Sir Brennen
Legend
Maultus Haunted Estate – Back Into the Mansion
Once up the stairs, across the balcony and to the library, everyone stopped almost immediately in the doorway, blocking the view as we dwarves caught up. You’d think the tall folk would have a little more consideration for their partners. A couple of pointed grunts, and they parted enough to let us in the room, though their attention never wavered from what had brought them up short.
A young human girl stood in the corner opposite. Not that remarkable, as everyone else had already told us they had seen her earlier, but as we pushed our way to the front, we saw her too. Really saw. It was if she were made of mist, as if the light of the gloomy light of the day had taken shape as this frail child. A stray breeze rustled a page of the open poetry book behind her. It was a moment before I realized I was looking through her at the book. A chill prickled across the back of my neck, and I was reminded the feeling the revenant caused in me back at the monastery.
“Thank you,” she said, in a voice so normal it was all the more eerie for it. At our blank expressions, she gestured to the bookshelves next to us by the door. “For saving my books. I was afraid the loathsome worms would eat through them all.” Marcus nodded his head with a faint motion, acknowledging her appreciation.
Looking over each of our faces, her gaze seemed to settle on Blaine. “You have my brother’s eyes.”
A few seconds of awkward silence, and then Barrick asked, “So, why ya hauntin’ this place?” Apparently he hadn’t felt the same dread that seized my tongue.
She smiled at us, but is seemed sad. “I think perhaps it is Regine who keeps us here, though I don’t know why.” Pausing for a moment, a quizzical look passed across her face. “Or do you mean the pretenders?”
“Pretenders?” Marcus asked.
“Yes. A man, and a girl who dresses like my sisters and I. They’ve been here a few days. Or perhaps weeks. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell those sorts of things. They’re intent on scaring others off for some reason.”
With a small shove and meaningful jerk of his head, Father Al indicated for Blaine to move forward. Our sponsor did so, with only a slight nervous glance backward. “I am Viscount Blaine Maltus, a descendent of your family. I’m the rightful heir to this house.”
“As I thought you might be.”
With the acknowledgement, Blaine cleared his throat and spoke with a bit more confidence. "As the entitled heir, I have come to lay claim to the content's of your father's vault. Do you know where it is?"
"I confess, I do not."
With the tension of dealing with the spirit somewhat dissipated, the whole group began asking a flood of questions. Reveri couldn't really tell us much more about what had gone on in the house since her death, or even how she died. We did learn the name of Regine's raven was Arabus, at least. We also questioned Blaine if he knew who the pretenders might be; a couple from town perhaps? He said it didn’t sound like anyone he was familiar with.
While the discussion was going on, Barrick stepped forward toward the ghostly girl and fanned his battle-axe back and forth through her.
"What... are… you doing?!" Father Al exclaimed.
"Huh? I was just checkin'." Barrick glowered a little as he came back over to us.
Father Al shook his head as if to clear it, and then suggested that the other sister, Rebecca, might be able to tell us more.
“Could you find her,” he asked Reveri, “convince her to speak with us?”
The dead girl agreed, telling us to give her an hour, and then meet her back here. So, with time to kill, we trundled downstairs to finish our investigation of the latrine. Entering the bare, dusty room, Father Al suggested that Charlotte might check the items we had found so far for mystical auras, to see if anything might be useful before we continued exploring, and also to see if there was anything unusual about the room itself.
As they laid everything out, we dwarves stood watch out in the hall. I took position out toward the large dining area, Barrick around the corner where a set of stairs led down. A minute or so later, Father Al announced, in a projected voice for the benefit of those of us in the hall, that the room was magic free. Then the voices of the humans became more indistinct as they fell to discussing the booty-thus-far. Father Al then called out again.
"Kurgish, Barrick. Either of you want the chainmail we found in the footlocker upstairs?"
"Not enough protection," Barrick grunted.
"Too heavy for me. Can't really use my urgrosh right if my armor gets in the way."
"I don't know. This seems pretty light. Probably not much more than that chain shirt you're wearing, but this would cover more. Though it is a kind of strange color."
No, it couldn't be, I thought. I'd heard of dwarven heroes who owned these light but incredibly strong suits of armor, but had never seen one. Could we really have come across mail made of mithral? I was walking back to the doorway to take a peek inside at what the priest was talking about, when I heard another voice behind me.
"Excuse me."
