by Megan Derr
"Ekaterina's family lived in Italy for half a century," Johnnie said grimly. "She could have learned it then, and no one there would breathe a word. She would have been rather young for a necromancer, though, especially one of the skill it would seem she could be." He frowned thoughtfully.
Zach added, "Her parents mentioned Italy, how much they all loved it and were loathe to return home for her father to properly take up the mantle of Dracula. They said Ekaterina especially was livid over their departure. But, out of nowhere, she suddenly loved it here. Her mother said it was like she hated it one day, adored it the next. They were relieved, and did not ask questions. I cannot tell you how many times they told me she is 'mercurial, but a good girl'."
"If they are party to all of this, then they are damned fine actors. Myself, I suspect they are merely severely strained parents who are almost too grateful whenever she is happy, and do not know her even half as well as they think, and they admit their daughter makes no real sense to them. Though, who knows, at that. They knew enough to know she was almost universally hated by her sisters. Really, though, that is no surprise. More than half the women in that Society are pretentious little snots."
The back of Johnnie's neck prickled. "You do not mean the Princess Society, do you?"
"Yeah," Zach said. "Our false bride was hated by a good number of her sisters."
Johnnie closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, and quoted, "The female of the species is more deadly than the male."
"What does that mean?" Rita asked.
"That we've got trouble," Phil said. "It cannot be coincidence that we wound up with twelve dead Princesses and she is a secret necromancer hated by all of them. Why did I not see that connection before?"
"You did not have access to her parents, and they would not have spoken to you of the matter, anyway," Zach replied. "We did not know to look there."
Phil shook her head. "I don't even see what my case has to do with this mess, though. What in the world is the connection?"
"Dreaming men are haunted men," Johnnie said softly, then turned to Rita and said, "My dear, I think it is time you played something for us." Break the curse and at least that problem would be solved. If she saw they were on to her, perhaps she would retreat—or at least she would be revealed, and they could face her head on. He glanced at Phil and Zach, "I think we had best resort to drastic measures. If she is this sly, there is no telling what else she can and will do. Best to have done, and face her now, and hopefully in doing so gain ourselves some sort of advantage."
"I still would like to know what she is really after, between the dead girls and all this nonsense," Phil said.
"Me," Johnnie said. "I believe she is after me." He strode off, back into the ballroom, ignoring Phil and Zach as they called after him.
In the ballroom, he looked around for his father. Spotting him standing near the buffet tables, Johnnie strode across the room to join him. "I think that Rita can finally break the curse," he said. "She is going to do it now. But we believe Ekaterina to be a necromancer—and I am completely convinced she is behind the murders of those twelve women from the Society."
Ontoniel's expression did not change, and he only nodded in reply, but Johnnie knew he was silently communicating with the various guards and other personnel scattered around his manor. "Despite your falling out," he said quietly, "I do rather wish your Enforcer was still about."
Johnnie did not reply, but he could not help but think me too. He hated himself for it, but there was no help for it. He turned his head slightly as music filled the air, watching Rita at the baby grand piano that Elam would normally kill anyone for daring to touch.
He recognized what she was playing only because he had learned by age eleven that not to know what Elam was playing was tantamount to death. Currently, Rita was playing Liszt's Liebestraume Notturno No. 3. It was, Johnnie knew, one of Elam's favorite pieces.
Someday, he would have to tell Elam that Rita looked better sitting at a piano than he did. The thought made him smirk—but then reminded him abruptly of what Elam had said to him only moments ago. Johnnie swallowed, and resolved to focus on the matter at hand.
But he really just wanted the entire damned affair over so he could return to the Bremen—
Could he return to the Bremen, he wondered suddenly, gut clenching. That had been Bergrin's stomping ground first, had it not? It would not be fair for Johnnie to take it from him—but he did not want to go home, either.
Later, he thought desperately. He would have to deal with all of it later. Johnnie looked around the ballroom, at all the people whispering in admiration, eyes on Rita before sliding to Elam—everyone present knew his obsession, and his possessiveness, when it came to his pianos.
Elam still sat at the table where Johnnie had left him, but he was paying no attention to the fiancée trying to get his attention. Instead, his gaze was riveted on Rita. He pulled irritably away from Ekaterina when she gripped his arm, then impatiently stood up when she tried to speak again. He continued to watch Rita, clearly enthralled.
There was also a growing confusion on his face. Like a man not entirely awake, he slowly crossed the room to the small stage where the piano rested. Rita paid him no mind, merely focused on the music, clearly pouring everything she had into the playing.
As the last strains of music finally faded away, Elam's voice, soft and unsteady, said softly, "Ree?"
Rita looked up, tears streaming down her face, and said, "Have you finally remembered me, you great big jerk?"
