I snatched up embroidered pillows and threw one at each of them. Berron simply caught his one-handed in mid-air, while Daniel caught his in both hands and flung it back at me.
I dodged. “Missed me.”
“What else is in here, anyway?” Berron said. He glided from lounging to prowling, followed by opening and closing drawers, looking behind picture frames, and chucking more pillows around as if to see if anything was hidden underneath. “There’s got to be something interesting.” He pulled a sword cane from the round stand and unsheathed it. Then he aimed it at the sofa.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Daniel.
“Investigating,” Berron said.
“Not on my couch, you’re not.”
Berron held eye contact with Daniel and punched the sharp point through the fabric. White clouds of stuffing burst from the slash.
“Dude, what is your problem?” He lunged at Berron, who—instead of whipping the blade back like a game of keep-away—simply aimed the point at Daniel. Daniel froze rather than be impaled.
“No problem,” Berron said cheerfully. “No problem at all.”
“Berron,” I said, “put the sword away and stop wrecking the furniture.”
“Bah.” He re-sheathed it and dropped it back in the stand. “No one lets me have any fun.”
Daniel examined the sofa’s wound.
“Where’s Jessica’s room?” I said.
Daniel straightened. “Over there. Why? You want to punch holes in her furniture, too?”
“Ididn’t punch holes inanything. Mr. Gentry Prince did that.”
Berron grinned.
I walked toward the door of Jessica’s room.
“Wait,” Daniel said. “You can’t just go through her stuff.”
“Who said I was going through her stuff?” That had been exactly what I was going to do, in fact, but I was willing to be flexible. “I just want to see what her room looks like.” Before he could protest any more, I turned the heavy knob and opened the door.
A heavy mahogany bed frame nearly filled the room. A vanity table with small drawers and a mirror sat to one side. A tall folding screen stood in the opposite corner. It looked as if dozens of cut-outs from Victorian prints had been glazed onto the panels: roses, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, a child with a dog. Swans and battle scenes and bowls of fruit. Carriages and pretty ladies. One of the strangest pieces of furniture I’d ever seen.
I stepped into the room with Daniel on my heels, followed by Berron.
Her vanity table held black eyeliner, black mascara, red lipstick, and a dark, almost apple-shaped bottle of perfume. I picked up the perfume. “Poison,” I said, gazing at the familiar bottle, one that had sat on many a bathroom counter in the nineties. “That’s almosttooobvious.”
Berron took the bottle from my hand, uncapped it, and spritzed it into the air.
“Stop it,” Daniel said. “She’ll know you were in here.”
Berron, unbothered, sniffed the air. “She’ll thinkyouwere in here.”
I waved a hand in front of my face. “My God, I’d forgotten that smell.”
“You don’t like it?” Berron said.
I wrinkled my nose. “Spilled grape soda and cinnamon? No, thanks.”
Berron peered at the bottle. “For something called ‘Poison,’ it’s awfully sweet.”
“Great,” Daniel said, taking the bottle from Berron’s hand. “We’ve all had our fun, now let’s go back to the living room.”
