I feel them watching us. I see them scatter when we pass near. Indeed, there have always been rumours ‘round Saint-Corsheim about the farmstead on the hill...and what goes on inside it.

  Life in Bellvoir had changed little since Josephine’s time away. Of course, there were some differences, such as Maria no longer being involved with the cabaret; but, if one did not look at the fine detailing of its day-to-day, they would be hard-pressed to notice.

  As for Josephine, she found herself daydreaming more often than not. Each day, on her way to the cabaret, she passed one of Edgar Lucien’s old estates (he’d owned several) and thought about Carcassonne. The large yet rundown building had not been occupied in many years, though every now and then Josephine saw groundskeepers tending to its gardens, raking leaves from its lawns. As far as she knew, Maria owned the building now (or it was owned under the Lucien estate) but nobody lived there. When the groundskeepers were finished, they went home, locked the large black gates, and the building was left alone until they returned.

  Hermine ran the cabaret now. She had changed the programming to feature more progressive artists and acts, and had begun work on redesigning some of the interior to make it, in her words, more contemporary. According to Hermine, people had lost interest in the cabaret during the twilight of Maria’s reign, and something needed to budge. Competition would rise. Business was not as great as it had been long ago.

  Josephine’s role had not changed much in Maria’s absence. However, she felt something was off; she just wasn’t sure if it was her or the cabaret. She was disassociating more often, and oftentimes it would take somebody many attempts to get her attention. Every day, she caught herself thinking about Maria’s final act, how she had surrendered to the Carcassonne police and conceded everything about what they had done to their mother. Whenever Josephine’s mind analysed these things, she became angry. Not because of Maria’s confession, but that Maria had done so at all. Left the cabaret, left Antoinette, left her.

  Suddenly, an entire month had passed. One morning, Josephine found herself departing Bellvoir and heading out into the French countryside.

  She travelled on horseback. Conditions were calm, if frosty, midwinter. With the setting sun, the countryside had a red, golden glow to it. She followed a road until eventually arriving at the town of Saint-Corsheim, where Maria had spent the majority of her childhood.

  She found the hilly region where the old Lucien farmhouse stood. There was no indication that anybody lived there now, nor that anybody had lived there in a long time.

  The building was strange. During the time after she had returned to Bellvoir, Josephine had spoken with several witches about Maria’s horrible childhood, inquiring about things she had learned regarding her mother, about the miscarriages. Her father’s research. Things which had, in turn, led to discussions about Edgar and how he had ended up.

  As the sun was setting, the air growing chilly in its absence, Josephine dismounted from her horse and tied it by a tree stripped bare of its leaves. After giving it a gentle stroke and saying to wait for her, she made the climb up the hill to the foreboding Lucien estate.

  She stared up at the heights of the building. The grass under her feet crunched where she walked, dead and rotten. A dirt path had once snaked its way from the road to the door, but was now concealed entirely with overgrowth. An old letter box stood near the entrance, rusted and enshrouded in wispy weeds.

  Perhaps it was curiosity that brought her here, the desire to see the place where such things had occurred; or, it was to better understand what had happened, and the whys of it all.

  Or perhaps it was that she could not convince herself that Maria would so easily concede defeat, not unless secretly, she’d come out on top. Yes, this was the main reason she found herself here at the doors of the abandoned Lucien house. There had to be another secret yet to be discovered, one that went deeper than anybody could have guessed.

  The front door was stuck on its hinges, and took an amount of work to pry open. As Josephine heaved against it with her shoulders, the door coughed angrily and swung. The waning sunlight from outside drenched through the house, illuminating a nice entrance hall that Josephine supposed had once been opulent. As she walked inside, the dust in the air immediately caused her to start coughing and had to catch her breath before venturing any further.

  She imagined the visions of the Lucien family living inside this house. All but two of them long deceased, she thought of all the mysterious events that had occurred here. Of course, Josephine did not know much about Odilon or Claudine Lucien or how the family came to be, just what the rumours were in Bellvoir and what Maria had told her.

  The air was thick with dust and things long hidden away. In terms of furnishings, there was little to be found except drawers and cupboards, some paintings so deteriorated you could barely make out anything underneath the layers of grime, gathered there over the decades gone by. It looked like the house had been gutted.

  Josephine took her time working through the house, pulling open drawers to check for things left behind. Eventually, she did discover some old newspapers inside a bin. They were faded and crinkled from the years, but dated back all the way to 1784. As soon as she saw the front page, a chill ran the length of her body from where she held the paper. There were numerous portraits of people who had disappeared. THE REAPER OF SAINT-CORSHEIM STRIKES TWICE IN ONE NIGHT!

