“What do we do?” Mallory yelled.
“Don’t ask me!” Anaïs yelled back. “What evenisthat thing?”
“A lou carcolh.”
“Awhat?”
“Think giant man-eating snail with tentacles.”
Anaïs shot her a disgruntled look. “Well, I can seethat. What other useless information can you tell me before it eats us?”
A fourth tentacle joined the battle, ripping the maid from Anaïs’s hold. She scrambled forward, but the mouth was opening wider, preparing to clamp around the girl’s ankle.
Mallory grabbed the fireplace poker and smashed it into the top of the creature’s spiraling shell. The impact resonated up her arms as if she’d struck steel. She stumbled back, teeth aching from the jolt.
Undeterred, the creature had started to close its jaw around the maid’s foot when Mallory took the end of the poker and jabbed it into the nearest tentacle instead.
The lou carcolh released a piercing shriek. It took all Mallory’s willpower to keep from dropping the poker and covering her ears. Instead, she lifted the weapon again, preparing to impale another tentacle—when a fifth tentacle appeared from beneath the shelland lunged toward Mallory with whiplike speed, snatching the poker out of her hand and tossing it at the window. Glass shattered. Frigid air and wind rushed inside, tearing at the curtains.
Another tentacle took hold of Mallory’s arm. She grabbed for one of the bedcovers. As pain lanced up her arm, she tossed a blanket at the creature, fully expecting it to shove the fabric away. But it hesitated, its free tentacles inspecting the fabric instead.
The distraction was enough for Mallory to lower her head and bite down on the tentacle holding her. Slime oozed into her mouth, tasting of sour mucus. The creature screamed and let her go. Mallory reeled back, spitting.
With one hand still holding the corner of the blanket, she launched herself over the creature, pulling the cover over and around, tenting the monster within the ballooned layers of fabric.
“Ha!” she announced victoriously, once it was trapped beneath. “You should know that Iloveescargot, you disgusting, slimy little—”
A rip. A tear. The distinct sounds of chewing.
Anaïs made a face. “Is it eating our linens?”
“Better the linens than us. We need another weapon. Do you see my dagger on the nightstand?”
Suddenly Anaïs’s eyes lit up. “What about smelling salts?”
“Honestly, I think she’s better off unconscious for now.”
Anaïs sprang away from Julie. “Not for her. This thing is part snail, isn’t it? Salt is like poison for snails!”
“I’m pretty sure smelling salts don’t contain any actual—”
Ignoring her, Anaïs raced from the room, hollering, “I have an idea! I’ll be right back!”
“What? Get back here! Don’t leave me here to deal withthis—” She yelped. A tentacle had slithered through a hole in the blanket and grabbed Mallory’s thigh. It yanked her to the floor. Mallory kicked, her feet getting tangled up in the fabric, her arms burning against the carpet as she was dragged toward the creature’s mouth, barely visible through the gash in velvet and lace. The scene was so absurd Mallory would have laughed if she hadn’t been scared out of her wits. Instead she flailed around for anything she could grab.
She threw a chair at the creature. It pulled her closer, indifferent.
Flipping onto her stomach, she spied Anaïs’s sewing box and threw that—only afterward realizing that the scissors inside could have come in handy.
There was a slipper discarded on the carpet. She grabbed it and took aim, waiting until the creature’s mouth had opened. A vicious gate of glistening teeth, an oozing tongue—
She threw the slipper in.
The creature didn’t release her, but it hesitated, its tongue exploring the shoe, pushing it from side to side. There was a slurping sound as it devoured the shoe whole.
“Here!” Anaïs stood in the doorway, hefting a linen sack with blue letters stenciled on the side.SALT.
Stomping forward, she upended the bag and started dumping the contents onto the lou carcolh’s outstretched tentacles in a great, salty waterfall.
