Chapter 13: Show and Tell

Lady Charlotte moved quickly, her skirts rustling behind. Mike said nothing, perfectly aware that he needed to remain silent while in her presence. His desire for answers was far too strong to heed the warnings in the back of his mind. If danger came, he would rely on his magic.

The corridors were long, dim, and confusing. Odd scents came from the dusty hallway and a heavy chill settled into his bones. At one point, Charlotte made him wait while she checked on a room up ahead. He made the mistake of leaning against the cold wall. It sapped away his body heat through the thin fabric of his shirt. When Lady Charlotte returned, she beckoned to him with a finger.

Mike stepped into a large sitting room with windows that overlooked the village. He went to look outside, but Charlotte held him back and pulled him through a doorway to her bedroom. Once they were inside, Charlotte turned to face him.

“We can speak freely here,” she said. “This is one of the few places where I have some expectation of privacy.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Privacy in my own room has been earned for good behavior over the years.” Lady Charlotte crossed toward the other side of the room to close the curtains. “I don’t want the gargoyles looking in and seeing you here.”

“Can’t they hear us?”

She shook her head. “These walls have been enchanted. Vincentius and his vassals require privacy of their own.” Lady Charlotte knelt by her bed and pulled something from beneath. It was a large trunk, and particularly heavy based on how the wood creaked.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

“Talking first,” she said. “And then I will take you elsewhere to show you something.”

Mike was about to crack a joke, but thought better of it. “Am I in danger?” he asked.

“Not from me,” she replied, then considered her words. “Not currently,” she added.

“What about the other vassals?”

Charlotte shook her head. “My brother, perhaps. His moods can be ... dark. I am uncertain of Galahad. The years have been long, and he is no longer the man he once was. I don’t know his motivations anymore.” She opened the chest and frowned. “My Lord and his daughters are the worst of the lot.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “To speak much more about them may call attention upon me I do not want. If I have his attention, then my ears betray me even here.”

“So what can you tell me?” Mike leaned against the nearest wall, arms crossed over his chest. He swore when the icy chill bit through his clothes and stood away from it.

“I wish to share some pieces of the puzzle in the hopes that you will fully understand what you see later this day,” she said. “For the same reasons I dare not speak certain names, I do not wish to call attention to this conversation. As far as anyone is concerned, I am speaking with a servant, and--” Lady Charlotte’s left eye twitched, her lips parting as if in surprise. “I will need more blue paint for next week’s portrait. Also, please arrange another lunch for Mike Radley and his guests for tomorrow. I mean to impress them, so bring some of those apple pastries from the village.”

Lady’s Charlotte sudden change in demeanor had Mike studying her soul in an instant. A dark, spectral tendril had come through the floor, wrapped around her throat like a collar, then split apart to encircle her ears. The woman scowled, holding up a finger to her lips for silence. Realizing that Vincentius was now listening, Mike moved to the bedroom door. He opened and closed it as if a servant was leaving. That dark tendril stayed connected to Charlotte for several minutes as she sat perfectly still. Eventually, it left.

“Message received,” said Mike. “No vague references about anybody important.”

“Now you understand,” she said. “We can speak on some things, but others will be off limits.”

“How can you tell that...” Mike gestured toward the floor, then pointed at his ears.

Charlotte stared at him, her lips thinning out. “It’s a dreadful feeling, really. Do you remember being a child? I barely do. But when I was little, sometimes I would stare into the shadows, convinced that something was watching me from the darkness. If I looked away, it would leap out and snatch me up. That feeling of dread that creeps up your neck and stops your heart is the same I feel when my senses have been ... compromised.”

There were so many other questions he wanted to ask, but knew that now wasn’t the time, not if they were directly about Vincentius. Along the corners of the room, he spotted that tendril of darkness, thinned out but waiting to reconnect at a moment’s notice. “Those portraits around the castle. They’re yours.”

She nodded, then opened the trunk. Inside were several small canvases. She took them out wordlessly, setting them around the room. Each one was a portrait of a man or woman. Some of them held apples, others held farming implements. There were a few portraits of children as well, many of them captured in mid-smile.

