“Is this a different path from yesterday?” Rose asked, winding arm-in-arm with Didymus, as much as she could be with an old man who kept phazing through her arm.

  “Quite so, my lady! The hedge maze is… how shall I say? Unpredictable.”

  “You are, how shall I say, bad with directions,” she laughed.

  Her ribcage tensed with the motion, and she waited for the telltale ache that used to follow any hard contraction in her middle, but the pangs came lighter than ever, almost unnoticeable compared to the early Fall weeks after…the piano. Now that Winter had fully set in, she managed to avoid the pain completely most days, as long as she kept her breathing shallow enough—a habit that was slowly driving Gearson insane.

  “Ah, that fresh evening air! Wisteria! Bloodroot! Jessamine! All quite lovely if you’ll take a moment to scent them,” Didymus remarked with a sly quirk of his long mustache.

  Caught.

  “It’s March. Isn’t it early for all of those? Everywhere else is still dead.” Rose deflected, taking a purposeful turn toward the center of the hedge maze.

  “Death and the manor have a different sort of arrangement than the typical dwelling. However!” He announced, turning the conversation as quickly as she had. “—This is the perfect opportunity to review your lessons on the efficacies of these specimens! Why, here, a PRIME example of conium maculatum—a delicious tea additive if one is dead, or very shortly wishes to be! And here, we have prunus serotina!”

  “Hemlock and wild cherry?”

  “Indeed! The fruit of the serotina can make for a fine preserve, however, the bark, seeds, and leaves all contain cyanogenic compounds which cause respiratory distress!”

  “Delicious jams, or death. What a plant,” she said dryly, pulling Didymus away from the flowering tree. “I didn’t know there were trees in the maze… we haven’t come across them before.”

  “They were not in season before!” he cried. “Onward! Adventure around every corner, as they say!”

  “Do they?” she mused, wandering deeper into the twisting hedges. “Mr. Didymus, I know that the hedge maze looks different in the winter, but I could have sworn that the path was different last week. It’s like there’s more of this maze every time we step in. The property should have run to the end by now. I mean, the manor’s garden is big, but…we’ve gone at least a mile north, and then another south.”

  “With all of the winding turns, one can walk for miles, whilst walking nowhere at all!”

  She examined his distant expression.

  “I’ve accounted for that, actually,” she said, eyes narrowing.

  “Ah, belladonna!” Didymus greeted the purple-berried wall of shrubs with a fondness that one might greet an old lover—very distractible one. “A relaxant, sedative, anti-inflammatory, antihistamine!”

  “Hard to sneeze if you’re dead,” Rose agreed. “Mr. Didymus, how many of the plants out here are poisonous?”

  “Why, all of them, if used correctly! Shall we collect some for Gearson’s tea? The man certainly can burn through a stash, if you know what I mean.”

  That brought to mind the memory of Gearson’s mustache on fire the last time he’d tried to roast his own coffee blend. The man could keep a flawless schedule, but cook, he could not.

  “I thought you told me not to touch nightshade, Didymus.”

  “Ah-HAH! So she does listen!”

  Rose sighed. “I do listen. Which is why I’d love to know why you’re dodging my questions about the maze.”

  Didymus was quiet a moment—for him, quite the feat.

  She waited, knowing that he would pounce on any chance for a distraction. Stubbornly, she wandered next to him in silence. The green leaves of the hedges sprawled in twisting paths under the drippy layers of the last snow. Oleander bushes, heavy with early buds lined some pathways, already fragrant enough to mask the swampy bayou scent that blew in every spring. Under the pattering of her footsteps on the cobbles, the sounds of the bayou drifted through the hedges—the buzz of insects woken too early, and the low croak of frogs.

  She steered them farther into the maze, letting her curiosity guide them as far away from the manor as they’d ever gone. Against all reason, the hedges were getting taller, the shadows longer, and shiftier. Faint whispers and scurrying could be heard just beyond the darkest part of where the brush met the ground.

  Without noticing, she began to walk faster, her feet carrying her toward the voices, pulled by something she couldn’t understand, until the telltale warmth of Didymus’ hand clamped down on her shoulder.

  “The shadows grow long, and my ears already hurt from the lecture we will have from Gearson when we come back late.”

  Rose sighed, moving again toward the voices, but Didymus’ hand was firm—not corporeal, but firm.

  “The maze—no, the Labyrinth, is a place of in-betweens, where the rules of this world and the next… bend.” He brushed the other hand over his mustache in a familiar motion. She recognized his answer for what it was, and accepted the offer.

  She turned around and let Didymus point her back toward the manor—as well as he could with his sense of direction. She slowed her steps until he continued talking.

