So, in the interests of getting out alive and with mental eardrums intact, they had carefully torn a page out of Bianca's personal journal and argued in low whispers over what to write. In the end, simplicity won out over everything else.

  As stealthily as he could, Jinkies slipped up to the ghost's writing desk and deposited the letter on it. At first, the librarian did not seem to notice, until an ethereal hand brushed up against it as she turned a page. She paused, turned, and stared at the errant piece of paper with weeping black eyes. Then, with great delicacy, she added a line of her strange, cobwebby letters to it.

  Uncle passed the note, with his semi-legible scribble, back to the two freckle-faces. "Okay," he said. "This might be the oddest diplomacy check I've seen in a long while, but it worked. We're going to pretend to pass notes back and forth, or else this will take forever. You can ask her five questions. Make them good ones, and try not to tick her off."

  "What's she doing in the library?" asked Cynthia.

  "This is where she died, doing research for her lord and lady."

  "...what sort of research?" Katelyn asked, her voice almost at normal volume.

  "Hmm..." Uncle mused on that. "She's reluctant to say, er, write about it, but it was mostly life spells for the mistress and darker magic for the master. Sometimes the other way around, too. She doesn't know what the point of it was, however."

  "What happened to everything here?" Cynthia continued.

  "She's not sure, but either something went terribly wrong, or something went even more terribly right."

  "...when did it happen?"

  "At the stroke of midnight, while she was doing some light reading."

  "No, er..." Cynthia paused. "How long ago did it happen?"

  Uncle shrugged. "Hard to say. Ghosts don't keep calendars, but she does say there were a lot of people sheltering there because of the invasion from the northeast. Katelyn, roll for a knowledge check. History. Circumstance bonus +5 because your princess proved she knew something related a few adventures ago."

  The quiet girl took up her violet d20 and gave it a nervous roll that hardly went anywhere before it teetered to a stop. The number 16 came up on top.

  He could've added in all the bonuses, but it really wouldn't have mattered. "Bianca realizes that this must have happened during the Palachkit wars, about a hundred years ago."

  "Okay!" said Cynthia. "Now, we'll ask about--"

  Uncle cut her off. "No can do. Five questions, remember? Pathya is already looking agitated, so unless you want more brain cells dribbling from your ears, I'd be careful."

  "Just one more?"

  "Nope."

  "Pleeeeeeze?"

  "Nuh-uh."

  "Not even 'Where's the exit?' Betcha she wouldn't mind seeing us leave."

  Blink, blink, went his eyes."Well, since you put it that way... On the back of the paper, Pathya draws a rough map of the manor, with the main hall clearly marked. Now, scram; you're bothering her."

  Shelby had her hand up while the rest of her body slouched. "Can we get to my princess now?" she whined.

  "Of course," he said. "So, last we saw of Princess Selvi, she was out cold, laid low by that raging ruminant, that antlered abomination, that ferocious force of hyperborian hideousness known as the northern moose. Or at least its nose..."

  "Yeah, yeah, rub it in..."

  "But, fortunately for us," Uncle concluded, "this gives us the opportunity to hear about that bad dream that you wriggled out of telling us earlier."

  The scowl Shelby sent his way was worthy of a princess, and probably should have gotten her some extra points for role-playing. The girl broke it off with a snort and said, "Fine, whatever."

  For the second time that day, Selvi Khan's-daughter found herself in the throes of unconsciousness, and she was enjoying it about as much as she had before. She wandered through a dark, clingy fog, with nothing really visible, not even the ground beneath her feet. Then there was a wall of mist, solid and billowing with a titan's breath. Before her eyes, the flowing surface became sharp and reflective, until she was staring in a mirror as solid as a cloud. Another her waited in that reflection, at first identical but then suddenly turning bigger, larger, stronger, with muscles and tusks more in keeping with a pure orcish heritage. Selvi shrank before this image of herself, not quite afraid but certainly in awe. This was everything she would want to be, after all: to be strong and fierce with none of the human frailties holding her back.