  Josephine gently placed the newspaper on the closest shelf, and searched deeper into the house, navigating the empty corridors. She found a painting on the ground against the wall. Kneeling down in the middle of the corridor, she examined it closer.

  The painting was most likely of the Lucien family, set sometime when they were still young, younger even than Maria’s stories. Odilon Lucien and his wife took up the background of the painting, with the three children in front. Edgar on their mother’s lap, Maria and Alfred blank-faced staring straight at Josephine, through the painting. What was it still doing here? Why, actually, after all these years had the house remained standing? A place of such evil, of such incrimination. The fact that Maria had allowed it to stand after such time, piqued Josephine’s curiosity.

  There was a loud noise from close by.

  Josephine’s body went hot with terror as she stood up and drew her wand, pointing it up the corridor. She felt the grains of wood indenting in the palm of her hand.

  “Reveal yourself!” Josephine said.

  At the other end of the corridor appeared a creature of twisted limbs and half-formed features. It had swollen, red eyes and hanging breasts that swayed like fat strings of cheese. The creature crawled away on its all fours, sluggishly dragging its entire body into the shadows where it disappeared.

  What on earth? she thought as her mouth went dry.

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  Josephine pursued it through the corridor, stopping at the place where the creature had vanished. An arched doorway led into a small library: a square room with tall walls and old bookshelves that had been totally cleared. She made a light on the end of her wand, which quickly brightened the room, but not by much. The dust itself was an extra layer to penetrate. Skittering feet shot from above and she looked up, the light of her wand catching the creature as it clung to the corner of the ceiling rafters, its eyes becoming large and white under the light.

  Josephine gasped and the creature dropped from the ceiling hard. Dust flew up where it landed. It attempted to move a leg, but was clearly exhausted, and slow.

  It’s the mother, Josephine thought.

  Only a single eye was visible through its long hair, which stretched to the floorboards. It opened its mouth to reveal crooked teeth in an otherwise human mouth.

  The homunculus snapped at Josephine.

  “Ugh!” Josephine cried as she stepped back. A blast of electricity zapped through the air from her wand, stinging against the creature. It howled, retreating a few feet like a spider. “Stay back!” Josephine said, her wand unsteady in the space between.

  “Who...are...you...?” the homunculus gasped. “Why...you...here?” It coughed loudly, its body scrunching inwards like a piece of paper, then unfurling again. Gagging, stringy saliva fell from its cracked human lips.

  Josephine had a sudden vision of the Lucien children successfully creating the homunculus fifty years ago, all of them so young they hardly even understood what they had done. Their panic. Maria’s inimitable curiosity. How much longer had they lived inside the house with it, before leaving it abandoned like this?

  She prodded with her wand through the air, causing the creature to flinch backwards yet again. She did not know what to say. How to respond to such a thing? It was not human, could not be, and yet it resembled one in all parts save for its disturbing, sickly appearance. Staring into the creature’s eyes, she confirmed who she was looking at. This was Claudine Lucien, the mother. Once the woman of the house, Josephine saw how those human eyes had been inherited in equal parts by both Alfred and Maria too.

  These thoughts swirled inside her head in the space between the creature’s last words and now. Eventually, it stopped prowling and sat down on the floor, like an animal.

  Josephine followed its movements with her wand. It felt strange to point it so aggressively at this hapless creature—what could it possibly do?

  “Kill...me...” it whispered.

  Josephine tightened her grip on the wand, her hands sweaty, the air burning her eyes. “Maria did this to you, didn’t she? And the boys, too.”

  The homunculus just stared back at her.

  “When she left you like this, was there something else she has kept hidden for all these years? Something else in this house with you? I mean, how have you survived...?”

  The monster turned and crawled arachnid-like out of the room. Josephine followed it through the house, deeper and deeper. Eventually, the homunculus arrived at the doorway to a basement stairwell, and waited for Josephine to descend.

  Josephine kept her distance from the homunculus, her wand held aloft as she slowly walked down the stairs into the basement.

  A door at the very end opened into a cold chamber with the most rancid smell she had ever faced. It dazed her and immediately made her eyes water. The room, lit only by her wand, was completely scattered with bones and dried-up blood. There must have been dozens of bodies here, so many that when Josephine walked, bones crunched underneath her shoes. As she was looking around, the homunculus passed her and sat in the middle of the chamber, fetching a bone from the ground and feasting on it.

  She looked at the homunculus, which paid attention to nothing but the bone. Its terrible, gangly shadow stretched long and hard across the ground.

