Carefully repacking all of her scholarly materials, she downed the last of her tepid tea but abandoned the second half of the stew as a lost cause. She couldn’t prevent herself from striding to the window before she left, to make an unnecessary final inspection of its thick shutters, but she did at least manage to restrain herself from lingering with sickening sentimentality over her perfectly safe husband’s prone figure.
Theirs was an alliance of dear friends and equals who valued each other deeply. There was no call to exhibit any embarrassing mawkishness.
The mirror glinted like a taunt in the corner of her vision as she left the room, but she refused to spare another glance for it.
The corridor outside was only slightly better lit now than it had been in the middle of the night, its occasional high and narrow windows too smudged to allow in any substantial illumination. Still, with care and determination, she found her way back to the main staircase and from its base mounted anexploration of the low-ceilinged maze of rooms that comprised the ground floor.
From a variety of faded sitting rooms to the sad remains of what might once have been an adequate library, two large dining rooms, and more, every room she found was empty, with no signs anywhere of her spectral host or any fellow guests. The rooms were also in a universal state of shocking disrepair, and Margaret wrinkled her nose in distaste as she finally settled onto an ancient couch that sent up a sneeze-inducing explosion of dust at the indignity.
The landlord of this inn might be an incorporeal being, but really, as he’d shown himself capable of opening heavy doors, there wasnoexcuse not to wield a broom and rag around the place every so often!
Still, she had dealt with far less comfortable conditions in some of the more thrilling expeditions on which she’d joined her adventuring parents as a child. So, rather than allowing the mess to distract her, she simply swept the pile of yellowing newspapers from the coffee table to the floor, wiped away all the remaining dust from underneath, and then emptied out her bag to sink into what mattered most: finding out the truth of the world and sharing it with the scholarly community.
Some hours later, the din of a nearby voice began to form a distracting buzz at the edge of her consciousness. However, she was far too busy to pay it any attention as she was deeply engrossed in the analysis of three tantalizingly different descriptions written inthree different languages across the centuries. Each letter had been transcribed by a different scribe, and all of them had to be carefully compared to a significant note she had only just discovered in the sixty-year-old Parisian pamphlet.
Ifone accounted for the variety of translation options for each word, not to mention any possible transcription errors along the way,andimagined how certain archaic fears could have led to exaggerations of both size and aggression...
“I said,what do you think you’re doinghere?” The high-pitched German demand sounded so suddenly and so close to her right ear that Margaret startled hard and—disastrously—lost her grip on her fountain pen.
“Ahhh!” She threw herself forward, her left arm shooting out to protect the materials on the table even as she snatched for the falling pen. Thank heavens, she managed to catch all the scattered puddles of black ink on the fabric of her own new travel gown rather than damaging the precious pamphlet or her notes—but her pulse was still jittering as she re-capped the pen a cautious six inches away from the closest manuscript on the long table. Glowering, she raised her gaze.
A sharp-toothed creature from the depths of Germanic legend loomed above her, red-rimmed eyes furious in a deathly pale and hairless face. Their lean body was swathed in a shapeless black hooded robe with draping sleeves that fell away to reveal long, curving, yellow fingernails as theyraised their arms menacingly above their head and let out an unearthly snarl of warning. “Begone or prepare to bedevoured, witless prey!”
“Oh, I very much thinknot,” said Margaret. “Really, have you no respect for scholarly work—or basic courtesy? You nearly made me ruin a priceless piece of historical research just now!”
“I...” The creature blinked, narrow shoulders hunching, as Margaret gave them the same cold and distinctly unimpressed look she’d perfected across years of attempted bullying from larger and louder male colleagues at Morningford College.
For a moment, she actually thought they might see sense and apologize.
Then they rallied and leaned even closer, until their hot, rank breath rolled distastefully across her cheek. “Begone now, piteous fool, or I’ll creep into your room tonight while you sleep andconsume your flesh!”
“For goodness’ sake.” Turning in place, Margaret raised her left hand to tick off a succession of simple facts in an educational fashion. “First of all, any scholar worthy of the name is well aware thatnachzehrer, such as yourself, only consume already-dead flesh—thus the species name ‘After-Devourer.’” That was also the reason why those originally-human yellow fingernails on the creature’s hand had lengthened, toughened, and sharpened into claws; they were not merely sinister accessories but necessary tools in order to dig up deeply buried meals.
“Secondly,” Margaret continued calmly, “if you make any attempt to come near my sleeping form tonight, you’ll find that my own husband—who happens to be a vampire—will take very badly indeed to your behavior. Then,you’llbe the one to regret it, I promise you!”
Even in the tumultuous first days of their marriage, well before his keen intelligence had won her over, Margaret had reluctantly taken note of Lord Riven’s large and muscular form, shaped perfectly for fighting or for dancing. Well before his vampiric transformation, he had trained in swordplay, wrestling, and warfare.
She’d only needed one quick glance to be certain that this haggard creature hadnot.
“Finally,this”—she gestured in illustration—“is a large room with multiple free tables and more than enough space for both of us to work...unless, that is, you came here solely to practice these exaggerated dramatics for some amateur theatrical?” She tilted her head and waited with pointed expectation.
For a long moment, the undead creature simply gaped at her in what appeared to be wordless disbelief.
Then they dropped their curled fists to their sides and said in a far less sinister but infinitely more petulant tone, “You’re supposed to befrightenedof me!”
“Pah,” said Margaret, and went back to her work, spreading out her best maps across the table for easy reference as she studied thosevariant historical descriptions from the letters and her Parisian pamphlet.
She could feel the shadow of the nachzehrer still above her as she scooped back up her notebook and pen. Fortunately, she had never lacked an ability to focus. It took several minutes before she realized that once again, the creature was speaking.
“But this ismy moping room!”
It had been many years since Margaret had allowed herself to be bullied by anyone but her own relatives, and this past year, she and her husband had jointly defeatedthemin court. She gave the nachzehrer a quelling glance, without lowering her work. “If you wouldn’t mind moving out of my light?”
The nachzehrer’s hiss in response sounded like nothing so much as a disgruntled cat.
Also like a cat, they retreated to lick their metaphorical fur in offended silence on a couch across the room, only periodically aiming glares across the distance that did not disturb Margaret in the slightest. In fact, she looked up from her notes, after some time had passed, with the intention of asking an important question about local geography that would have been of great assistance in clarifying her next steps...
Only to find that the nachzehrer had apparently flounced off in the meantime.