  At some point, she realized that her image wasn't growing, but that she was shrinking. Her hands, no longer calloused and tough, ran over her face and found a straightened nose, a rounder jawline, and no jutting teeth. The Selvi on that side had become the orc, but the Selvi on this side had become the human. Her armor weighed heavily on her shoulders, and she could not find the strength to draw her scimitar.

  The orc who was she had no such problem, had her blade lead the way as she stepped through that wall of mirrored mist to tower over her human side. A gauntleted hand slapped her, then gripped her by the throat and lifted her off the unseen ground. She tried to escape, to kick and hit and scream until she let herself go, but that orcish strength stopped the breath in her throat.

  No matter how she willed it, she could not prevent her body from going slack, from succumbing to the inevitable as darkness closed in and chased the light of life away. The last thing she saw was the flicker of hatred in her other self's eyes.

  And then she was awake, coughing and sputtering. Her neck ached, and she could almost feel those armored fingers digging into it still. Scrambling to her feet, she tried to make sense of her surroundings. The crazy corridor with its godsforsaken paintings was gone, and by the looks of it Selvi was far removed from where it had been, for the walls here were stone and mortar instead of wood. She sniffed at the air, breathing in the moist, earthy scents of a cellar or some other underground space.

  How much time had passed? Not much, she reckoned, as one of Bianca's little magic lights still bobbed along near her. It wasn't very bright, but it worked well enough with her eyes.

  She stepped past rows of wine casks, most now burst or leaking. Their sour smell was faintly detectable in the dust her boots kicked up. Selvi kept a hand on the hilt of her scimitar, while on her back the longsword called Starsinger was a comfortable weight.

  Through a stone arch, she reached what might have been a room for guards. Certainly, its floor was strewn with bits of armor and rusted blades. Here and there, some bones remained where they'd fallen.

  "Ancestors..." Selvi muttered to herself as she carefully made her way across the room to the stairs beyond. The dust here smelled of many things besides wine, things which even the long years couldn't quite erase. She preferred to imagine that all the red mixed in with the dirt was only rust.

  -shuf- It wasn't a loud noise that caught her attention, but in the silence any mouse might roar like a lion born. It was the faintest hint of dust grinding against dust, but it made her turn to see--

  To see vague forms rising up from the dust, outlines of men in armor, four in all. She dashed for the stairs, only to be caught by a fifth. Its sword, though no more than a shape in the air, still cut at her, cut through her armor and hit her soul with a pain that was all too real.

  Her scimitar snaked out, slashing at these shadows of the dead, but its steel slipped through them like a butterfly's whisper, and about as effectively. This did not discourage her from trying, and she hacked and slashed with wild abandon as the five surrounded her. She took more hits, painful despite their ephemeral nature. Selvi barreled through the nearest shadow, head down and charging like a steppe bison, and while she passed through easily, it was hardly pleasant. The shock of soul-chilling cold forced her to stumble and fall, and the longsword slipped from its place on her back.

  Selvi flailed her arms, trying to grab the blade as it fell, but it was not her hand which caught it. A gauntlet, glowing ruddy bronze in the darkness, held the Starsinger aloft, and the half-orc princess's eyes followed up that armored limb to a chest emblazoned with an eagle in flight gripping a red rose in its talons.

  Her brain snapped into focus. The eagle was a golden condor, a bird held in great esteem by the clans of the high grass. Selvi sought out the face of this newcomer, but already they had turned to face the five shadow guards. With a single great swing, the Starsinger sliced through the closest two, and this time it was no whisper, but rather the scream of some great bird of prey. Twice more the blade cried out, and then the shadows were returned to the red dust below.

  Only then did this stranger turn to face Selvi Khan's-daughter. Their glowing armor was plate-and-chain, as was common in the west, but its lines resembled more the style of the khanate. This person's skin was pale, however, and freckles shone upon her face, across an upturned nose. It was a familiar face, one that she'd last seen severed from the rest of its body by her own scimitar. One green eye winked playfully beneath a shock of red hair, and then this unexpected phantom disappeared, vanishing as if she were never there.

  "Rosina...?" Selvi whispered in the now-empty darkness, not believing her own eyes. It wasn't until a little later that she realized the sword was gone, too.

