Mada Vittora’s watery eyes snapped to her. A momentary suspicion wavered in her look, but it was soon drowned out by a tipsy hiccup, and she blinked and flicked at the little button. “Ah, I remember now. Attash betit truk.”
The button obediently stitched itself back to the blouse.
A flush of pride warmed Anouk’s cheeks. To her surprise, the witch suddenly pressed a kiss against Anouk’s forehead. “My sweet girl. My darling girl. Ma galuk spirn.” She wobbled away, leaving the heels.
My clever girl. That was what she’d said in the Silent Tongue.
Anouk brushed her fingers against her forehead, the kiss still damp. Her heart was lighter as she finished washing the dishes, dried them, and put them away. She soaked the big roasting pan in the sink to scour first thing in the morning. She cleared the rest of the dishes from the empty ballroom and blew out the candles. She swept the floor and closed the curtains over the tall windows. The moon was high outside. It had to be close to midnight.
A thump sounded from upstairs.
She dropped the broom, which clattered to the floor, and picked it back up in a hurry.
She listened.
No footsteps. No voices calling for her to come clean up a broken vase or fallen books. But something about the silence ate at her.
“Mada?” she called up the stairs. “Is everything all right?”
No answer.
“Viggo?”
But no, he had left with the Royals, and he would have taken Hunter Black with him. They wouldn’t be back until the morning. She went to the window and pushed aside the drapes. The black Rolls-Royce was parked o
ut front, as was Hunter Black’s gunmetal-gray motorcycle. They must have gone to Castle Ides in the Royals’ car.
Now the silence gnashed at her with big, jagged teeth. With a start, she realized the clock above the drawing-room fireplace had stopped. She tapped its face. Nothing. She’d have to reset it.
Her eyes trailed up to the portrait of the Shadow Royals, pulled by some unavoidable force, and she shivered. Were they watching even now? She went to the salon to check the time on the grandfather clock so she could reset the mantel one, but it had stopped too. A chill started at the base of her spine. She checked the hall clock, and the one in the kitchen, and the one on the stairs landing.
Every clock in the house had stopped at exactly midnight.
The chill grew. What was this dark magic? Not like any trick or whisper she had ever seen. The coldness spread up her back as she made her way up the stairs. She realized distractedly that she still clutched the broom in one hand.
“Mada?”
Empty bedrooms, empty halls. She double-checked Viggo’s room and the guest room Hunter Black used while he was in town to make sure they’d really left. All empty. She clutched the broom like a weapon, ready to strike. It wasn’t until the sixth floor, Mada Vittora’s grand bedroom, that she heard the scramble of someone’s jagged breath.
“Hello?”
She brandished the broom handle but then let her arms fall in surprise. “Beau?”
He was crouched on the Persian rug at the foot of the bed. The closet door was open. The dressing table’s chair was overturned. Bright red wine had spilled and was soaking into the carpet, and Anouk tsked reflexively. The hardest stains to get out.
She set the broom aside uncertainly. “What are you doing in here? Where’s Mada Vittora?”
His hair was messy. His chest rose and fell quickly. He met her eyes with a gaze like a caught animal’s, a look she’d never seen on his face before, not even the time that Hunter Black had cornered him in the garage and threatened to cut out his tongue if he ever called Viggo a salaud again.
“Anouk. Oh God.”
The stain wasn’t red wine, she realized.
Her mouth went very dry.
Blood.
But whose blood?