“Listen to me,” he said seriously. “There are three people you can trust in this place, okay?” He ticked off a finger. “There is me because I had no choice in the matter.” He ticked off a second finger. “There is Leala because she is a damn fine lady’s maid and will keep every one of your secrets. Don’t tell her I said nice things, she’ll just taunt me.” Third finger. “Finally, there’s the master.” He spread his hands. “That’s it. We’re the only ones you can trust. Just us three. And that isn’t because the rest of the house staff mean you harm. The problem is that the survivors are mediocre at best. Remember me telling you that? We tend to make things worse instead of better. So if you tell someone something, they’ll spread it around. If they don’t tell a demon during a pleasure session, they’ll tell someone else on the house staff, and they’ll pass it on. When it comes to you, we do not want any details getting around. As far as they are concerned, Nyfain found someone stealing, and he’s going to use her as a plaything before he kills her. That is something the demons will understand. They’ll think they’re finally getting to him. They’ll give him a little leeway with it. At least”—he grimaced—“he seems to think so. I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out, huh?”
“But…I still don’t understand. If he never takes anyone else prisoner, why me?”
“Sometimes to protect something, we need to hide it in plain sight.”
“Protect me from what?”
“You’ll have to ask the master. I’m not at liberty to say, and if you go too far in making me answer your questions, you might accidentally ask the wrong one. I’ll try to spill things covered by the magical gag, and it’ll kill me. Your grievances need to be taken up with the master and no one else. Preferably where you can’t be overheard.”
I brushed my hair out of my face, nervousness swirling in my gut.
“Fine.” I lifted my chin in defiance. “I will take it up with him directly.”
So much for staying away from Nyfain. I just hoped the next meeting didn’t end up with my tit in his mouth.
8
“Okay, what are we thinking, my darling?” Hadriel walked me down a wide hallway with towering vaulted ceilings. Mostly closed doors lined our pathway, with windows at the very top of the wall beneath the ceiling line, showering down light.
“What are we doing again?”
“We’re choosing hobbies. You need something to do during the day besides piss off the master.”
“Oh… But…”
“This is needlepoint.” He pointed at a door somewhat ajar. “Fancy making a lovely picture by poking fabric with needles? Or, in my case, a horrid rendition of a pond? It turned out like a swamp. By then word had gotten around about the watercolors and everyone accused me of failing at making a penis.” He put a hand to his chest. “I said excuse me, if I wanted to make a dick, I could make a dick, even in needlepoint. But I left in a huff and never returned because, honestly, I wasn’t totally sure that was true, and I didn’t want them to call me on it.”
I barked out a laugh before poking my head into the room. A middle-aged woman sat in a rocking chair. Glasses perched on the end of her nose as she pulled a string through a white strip of fabric. Two other women sat near her, one of them sitting in front of a white rectangle of fabric on some sort of stand, creating an intricate flowery design.
Before I could back out, the woman in the rocking chair glanced up. Her eyebrows sank low, and she startled.
“Maxine!” she shouted, stopping her rocking. “Maxine, am I dead?”
“What?” A woman up in years glanced over with a scowl. “What are you talking about?”
“I see an angel. Am I dead?”
“I see it, too,” the third woman said, her hair piled up into a bun at the top of her fuzzy head. “Is it a battle angel? Why is it dirty?”
I pulled my head back out and backed away. Hadriel filled my spot.
“Hey! Did you ladies see that ghost?” he said. I heard a collective gasp. “That was a ghost, wasn’t it? I’m pretty sure it was! It looked like that woman…” He snapped a few times and glanced at the ceiling. “That cook’s assistant from back in the day. Remember her, the one that dove off her horse and got trampled?”
“Oh!” one of the women said. “Yes! I believe I remember.”
“That never happened,” another said. “I would’ve remembered if that happened.”
“It did happen!” the first insisted. “Remember—”
Hadriel shut the door and turned back, chuckling. “That’ll give them something to discuss for at least a year. Andrelle has been obsessed with death since the start of all of this. She constantly thinks she’ll be the next to go. She hunts the grounds for ghosts, assured they are real. What she doesn’t believe in? Demons.”