  "What the fu...." Shelby's mouth almost outran her brain, but thankfully the little grey cells made a mad dash and won the race before she could finish. "Uhhh... um... udge," she said lamely, all too aware of how Señora Hernandez's eyes were burning behind her. "That's what we need. Peanut butter fudge with chocolate chips. I'll see if I can get Mom to help me make some for next week."

  "Nice save," Uncle teased, and the girl's cheeks turned even darker with a blush. "And you asked for something cool to happen, but you left the specifics up to me. I do aim to confuse."

  "So are you gonna 'splain what just happened?" Shelby fumed.

  "Nope."

  "Aw, c'mon!"

  "Nuh-uh. Gotta save interesting plot points for a later date. How else am I going to keep you coming back for more, hm?" Uncle chuckled. "All joking aside, maybe next week. Right now, you ladies need to find a way out of your current predicament." He moved Princess Selvi's chess piece around. "Those stairs lead back up to the main part of the manor, and everyone else should be near the front hall by now, so let's move on..."

  Selvi's breathing was ragged as she reached the top of he steps. That fight against the shadows had been far too one-sided, and her body felt as weak as a kitten. She prayed that it would pass soon, but for now her knees shook at the exertion from a simple flight of stairs. To push on after that seemed a certain way to court collapse from exhaustion, so she just sat on the floor and waited.

  A pair of big fancy doors cracked open, and Cassie slipped through with her cousin in tow. Never had the khan's daughter been happier to see a pair of living souls, and she croaked a greeting at them.

  "Selvi, is that you?" Cassie called out. The two ran over and propped her up before she could fall over completely.

  "No sign of injury," Isabel reported.

  "Shades," said Selvi, her voice barely a whisper. "No marks, but still hit hard. Feeling weak..."

  The moon princess had her holy scepter raised high, waving it in wobbly circles in the air. "Moon's Restoring Light," came the litany. Streamers of glittery specks showered down upon them, and each little grain of moonlight soothed Selvi's aches and pains. Soon she almost felt back to normal.

  "Thanks," she said.

  "Um, no hard feelings?" asked Isabel nervously.

  Selvi had the strength to glare at her now, and the ex-paladin winced in reply. "Plenty, but now ain't the time. Where's everyone else?"

  "I'm here," Gwen announced, coming in through a small door across the way. "Got stuck in the garden for a bit." Her face and clothes were covered in a mish-mash of colors that Selvi could only assume was the pointy-ears' idea of camouflage, because it really didn't work.

  "How elfy of you."

  "Well, it was on fire by the time I left," Gwen said with an embarrassed shrug. "Where'd you end up?"

  "Ball room," said Cassie. For some reason, the moon princess was wearing her cousin's headband, but Selvi wasn't interested enough to ask why.

  "Cellars, somehow," she said. "And a guard room after that. Not fun."

  Heavy steps, squeaks, and a plaintive meow heralded the arrival of their last two companions. Flora and Bianca also looked rather worse for wear, and the tiny witch clung to her broom tightly as it bobbed along. Their little fuzzy friends, on the other hand, seemed to be in better shape than any of the princesses.

  It took several minutes for everyone to catch up and get patched up. The general consensus was to get the heck out of there as fast as possible, but that turned out to be easier said than done. They were in the front hall, true, and the main doors were right before them, but despite their appearance, the beaten old panels were both heavy and sturdy, refusing to budge.

  To either side, there were ugly, squat windows, their curtains so ancient that they dissolved into piles of dust at a mere touch. These were already open, or at least their glass had also long been lost to the ravages of time, but it didn't do the princesses much good. With flagrant disregard of any sane rule of physics or geometry, the two openings apparently looped back around to each other. When Gwen pulled her way through the window on the right, it was to find herself looking back in on the main hallway, via the window on the left. Her legs were still kicking and flailing, a good four yards away from where her eyes were wide with panic.

  "This is getting ridiculous," the half-elf muttered after her fourth attempt ended much the same as the previous three. She scrambled all the way out and shook her head in annoyance.