I whirled around and saw one of the triplets, standing just past the end of the hall in the dining area. No, not one of the triplets. Having now seen a couple of the ghost girls up close, I could see this woman only superficially resembled them. Older, too. Her pale complexion was achieved through makeup, not from being dead. And she wasn’t the least bit see-through.
"I think we can negotiate," she said.
"Not my call," I replied, shifting my grip on my urgrosh. She was about twenty feet away, and kept glancing to her left, where I knew the double doors out of the dining were. Or perhaps where her accomplice was. Her ghostly appearance didn't hide the fact that she appeared in good shape, and wary. I knew if I started I would never catch her, not with my short legs. The rest of the party had gone quiet in the room, as they realized I was talking to someone. Behind me, I heard the creak of floorboards as Barrick moved into the hall. "Don't come any closer," she said when she saw him. Then again to me, "Well, can I speak to someone who can make that call?"
I looked into the latrine room and called to Blaine, gesturing him over. He stepped next to me out in the hall, and turned toward her.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"That's not important. What is important is we can help you, and we want to make a deal. Also, we have your friend."
"Joshua?"
"Yes. And as a show of good faith, we're willing to let him go."
"And then what? What do you want?"
"To work with you in finding the vault. We've been here for weeks and have been unable to discover it. For instance, we call tell you with certainty that it's not down the privy there. You don't seem to frighten off too easy, so why don't we pool our resources?"
"Let me see Joshua, first."
She held up a finger. "Wait here." Then she took off around the corner.
"Joshua’s your buddy that went missing, right?" I asked. Blaine nodded his head. By now the rest of the group had joined us. We waited a few minutes, and then heard a door opening down the stairs where Barrick had been guarding. Too many gods'spittin' ways to get around in this house. Weapons ready, we prepared for a trick, an ambush. A young human, his eyes squinted from having just come from the dark basement, stumbled up the stairs. His hands were tied, and his stylish "adventuring" clothes were filthy and torn.
Blaine rushed up to him, threw his arms around his friend, and clapped him on the back. Then, holding him out at arm's length, he took a better look at him. "Are you alright? Did they treat you well?"
Joshua nodded. "Yeah, they fed me and stuff. Said they were going to let me go after they found what they were looking for."
While he was talking, Blaine took out a dagger and cut his bonds. Barrick shuffled past to once again keep watch on the stairwell. Away from the re-joined comrades, I overheard Marcus lean over and whisper to Father Al, "I'm not sure about him. What if he's working with the girl and this is all a ruse?" Father Al nodded in agreement.
Joshua explained that when he had gone to the greatroom during Blaine's first search of the mansion, he fell through a hole in the floor that had been covered by a tarp. We looked at each other puzzled, because we had seen no such hole when we checked the greatroom. Joshua said that next everything went black, and he couldn't find a way out of the hole. A few minutes later, there was light above him and a man's voice telling him to climb up. When he pulled himself up over the edge, he was in a completely different room, with stone walls and big support beams, but no windows. A middle-age man with a big scar across his neck forced him at sword point to move to the corner, then bent over and actually picked up the hole by it's edge, folded it up like a black picnic cloth, and stuffed it in his pocket. Then the scarred guy tied him up, and left through a door Joshua hadn't even seen until it was opened. The man and woman that captured him had been using that room as their living quarters pretty much the whole time he was down there.
"Think it's been an hour, yet?" Charlotte asked, subtly gesturing up across toward the library with a sideways glance.
Nodding in agreement, we moved down the hall into the dining room. As we moved to the staircase, the unnamed girl, who had been waiting around the corner, got our attention. "So, can we make a bargain?"
Blaine stepped out in front of us, hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes. You're friend told us. You're Lord Blaine Malthus." She finished her address with a little mock curtsey.
"Then you know that everything in this house is rightfully mine. I am here to claim my inheritance, not give equal shares to pranksters and kidnappers."
She seemed about to protest, then furrowed her brow as she reconsidered. "Alright. All I ask is that we get the same share as the rest of your hired help there."
"From the vault," Charlotte quickly amended.
"Yes, from the vault. Of course," the girl agreed, seeming a little puzzled why Charlotte had made such an obvious statement. Charlotte glanced meaningfully at the bag Father Al carried, which contained the valuables we had found so far in the house. Those were now not part of the deal. I grinned. Hey, if ghost girl and her boyfriend, wherever he was, had wanted any of that stuff, they should have picked it up while they were haunting the place the past few weeks.
