considering the situation. “It might be a breach of protocol to go wandering around the castle uninvited.”
“It might also be a breach of protocol to install me in a room where we can be spied upon,” I said. “I’m sure Amarantha carefully considered which guest room to put us in.”
Beezle clapped his hands together. “An offense for an offense—just the stuff successful negotiations are made of. Let’s go. If you could talk your way out of the last mess, I’m sure you can talk your way out of this one.”
I didn’t need any further encouragement. My curiosity overrode propriety. I wanted to know where the tunnels went. We walked into the surprisingly well-lit corridor. Lamps burned every few feet, and the stone floors were sparkling clean. There wasn’t a cobweb in sight. This was not the haunted passage of those old movies that Beezle loved.
Before I swung the door closed I realized we should have some way of knowing which door was mine, and also how to reopen the door from the corridor.
“Beezle, run and grab my lipstick from my makeup bag,” I said.
“You mean the lipstick that you spent twenty-five dollars on and never use?” Beezle asked.
“Just get it and keep your comments to yourself,” I said.
I examined the exterior of the door while Beezle flew back in the room on his errand. There was a small lever at doorknob height, built flat into the door. There was just enough room under the lever to slide my fingers and pull it out. As I did, I heard a click. Easy-peasy.
Beezle flew back to me and wordlessly handed the lipstick out. I closed the door and then drew a line just above the lever with my lipstick. Hopefully it was small enough to go unseen by anyone walking this way. No matter what I told Beezle, I really didn’t think Amarantha would tolerate another offense from me so soon after the last one.
The corridor stretched out in both directions with no defining features or useful signs, like “Watchtower this way” or “Ballroom on the next level.” I’d tried to pay attention to where we were taken but the castle had such a profusion of floors and twisting stairs that maintaining any sense of north-south orientation had been impossible.
With no clues to go on, I decided to go right. I remembered vaguely something that I’d read in a historical novel once. The characters had been attempting to negotiate a maze, and one character had said that if you always turned right when possible, you would reach the heart of the maze.
I didn’t know if turning right continuously would take me to the heart of the castle, but at least it would make getting back easier. I would just turn left until I found my corridor again.
We’d only gone a few feet when I heard Nathaniel’s voice. I stopped for a moment and looked guiltily around before I realized the voice was coming from his room. I crept closer, pressing my ear to the wall. Beezle gave me the big what-the-heck-are-you-doing eyes. I waved him away.
“Yes, of course. This delay won’t change anything. No, Lord Azazel is not aware of any of this. He has no inkling.”
Interesting. So Nathaniel was sneaking around Azazel’s back. But what was he up to?
“Do you take me for an idiot? I can handle her,” Nathaniel said angrily. “I said, I can handle her.”
Her? Who was he talking about? Me? Amarantha? Or some other player in whatever scheme he was involved in?
“I will speak to you tomorrow,” he said firmly. I heard the push-button tone as he clicked off his cell phone.
I waited a few minutes longer but he didn’t make any more illicit phone calls and I heard nothing more interesting than the shifting of mattress springs. I yielded to Beezle’s insistent gesturing and continued down the corridor. We turned right when we reached the end and only then did we feel it was safe to talk in whispers.
“What in the four hells did you do that for?” Beezle asked. “How do you know Nathaniel doesn’t know about the secret doors? You could have been caught.”
“I’d be surprised if Nathaniel knows about the doors. He doesn’t strike me as observant generally.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the sort to sneak around on Azazel, either,” Beezle retorted. “I didn’t think he had the stones.”
“I know. He always seems like the world’s biggest kiss-ass.”
We walked along for a while, turning right when the opportunity presented itself and going down stairs when we found them.
We heard nothing more exciting that the gossip of servants, which seemed to be everywhere. It made sense, I guess, that a castle of this size would need a lot of people to run it.
Amarantha seemed universally revered, which was surprising. Most monarchs would have managed to sow at least some discontent in a one-thousand-plus-year reign. Lady Violet, on the other hand, was despised by pretty much everyone. She “acted above her station,” made unnecessary demands and in general behaved as though she were the queen of the castle, not Amarantha.
I managed to avoid detection by the servants by putting out my wings whenever I heard footsteps approaching. Beezle would hover up near the ceiling out of sight.
My wings were far too large and unwieldy to leave out, though, even folded on my back. A couple of times I’d had to hold my breath as I pressed up against the wall while a faerie passed by. I ran my finger inside the rather snug waistband of my skirt. Maybe Beezle was right. Maybe I did need to take up jogging or something.
We had just about decided that we’d pushed our luck long enough when we heard the wolf howling.
It sounded like it was in horrible pain. I started to run down the corridor in the direction of the sound. We reached a T-junction.
“Where?” I asked, looking left and right.
Beezle flew up behind me, panting with exertion. Talk about someone who needed an exercise program.
“I think it’s outside,” he panted. “Try to get into one of the main rooms.”
I sprinted for the first door that I saw and opened it. Shelves stacked with bread and cheese and hanging meat surrounded us. We were in some kind of larder. I pushed out the door on the other side and surprised several faeries working in the kitchen.
“Outside door?” I asked.
A faerie pointed wordlessly at a heavy oak door on the other side of the kitchen. The wolf’s howls grew louder, more anguished, and suddenly the howls of the other wolves rang out inside the castle.
I pushed open the door and emerged into the darkness of full night. The forest that surrounded the castle loomed above the outer walls. I listened for a moment to the sound of howls now growing faint, and turned left. The wolf was dying. I could feel it.
I turned the corner on the castle and was suddenly knocked back by a powerful shock wave. For the third time I was struck by a sense of wrongness, a sense that this was outside the natural order of things. It was the feeling I associated with Ramuell, and I knew the wolf was already dead.
I didn’t have time to think or to protect myself as the shock wave hit, and I felt my magic wink out in an instant.
Great. Now I was totally helpless and surrounded by enemies, and the wolf was beyond help. But I could still try to discover the identity of its attacker. I knew one thing for sure—this was the same creature that had killed the other wolves. The shock wave confirmed that.
The darkness made it hard to see, and my lack of magic meant that I couldn’t conjure up a ball of flame to light my way. Amarantha had lit the catwalks with torches, but here on the ground everything was swathed in shadow. Beezle puffed and panted behind me. The wolf had long since stopped crying, and the howls of the other wolves had ceased.
I ran forward blindly and tripped, flew a few feet and landed on my face in the dirt. Dirt and other things. Thank goodness my mouth was closed.
I came to my knees and looked around in the faint light. The same scene of carnage that had greeted me twice before was here. The coppery smell of blood filled the air.
“Dammit,” I said to Beezle. “How many times are we going to be too late?”
“A question I have asked myself, as well, Madeline Black,” a rumbling voice said behind me.
