“How about Prospero’s room?” I said.
“Daniel’s room,” Berron corrected.
Daniel shot him a look. “Sure. Anything that will get you out of here.”
“Lead on,” I said, the perfume still tickling my nose.
We left Jessica’s Poison-scented Victorian boudoir behind.
Prospero’s bedroom door was exactly the same, but inside, everything was different. The larger space permitted a thick Persian rug on the floor. Prospero had a dark wooden bed frame, but this one had high columns and curtains like it belonged to Ebenezer Scrooge. A matching dresser next to an old Victrola phonograph. In place of a vanity table, there were bookshelves filled with volumes decorated with gold lettering on the spines. And instead of a screen, Prospero had a marble fireplace with a mirror hanging above the mantel.
I passed through the doorway and rested my hand on one of the bed columns. In a strange way, it was similar to my own room—poster bed, fireplace, bookshelves—but dark and stuffy where mine glowed with sunlight. “Are you actually going to sleep in here?” I pictured Daniel’s bedroom, where all the wood was light-colored and Scandinavian smooth, and the sheets were the latest high-tech fabric.
“I already do,” he said.
And I nodded as if it was nothing, while I wondered if ghosts would haunt his dreams.
4
Berronransackedthechestof drawers while Daniel half crawled under the bed, looking for anything of interest. I knelt by the fireplace and summoned Patty Melt, my fire mouse. Maybe a fire could banish the presence of dead vampire lords.
She popped into my hand with a hiss like a sparkler igniting. I put my hand close to the logs that had already been neatly laid in the grate with old newspaper tucked into the wood. The seasoned wood had laid untouched since the summer, waiting for autumn—and a master who would never return. “Go on, hop down,” I said.
Patty Melt’s whiskers twitched like burning threads.
“Look at all that nice paper. Don’t you want to burn it up?”
Patty took hesitant steps forward, her tiny claws like hot fork tines. Then she ambled onto the logs, seized a twist of newspaper, and began chewing on it. Smoke rose from the wood where she sat.
“Good girl,” I said.
Berron tossed items over his shoulder. Bow ties and socks rained down. “Boring. Boring. Boring.Doubleboring.”
Daniel slid out from under the bed frame and brushed the wayward accessories from where they’d landed on his legs and torso. “Nothing under there.”
“Stay in the fireplace,” I told Patty. Then I stood up, dodging more flying socks, and moved to the closet. I opened the door. Prospero’s suits hung neatly from thick wooden hangers.
Daniel joined me. “The man had some nice threads.”
I pulled a tweed jacket out. “Maybe we could donate them.” But as my fingers grazed the richly textured cloth, I felt faintly sick. I should have been cool and calm, going through Prospero’s things. He had, after all, trashed my shop, threatened all I held dear, and nearly destroyed the home of the Gentry.
“You’re getting that faraway look again,” Daniel said. “Are you all right?”
“I came here to make sandwiches,” I said, quietly, tracing the curve of the jacket collar. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“For what to happen?”
“I never meant to…” I stopped, remembering the biting cold, the flood of magic. Prospero’s brittle bravery. It tasted of metal and ash, like I’d licked the fire grate. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt. Even someone as bad as Prospero.”
Daniel’s eyes glowed redder, enhanced by touches of orange from the fire. “He would have destroyed everything in his path until he got what he wanted. You don’t have to feel guilty. Berron would say the same.” He paused and looked over to where Berron was elbows-deep in another drawer. “Right, Berron?”
“Hm?”
“Back me up. Zelda shouldn’t feel guilty for taking Prospero out.”
“Of course she shouldn’t. If she takes on the guilt for what he did, she’s not giving him credit for the only good thing he tried to do.”
My eyebrows rose so high I felt my hair shift. “The onlygoodthing he tried to do? Destroying the Forest of Emeralds?”