Maybe our little half-elf was thinking like a dwarf, after all.
"I am not making a deal with someone whose name I still don’t know," Blaine said.
"It’s Priscilla," she said, seeming resigned to forthrightness in order to secure our help.
"And the man who's with you? Where's he?"
“His name’s Brock,” Joshua said, keeping his eyes on Priscilla, letting her know he was not keeping any of her secrets. Maybe he sensed our suspicions and was trying to prove himself.
"He's still waiting,” she replied, a touch of annoyance edging into her voice, “safeguarding a few things that might be useful should you agree to work with us. Can't show you all our cards, can we?"
I think it might have been the gambling metaphor that made Father Al speak up next. "You have some sort of magical hole?"
"Yes, a portable hole. It’s proven quite handy."
"And it was you that frightened our donkey," the priest continued to press.
"Yes, yes... but finally we decided it might be better to work with you since you obviously weren't buying the whole haunted house routine."
"I wouldn't say that," Barrick started, but I gave him a quick poke in his armor with my urgrosh. Catching on, Marcus asked Priscilla to sit at the dining table and wait, as we still needed to discuss a little more in private. She complied, and we continued on our way up to the library. When we started to enter, Marcus asked if Joshua and Barrick could stand outside and keep an eye on the girl from the balcony.
"Why can't he just watch her?" Barrick asked, following us in the room.
Marcus bent down and whispered in his ear, "Because I still think he might be working with her."
"Oh. Right. I'll just be outside and keep watch, then."
The library appeared empty. After a moment, two of the triplets slowly faded into view.
"Rebecca?" Father Al asked.
"Yes?" Her voice was the same as Reveri's, but there seemed to be a weariness to it greater than her sister's.
"I suppose your sister has explained why we're here."
"She told me you might be able to help us rest. I'm so tired. I just want to rest."
Father Al straightened up a little, as if he realized he might have taken this aspect of our little treasure hunt a bit for granted. With a bit more purpose behind his tone, he replied, "Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Can you tell me what you remember, what happened to you?"
The girl's brow furrowed, as she tried to recall events long past, then relaxed again as that weary expression settled back into her face. "We fought, Regine and I. In my room. I had come in and she was standing there, writing something on the wall. I don't remember what it said, because I saw she was writing it in her own blood, from a cut across her hand. In the other hand, she had a small knife. I ran in to take it away, to stop her from hurting herself, but she swung the knife at me. Put a cut in my nice dress." Rebecca absently fingered a sliced opening on the shoulder of her ghostly clothing. "When she tried to attack me again, I fell back against the window, and it broke. I fell outside onto the ground. I don't remember much after that."
I thought of the old blood we found on the window glass in the second floor bedroom.
"Yes, I heard that, the window." Reveri picked up her sister's story now. "I went to your room to see if you were alright, and Regine stabbed me. I ran and hid in Aunt Jocasta's closet." And died there, I mentally finished for her.
Father Al absorbed all of this, quietly thinking for a moment. "Well, I guess we need to figure out what exactly happened to Regine, then. But to do that, we need you to help us, if you can. First, the man and woman who've been pretending to haunt this place. Do you know where they've been spending most of their time?"
"No. Somewhere in the basement. We don't wander down there much."
"What does the man look like?" Marcus interjected.
"Older, like my father. He has an old cut across his throat." She swiped her hand below her own chin to demonstrate. Satisfied that she was talking about someone other that Joshua, Marcus let the priest continue.
"Then, do you know where your father's vault is?"
"No, I don't know that either." She paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "Once, on our birthday, father told me he had a surprise, that he would let me wear one of my grandmother's best necklaces at the party. He went upstairs to get it. It was gorgeous, with sapphires. After the party, he told me he had to lock it up again, and took it back upstairs with him."
"It's got to be that mirror," Blaine muttered. "Perhaps there's a password."
"Tinkerpaws!" Charlotte exclaimed. We all stared at her blankly. "The poem, framed in his study. Tinkerpaws!"
"Oh, yes!" Reveri almost squealed as she clapped her hands together. "I had forgotten about that poem! Father kept it in his study? How sweet."
Realization spread through the rest of the group. "So," Marcus jumped in, "if we're able to have Blaine open the mirror with the password, we won't need the help of Priscilla or her friend. Or have to split anything with them."
Everyone nodded in agreement. First, we had to devise a route through the house from the library back to the bedroom with the magical mirror, without letting our guest in the dining room see us.