  “There are creatures in it that love to be followed, but do take caution, Miss Rosalie. The master used to say the labyrinth knows the steps of those who tread its paths, and even enjoys toying with those who run it—not that this is the true labyrinth, but wander in it long enough, and even I don’t know where it will lead.”

  Rose snorted. “You don’t know where it will lead, now. This is a left, by the way.”

  “You’re quite….sure…”

  They took a left, a right, and then two more lefts. The spire towers of Dross manor were already close.

  “You have a gift, Miss Rosalie,” Didymus said sincerely.

  “Thank you,” she sighed, deciding that nothing she asked Didymus would give her a straight answer—apparently even when he was trying.

  Once trimmed and trained, the overgrown garden was still beautiful in its ruin, pulsing with the lush, intrusive life of the bayou. Spring had coaxed every vine, flower, and leaf into full, riotous bloom, transforming the garden into a lush cornucopia of poison against the icy backdrop of the rest of the stree. Towering oaks draped with thick, silvery Spanish moss loomed over the garden, twisting above nightshade bushes and yellow angel trumpet. Monkshood had taken the lack of a formal gardener as permission to bloom beneath the wisteria and aconite flowers. Didymus had regaled her on multiple occasions about their uses in tinctures, healing, and, most disturbing of all, tea.

  The old fountain waited before the back porch, filled thawing ice and scum. Dark lilies floated on its surface, deep burgundy petals like velvet, and in bloom months too early in the chilled evening air. Without the hedges’ protection from the wind, the gusts caught the hem of her blue dress and peacoat. She huddled into the coat, missing, not for the first time, the manor in days when she’d known it. However, even then, it hadn’t been in its prime.

  “What was the manor like, back when it wasn’t so… quiet?” she asked as they meandered through the last of the shrubbery.

  That, at least, Didymus had no qualms answering.

  “There were grand dinners, exquisite musicians, and chatter at all hours from every room,” he said wistfully. “The master had guests from all corners of the world—scholars, performers, even the occasional priest!”

  That pricked something in her memory.

  “I think I remember the cook saying that he wasn’t allowed to be buried in hallowed ground. Where was Master Dross buried?”

  “AHAHAHAHA!” Didymus barked a laugh that shook his mustache and rattled the leaves of the chokecherry trees as they passed beneath them. “Nay, he was not, indeed! Entirely his fault, of course. As to his precise location, Miss Rosalie—drag your feet, or threaten me with a brand of fire, that is one tidbit that I cannot tell.”

  “Fire hurts ghosts?” Rose asked, curious.

  Gearson threw open the back kitchen door with prejudice just as they reached the house. “Of course it does! Wouldn’t it hurt you? You two are late! Late!”

  “Come come, you old fuss. There’s two hours til sunset at least!”

  Gearson snarled. “You are a century and a half older than I. One would think that you’d have had ample opportunity to come to grasps with the concept of time!”

  Rose snickered quietly at them.

  “And you, young lady!” She hid her smile behind the collar of her peacoat as Gearson turned the force of his wrath on her. “Don’t think I don’t know who’s at fault for Didymus’ late arrival! The man couldn’t steer a hay cart down a twenty-inch road!”

  “As if anyone would need to steer a hay cart,” Didymus muttered.

  “I heard that!” Gearson snapped. “Well?”

  Rose tapped a foot behind her sheepishly.

  “And no fidgeting! I thought we’d broken you of that months ago!”

  She straightened.

  “Apologies, Mr. Gearson. But we did set a new record for distance. And, no pain outside the manor this time. It felt… free.”

  She smiled. It could have been her imagination, but it seemed the sight of that…softened Gearson a degree.

  “I see. Well, since you seem to be so completely recovered, you can give me the upper register exercises twice over this evening—not that we have much time left for them before sunset!”

  Didymus cleared his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something, George?”

  Mr. Gearson harrumphed. “I’m forgetting nothing! Hurry up!”

  Neither of them chastised, Rose shared a grin with Didymus behind Gearson’s back, and followed him along the familiar route to the upper formal sitting room. Gearson stomped over to the piano—or, he would have, had his footsteps made any noise, and began putting Rose through her paces before she’d even reached her position at the side of the instrument.

  “There is a difference between strength and strain, girl! If you force that note from your neck one more time, I’ll throw this metronome through your gullet to remind it of its job!”

  Rose adjusted her breathing, against her instincts, to lower in her lungs and stomach. The places of the most pain in the early days, she still winced when she used them, even if most of the discomfort was gone when she was warm.

  “Higher, Rose! Such tone! Such expression! Let your voice pierce the veil between this world and the next!”

  “Didymus, when I want an idiot’s opinion on music I’ll spend a night at the symposion for town fools and at least bother to drum up more than one.”

