it was her fault it was broken to start—but decided against it. She’d made too many attention-acquiring choices today and couldn’t afford another one. She pulled the hood of her Opulence cloak over her hair and continued on.
Around the bend in the lane, she came upon the first enchanted sign.
One that would stay alight no matter the time or weather, warning passerby with a jaunty script and bright display.
She paused before it, examining the silver-tipped ferns beyond, and the white trees beyond those.
Her fingers tapped a quick rhythm against her thighs.
She searched for eyes. For specter wolves. The Urchin captain had said he’d killed six of the creatures and she’d turned two to stone, though she didn’t know whether they would return to the world alive or dead should she wish them as they were. She squinted harder, but nothing stared back at her.
Somewhere inside Renwick was a path. A shortcut between Opulence and Enver, and a way for Urchins to come and go and patrol as required.
Who said, aside from this sign and Madam Feebledire, that she could not use it too?
Her hand came up to brush against her ear, the scar left there from a mistake in her choice of weapons.
Or perhaps that night came about as it was meant to.
As fine as the Urchin captain might have looked as stone, she much preferred him alive and breathing against her, his fingers holding pressure to her wound.
None of which would have happened if she’d turned him into a rock.
Of course, he wouldn’t have been mauled by wolves then.
Her chest hitched at the memory of his weight, his voice against her neck. “You didn’t try very hard to live, did you? You didn’t listen to me.” But that was unfair. He’d lost so much blood.
She tugged off the ugly cloak and tucked it away.
In its place, she shrugged on her lovely enchanted coat; it was a more breathable fabric than the last creation.
She studied the sign serving as a reminder that, while the forest was by no means private property, it was still controlled by Opulence. Well, to hell with that.
Your rules protect none but yourselves. She glowered, and in the next breath imagined the sign dismantled. It fell to the forest floor in a pile of gilded wood chippings. There, now she disobeyed nothing. She walked overtop them and into the trees.
The path created in the woods wasn’t wide, but it was well-used.
Alora didn’t find so much as a root as she weaved through the white forest. She thought over when she was last here, or attempted to, her memory from that day blurry and faded with the concoction William had fed her.
Mostly, what she remembered was a feeling, one that if not satisfied, she’d thought would surely kill her.
The devastation had been so real, the desire to feel the high again so pronounced, it was little wonder members returned every night to chase it.
Did Merridon relay all these side effects to every patron at the door? She sincerely doubted his honor.
A butterfly flitted past her nose, and Alora paused to see what it wished from her. When it landed on her shoulder, folding its wings in a contented sort of way, she felt the tiniest beginnings of a smile. “You don’t fear the forest, do you? Merridon is a con man, indeed.”
Still, specter wolves were a very real thing, and she kept her eyes alert for any sign of a moon-white gaze.
Dusk neared; she could sense its creeping feel as she’d become trained to fear its encroachment toward Opulence.
She also hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast. Her stomach protested this development loudly now, though everything else within her wanted nothing less.
She contained too much inside her to make room for a meal.
If only she could slit her veins, a bloodletting that would sieve the poison that was the mansion and all its secrets from her insides.
Her body felt abuzz with it. She could feel the vibration in her chest, blooming outward until it reached her toes and fingertips.
She glanced down at herself, wondering if she could see it. Sure she could hear it.
Wait.
She could.
Alora spun a circle, eyes darting amongst the trees.
She could see nothing but foliage and shadow on the forest floor, nothing but stark bark in line with her vision, but then she lifted her gaze and stilled.
Nests of white paper lined the high boughs.
They were cone-shaped, and larger than her head, and from inside, a buzzing so incessant that it resounded within her.
“Did you know there were bees here?” she asked the butterfly. The creature only twitched its antennae in reply, unperturbed.
She couldn’t remember them, couldn’t recall feeling their buzzing inside her when taking this path once before.
But she’d been drugged and distracted, and it made sense she’d not noticed it then.
She’d almost missed it now. It was a relaxed sort of buzzing, she thought.
A note that didn’t sound especially loud or aggressive.
She glanced to the opposite side of the path, scanning the boughs there until she discovered more.
A small rustle drew her attention to the forest floor and a chipmunk bounded along a fallen limb.
“Bees and butterflies and chipmunks. What a treacherous place,” she mused with healthy sarcasm.
She wondered if this was where Bash had ventured to collect his bones.
If he wandered out here, donned in black from head to foot, cloaked in shadow to mimic the dark.
If his face would be covered to hide from whoever might witness him, even if those things were only chipmunks.
If he would move silently so as not to alert his prey.
Alora imagined it all and faltered.
No.
She doubled over, retching. Through watering eyes and a tender throat, she wheezed, “No. No, it can’t be.”
“And you are not?”
“I am not prone to it.”
The memory returned, skipping and repeating like some broken record before it finally transformed from blurred remembrance to a new one, plain as the present.
“Maybe I’m an obsessive type, after all.”
The sudden despair caught and swept her up, a dizzying maelstrom that drained the contents from her stomach and from her head until only one thought remained. It pounded away like a malevolent tumor. She trembled all over.
It wouldn’t be true. She’d hurry to Potions and Peculiarities, and she’d find it open. She’d find Bash at the worn counter dallying over ledgers, or she’d find him at the back boiling some foul-tasting elixir for his cabinet. She wouldn’t find it closed. She wouldn’t find him gone.
“Hold tight,” she whispered to the butterfly.
She didn’t think of it until later, that it could see her.