“When I first came to this place, I struggled to find a purpose,” she said. “You see, many years ago, I was ... born human.” She paused and waited. The dark tendril in the ceiling had actually withdrawn. If Mike was right about how the magical link between them worked, then Vincentius was likely occupied with something else. “I was also sick quite a bit, and took up painting as a means to occupy the time.”

“I read about that in Edmund’s journal,” Mike said. “But remember there was a time when you seemed to be doing better.”

Charlotte nodded, then sniffled. “My brother met a certain ... benefactor who came up with a way to mitigate the worst of my illness. It was to be the beginning of the end, and we were spirited away to this place to begin our new life.”

“Why you?” Mike asked.

Charlotte laughed. It was a dry sound, more of a sudden exhalation. “Somebody believed we were the lost descendants of a very noble lineage. My brother was given whatever he wanted in order to lure us here. One of us would be fine, but two? Even better. This benefactor provided me with treatments for my illness, but then they mysteriously failed after several months. We were forced to come here to pursue a more direct ... cure.”

“You came through the mirror?” asked Mike.

“Our benefactor had a secret castle in Ireland,” she explained. “The people there worshipped him, but not as a God. No, he was very clear about that. This fortress was designed to protect the mirror. If it were to somehow be shattered, then our connection to the world would be lost.”

“I see.” Mike kept an eye on that thin tendril of magic. Clearly Charlotte wasn’t being specific enough to capture Vincentius’ attention.

“After coming to this place, I took up painting. Each of these pictures is of someone who lived here.” She picked up the closest painting and smiled. “These images are all that remains of them.”

“They died?”

Charlotte nodded, then set the picture down. “I can’t remember them. The older ones, anyway. The human mind was never meant to persist for this long.”

“So you aren’t human anymore?”

Lady Charlotte shivered and bit her lip. “I’m not,” she admitted. “But I never became more, either.”

“What’s that supposed to—” Mike zipped his lips when he saw that tendril snake down and wrap around Charlotte once more. This time, she turned her head toward the wall as if listening to something.

“I will be ready,” she said, and then the tendril withdrew and sank through the stone. Charlotte looked back at Mike. “We must hurry. The others are busy, and what I wish to show you can only be safely seen from the shadows. Come.” Charlotte rose and took Mike by the hand. He couldn’t help but notice that her fingers were cold to the touch. It reminded him of Dana.

Lady Charlotte led him into yet another secret passageway. He was convinced that this castle had more of them than normal corridors. The two of them walked in silence, and he watched as that dark thread snapped back into place around Charlotte’s body. It pulsated every few seconds, like a slowly beating heart.

They had to wait several times, but for what, Mike could only guess. Lady Charlotte had him sneak through someone’s bedroom to another set of secret corridors, then they scaled an ancient wooden ladder to crouch through a shallow tunnel. The lights were out. Lady Charlotte could navigate in the dark, but Mike was worried he may bump his head or even trip, so summoned a pair of lightning spiders to light the way.

The corridor grew taller, te also began to constrict. Charlotte turned to face him, her slate in one hand. She had written Almost There on it, along with a picture of a skull. She tapped the skull, then pointed to her lips and made a gesture for silence.

Message received, Mike thought to himself. The tunnel was now so narrow that they had to turn sideways and scoot down its length. It was hard for him to imagine that this secret passageway had any real use for servants. Perhaps it was some sort of service tunnel?

With minimal light, he did his best to stay close to Charlotte. On occasion, his hands would brush against hers, or against the hem of her skirt. Eventually, Charlotte reached out for his wrist and gave it a squeeze. He waited as she wrote something on her slate, then handed it to him. Conjuring some light into his hands, he looked at the slate. Her print still seemed eloquent, despite doing so in a cramped space without looking.

She had written Don’t make a sound and underlined it several times. When he looked to her for an explanation, she pointed at the wall in front of them. A small wooden latch had been affixed there. She slid it open, revealing a tiny pinhole of light. Mike looked through it to see the dining room where they had met Vincentius.