  Is this what you were trying to hide? Josephine thought. She recalled seeing the newspaper in the house above. THE REAPER OF SAINT-CORSHEIM—

  My god. She remembered how Vincenzo Molteni had been collecting payments from Alfred, that Maria was worried what he knew. Was this it? Worse, even, than their experiments to create the homunculus. Of course, she thought. If Maria and Alfred were found as being behind these kidnappings—these...murders—that would definitely be the end of them. And when Vincenzo Molteni found out, it became a gold mine for him!

  By turning herself in and admitting to the crime of Carcassonne, connecting that with the homunculian birth of her mother...there’d be no reason to investigate further. She could prevent a witch hunt, and protect herself and Alfred.

  “Oh god, Maria,” Josephine whispered. “You really found a way out.”

  The homunculus was facing away from her as Josephine pointed her wand at it. There was nothing that could distract it from the bone it feasted ravenously on.

  She did not delay things further. A dart of light shot from the end of her wand, struck the homunculus in the back of the neck, and it collapsed.

  The house of Lucien fell eerily silent.

  #

  Josephine had always battled with her feelings towards Maria. Upon returning from the old farmstead, she found herself wielding great power. This was power that could completely destroy Maria, and Alfred too, as Baron of Carcassonne. But, ultimately, she elected to keep things to herself. As she sat in the back of a carriage headed out from Bellvoir, staring out the window at the passing scenery, she debated whether she had made the right choice.

  She supposed that, knowing what she knew, and knowing the extreme lengths the remaining Lucien siblings would go to in order to contain things, she would likely be murdered if either of them found out what she knew. So she never spoke about this to anybody, never wrote anything down, in fact left nothing at the house. Except, of course, the dead homunculus. It would, inevitably, rot away with everything else left down there.

  Maria had left her a letter before vanishing on their last day at Carcassonne. Josephine removed this from a pocket in her sleeve and unfolded it. She had read this often over the intervening months, seeing if there was anything she had missed.

  Dear Josephine,

  It is no secret that I often struggle to come up with the right words, even after two or three glasses. I certainly do not wish to take up more of your time with trite explanations for what I have done; though, I am certain you would understand my reasoning. I confess, last night’s conversation made me reconsider what I was doing, and what was important to me. That is, I care about nothing as much as I do the protection and preservation of the cabaret. It is no different whether it is Hermine in Bellvoir, or Bella and her rabble in Carcassonne. For that reason, I have taken the only course of action that would forgo a formal hearing regarding matters. I have turned myself in.

  Now, do not be surprised; and god, do not be concerned about me! I imagine I will serve a short time in jail and then be back before you know it. Do not act as though I am dead! Unless, I am. In which case, I’m sure there have been a fair few celebrations already.

  Josephine, I apologise for how I acted in our time together. You deserve better than that. And, yes, you are right: Antoinette does too. I am cruel, and I fear that I know no other way. I am wont to blame my family for that, but who can even be sure? For one thing, my mother was always kind.

  When you return to Bellvoir, tell them the truth of what has happened. I do not wish to deceive them, and I’m sure the truth will come out anyway—if it has not already. Josephine, know that there are more witches out there who would worship my dead brother. I cannot help but feel increasingly-concerned about these so-called “Lucienists” and the lengths they will go to now that more of his teachings exist.

  Look after Antoinette for me. Try to explain to her why I have done this, though I fear she already hates me enough. I hope that one day we are able to make amends.

  Farewell, Josephine. It is possible that this letter causes you to despise me even more. If that is the case and you wish never to see me again, then I wish you well.

  Signed, Maria

  Josephine carefully tore the letter along the creases, and then tore those in half again. She ripped it up until there were just little pieces, and she extended her arm out the window of the carriage, scattering them in the winds, never to be seen again.

  After a four-day journey, her carriage arrived safely in the busy streets of Paris, her final destination. Josephine gathered her belongings, which consisted of all her clothes, some books, and her wand (wrapped in a thick, grey cloak). She flung open the carriage door and stepped out onto the red-bricked road, which glittered as the sun glanced upon its minerals. Suddenly, she stopped and turned around.

  “Antoinette, we are here,” Josephine called.

  The girl appeared from underneath her bed of fabrics in the carriage, squinting at the shining rays of light. Her hair was a terrible mess, sticking up in every direction. Her cheeks were full, and red from the pressure of her knuckles.

  “Huh?” Antoinette squeaked.

  Josephine spread her arms. “Paris.”

  Antoinette’s eyes widened and she jumped off her seat, grabbing as much as she could in one massive armful, and running out of the carriage into the sunny mid-afternoon.

  Something about her laughter brought a smile to Josephine’s face.