  “I’ll have you know, my internal resonance is as finely tuned—”

  “Didymus, you couldn’t carry a tune if it came with a handle and instructions. Go and get the sazerac, would you? And bourbon.”

  To Rose’s surprise, Didymus went, but if Gearson thought he could get her to drink tea, and bourbon, he had another thing coming.

  “Rose!”

  She snapped to attention.

  “Take it from the third bar again, and this time, precision! Every tone must be as exact as the ticking of a clock. From here on, you are banned from vibrato of any sort. I want your tone perfect before you start hiding under bad habits.”

  Rose didn’t waste breath arguing, and did the segment again. And again. And again, until at last the fussy man decided that they’d both had enough.

  “That was… acceptable,” he said eventually.

  Rose could have glowed. It was the highest praise he’d ever given.

  Didymus chose that moment to enter the room, the usual tea tray clattering with cups and pot, and an assortment of glass bottles.

  “Ah! Our girl never fails to bring joy to my heart and a tear to my eye! Lovely! Simply lovely!” he cried.

  Gearson immediately retreated from his praise, closing the piano cover with a snap. “Well, she certainly brings tears to my eyes. That might have been passable in a barn.”

  “Find me a barn!” Rose spun around and crowed, fist in the air. “Gearson says I’m passable!”

  “Among livestock! Not—oh, fine! I suppose Didymus counts.”

  She and Didymus both had a good chortle as Gearson harrumphed his way into his preferred sitting chair, right in front of the gargoyle-headed fireplace. Didymus made his usual show of fetching the kettle from the goblin claws over the fire, and filling the kettle—this time with livestock impersonations behind Gearson’s back. Rose clamped her jaw shut trying not to give him away, and failed.

  “Is my mustache crooked, girl? Or is Didymus as a chicken really that surprising to you?”

  Rose finally let the snickering come through in force. “You can see without looking?” she asked, breathless.

  “I simply know my colleague,” Gearson retorted. “Didymus, this isn’t bourbon, this is brandy.” He picked up a molded glass bottle and shook it at the man as he took his own seat, across from himself, and next to Rose.

  “It is a butler’s duty to anticipate needs before they arise!” Didymus declared as he plucked the bottle from Gearson’s hands and poured it, not into a glass, but right into his teacup.

  “This is not how one serves brandy,” Gearson growled.

  “And yet, there’s no getting it back into the bottle,” Didymus sighed tragically.

  “So you were planning on irritating me from the start. At least its reassuring that some forethought goes into this household…”

  “For you, Miss Rosalie?” Didymus offered the brandy bottle while Gearson’s mouth was full, which, she suspected, was also on purpose. “Oh, I jest!” he chortled when Gearson choked. “But surely a little wouldn’t hurt! After all! Today our lady is of age!”

  “Eighteen isn’t quite old enough for that, here,” Rose smiled, grateful for the excuse. It didn’t matter how expensive the drink was—it still smelled like old dog to her. “And how did you know?”

  In place of brandy or tea, Didymus produced a bottle of corner-store apple juice, pouring her a full cup. Rose sighed with relief. Not forced to drink tea or anything that had been fermented in a barrel for a decade was the sort of birthday offering she could appreciate from these two.

  “But of course we knew! That lovely light that shifts in a young woman of age is tell enough!”

  Gearson rolled his eyes, and poured himself another teacup of strong-smelling liquor.

  “It was on your hospital paperwork,” he gruffed, although with less ire than before.

  “Eighteen…” Rose leaned back into the velvet chair’s stuffed backing, enjoying every moment. “Not where I thought I’d be right now…”

  “Where did you think you’d be?”

  On a stage. Flying. Learning. Competing. Free, she thought, before stamping down the bitterness.

  “Nowhere as magical as here,” she said instead. “I never asked…You know my age, but how old are you two?” It seemed as appropriate a time as any.

  “Been dead about 300 years. Didymus here, 450,” Gearson supplied curtly.

  “It’s a dead-end job!" Didymus chuckled, eliciting an easily-earned groan from Gearson.

  “If I didn’t know better from many hard years of experience, I’d say you’d finally managed to go and get drunk, Didymus. Did you pull that comment from a horse’s arse?”

  “From my own, since I am livestock,” Didymus said wryly.

  “And come back to bite me,” Gearson groaned. “Back to what’s important,” he addressed Rose. “We don’t have as much time to celebrate as we had planned—” there, he shot a disdainful glare at Didymus, who toasted in place of a response, “—however, we may still manage, and have you out the door by sundown.”