Once up the stairs, across the balcony and to the library, everyone stopped almost immediately in the doorway, blocking the view as we dwarves caught up. You’d think the tall folk would have a little more consideration for their partners. A couple of pointed grunts, and they parted enough to let us in the room, though their attention never wavered from what had brought them up short.
A young human girl stood in the corner opposite. Not that remarkable, as everyone else had already told us they had seen her earlier, but as we pushed our way to the front, we saw her too. Really saw. It was if she were made of mist, as if the light of the gloomy light of the day had taken shape as this frail child. A stray breeze rustled a page of the open poetry book behind her. It was a moment before I realized I was looking through her at the book. A chill prickled across the back of my neck, and I was reminded the feeling the revenant caused in me back at the monastery.
“Thank you,” she said, in a voice so normal it was all the more eerie for it. At our blank expressions, she gestured to the bookshelves next to us by the door. “For saving my books. I was afraid the loathsome worms would eat through them all.” Marcus nodded his head with a faint motion, acknowledging her appreciation.
Looking over each of our faces, her gaze seemed to settle on Blaine. “You have my brother’s eyes.”
A few seconds of awkward silence, and then Barrick asked, “So, why ya hauntin’ this place?” Apparently he hadn’t felt the same dread that seized my tongue.
She smiled at us, but is seemed sad. “I think perhaps it is Regine who keeps us here, though I don’t know why.” Pausing for a moment, a quizzical look passed across her face. “Or do you mean the pretenders?”
“Pretenders?” Marcus asked.
“Yes. A man, and a girl who dresses like my sisters and I. They’ve been here a few days. Or perhaps weeks. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell those sorts of things. They’re intent on scaring others off for some reason.”
With a small shove and meaningful jerk of his head, Father Al indicated for Blaine to move forward. Our sponsor did so, with only a slight nervous glance backward. “I am Viscount Blaine Maltus, a descendent of your family. I’m the rightful heir to this house.”
“As I thought you might be.”
With the acknowledgement, Blaine cleared his throat and spoke with a bit more confidence. "As the entitled heir, I have come to lay claim to the content's of your father's vault. Do you know where it is?"
"I confess, I do not."
With the tension of dealing with the spirit somewhat dissipated, the whole group began asking a flood of questions. Reveri couldn't really tell us much more about what had gone on in the house since her death, or even how she died. We did learn the name of Regine's raven was Arabus, at least. We also questioned Blaine if he knew who the pretenders might be; a couple from town perhaps? He said it didn’t sound like anyone he was familiar with.
While the discussion was going on, Barrick stepped forward toward the ghostly girl and fanned his battle-axe back and forth through her.
"What... are… you doing?!" Father Al exclaimed.
"Huh? I was just checkin'." Barrick glowered a little as he came back over to us.
Father Al shook his head as if to clear it, and then suggested that the other sister, Rebecca, might be able to tell us more.
“Could you find her,” he asked Reveri, “convince her to speak with us?”
The dead girl agreed, telling us to give her an hour, and then meet her back here. So, with time to kill, we trundled downstairs to finish our investigation of the latrine. Entering the bare, dusty room, Father Al suggested that Charlotte might check the items we had found so far for mystical auras, to see if anything might be useful before we continued exploring, and also to see if there was anything unusual about the room itself.
As they laid everything out, we dwarves stood watch out in the hall. I took position out toward the large dining area, Barrick around the corner where a set of stairs led down. A minute or so later, Father Al announced, in a projected voice for the benefit of those of us in the hall, that the room was magic free. Then the voices of the humans became more indistinct as they fell to discussing the booty-thus-far. Father Al then called out again.
"Kurgish, Barrick. Either of you want the chainmail we found in the footlocker upstairs?"
"Not enough protection," Barrick grunted.
"Too heavy for me. Can't really use my urgrosh right if my armor gets in the way."
"I don't know. This seems pretty light. Probably not much more than that chain shirt you're wearing, but this would cover more. Though it is a kind of strange color."
No, it couldn't be, I thought. I'd heard of dwarven heroes who owned these light but incredibly strong suits of armor, but had never seen one. Could we really have come across mail made of mithral? I was walking back to the doorway to take a peek inside at what the priest was talking about, when I heard another voice behind me.
"Excuse me."