  "Well, maybe we could..." Selvi was interrupted by a sharp creak. All eyes flew to the rickety stairs. No one had tried them yet, since the wooden steps looked three-quarters of the way to caving in, and in any case they wanted to get out, not deeper into the madhouse that was this manor.

  There was a girl on the stairs now. In fact, it was the same girl who'd let them in and shown them to their haunted bedroom the morning before, and from the way she gasped in surprise, she was obviously still numbered among the living. Selvi hadn't been able to recall much about her before, remembering a nervous, mousy demeanor and not much else, and to see her now, there didn't seem to be much to add. The little mouse froze in place, transfixed by six pairs of curious eyes, and then with a quiet cry the girl turned and ran back up the steps.

  "After her!" Gwen, Selvi, and Bianca all shouted, roughly at the same moment.

  The stairs shook under the pounding of their boots, but somehow failed to collapse beneath them. Caution did make them slow down, however, and the mousy girl stayed ahead of them as they chased her down hallways and up more stairs and finally through one last door into a boudoir.

  Selvi blinked. Of all the rooms of the manor she'd had the misfortune to witness, this one was by far in the best condition, and that condition could be summarized as "opulent." Magic lanterns lit the space from all corners, revealing a broad bed covered in soft pillows, a woven rug of complicated pattern, a huge vanity with an oval mirror and plenty of jewelry, and an ornate writing desk, where the room's inhabitant was now standing up to meet them.

  The girl ran into this new person's arms, crying in fright, but the tall woman gazed at them with calm, cold eyes and a wry grin upon her pale face. Her hair and dress were the same inky shade of blue-black. A ruby pendant around her neck provided the sole splash of color on her person, but Selvi's eyes were drawn more to the reflection in that vanity mirror, in which only the girl huddled in place by herself.

  "Vell," said the woman with an odd, thick accent. "It vould seem zat you are varriors of greater wigor zan I had zought." She smiled, baring fangs almost as long as a pinky finger. "I am Vilhemina Natasha Badinova von Volmorten, and you shall be a delicious snack--"

  "Ridiculous! What sort of accent is that supposed to be, Russian? Transylvanian? And that name! Really, is that complicated rigmarole the best you can do? And the entire 'I vant to suck your blud' schtick..." The tirade petered out as the entire table turned to stare. Señora Hernandez maintained her composure well enough not to blush, but she did for the first time that afternoon appear discomfited.

  "Girls..." said Uncle. "I think this would be a good time to break for pizza. Go fill up your drinks and bug Max some, will you? Ma'am, if I could have a word?"

  The last time the two of them had been seated at the blue-checked table, it had been enough to send him into a nervous sweat. Now, even though they were in the exact same seats, the table had somehow been turned. The lady actually looked slightly embarrassed, if such a thing were possible on this green earth, while Uncle waited calmly with a plastic folder in front of him.

  When it became obvious she wasn't going to speak, he said, "Ma'am, if I may venture a guess? You wouldn't happen to be a fan of tawdry vampire romance novels, would you?"

  "They are not tawdry," Señora Hernandez snapped, protesting far too quickly and sharply. "Ahem, at least not the ones I read."

  "Of course not. My apologies. I should not have assumed."

  The silence lengthened a few more beats, and then: "You're going to call me a hypocrite now."

  "Nope, no intention of doing so. I like my head on my shoulders, if it's all the same."

  "You'll make me apologize to my granddaughter, then?"

  "While that would be nice, I'm not gonna twist your arm over it."

  "Then why in Heaven's name are we sitting here?" the lady demanded.

  "Well..." Uncle pulled a single sheet of paper from his folder and placed it neatly on the table between them. "I was going to ask if you would like to play along."

  Señora Hernandez peered at it suspiciously. "And that is?"

  "All pertinent information about one lady vampire, a level-two aristocrat and level-eight enchantress. Her vital stats and other important numbers, her list of magic spells, which will need to be revised a bit now, and her special vampire abilities -- commanding undead, enslaving mortals, turning into mist, calling the children of the night, stuff like that. The only things missing, because I'm erasing them as we speak, are her name and her personal history." He blew away the eraser boogies with a flourish, and then placed a freshly sharpened pencil in front of Claire's grandmother.

 

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