The Return: Shadow Souls

“In my parents’ day, it was common to hide your wealth somewhere on your estate — and to keep the knowledge of its hiding place strictly to the owners. Of course, my father, as a designer and trader in jewels, had more to hide than most people knew of. He had a wonderful room that seemed to me something like Aladdin’s cave. It was his workshop, where he kept his raw gems as well as finished pieces that had been commissioned or that he designed for my mother or out of his imagination.”

“And no one ever found that?” Meredith said. There was just the slightest tinge of skepticism in her voice.

“If anyone did, I never heard about it. Of course, they could have gotten the knowledge out of my father or mother, in time — but the general was not a meticulous and patient vampire or kitsune, but a rough and impatient demon. He killed my parents as he stormed through the house. It never occurred to him that I, a child of fourteen, might share the knowledge.”

“But you did…” Bonnie whispered, fascinated, taking the story where it had to go.

“But I did. And I do now.”

Elena gulped. She was still trying to stay calm, to be more like Meredith, to maintain a cool head. But just as she opened her mouth to be coolheaded, Meredith said, “What are we waiting for?” and jumped to her feet.

Lady Ulma seemed to be the most tranquil person there. She also seemed slightly bewildered and almost timid. “You mean that we should ask our master for an audience?”

“I mean that we should go out there and get those jewels!” Elena exclaimed. “Although, yes, Damon would be a big asset if there’s anything that takes strength to lift. Sage, too.” She couldn’t understand why Lady Ulma wasn’t more excited.

“Don’t you see?” Elena said, her mind racing. “You can have your household back again! We can do our best to fix it up the way it was when you were a child. I mean, if that’s what you want to do with the money. But I’d love, at least, to see the Aladdin’s cave!”

“But — well,” Lady Ulma seemed suddenly distressed. “I had meant to ask Master Damon for another favor — although the money from the jewels might help with that.”

“What is it that you want?” Elena said as gently as she could. “And you don’t need to call him Master Damon. He freed you days ago, remember?”

“But surely that was just a — a celebration of the moment?” Lady Ulma still looked puzzled. “He didn’t make it official at the Servile Offices or anything, did he?”

“If he didn’t it’s because he didn’t know!” Bonnie cried out at the same time as Meredith said, “We don’t really understand the protocol. Is that what you need to do?”

Lady Ulma seemed able only to nod her head. Elena felt humble. She guessed that this woman, a slave for more than twenty-two years, must find true freedom difficult to believe in.

“Damon meant it when he said we were all free,” she said, kneeling by Lady Ulma’s chair. “He just didn’t know all the things he had to do. If you tell us, we can tell him, and then we can all go to your old estate.”

She was about to get up again, when Bonnie said, “Something’s wrong. She isn’t as happy as she was before. We have to find out what it is.”

By opening her psychic perceptions a bit, Elena could tell that Bonnie was right. She stayed where she was, kneeling by Lady Ulma’s chair.

“What is it?” she said, because the woman seemed to bare her soul most when she, Elena, asked the questions.

“I had hoped,” Lady Ulma said slowly, “that Master Damon might buy…” She flushed, but struggled on. “Might find it in his heart to buy one more slave. The…the father of my child.”

There was a moment of perfect silence, and then all three girls were talking, all three, Elena guessed, trying frantically to do what she herself was working at, which was not mentioning that she had assumed Old Drohzne was the father.

But of course he couldn’t be, Elena scolded herself. She’s happy about this pregnancy — and who could be happy to have a child by a disgusting monster like Old Drohzne? Besides, he didn’t have a clue that she might be pregnant — and didn’t care.

“It might be easier said than done,” Lady Ulma said, when the babble of reassurances and questions had died down a little. “Lucen is a jeweler, a renowned man who creates pieces that…that remind me of my father’s. He will be expensive.”

“But we’ve got Aladdin’s cave to explore!” Bonnie said gleefully. “I mean, you’ll have enough if you sell off the jewelry, right? Or do you need more?”

“But that is Master Damon’s jewelry,” Lady Ulma said, seeming horrified. “Even if he did not realize it when he inherited all of Old Drohzne’s property, he became my owner, and the owner of all my property….”

“Let’s go get you freed and then we’ll take things one step at a time,” Meredith said in her firmest and most rational voice.

Dear Diary,

Well, I am writing to you still as a slave. Today we freed Lady Ulma, but decided that Meredith and Bonnie and I should remain “personal assistants.” This is because Lady Ulma said Damon would seem odd and unfashionable if he didn’t have several beautiful girls as courtesans.

There is actually an upside to this, which is that as courtesans we need to have beautiful clothes and jewelry all the time. Since I’ve been wearing the same pair of jeans ever since that b*st*rd Old Drohzne sliced up the pair I wore into this place, you can imagine that I’m excited.

But, truly, it’s not just because of pretty clothes I’m excited. Everything that happened since we freed Lady Ulma and then went to her old estate has been a wonderful dream. The house was run down, and obviously the home of wild animals who used it as a lavatory as well as a bedroom. We even found the tracks of wolves and other animals upstairs, which led to the question of whether werewolves live in this world. Apparently they do, and some in very high positions under various feudal lords. Maybe Caroline would like to try a vacation here to learn about the real werewolves though — they’re said to hate humans so much that they won’t even have human or vampire (once human) slaves.

But back to Lady Ulma’s house. Its foundation is of stone and it’s paneled inside with hardwood, so the basic structure is fine. The curtains and tapestries are all hanging in shreds, of course, so it’s sort of spooky to go inside with torches and see them dangling above and around you. Not to mention the giant spiderwebs. I hate spiders more than anything.

But we went inside, with our torches seeming like smaller versions of that giant crimson sun that always sits on the horizon, staining everything outside the color of blood, and we shut the doors and lit a fire in a giant fireplace in what Lady Ulma calls the Great Hall. (I think it’s where you eat or have parties — it has an enormous table on a dais at one side, and a room for minstrels above what must be the dance floor. Lady Ulma said that this is where the servants all sleep at night, too (the Great Hall, not the minstrel gallery).

Then we went upstairs, where we saw — I swear — several dozen bedrooms with very large four-poster beds that are going to need new mattresses and sheets and coverlets and hangings, but we didn’t stay to look around. There were bats hanging from the ceiling.

We headed for Lady Ulma’s mother’s workroom. It was a very large room where at least forty people could sit and sew the clothes that Lady Ulma’s mother designed. But here’s the exciting part!

Lady Ulma went to one of the wardrobes in the room and moved away all the tattered, moth- eaten clothes that were in it. And she pressed some different places at the back of the cupboard and the whole back of the cupboard slid out! Inside it was a very narrow stairway going straight down!

I kept thinking about Honoria Fell’s crypt and wondering if some homeless vampire might have taken up residence in the room downstairs, but I knew that was silly because there were spiderwebs just inside the door. Damon still insisted that he go down first because he has the best eyesight in the dark, but I think the truth is that he was just curious to see what was down there.

We each followed him one at a time, trying to be careful with the torches, and…well, I can’t find the right words for what we discovered. For just a few minutes I was disappointed because everything on the big table down there was dusty rather than sparkly, but then Lady Ulma began to gently brush jewels off with a special cloth and Bonnie found sacks and packages and she poured them out — and it was like pouring out a rainbow! Damon found a cabinet where there were drawers and drawers of necklaces, bracelets, rings, armlets, anklets,