  “Thank you Mr. Gearson,” and as the warmth of the chair and fireplace seeped into her, Rose found that she had rarely meant so few words so sincerely. “And Mr. Didymus. Without you both, this last year would have been hellish,”

  “Ironic choice of words—”

  She laughed. “No. no, wait—what I mean is, the week of the incident—my injuries—I didn’t think I’d ever be able to move again. Not really. This is faster than anyone’s ever bounced back from death, I think, and it was thanks to a couple of ghosts—”

  “Technically a ghast…”

  “Death is our specialty!”

  “A ghast, and a ghost,” she corrected. “But you’re both plenty substantial to me. Thank you for everything. For making me move. For making me whole again—well, almost,” she touched the scar running down her face with a small smile. It could have been worse, she supposed, but now that she was healed enough not to need the bandage, the line running from her brow down to her chin was still an angry red.

  Gearson sniffed, never one for sentiment. “You talk as if we’ll disappear any moment. The absurdity. And did I not say we have a schedule to keep?”

  Setting down his cup with a decisively smark ‘clink,’ he snapped his fingers unnecessarily at Didymus, who was already rising to lower the curtains over the chilly sinking sun.

  “There, now we won’t be blinded. Or worse, transparent,” Gearson said, shuddering. “Now. The gifts we give you won’t be material, that would go against our very being, but…. Taps her forehead. There.”

  “Oh my! Such thought! Such a gift, indeed!” Didymus clapped his hands, and began pacing a happy circle around Rose, wearing an expression of mustachioed delight.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rose neither felt any different, nor could see any difference in herself when she looked at her reflection in her juice.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gearson, but… I feel the same?”

  “Always the questions,” Gearson sighed, a bit dramatically for him, blowing a gust of bourbon scented air her direction. She cringed at the scent. “My gift is an exercise in patience. You will have to wait and see.”

  She nodded, not caring if it was something, or nothing. They’d remembered. They were there. They had cared for her over the course of months. She wouldn’t ask for more.

  “And from me!” Didymus proclaimed, setting a glass bottle in front of her. “Fear not! ‘Tis simply another bottle of cider! Far better stuff than the shabby corner shop can provide, I assure you,” he said with a wink that she didn’t trust.

  Rose smiled, and set it next to her cup politely.

  “Now, surely, well, it would be rude to pry, however…” Didymus said, back to his restless, jumpy pacing.

  Gearson rolled his eyes. “Didymus, the day you learn not to pry, I can give up the ghost and finally leave affairs in good hands.”

  Rose laughed. “Just ask, Mr. Didymus. I thought we were friends?”

  Didymus actually clicked his heels in excitement.

  “Well, in that case,” he toasted his teacup to her. “As friends, in honor of the occasion, regale us with tales of your suitors! Their names! Birthplaces! Family names! Offers! Was there poetry? Song? Perhaps an instrumental serenade?”

  She stopped, apple juice halfway to her mouth. Then, she set it down so that her laughter couldn’t send the liquid flying.

  “Suitors? I’m eighteen—I’m not actually—Sorry, Didymus, but there really aren’t any. Well, I thought there might have been one, once, but—”

  Rose quickly stuffed those memories down, before the pain could start again. She refused to remember the cirque, and she refused to remember what had happened after. The ‘friends’ who had never come.

  “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Didymus laughed himself to tears. “A lovely jest, my lady. But I do understand if I pry too far—”

  She held up a hand. “You really aren’t prying. I just don’t have any. And I think it’s too early to be thinking about that. And my face…”

  “What about your face?” Gearson interjected for the first time.

  Rose gestured to the scar. “Women with scarred faces aren’t really sought after in this century, either.”

  “Preposterous! It’s hardly there!” Didymus cried, stopping stock still, and sending his empty hot water splashing onto the rug.

  “Oh, sit down!” Gearson scolded fruitlessly. “Think of the furnishings!”

  “It’s still dark red in the cold,” Rose said, before they could get too distracted. “And it’s almost always cold this time of year.”

  It was easy to forget how different she looked when she walked with Didymus in the garden, or when Gearson spent his afternoons trying to mold her lungs back into what they once had been. However, when she wasn’t in the manor, when she was anywhere else, the stares and turning heads still followed her, and never in a good way.

  “Preposterous! Prep—”

  “If you spout the word ‘preposterous’ one more time, I’m going to eject you through the window and into the fountain. You’ll smell of swamp and be finding frogs in your pockets for the next month,” Gearson promised, grinding nightshade now, not into his tea, but into his bourbon.

  Didymus, however, was still unwilling to come to terms with what Rose thought was a perfectly reasonable explanation. He stood up, and began his usual agitated pacing, forgetting even to put his glass down.

  “I am appalled! I am… this is—this is not to be born! Do the young gentlemen of this generation lack eyes? Are they somehow addled in the head? Is the modern generation plagued with a defect of the skull?”

  “You are addled in the head. Sit down,” Gearson snapped, with no real vinegar. He was beginning to look very relaxed sipping his liquor, and the bottle was nearly half-gone.

