The Red Wing Mansion

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Go inside," Claudius had parked his Rolls Royce out front, and ushered me up the porch, taking off his gloves and looking to the wood shed set aside from the large mansion, he seemed to be thinking about starting a fire – at least that is my guess.

I turn to the dark mansion, where the door is ajar – and I see... nothing.

Not a single candle burns within.

I watch as Claudius turns and his blue eyes disappear with the darkness of the shadows, swallowing him whole as he walks down the steps and disappears toward the trail which leads to the rickety looking shed.

Sigh. No more lanterns. No more crowds.

Just us in the dark with the cloudy sky.

I feel for the earrings he bought me at the market, tucked away in my jeans pocket, wrapped in tissue paper. I pat them down to make sure they won't fall out.

Whatever it is that Claudius has planned for us, I figure the mansion is quite large and there must be light at the back – in a room I can't see from the front.

I walk over the creaky front porch and I put my hand on the dark wood of the front door.

When I peak inside, I see yet more darkness, enveloping and wispy.

I swing the door open all the way to let in some natural starlight. Then I carefully walk through the empty Red Wing and notice everything is... hmm... it looks crooked.

The Red Wing has been truly abandoned.

There is no care at all.

There is no furniture at all.

No effort of preservation.

Each room is startlingly empty.

Even so, I walk through the corridor, wondering if something is set up in the ballroom at the back. Every mansion had a ballroom.

When I enter what might have been such a space, the windows overlooking an overgrown garden are broken or smashed, spider webs hang – and a breeze whispers through. The floorboards at the edges, near the windows, look damp and damaged.

I scratch my nails into the front of my jeans, along my thighs, sighing quietly in disappointment. I thought we were going to have... you know... some kind of romantic interlude or something. How could we do that in a place like this?

This abandoned historic mansion was... cold and empty. It's like the heart of the building had been stolen. There was no soul, there was nothing. Fontaine was the caretaker. You'd think, after keeping this in his possession for so long, that he'd at least maintain it.

Instead, it looks deliberately desolate – almost like he wanted it to hurt. I don't know... I don't know... is his idea, of a private thing set up for us at the mansion – a ghost tour? Maybe he liked surprises.

The floorboards are not silent, so it's impossible to move on them without making a noise.

So my spine crawls when I hear Fontaine speak right behind me, using a perfectly honed incubus stealth to sneak up on me without a single sound.

"Will you follow the rules, brat?"

When Claudius asks that question – a question we had already established the answer to back at the Night Market – he asks it behind my back, over my head, and I hear the demon come out.

It is still a man's voice, but it is tainted with some kind of... power.

A power I don't understand.

Ghostly, supernatural... cold, needing warmth.