Lucky Rabbit

Pandy and Isidor left while everyone else ate breakfast on Saturday. Augustus himself carried Isidor’s small suitcase. The boy had left his Falconet uniforms behind, since he wouldn’t be needing them, and at least in theory they might someday fit Thaniel. That left only a few changes of clothes and his toiletries, along with Tempest’s sleeping-box, which he carried himself.

Once Isidor got into their borrowed carriage and placed Tempest’s box on the floor, Augustus handed Pandy up to the boy, along with another, smaller box he removed from his secret cache-pocket. He gave it a rather wary look as he said, “This is for Eurydice, from Professor Beeswick. He promised dire consequences if anyone opens it before she sits at the desk in the office at Avington House. I suggest you don’t tempt fate.”

He gave Isidor a hard look, and the boy looked surprised, but nodded. Did he not know what Beeswick really was? Perhaps not, though Isidor certainly did know the librarian was more than he appeared.

The two of them sat in silence as the carriage rattled through the city. It was one of the ones that belonged to Falconet, and the driver would return there, so it was best that if an eight-year old and a rabbit entered the conveyance, an eight-year-old and a rabbit exited it at the other end of the journey. Besides, Pandy suspected neither of them really knew what to talk about. For once, they hadn’t been brought together by duplicity or desperation, but by choice, and the awkwardness between them was palpable.

Falconet was in the northwestern quadrant of Knightmere, while Avington House was close to the middle, but definitely in the northeast, on the other side of Celestine Point. The commute wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t short, either, and if she did spend the night here, Pandy would definitely have to leave early in the morning in order to reach Falconet on time. Still, one carriage was much better than two or three buses and allowing at least an hour for an Incident involving two lampshades, a koala, and sixty-three candycanes.

When Isidor climbed out of the carriage, he immediately stopped and turned to look back at Pandy with an expression of incredulity on his face. “This is a noble estate?”

Pandy hopped to his side, staring up at what had probably once been box hedges, but now more closely resembled casket-bushes. Some kind of thorny vine wrapped around them, with probably poisonous red berries glistening invitingly from dangling branches. The stone fence was crumbling, and the metal spikes atop it were rusty and broken.

Overgrown trees swallowed up the front of the house, but she could make out peeling paint and missing mortar. At least the windows on the first floor all looked intact… But hadn’t at least one of them been cracked when she arrived to meet M. Piers? It had been dark, and Pandy was focused on meeting the disreputable noble, but she thought she remembered seeing one.

They both turned back to the carriage as someone spoke from behind them. It was the carriage driver, who leaned toward them, scarf pulled up around their ears and a hat low over their eyes. “Mr. Blackwood said I should ask if you’ll need a ride back, and when,” they said, in a neutral tone, and Isidor stepped backwards.

“No,” he said, “I don’t attend Falconet any more, so-”

“Not you,” the driver said gently, pushing the cap out of her eyes. “Miss Haupe.” It was, of course, Sir Bailey, and she was looking straight at Pandy.

Pandy shook her head at the same time Isidor stepped back toward the carriage, raising his hands to fumble at his necklace. “Oh,” he gasped, obviously also recognizing the knight, “I should send this back with you, then.”

Sir Bailey sat back, tugging at the brim of her cap. “Someone will be by to get it,” she said, then snapped the reins as she clucked to the horses. The carriage rolled away, leaving only Pandy, Isidor, and Isidor’s meagre belongings. Tempest was presumably in Isidor’s pocket, but the tortoise hadn’t so much as poked her head out all morning, so Pandy didn’t even count her.

Isidor picked up his suitcase, tucking Tempest’s box beneath his arm and holding the box from Professor Beeswick like it might contain some kind of explosive device. Which wasn’t entirely out of the question, even though Pandy had no idea why the dragon would want to blow them up.