I whirled around and saw one of the triplets, standing just past the end of the hall in the dining area. No, not one of the triplets. Having now seen a couple of the ghost girls up close, I could see this woman only superficially resembled them. Older, too. Her pale complexion was achieved through makeup, not from being dead. And she wasn’t the least bit see-through.
"I think we can negotiate," she said.
"Not my call," I replied, shifting my grip on my urgrosh. She was about twenty feet away, and kept glancing to her left, where I knew the double doors out of the dining were. Or perhaps where her accomplice was. Her ghostly appearance didn't hide the fact that she appeared in good shape, and wary. I knew if I started I would never catch her, not with my short legs. The rest of the party had gone quiet in the room, as they realized I was talking to someone. Behind me, I heard the creak of floorboards as Barrick moved into the hall. "Don't come any closer," she said when she saw him. Then again to me, "Well, can I speak to someone who can make that call?"
I looked into the latrine room and called to Blaine, gesturing him over. He stepped next to me out in the hall, and turned toward her.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"That's not important. What is important is we can help you, and we want to make a deal. Also, we have your friend."
"Joshua?"
"Yes. And as a show of good faith, we're willing to let him go."
"And then what? What do you want?"
"To work with you in finding the vault. We've been here for weeks and have been unable to discover it. For instance, we call tell you with certainty that it's not down the privy there. You don't seem to frighten off too easy, so why don't we pool our resources?"
"Let me see Joshua, first."
She held up a finger. "Wait here." Then she took off around the corner.
"Joshua’s your buddy that went missing, right?" I asked. Blaine nodded his head. By now the rest of the group had joined us. We waited a few minutes, and then heard a door opening down the stairs where Barrick had been guarding. Too many gods'spittin' ways to get around in this house. Weapons ready, we prepared for a trick, an ambush. A young human, his eyes squinted from having just come from the dark basement, stumbled up the stairs. His hands were tied, and his stylish "adventuring" clothes were filthy and torn.
Blaine rushed up to him, threw his arms around his friend, and clapped him on the back. Then, holding him out at arm's length, he took a better look at him. "Are you alright? Did they treat you well?"
Joshua nodded. "Yeah, they fed me and stuff. Said they were going to let me go after they found what they were looking for."
While he was talking, Blaine took out a dagger and cut his bonds. Barrick shuffled past to once again keep watch on the stairwell. Away from the re-joined comrades, I overheard Marcus lean over and whisper to Father Al, "I'm not sure about him. What if he's working with the girl and this is all a ruse?" Father Al nodded in agreement.
Joshua explained that when he had gone to the greatroom during Blaine's first search of the mansion, he fell through a hole in the floor that had been covered by a tarp. We looked at each other puzzled, because we had seen no such hole when we checked the greatroom. Joshua said that next everything went black, and he couldn't find a way out of the hole. A few minutes later, there was light above him and a man's voice telling him to climb up. When he pulled himself up over the edge, he was in a completely different room, with stone walls and big support beams, but no windows. A middle-age man with a big scar across his neck forced him at sword point to move to the corner, then bent over and actually picked up the hole by it's edge, folded it up like a black picnic cloth, and stuffed it in his pocket. Then the scarred guy tied him up, and left through a door Joshua hadn't even seen until it was opened. The man and woman that captured him had been using that room as their living quarters pretty much the whole time he was down there.
"Think it's been an hour, yet?" Charlotte asked, subtly gesturing up across toward the library with a sideways glance.
Nodding in agreement, we moved down the hall into the dining room. As we moved to the staircase, the unnamed girl, who had been waiting around the corner, got our attention. "So, can we make a bargain?"
Blaine stepped out in front of us, hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes. You're friend told us. You're Lord Blaine Malthus." She finished her address with a little mock curtsey.
"Then you know that everything in this house is rightfully mine. I am here to claim my inheritance, not give equal shares to pranksters and kidnappers."
She seemed about to protest, then furrowed her brow as she reconsidered. "Alright. All I ask is that we get the same share as the rest of your hired help there."
"From the vault," Charlotte quickly amended.
"Yes, from the vault. Of course," the girl agreed, seeming a little puzzled why Charlotte had made such an obvious statement. Charlotte glanced meaningfully at the bag Father Al carried, which contained the valuables we had found so far in the house. Those were now not part of the deal. I grinned. Hey, if ghost girl and her boyfriend, wherever he was, had wanted any of that stuff, they should have picked it up while they were haunting the place the past few weeks.
Maybe our little half-elf was thinking like a dwarf, after all.
