Beatrice wasn’t sure if it was reason that made her do it, or instinct. But at the sight of the shadow foxes, she willed herself into her second shape. Rainbow colors shimmered around her as her body reformed…more quickly and with greater ease than it ever had before. She’d feared quite the opposite, considering her failed attempts at portal-summoning. But she was grateful to have been wrong, for in the next heartbeat the horde was upon them, trilling, yipping and howling.
Swarming the Jaguar knight, the foxes spared Beatrice little attention. The creatures’ own strange screams sounded almost human themselves, and quite nearly drowned out the tortured cries of their meal…though not nearly enough. She wished she could cover her ears, but she dare not change back just yet. Before long the screams were replaced with yowling roars, until those too were silenced. There was a chorus of crunching bones, and the scent of blood soaked the air.
When the foxes parted at last, the knight’s crumpled remains were revealed, little more than a bloodied feline skeleton. A strange darkness danced around it, like flames made of shadow, but it burned into the earth and faded before her eyes.
Beatrice turned from the sight, stomach churning, limbs trembling.
And then she heard a voice.
It issued, muffled and occasionally off-key, from somewhere above…a slight brogue purring at the edges of each indecipherable word.
Gray?
Glancing up, she saw through the tangle of rose vines that a lantern had been lit beyond the balcony door of what was—at least in the other world—her bedroom. A few of the shadow foxes still lingered in the vicinity, but they seemed perfectly docile now. So, returning to human form, she found her way to the house’s back entrance. Fighting through the tangles of thorny vines blocking the door, Beatrice managed to force it open. Then, snatching up the tattered remains of her skirts, she shoved herself through the narrow entrance.
Once inside, she stared about in bemusement and wonder, making her way to the central foyer. The house’s interior was a dreamlike patchwork of the familiar and the not. There were portraits she didn’t recognize of people she didn’t know, all hanging right alongside pieces she very much did, and there were even patches of painted wall right alongside the stone and the papered.
It was the same with the furniture, though she noticed that many of the pieces she did recognize looked almost brand-new despite the fact that they were most definitely at least a hundred years old. Oddest of all, there were many things which seemed to have blended together with other things. A fainting couch that was also piano, a still life of Jemison’s which Beatrice knew well, but the apples had become faces, the vessel from which they tumbled a voluminous dress.
Feeling her own vulnerability rather more intensely than usual, she stopped to take up a standing candelabra that was also part dinnerware—it’s three prongs ending in a fork, a knife, and a spoon respectively. Wielding it before her, she stepped forth quietly and listened in silence before every corner, inwardly praying that the Lord High Inquisitor did not await her ‘round its bend. But she didn’t encounter another soul, save a few more shadow foxes who paid her little mind. As she stepped foot off of the landing and onto her own floor, she heard the singing again for a moment before it abruptly ceased.
She hurried down the hall, and quite a lot of scrabbling and banging could be heard issuing from beyond the closed door of her bedroom. Flinging it open and brandishing her weapon, she found the chamber in disarray…the balcony door left ajar as a great deal more noise came from beyond it. Rushing over to the balcony, she peered down just in time to catch sight of a figure landing all too lightly upon the moss-drenched stone below. He glanced back up over his shoulder and caught her eye—a man dressed in old-fashioned clothes with a great sack slung over his shoulder. But he’d the head of a snow white fox…and the tail of one, too.
For half a heartbeat, he smirked up at her. Then he turned and dashed off, disappearing quickly amongst the inky hedgerows. She called after him, but he gave no response.
“What in all the heavens…” whispered Beatrice, staring at the place into which he’d vanished.
Well, that certainly wasn’t Gray. Not in any world.
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But that didn’t mean he wasn’t there somewhere. Resolving to search the entire estate from corner-to-closet, Beatrice set off, covering the rest of her level before heading for the opposite wing of the first. But upon reaching Gray’s library tower, she stopped short. The great spiraling floor that lead all the way to the tower’s top was fragmented, simply not there in several places. And where that was missing, so too were the books—revealing instead cobbled and mossy stone. The lift was gone as well, but the shaft in which it once perched was there still…a dark hole that looked as though it dropped away into nothingness.
Leaning over the pit, she called into it…again and again. But no one answered.