  “It’s alright, really, Mr. Didymus,” Rose tried to calm him. “I don’t think anyone these days is…um…as trained as they used to be. There are lots of nice kids my age, but calling them ‘refined gentlemen’ right now would be…very inaccurate.”

  “Surely a squirehood would sort them all out! An apprenticeship, perhaps?” Didymus suggested.

  “I’ll write the school board on your behalf,” Rose promised. “More highschool boys should be trying for knighthood, etc. For now, I’m really alright. I’m not interested.”

  “It is not a maiden’s duty to give first interest! It must be sought after! Hunted! WON!” Didymus declared.

  “Oh, how courtship has changed…” Rose mused, going back to her juice, but Didymus wasn’t done. He began to actively weep into his hands, his sobbing filling the room with a cold, ghostly wail.

  “Of age! And not a suitor in sight! I simply never imagined things would be so drastic.”

  Rose shot Gearson a pleading look, but he was already glowering at Didymus’ display.

  “Of age? Maybe for the fourteenth century. “In the here and now, you dolt, she isn’t even of age to drink brandy.”

  Didymus lifted his face from his hands, his mustache soaked with ghostly tears and… other excretions that like to make an appearance when sobbing.

  “But of course not!” he cried, affronted. “It is terrible for the skin, and at her age, she must have every advantage against younger foes in this most perilous of battles!”

  Gearson sighed. “I am going to regret this, but which battle exactly, are you referencing?”

  “Why, the battle to capture a suitor!”

  “Ah, the bitterness of having been right," Gearson rolled his eyes. “We have instructions, Didymus. No meddling.”

  “No meddling? The situation is dire.”

  “It really isn’t,” said Rose quickly. Hopping to her feet, she put herself in the path of Didymus’ pacing to ensure she had his full attention. “Sir Didymus, I appreciate the concern, but please please never try to arrange anything like that for me. Ever.”

  “Perhaps it is for the best…” Didymus stopped his pacing, slopping the rest of the contents of his cup onto the floor.

  “Oh, please, Didymus, have you no—”

  “She heard the call of the labyrinth again, today,” Didymus said, staring at Gearson with what Rose could only describe as a wealth of information.

  Gearson committed the ultimate teatime sin. He dropped his full teacup on the rug. Quite suddenly, all of his brandy-induced relaxation vanished, replaced with anxiety, and what looked like fear.

  “You should have told me that before I let you in the house!” he explained, throwing himself to his feet.

  “It is time to fulfill the wish,” Didymus insisted.

  “It is not time, and you know it. We have instructions, Didymus. Does that mean nothing to you? Allow me to elucidate—”

  Before Gearson could begin to recite every encyclopedic reference ever written about the word ‘instructions,’ Rose committed the second gravest sin of tea time, and interrupted him.

  "Mr. Gearson, what do you mean about the wish?”

  “If you don’t remember girl, then there’s nothing I could ever do to make anything stick in your head! This close to sunset, and you saw—you heard—it is no longer enough to get her out of the house before sundown, Didymus, you know that! She needs to be off the property! Out of the gate! Gone! Where they can’t reach her!”

  “What I remember… I’m not sure it was real,” she said to Gearson evenly.

  “And you’re not sure we’re real, either, is that it?” he snapped, rounding back on her.

  Rose stood gingerly, though that much care was no longer needed. She could move well. It had been long enough. Old habits… It was time to switch tactics.

  “Are these instructions… is that why you’re still tethered here, isn’t it? It’s my fault. I’m keeping you from finding eternal peace? But I am happy. I am satis—"

  If Gearson had still been holding his cup, he likely would have dropped it again.

  “How absolutely absurd,” he snapped, sharper than usual. “No, don’t you look away from me! Eye contact!” he reminded, then added in a more gentle tone. “Miss Rosalie, I would strongly advise ever saying aloud, even by insinuation, that you are satisfied with the terms of the wish of the master, or your own, until it is not only true, but perfectly and absolutely necessary.”

  “But what about you—”

  “Didymus and I, fool-brained as he is, are both completely capable of maintaining an honorable contract, thank-you-very-much! Our continued existence, and ‘eternal peace’ as you put it, is in our hands, and ours alone. The very notion! Putting our fates in the hands of a fourteen—now eighteen—year old girl? The idea!”

  “What are the instructions, then? The contract?” Rose asked frustratedly, presenting the question that she asked most often of the two—that neither were ever willing to explain beyond—

  “Why, to fulfill the wishes of the master! And your own!” Didymus said, cheerily over his undrunk cup. “For you to know him!”

  Gearson shot him a dirty look, but that was at least more information than they usually provided.