Charlotte took the slate and wrote Wait here, watch. Mike nodded and gave her a thumbs up. Satisfied that she had gotten her message across, she then pointed at herself and back the way they had come. Realizing she needed to get past him, Mike flattened his back to the wall in order to make room.

Lady Charlotte attempted to squeeze past him, but it was a tight fit. Pressed up against his body, he was suddenly aware of her breasts pushing into his ribs. Lady Charlotte let out a small gasp, and his magic roared to life.

What the hell? He summoned a bit of light into his fingertips to see what was going on and caught sight of Charlotte staring up into his eyes, her lips parted and cheeks flushed. Arousal was seeping off her in waves, and he couldn’t quite understand why.

When she tried to move again, he realized that the tightness of the space meant that their hips were pushed together. His cock was already rising to the occasion, and was now firmly lodged between her upper thighs, despite the fabric of her skirts.

Charlotte whimpered. Mike wasn’t entirely sure what to do. He let go of the light in his hands and grabbed her by the waist to pull the two of them even closer together in the hopes that she could suddenly squeeze by. This caused their unexpected contact to increase, and the smell of her arousal flooded his nostrils.

Wait, what? There was absolutely no way he should be able to smell that, especially not through the thick fabric of her skirt. Lady Charlotte whimpered in his arms as he now twisted his body, trying to allow her just enough room to wiggle past. Despite doing so, she froze again.

Troubled, he summoned another lightning spider and had it sit on the wall above him. The illumination revealed Charlotte’s face, her eyes closed as she bit her lip so hard that it bled. She shuddered with desire in place for several seconds, then opened her eyes and just stared at him hungrily. With great hesitation, she let him go, her skirts swishing against the stone walls as she disappeared into darkness. The smell of her arousal was even greater now, but she was gone.

Fucking weird, he thought, then went over to the secret viewing hole. He felt like a shitty Scooby Doo villain as he opened the latch and placed his face against the wall. Were his eyes currently in a painting? He tried to remember what the room had looked like. He had been too focused on the vassals to pay attention to the decorations.

Charlotte’s musk didn’t linger long, but it was weird that he could still smell it. What type of creature was she? The list wasn’t terribly long and he knew better than to make assumptions. Staring through the hole in the wall, he wondered how much longer he would have to wait for something to happen.

An hour passed, or at least it felt like one. Mike stifled a yawn. Whatever surveillance Charlotte had tasked him with was already incredibly boring. His mind kept wandering to thoughts of the house, and what he had missed. He thought about how he was going to make up for missing Halloween to his son. The young centaur was a clever negotiator, so he’d have to go into this discussion with options he was willing to pursue.

A door outside his range of vision clicked open, and a servant walked in. The man was carrying a massive tablecloth, which he spread across the table. Mike almost groaned in frustration when the servant left shortly after and he continued to watch nothing happen for at least another fifteen minutes.

When the door opened again, it was Lady Charlotte. She crossed the room with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her waist. Upon sitting at the table, she stared straight ahead.

There was no fanfare from the servants this time as the other vassals arrived. The false Amymone came first, smirking at Charlotte for reasons Mike couldn’t fathom. Gerard was next, the man sulking as he sat across from his sister. When the false Cecilia arrived, she made a show of sniffing the air, then looked down at Charlotte.

“You smell like a whore,” she declared. A small hint of blush crept along Charlotte’s cheeks, but she didn’t acknowledge the comment. The blonde sneered at Charlotte a moment longer, then let out an exasperated sigh as she flopped down into one of the seats.

“You shouldn’t talk to her like that,” muttered Gerard.

Cecilia smirked and leaned back in her seat, her demure facade officially crumbled. “Or what? Are you gonna brood? Go cry in your journal, book boy.” She put her hands behind her head. “Where is Galahad? I’m fucking starving.”

“He is on his way,” said Amymone. Her jaw made a strange clicking sound when she spoke. “I saw them enter not long ago, which means the sword room comes first. I wish it wasn’t on the other side of the castle. But we should talk about more important things, like why Charlotte smells like a woman in heat.”

“I shouldn’t have to listen to this,” muttered Gerard, and he stood from his seat.