Pandy hopped ahead of him, and as soon as she was beyond the massive bushes, which still served to conceal her from the street even though they were dropping their leaves at a prodigious rate, she thought, <Cast Shifting Faces.>

Between one hop and the next, she became Eurydice Haupe, and pushed open the rusted, creaking gate that served to separate what she assumed was public property from the grounds of the Avington estate. The path beyond was as neglected as the rest of the house, and she bent to pick up a stone, replacing it in a matching gap in the walkway. Mud had filled in the hole, forcing her to jump up and down on the rock a few times before some muck bubbled out from under it, soaking her shoes. Pandy sighed.

Isidor moved past her, gingerly stepping over the cracks in the steps, and avoiding what looked like the moldy remnants of a mat in front of the door. He set down his suitcase and turned to Pandy. “You expect children to live here?” he demanded.

She grimaced as she came to join him. “It’s better inside. But, um, don’t touch anything. Especially if it looks wet. And if the floor starts to give way, jump.”

He gave her an incredulous look, and Pandy realized she probably should have used the ride over to tell him about all of the traps, and the possibility of dead bodies, and the maybe-ghosts, rather than pondering the inscrutable nature of dragons and how pretty the city was after it rained. Well, live and learn. As long as Isidor lived, Pandy would learn.

The doors were exactly as Pandy remembered, both from Guising Eve and Gacha Love. The knocker, however, had changed. Where before it had been a horrific mass of gnarled nose, twisted tusks, terrible tongue, and extravagant eyeballs, now it looked like… nothing. It was a simple, heavy brass plaque with an equally heavy brass ring dangling from the top of it. Without pausing to consider the fact that she was now technically the homeowner, which meant there was no one on the other side of the door to answer, Pandy reached out and lifted the ring, then let it fall onto the flat metal plate below.

An echoing bang rang out over the estate, and Pandy could practically see the air ripple with the noise. It was far beyond the sound that should have been produced by the simple impact of one piece of metal on another. Footsteps sounded from beyond the door, and the latch clicked.

The right-hand door swung open, and there stood a man who was the very embodiment of what Pandy would have expected a proper English butler to look like. His silver-gray hair was neatly groomed, and an equally silver mustache perched above his austere mouth, which opened to say, “Welcome home, madam,” as he stepped aside, sweeping a bow.

Pandy and Isidor exchanged wide-eyed glances, and then Isidor – who didn’t know Pandy didn’t have servants, because Pandy hadn’t thought to tell him something so obvious – stepped through the door. Pandy hurried after him, setting her hand on his shoulder just in case she had to heave him back outside as the floor collapsed or the butler produced an axe. Nothing happened, except that the butler’s sharp black eyes caught the protective gesture, and he nodded to himself, ever so slightly.

“Oh, it’s so lovely to have a family in the house again,” said another voice, and Pandy nearly tossed Isidor out of sheer surprise. The speaker was a short, plump woman with a distinct resemblance to Marta, the cook at Thaniel’s family estate, except that this woman had bright, dark eyes and a wide smile, while Marta always looked at least a little bit concerned.

“I’m Nyssa,” the woman said, practically beaming. “Please, let me show you to the sitting room. Nox, what are you doing? Close the door and take their coats! They’ll catch their deaths, and they’ve only just arrived.”

The butler-type took Isidor’s jacket, laying it neatly across his arm while he eyed Pandy. She still didn’t have a coat, of course, so she smiled an awkward apology as she mentally reminded herself to visit Saskia sometime this weekend to pick up her new pants and order some kind of winter-wear. Nox gently shut the front door before entering the room to their left, which Pandy knew from Gacha Love was a relatively innocuous coat room. Nyssa opened the door to their right and led the way into the room beyond. She moved very oddly, and it took Pandy a moment to figure out that she seemed to be floating above the ground ever so slightly, so the movement of the shadowy appendages just visible beneath the hem of her skirt didn’t quite match up to her actual pace.

“What’s going on?” Isidor asked from the corner of his mouth, and Pandy was forced to shrug even as she followed the diaphanous little woman. If this was another of the house’s tricks, it was far more insidious than the ones she was used to from the game.