  “You knew Master Dross. Is telling me…not enough.”

  “Oh, we knew him alright. Though not by that name, exactly,” Didymus supplied.

  Gearson snorted. “Knew him? The Master was… he was….” A pensive, sad look crossed his face ever so briefly, but was quickly replaced by annoyance.

  Didymus came to Gearson’s rescue, and her own, before he could change the topic. "Ah, but what does it mean to truly ‘know’ someone, my lady? Perhaps there is more to the wish than you thought? The master had a way of setting things in motion that often made sense only much later.”

  “He also had a penchant for impulsive wastes of magic,” Gearson huffed. “His wish granting was often self-serving as well. Which is why, we cannot give him the satisfaction of letting things go off-kilter. We obey. We succeed. We’re done. That’s enough stalling! Both of you, out! I want you off the doorstep an hour ago!”

  “I wasn’t here an hour ago,” she muttered under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gearson!” Rose smiled winsomely, putting every bit of sweetness she could into a formal performer’s bow. “Thank you very much for the celebration, and the company, it was absolutely lovely! It was—”

  “What did I say about stalling?” Gearson snapped. “You made a promise, girl. Out before dark. Sun’s on the horizon already, I—damn! Sun’s on the horizon already! Didymus! Make sure she goes.”

  Didymus snapped to a smart salute that Rose suspected was as much mocking-respect as her gaudy bow, and ushered her from the room.

  The butler, standing tall and formally dressed, moved with a quiet precision as he guided the way from the upper sitting room, his gloved hand poised a respectful distance from her elbow as always, though she hadn’t stumbled in months. In contrast to Gearson’s frenzied rush, his steps were silent against the grand staircase’s plush runner, and he paused at each turn, allowing her to descend with unhurried elegance.

  As they neared the front door, he pressed an age-worn hand to his mouth, and coughed, catching the sound before it could escape fully. He wanted to say something, she could tell, but what, or why he wouldn’t was beyond her. There had been something different about today—perhaps it was the new season coming in, but there was the scent of change in the air, and Rose was worried—worried that despite Gearson’s assurances that her concerns were ‘absurd,’ that one day, she would wake up and everything would be empty.

  “Do you want to come with me to the gate?” Rose didn’t want to end this night alone so soon.

  Didymus gave her a gentle look.

  “I fear I cannot, my lady! For, just as you cannot be caught inside the manor past dark, I cannot be caught out.”

  She blinked. “Wait, really? Why?”

  Didymus smiled, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “A secret for another day.”

  She sighed. “Is everything a secret for another day?”

  “Alas, Gearson is right on one count. We don’t make the rules. We are but humble servants to the master. We cannot…tell you anything.”

  The way he said it, the way he looked at her, and the way his mustache and goatee twitched when he said it, made her sure that he was trying to tell her something very important. Unfortunately, she didn’t understand. It wasn’t a riddle he was asking. He was asking her to read between the lines of a text she hardly understood in the first place.

  “Indeed,” Didymus sighed dramatically as he unlatched the front door for her, and held out her coat—miraculously transported while they were upstairs from the kitchen to the front foyer. “Indeed, we cannot tell you anything. We can only dodder about, talking to… each other.”

  “Mr. Didymus—”

  “Well! That’s that! A happy annual completion to you, my lady! I trust you know the way out the door on your own. I do hope you haven’t forgotten anything in the up and up! Ho!”

  With that suspicious farewell, he nodded to her, his head bobbing in the tiniest of bows. Then, he was back up the foyer stairs, marching around the corner to the upper formal sitting room with the unnatural speed of one to whom gravity was no longer of import, so quickly that a draft followed in his wake, wafting the scent of aged wood and wax through the foyer.

  Rose stared. Didymus had unlatched the door for her, as he usually did, but he was usually there as she walked out as well, to lock her out—to ensure that there could be no opportunity for her to renege on her promise of three years ago.

  Behind her, the sinking light of the sun promised that twilight was short on its heels, in the chilly spring air that blew through the cracked doorway, but here she was, still inside—and there was still time.

  They couldn’t tell her anything, but they could tell each other. There was something that Didymus clearly wanted her to know. And… and she wouldn’t be breaking her promise. She’d promised to never go into the house after dark…but she was already here.

  Leaving the door ajar, Rose turned her feet back up the staircase, careful not to touch anything she didn’t absolutely have to. The last thing she needed was to knock one of the old-framed oil portraits, or dozens of porcelain vases that still decorated every side table in the main hallway. Grateful for the plush carpeting that muffled her footsteps, Rose reached the hall just as Didymus slammed the door on his way in. The sound of clattering tea ups, the covering of furniture, and frustrated drawing of drapes met her ears, until Gearson spoke at last.

  “Well, Didymus? You have something to say.”

