Mallory spotted a reptilian tail as it disappeared beneath a baseboard.
“Oh, whatisit with this house?” cried Julie. “It’s becomingan infestation. I’m going to find a broom.” Lifting her skirts, she stepped over the linens and rushed down the hall.
Mallory crouched down and peered along the baseboard. Glowing yellow eyes peered back.
She had loved catching salamanders as a child. There had been a pond near their family home that had overflowed with them every spring—so many that she could fill entire jars with their squirmy, slimy bodies. She could watch their tiny toes scramble against the inside of the glass and their slick bodies writhing in one confused mass, before inevitably dumping them back into the water, where they scattered beneath the grime-covered surface.
She reached a finger forward. “Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt—”
A spit of fire burst from the salamander, singeing Mallory’s finger.
She yelped and recoiled. Her elbow struck a rack of drying herbs, sending lavender buds and twigs of rosemary scattering across the floor. She stuck her burned finger in her mouth.
Not just a salamander, then. Mallory knew about the fire-breathing creatures, as revered by the kings and queens of Lysraux as wyverns and dragons were elsewhere in the world, though it struck her as a peculiar comparison. She supposed when it came to mythical creatures, people took what they could get.
This house got better and better.
The salamander darted out from its hiding spot. It was longer than Mallory’s hand, with a flat, slimy body, deep red with yellow splotches along its back. As it skittered through the mess of herbs,it paused suddenly, reared back on its hind legs, and sneezed—which released a rope of flame nearly as long as a candlestick.
It glared at Mallory, as if it sensed that the dried lavender was her fault.
“Oh, wait!” Mallory dug through her pockets, retrieving the last bundle of herbs from the greenhouse. She crouched down and held out the bundle. “Would you mind?”
The salamander cocked its head.
Not to be outwitted by a creature who was 80 percent slime, Mallory pinched a pile of purple flowers and flicked them at the little beast.
It sneezed again and spat another flame at her. Mallory intercepted it with the herbs, which promptly caught fire. She stood up, delighted. “Thank you.”
The salamander flicked its tongue at her, then dove beneath the kitchen door.
Julie reappeared at the far end of the corridor, wielding a broom. “Where is it?”
“That way.” Mallory pointed not to the kitchen but the pantry, then stepped aside as the maid charged through.
Gripping her smoking herbs like a magic wand, Mallory headed in the other direction—toward the cellar.
This corridor was colder than the others, a gentle yet frigid breeze blowing in from a stairwell that was cut into the hall, leading down beneath the house. It was narrow and easy to miss, the shadows at its base impenetrable.
Mallory stood there for a long time, letting the smoke wind its way like a serpent around her body. The smell of the herbs became repugnant.
She had never before known such a soul-deep dread as when she stared into those shadows. Every instinct told her to run away. To pretend she had never seen this place. To never, ever come back.
Something evil was down there. She knew it with as much certainty as she knew Anaïs’s favorite gemstone was all of them, and that Triphine had never broken a bone in her life, though she still sometimes limped and complained how her leg had never healed right. She knew it with as much certainty as she knew that Le Bleu was still haunting this house and it might—possibly—be her fault.
She took a candle from a wall sconce, brandishing it in one hand and the pathetic bundle of herbs in the other. Her weapons against whatever evil lay below.
There was nothing particularly interesting about the stairwell itself. Stone walls. Stone steps, worn smooth. And that bone-seeping cold coming up from its depths.
Mallory took one, two, three steps down, but halted when she saw a smear of red staining one of the risers.
Blood?
She crouched, lowering the candle toward the mark. And… no, she did not think it was blood, but more likely… wine?
Of course. It was a wine cellar.
The shadows peeled back from the flickering candlelight, and she could make out an arched wooden door at the bottom, hung on ornate black hinges. A wrought-iron handle sat above an ancient keyhole.