As they entered the sitting room, Pandy finally noticed something she would have seen the moment she entered if she hadn’t been distracted by the sudden appearance of a pair of strangers in her home. All of the old, moth-eaten sheets had been removed from the furniture, and the floor had been swept. The furniture itself was still faded and damaged, with the strange wooden ‘springs’ popping out of more than one seat cushion, but some attempt had been made to rearrange it, rather than just shoving it out of the way. A few of the nicer pieces even looked like someone might have tried polishing them.

Two of the best chairs had been placed on either side of a small table that only had a chip out of one carved edge. A dented silver tray sat on the table, topped with a mismatched tea set, including a pot, two cups, and a bowl with what looked like sugar cubes in it. Pandy wasn’t certain they actually were sugar cubes, because they were more yellow than white, but the similarity was clearly there.

“Sit down, sit down,” Nyssa said, gesturing to the chairs. Cautiously, Isidor and Pandy did so, and the woman poured a steaming, brownish liquid from the teapot. As she did, Pandy caught Isidor’s eyes and shook her head very slightly, indicating that he shouldn’t drink it. Isidor gave her a look that said he wasn’t an idiot, and he would appreciate it if she’d stop acting like he was.

Once the tea was served, Pandy cautiously picked up her cup by the delicate handle. As Nyssa watched anxiously and Isidor stared with ever-increasing incredulity, Pandy raised it to her mouth and took a sip. When the System didn’t inform her she’d just been poisoned, she added a single cube of ‘sugar’ and sipped again.

The taste was vile – somewhere between moldy socks and the fluid that had collected in a hollow, rotten stump, both of which Pandy had had previous encounters with – but it was technically potable. Pandy swallowed hard, forcing it down, then set her cup back on the saucer with a polite smile.

“Nyssa,” she said carefully, “may I ask who you are?”

The woman’s hand fluttered to her mouth, and her eyes widened. She seemed about to speak, when someone else got there first. It was Nox, who stood in the sitting room doorway. “We’re the servants of Avington House,” he said in what was very definitely the exact kind of British accent Pandy heard on shows with names with Upperton Abbey. Had he spoken like that the first time?

Pandy cleared her throat and stood, which made Nyssa flutter worriedly, clutching her hands together as she wondered if the tea hadn’t been to ‘her ladyship’s’ liking after all. Pandy ignored her, watching Nox. “I didn’t hire any servants,” she said in a tone so firm she surprised herself.

Nox bowed his head. “We attend the lord or lady of Avington House,” he told her, so calm as to be emotionless. “And you are now our lady.”

Pandy stared at him. “But I can’t afford to have servants. I don’t want servants.” Servants would definitely get in the way of the sneaky things she needed to be doing. Plus, now they’d seen Isidor in his young shape. How would she explain it when this child disappeared, and a clearly-related teenager appeared instead? “You’ll have to go. I’m sorry.”

She thrust her hand into her pocket, summoning ten gold coins into her palm. Holding it out, she said, “Here. It’s, um, severance pay.” Something Pandy had never gotten, but they talked about it in books and movies all the time, so it was probably a thing here, too. If it hadn’t been, it was now.

Nyssa let out a soft gasp, and Pandy turned, to see the older woman staring at the money, looking like Pandy had just offered her a cup of her own tea. “Oh, my lady,” she said in a heartbroken voice, “you don’t want us? I promise, we can do better. I’ve been cleaning ever since you claimed the house, but I can do more. So much more, if you just give me a chance.”

She was wringing her hands again, and as Pandy watched, she seemed to lose color, fading to a grayscale version of herself, then beginning to wisp away around the edges. The only light in the room came from sunlight entering through the window at the front of the room, but that was enough to show that Nyssa had become distinctly translucent.

Isidor let out a strangled gasp, pushing his chair back as he stood up too quickly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tetchy tortoise, who snapped at the air while sparks danced over her shell. “Ghosts,” he said, thrusting the turtle out toward the two fading figures.

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