  “Whatever would make you say that, George?” There were sounds of him collecting the tea tray. “We’ve only just rudely booted our guest out of home on the eve of a critical milestone in her young life. And why not? We’ve important things to do! Couches whereon to lie about! Chandeliers to dust for the thousandth day in a row!”

  “Oh, stop that!”

  The clattering of tea cups stopped.

  “You’ve been at this all day, Didymus! Delaying celebrations, foot-dragging, stalling, neglecting to tell me that she heard the call of the labyrinth while wandering through a back-garden hedge maze! You have something to say, Didymus, so spit it out!”

  There was a long pause before Didymus spoke, more serious, albeit just as impassioned, as she had ever heard him.

  “The first seal is opening. Clearly things are ahead of schedule, and so must we be.”

  “That’s not how things work!”

  “Have you not read them? Have you not seen the dates?

  “That was years ago! It has no correlation.

  “The changes started on the day of Miss Rolaie’s alleged incident. You really believe a young woman of her focus would get into such trouble by happenstance? That all of it was an accident?”

  “This is conjecture! She refused to focus for us until you dangled the prospect of fixing her injuries for her right in front of her nose, as the liar you are! You could never fix her permanently. How does that fit into your so-called unimpeachable moral code?”

  “She does not need fixing.” Didymus said stubbornly. “She has mended herself!”

  “Have you looked at her? She needs a miracle!”

  Rose flinched.

  “I am not the one in discussion, Gearson! You’ve seen it, too. The master’s letters are changing. The changes began the day Young miss Rose died. Does that tell you nothing? Something else is at work.”

  “That is conjecture! We have instructions—!”

  “The instructions are changing! We can’t count on anything anymore, especially when we don’t know what’s forcing the changes!

  “And your grand solution is to rush in blind? We don’t have the paperwork ready. We don’t have the arrangements. We don’t have her letter!”

  “Don’t you care about the girl? About what she’s become? She is miserable! Broken, Suitorless!”

  “You and the damnable suitors. What is paperwork and food and shelter to the damnable suitors? And did you not only just say that she has fixed herself?” Gearson’s tone was mocking. Rose had heard him scold before. She was nearly always on the receiving end of it, but never before had she heard him so cold.

  Unaffected, Didymus scoffed. “Have you been dead so long you’ve forgotten what it is to be young?”

  “I have an example of idiocy at my beck and torment daily! How can I forget?”

  Didymus snorted. “Well, you question dodgering cad?”

  “Well, what?

  “Do you not care?”

  “I care about our contract! Do you know what we lose if we break it? We lose all guarantee of success—part of which, I might remind you, is our young protege surviving this mess! We both know she won’t choose this path! She would never go the route of eternal lingering, even if you do think you have her charmed by your walks, and your stories, and your prattling which ALL are perilously close to breaking contract, if I might remind!”

  “The girl needs instruction!”

  “Then provide it! Give her something useful, and give her the time to absorb it! Good god, the girl only just started moving well again. You really think she’s ready for the academy’s seals?”

  “We are out of time!” Didymus argued again.

  “That is not your call to make!”

  There was a very long pause on the other side of the door. Rose could practically hear the seconds tick, tick, ticking away.

  It was nearly dark. She should go…

  And then Didymus spoke at last:

  “Indeed it is not. It is hers.”

  “It is… It is what?”

  There was a sound of something very heavy hitting the floor, and then silence.

  “What have you done, Didymus? Where is she? Did she leave? Oh good god. She hasn’t, has she? You didn’t…”

  There were no footsteps to indicate Gearson was close to the door, but Rose heard his voice carrying him through the furniture at a frantic pace, right toward where she crouched at the keyhole.

  Quietly as she could, she turned and ran. Back down the stairs. Past the lower foyer. A sidestep around the umbrella stand. She didn’t look back to see if Gearson had caught her spying, focused only on Gearson’s betrayal, and on Didymus' lie.

  Door still ajar, the dim light of the outside garden beckoning, she wrenched it open the rest of the way, when a skittering, muttering, sound behind the door met her ears.

  “Stay,” she could have sworn she heard the shadows whisper. “Yesss, ssstay…”

  “Don’t hesitate! Go! Just step—” Gearson’s cries behind her came too late.

  Inches from the threshold, she had only reached the door in time to see the last rays of sunlight on the horizon die.

  And then, with unnatural, blanketing speed, the sky was no longer the one she knew. Instead of the soft glow of a Shreveport spring twilight, the early stars that had begun to peek through the clouds went out like an extinguished lamp. The moon disappeared. Everything above the horizon went suddenly and absolutely black.

  Wrong! This was wrong!