"I am not making a deal with someone whose name I still don’t know," Blaine said.
"It’s Priscilla," she said, seeming resigned to forthrightness in order to secure our help.
"And the man who's with you? Where's he?"
“His name’s Brock,” Joshua said, keeping his eyes on Priscilla, letting her know he was not keeping any of her secrets. Maybe he sensed our suspicions and was trying to prove himself.
"He's still waiting,” she replied, a touch of annoyance edging into her voice, “safeguarding a few things that might be useful should you agree to work with us. Can't show you all our cards, can we?"
I think it might have been the gambling metaphor that made Father Al speak up next. "You have some sort of magical hole?"
"Yes, a portable hole. It’s proven quite handy."
"And it was you that frightened our donkey," the priest continued to press.
"Yes, yes... but finally we decided it might be better to work with you since you obviously weren't buying the whole haunted house routine."
"I wouldn't say that," Barrick started, but I gave him a quick poke in his armor with my urgrosh. Catching on, Marcus asked Priscilla to sit at the dining table and wait, as we still needed to discuss a little more in private. She complied, and we continued on our way up to the library. When we started to enter, Marcus asked if Joshua and Barrick could stand outside and keep an eye on the girl from the balcony.
"Why can't he just watch her?" Barrick asked, following us in the room.
Marcus bent down and whispered in his ear, "Because I still think he might be working with her."
"Oh. Right. I'll just be outside and keep watch, then."
The library appeared empty. After a moment, two of the triplets slowly faded into view.
"Rebecca?" Father Al asked.
"Yes?" Her voice was the same as Reveri's, but there seemed to be a weariness to it greater than her sister's.
"I suppose your sister has explained why we're here."
"She told me you might be able to help us rest. I'm so tired. I just want to rest."
Father Al straightened up a little, as if he realized he might have taken this aspect of our little treasure hunt a bit for granted. With a bit more purpose behind his tone, he replied, "Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Can you tell me what you remember, what happened to you?"
The girl's brow furrowed, as she tried to recall events long past, then relaxed again as that weary expression settled back into her face. "We fought, Regine and I. In my room. I had come in and she was standing there, writing something on the wall. I don't remember what it said, because I saw she was writing it in her own blood, from a cut across her hand. In the other hand, she had a small knife. I ran in to take it away, to stop her from hurting herself, but she swung the knife at me. Put a cut in my nice dress." Rebecca absently fingered a sliced opening on the shoulder of her ghostly clothing. "When she tried to attack me again, I fell back against the window, and it broke. I fell outside onto the ground. I don't remember much after that."
I thought of the old blood we found on the window glass in the second floor bedroom.
"Yes, I heard that, the window." Reveri picked up her sister's story now. "I went to your room to see if you were alright, and Regine stabbed me. I ran and hid in Aunt Jocasta's closet." And died there, I mentally finished for her.
Father Al absorbed all of this, quietly thinking for a moment. "Well, I guess we need to figure out what exactly happened to Regine, then. But to do that, we need you to help us, if you can. First, the man and woman who've been pretending to haunt this place. Do you know where they've been spending most of their time?"
"No. Somewhere in the basement. We don't wander down there much."
"What does the man look like?" Marcus interjected.
"Older, like my father. He has an old cut across his throat." She swiped her hand below her own chin to demonstrate. Satisfied that she was talking about someone other that Joshua, Marcus let the priest continue.
"Then, do you know where your father's vault is?"
"No, I don't know that either." She paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "Once, on our birthday, father told me he had a surprise, that he would let me wear one of my grandmother's best necklaces at the party. He went upstairs to get it. It was gorgeous, with sapphires. After the party, he told me he had to lock it up again, and took it back upstairs with him."
"It's got to be that mirror," Blaine muttered. "Perhaps there's a password."
"Tinkerpaws!" Charlotte exclaimed. We all stared at her blankly. "The poem, framed in his study. Tinkerpaws!"
"Oh, yes!" Reveri almost squealed as she clapped her hands together. "I had forgotten about that poem! Father kept it in his study? How sweet."
Realization spread through the rest of the group. "So," Marcus jumped in, "if we're able to have Blaine open the mirror with the password, we won't need the help of Priscilla or her friend. Or have to split anything with them."
Everyone nodded in agreement. First, we had to devise a route through the house from the library back to the bedroom with the magical mirror, without letting our guest in the dining room see us.
