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If they were lucky, it would still have enough of Reckless’s scent.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
BRING HIM TO ME
The window behind which Fox had stood was dark by the time they reached the house. Jacob forced himself not to think what that might mean. Donnersmarck leapt up the steps as though if he only hurried, he could have his sister back. The heavy door simply swung open as he pushed his shoulder against it. Donnersmarck did not need Jacob to explain that an unlocked door on a house like that was best treated with caution. Both drew their sabres. Pistols were as useless against a Bluebeard as they were against the Tailor in the black forest.
The entrance hall smelled of forgetyourself, even more so than the endless paths of the labyrinth. Jacob plucked the flowers from the vases by the door, and Donnersmarck pushed open the high windows to let in the night air.
Several corridors led away from the hall, and a broad staircase swung up to the first floor. What now? Should they split up?
They didn’t have to make that decision. A servant stepped from one of the corridors. Judging by his hairy hands, he hadn’t always been human.
Jacob drew his pistol. It was useless against the master, but it might work on the servant.
‘Where is she?’
No answer. The eyes staring at him were uniformly dark, like an animal’s.
Donnersmarck grabbed the servant by his stiff collar and put the tip of a sabre to his throat. ‘If she’s dead, then so are you. Understood? Where is she?’
It happened too fast.
Antlers sprouted from the servant’s head. They tore through Donnersmarck’s body before he could parry them with the sabre. Jacob shot, but the bullets had no effect, and the Man-Stag deflected Jacob’s sabre effortlessly, as though it were nothing but a stick wielded by a child. Jacob had read about them – stag calves that took the form of a man if human hair was mixed into their hay. It was said they were mindlessly loyal to their masters.
The Man-Stag wiped Donnersmarck’s blood from his brow and made a summoning gesture towards the corridor he’d come from. Jacob ignored him. He reached into his belt pouch and knelt down next to Donnersmarck. Yes, he still carried the Witch’s needle with him. Jacob pressed it into his friend’s bloody hand. It wouldn’t be able to heal a wound as terrible as this, but it could at least close it. The Man-Stag snorted impatiently. Only his head had changed. The blood was dripping from his antlers on to his black tailcoat.
‘Go, Jacob!’ Donnersmarck’s voice was a croaky rattle. Maybe the needle would keep him alive long enough. Long enough for what, Jacob? He got up.
The servant pointed at the corridor again. Jacob thought he could hear Chanute berating him: ‘Damn it, Jacob! What did I teach you about Bluebeards? You seriously believed you could just barge into his home and steal his quarry?’
Doors. At each one, Jacob thought Fox might be lying behind it, dead. But every time he stopped, the Man-Stag just uttered a menacing grunt.
The door he led him to was open.
Jacob already saw the red walls from many steps away.
And the dead on golden chains.
And Fox among them.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
LIFE AND DEATH
For an instant, Fox feared that the blood on Jacob’s shirt was his own, but then she saw the servant’s bloody antlers, and that they’d come without Donnersmarck.
Jacob just brushed her with a quick glance. He knew they were both lost if he let his concern for her distract him from the murderer who was waiting for him among the dead. Jacob was unarmed. His face was blurred by the tears in Fox’s eyes. Tears for her own helplessness. Tears for her fear for him. As they ran down her face, she nearly expected them be as white as the liquid that was filling Troisclerq’s pitcher.
The Bluebeard pushed himself off the blood-red wall. Lost in his house of death. Guy. He briefly regained his name. He went to Fox and touched her cheek as though he wanted to feel her tears on his fingertips.
‘You may go,’ he said to the servant, who was still standing in the door with his bloody antlers. The Man-Stag looked puzzled.
‘I said, you may go!’ Troisclerq’s voice sounded composed, as though time was his. And it was his. The dead bodies around them had procured it for him.
The servant bowed his horned head. Then he hesitantly stepped back and disappeared into the dark corridor.
They were alone. With the dead and their murderer.