  She tried to step out, to step over the threshold, but her shoes were plastered to the floor, stuck as though the polished hardwood boards beneath her feet had turned to tar. She pulled. She yanked. She wrenched. She struggled. Nothing.

  Something in the corner shadow laughed at her attempts.

  “Didymus, get down here! NOW!” Gearson bellowed behind her, just as something with long, scraping, clawed fingers grabbed at Rose’s angles, and dragged her to the floor.

  Rose screamed as whatever had her started to drag her back toward the staircase.

  “DIDYMUS! NOW!”

  All around them, the shadows laughed.

  “She said the words,” they said. “She said them oh, so long ago…”

  Rose scrambled for purchase on the ground, finding nothing but the umbrella stand. She knocked it over as she was dragged past, faster and faster, sending umbrellas and bats and a shoe horn smattering across the floor. The moment the thing had her on the stairs, her dress dragged over her head, the buttons scraping painfully on the ledges. She couldn’t see.

  “It’sss been waiting. We’ve waited ssso long…”

  “Not now! Not tonight!” Gearson yelled, but the things that had her, had already dragged her past him, and were nearly strangling her as they pulled her up the stairs.

  “Yesss, tonight. Yesss, now…She controls. She gave permission…”

  “I absolutely did not give you permission!” Rose yelled, swiping at her feet.

  She grabbed blindly. Catching the legs of a side table a table she sent three vases crashing to the floor. They shattered near the things around her feet, and earned herself a snarling hiss from whatever it was, but the creeping fingers only dragged her faster.

  “What is this? Is this any way to treat your quarry? Stand you, and face the occasion with honor!”

  Didymus had joined them, far too late. She was already down the hall, and knew by the direction she was being dragged that she was in the informal sitting room, a room that she hadn’t entered since the day she’d met Didymus and Gearson. The day she had been trying to fix a broken window pane with tape and plastic, and misguided good intentions. She heard the slam of the attic stairs hit the floor, and then she felt herself dragged upside down as they vaulted her up them.

  “DON’T!” Gearson was yelling. “It’s still too soon!”

  She screamed, and promptly had the breath knocked out of her when she slammed into a wooden rafter-board floor so coated in dust and droppings and remnants of broken decor that it may well not have been cleaned since the house was built.

  “It’s time! It’s time! It’s time!”

  The dragging paused just long enough for Rose to whip her skirt off from over her head, and get a brief glance around the room.

  Dust hung in the air, dancing in the few beams of light that dared to pierce the grime-coated window from the garden lanterns outside. The wooden beams overhead, swollen and warped with age, stretched across the ceiling like moldering ribs, choked in filth and cobwebs and the threads of moth-eaten sheets from the various covered furniture and caved-in crates lining the outside walls.

  A broken trunk or two lie in a far-corner, much too far to reach. The smell of mildew, aged wood, and the faint trace of something sweetly rotted filled the air. Rose jumped when she spied an actual suit of armor looming over her, thinking it was another attacker at first, and then realizing—it had a sword.

  Hastily, she snatched the weapon from the empty gauntlets, and swung down at her ankles—only for the clawed fingers to disappear before she could hit anything—but she was still being dragged! Gearson and Dydimus were close behind, but the skittering, clawing things were still laughing, writhing in the shadows just out of sight.

  “When this is done, I’m filling this place so full of rat traps, you’ll never see the light of day again!” Rose threatened, swing the sword down hard, at nothing.

  The laughing got louder.

  “But why, pretty thing, would we want to see the light of day?”

  “I don’t care,” she declared, leveling the sword at the shadows.

  Then, the attic was flooded with light, as many clawed hands—she could never make out what the things really were, such as they hid, and such as she was blinded as they all dragged a yellowed sheet off of a massive ornate mirror on the far wall. The things had her again, this time tearing at her dress, clawing at her sleeves and skirts, and trying to force her down again. She swung blindly, ignoring the exclamations from Gearson and Didymus, ignoring the hissing and the biting at her legs. She couldn’t hit them. She couldn’t even see them, but that didn’t stop her from slashing at the floor where she saw movement, and hacking dangerously close to her ankles when the things tried to grab her again.

  “Hold still!” she grunted furiously.

  “After you,” they hissed.

  Then, something hard and heavy knocked into her back, sending her back down heavily. Her eye smacked hard against the pommel of her own sword, sending her vision into a flurry of black and purple spots. She was being dragged again. Dragged to the mirror! Faster and faster. They were going to knock her out on the glass. She swung hard at the glass, hoping to stop herself before she hit, but the sword passed right through it’s reflection, and the mirror didn’t break.

  “NO!” Gearson yelled, just as the things cried out in victory.

  “She said the words…” they hissed.

  They gave Rose a final shove, and she tumbled through after her sword, through the mirror frame, and through the mirror.