Page 21 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

Another source of displeasure curved his mouth even further. He’d envisioned Beadle in his lair, many times. It’d be squeaky clean, he had thought, as polished and rigid as his policies. The reality disappointed. Beadle’s carpet turned up at the corners, curled with age. Dust powdered his mantel. And, opposite his salon chair, stuffing protruded from a tear in his chaise longue. How could this be the man who anticipated his every move in Parliament? Someone who didn’t even dust? Affronted, Waldemar clutched the severed hand to his chest.

This movement caught Lambert’s eye. “Ahh,” he moaned, in that deep, smooth voice that always boiled Waldemar’s blood. “Ahhh. It’s done, then? Bring it here.”

Waldemar decided to enjoy his joke a little longer. He stepped closer, allowing his talons to scrape against the wood, and offered no words, only a slow, wide smile.

Lambert half-rose in his impatience. “Give it here!”

When strutting about parliament, Lambert’s long, thin legs gave him the look of a heron. Now they appeared awkward, tangled. Waldemar considered dangling the hand before him to see if he’d lunge and trip, but instead surrendered it to Lambert’s grasping fingers.

Lambert fell back in his chair like a puppet with cut strings. “Oh,” he said. Then: “Oh! This isn’t his – Waldey has a ring, here!” He tapped at the pinky finger and grinned, seemingly back to full animation, only to droop again as another detail caught his eye. “No. Wait. This mole, by the thumb… and the shape of his fingers… no, it’s him. You did it, ghoul.” He turned the hand over, bending the stiff fingers, tracing a nail along the lines of the palm. “I did it.”

Unobserved, Waldemar pranced to the chaise longue and spread himself across it. Then he played one of the greatest tricks of a ghoul: the ability to mimic the form of its victims. Bones shifted, shortening and thickening. The slits of his nose erupted in a beak of cartilage. And, finding himself abruptly nude, Waldemar sat up and crossed his legs. When Lambert failed to notice (being still quite absorbed with the hand), Waldemar clicked his tongue. “Well? Are you just going to stroke it, or are you going to suckle on the fingers, too?”

Lambert screamed, then threw the severed hand at Waldemar. It sailed past his head to strike a lamp, which toppled, shattering. “You disguised yourself as my ghoul!”

Waldemar had twisted to observe the lamp. Now he turned to Lambert, sneering with great satisfaction. “No.”

“Oh, gods. It consumed you? I told it not to! I instructed it—”

“And would you put bacon in a dog’s mouth, and instruct it not to swallow? Idiot.” Waldemar wagged one of his crossed legs, then shivered. “Fetch me a blanket, would you? Unless you prefer me like this.”

“Don’t be ludicrous.” Lambert rose from his chair, only to waver. Firelight shadowed his face, deepening the lines across his forehead. “I suppose you’ll try to kill me now.”

This startled Waldemar so badly that he nearly lost his shape. His fingers lengthened, and he clenched them, concentrating. “Just because—” he sputtered. “That is. You may have lost all civility, but that doesn’t mean that I… by the gods, Beadle, murder isn’t for everyone!”

“Then, why have you been trying to kill me?”

“Why have I…?” Waldemar sat up straighter, blinking at the other man. “I imagine you’ve surmised that… well, yes, those are my letters, but I only wanted to expose the dark rot of you. Your rat turd of a heart, as it were. But to interpret such malice from letters is just… excuse me, Beadle, what are you doing?”

Lambert Beadle was unbuttoning his shirt.

Waldemar stared with the intensity of a starved dog. “Come, now,” he said. “Nobody wants to see that.”

“This wasn’t you, then?” Lambert slipped his shirt over a shoulder, exposing a plane of fish-belly white skin. A jag of red interrupted it, rising in an ugly ridge from his collarbone down to his pink knob of a nipple.

It’s like a kitten’s nose, Waldemar thought, stunned.

“Well?”

“Oh, the wound. Of course that wasn’t me. And terrible job on the healing, by the way, you’d have gotten a better result from needle and thread. Here—” Waldemar vaulted from the chaise, producing a shriek from Lambert. This surprised him, until he realized that, even in a human shape, his movements remained distinctly ghoulish. He unbent his spine, cleared his throat, and (making a concerted effort not to scuttle) approached again.

Though Lambert stiffened, staring at the ceiling, he allowed Waldemar to examine the scar. Runes danced along its edges, having yet to fully expend themselves. Waldemar prodded at these with pure science in mind, not allowing his eyes to descend further. He hoped that Lambert could not hear his swallowing. “You’ve applied the spell for a small cut, over and over. Obviously, hoping that the repetition would be enough to counteract the size of the injury. Incredibly wasteful use of your energy – I imagine this sucked you dry?”

“Pardon?” Lambert squeaked.

“Never mind. I forgot that I was talking to a fool. It’s beyond the realm of saving, now, you’ll always have this ugly scar. But perhaps…” Waldemar bared his teeth, wondering if he should share the resurfacing spell he used to exfoliate his own face each morning. He’d sub-specialized in healing with quietly purchased books, having more of an interest in the cosmetic applications. In exposing this private hobby, he also opened himself up to Lambert’s mockery. But this raw, red ridge annoyed him, as did the forwardness of another man having taken shots at his nemesis, so he spat out the spell words, with enough haste to prevent his reconsidering, and then watched in satisfaction as they wormed their way into Lambert’s flesh.

“You devil—” Lambert pushed him away, rubbing at his skin. Thick white flakes fell to the carpet, revealing a softer pink beneath.

“You must forgive me. I couldn’t stand to look at something so ugly.” Waldemar swiveled, his heart beating nearly out of his chest, and returned to the safety of the chaise. Sitting, he tucked his legs to his chest. It was at that moment he remembered his nudity, and discerned a different reason for Lambert’s shriek. “Huh,” he breathed. Horror squirmed in him – of this new ghoulish bent to his mind, and the unintended bucking of human decency – but it was quickly overcome by curiosity as to what other boundaries might have lost their power.

Lambert Beadle coughed into his fist. He was attempting to side-eye Waldemar while facing a cabinet of plates, and wasn’t entirely having success. “I should have known. The attempts on my life were rather too straightforward to have come from you.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’d expect you to smear cologne over the throwing knives, for one. And carve perverse little messages into the handle. It’s only that my assailant cloaked himself in illusion, which I know to be your specialty.”

Waldemar sank back into his seat, allowing the cushions to swallow the notches of his spine. “How many times has this happened? How many attempts?”