Perhaps this is not the only entrance into Gray’s chambers, she speculated. It would be terribly inconvenient for him if it were. And besides, she’d expected for a time that he had another lift elsewhere, allowing him access to all the other levels of the house. But even if it exists on this side of the mirror…it likely wouldn’t work without Darcy’s spirits and thralls to run everything.
Beatrice frowned, deciding she’d face that problem if and when she came to it. Resuming her sweep of the house, she opened every door she could find and even sought out hidden ones. But she discovered no secret lifts, no cleverly concealed doors. Only the chaos of room of after room that seemed to be jumbled and blended in time.
She saved the greenhouse for last, hesitating before the half-open ground floor entrance. If the Lord High Inquisitor were anywhere in the house, it would have to be there. Her one hope was that if he were, he’d be on the balcony above where she summoned the portal…giving her time to escape once he’d seen her.
Taking a deep breath, Beatrice edged around the door. And for one confusing moment she thought she’d stepped back outside. There were roses everywhere, climbing and growing all the way up to the grimy glass ceiling. But there was no balcony overhead. Only a mass of greenery and fragrant blossoms…and the bloodied remains that lay tangled in their heart.
She only saw it for an instant before whirling to wretch into the leaves. But from that one glimpse, she surmised the awful man had met a similar fate as his fellow inquisitor. She was halfway back out the door, however, when Beatrice thought of something she almost wished she hadn’t. With great difficulty, she forced herself to turn back, covering her eyes with one hand and looking through slightly parted fingers as she sought the inquisitor’s sword. It was far too valuable to let molder along with what was left of his corpse, even if she couldn’t properly wield it.
Setting aside the combination candelabra-dinnerware, she reached up and over the remains, her fingers slipping through blood as they sought the sword’s grip. Fighting not to vomit again, she dragged the weapon up and out of its scabbard. Then, hefting it before her, she made a hasty retreat.
Just outside the main front entrance, she found herself met with a view that, even in the faint pink moonlight, took her breath away. Misted mountains stretched into the distance, so like those of home…but covered entirely in hedgerows, with here and there a tower or roof rising beyond their grasp. But most noticeable of all was the orange glow of a bonfire on the mountain face directly opposite hers, and the great black column of smoke rising above it.
Could it be a signal from Gray? If so, she hated to think how long it might take her to get there. Drawing in a deep breath of smoky air, she called again for the Wolf mage, and again she had no answer save a few starry eyes glancing briefly her way. Then, circling the whole house, she shouted his name into the darkness…all the while fearing she might attract something with a far keener interest in her than the ubiquitous shadow foxes. But there was nothing and no one else to be found.
Utterly exhausted, Beatrice was unready to venture amongst the hedgerows and not sure where she’d begin if she did. So instead she returned to the chambers that both were and were not her own. Closing and locking all the doors, she lay the sword down beside the bed before rummaging through the armoire for something to wear that wasn’t shredded and stained with blood. Finding a shift that was half hers and half someone else’s, she cleaned herself off as best she could, changed into it, then collapsed onto her unevenly patchworked duvet.
She wasn’t sure yet what she would choose to do, but either way, she needed time. Time to rest and regain her energy should she wish to summon a portal home, time for light to come should she decide to venture further. But rest was especially hard to find in such a place and situation, and she felt at once terribly alone and terribly observed. What’s more, she was unable to stop thinking of the ravaged bodies nearby and of the unknown beyond. Of what beasts might lurk just outside in the twisting darkness of the labyrinth. So she merely lay awake in bed, clutching the mint-scented blankets close around her for comfort.
Over the course of what felt like many hours, the sky outside took on a hazy sort of light. Turning around in bed, she sat up and rubbed her bleary eyes. From the corner of her vision, she caught a hint of movement. Beatrice gasped, startled, then sighed in relief as she realized it had come from the reflection in the mirror across the room. But that relief turned acid-sour in her stomach as her vision adjusted and she saw that it was not her own reflection looking back at her at all, but something else entirely. Something which only vaguely resembled a person, featureless and composed of dripping, seething darkness. As she stared, frozen in terror, the thing grinned at her…revealing twin rows of dazzling daimond teeth.