"Ree—" Elam surged up onto the stage and yanked her from the bench, holding her tightly. "Oh god, Ree. I'm so—"
The words were abruptly cut off, as Elam and Rita dropped unconscious, crashing into the bench, the piano, before finally landing in an awkward heap on the floor. The sound of thumping, breaking glass and crashing chairs created a cacophony throughout the ballroom as all around Johnnie, everyone collapsed.
"Father!" he said in a panic, as Ontoniel fell right next to him. He dropped to his knees, examining Ontoniel frantically. "Father!" He looked around at everyone else, then sneezed hard. Magic. His eyes watered from the smell of it—he had never smelled magic so potent, like something sweet had cooked too long and burned.
The sounds of heels clicking on wood drew him, and he looked up, unsurprised to see Ekaterina standing there, as cold and hard as ice. Slowly he rose to his feet. "What did you do to them?"
"The Princess shall not die, but fall into a deep sleep for a hundred years," Ekaterina replied, then laughed in a way that made Johnnie want to take several steps back. "Except, you did not fall asleep, did you, Beauty? Still wide awake, doomed never to dream when it should be your fate to walk freely in dreams. Your bitch mother saw to preventing that, though, didn't she? She told me that right before Sariah made a snack of her jugular."
"Shut up!" Johnnie snarled, balling his hands into fists to still their trembling—though whether it was from fear or anger, he did not know. "Why—why the fuck are you doing this? How did you do this? Wake them up!"
"No," Ekaterina said. "I tried to warn you off, but you did not listen."
"Warn—twelve," he realized. "When you mentioned twelve women, you were trying to warn me off."
Ekaterina laughed in that chilling way again. "As usual, little Johnnie Goodnight does not listen to those wiser than him, too busy thinking he knows everything because he's read a lot of books. How smart do you feel now, little Johnnie?"
"Why?" Johnnie asked, fighting despair. They were all so still—his father, his brother, Phil, Zach. They could have been dead, and if they slept too long, there might be no pulling them back out of the dream plane.
"Because I want something that only you can bring to me," Ekaterina said. "I have tried to obtain it myself while waiting until I could get access to you again … but the quest has proven to be extremely difficult on both counts. Did you know, dear Johnnie, that I wanted to put the love spell on you first?"
"What?" Joh
nnie asked.
"Except there was one already on you, and to judge by the look of it, the spell must have been cast when you were a child. I sense Ontoniel had some noble purpose there, knowing that idiot—but it worked, because I could not cast one on you. So I had to settle for your brother instead, and that only after pushing my parents for years to negotiate my betrothal to Elam." She fell silent, obviously fuming over old memories.
Johnnie's mind spun. A love spell? Cast on him? Since he was a child? But …
But that would explain why at only nine he had been hopelessly in love with his brother. What in the hell had they been thinking?
What the fuck did it matter now?
Johnnie tried to get a hold of himself, but he was already ragged from his fallout with Bergrin—
He closed his eyes and swallowed, missing Bergrin so much right then it was a physical ache, a weight upon his chest that made breathing almost impossible. He had messed everything up, had done not one single thing right, and now his family and friends were going to die, or worse, sleep forever and lose themselves in dreams.
"You want the object my father made?" he finally asked. "No one even knows what it is—and even if I knew where in dreams to find it, I cannot go get it. I am completely spelled against ever entering the dream plane."
"Then I suggest you find a way to break the spell," Ekaterina said. "Let me explain everything to you, so that we understand one another perfectly. I want that object. I was prepared to handle the matter quietly, until you chose to poke your nose into matters too far. Your behavior has forced me to play my hand, and resort to extreme measure. This entire house has been set with the Sleeping Beauty curse. Anyone who enters the house will fall victim to it. If you try to find and tamper with the spell key, they will be lost in dreams forever. You will go into the dream plane and bring back the object your father made."
"But I do not know—"
Ekaterina laughed. "How sad, that not a one of you truly appreciates the accidental brilliance of your stupid father. An impossible relic lies in dreams, just waiting for you to take it, and you don't even know what it is."
"An impossible … no, that cannot be," Johnnie said. "No one has ever actually made one of the impossible relics."
Laughing again, Ekaterina then recited, "Looking-glass, Looking-glass, on the wall/Who in this land is the
fairest of all?"
"I think you must be mad," Johnnie said. "There is no such thing as a magic mirror."
One moment Ekaterina was standing several steps away—the next Johnnie could feel blood tricking down his stinging cheek from where her nails had scraped it when she slapped him. "You will bring me the mirror, and you will do it in three days, or everyone you know and love will suffer a fate worse than death. When you have the mirror, contact me. Until then, I suggest you do as you are told, and do not attempt heroics. No one but me can break the spell and wake those who sleep here. Bring me that mirror, or else."
Then she was gone, with nothing but a small, pale pink business card lying where she had stood. It bore only a phone number. Feeling numb, Johnnie bent and then tucked it into a pocket of his tuxedo. Then he knelt beside Ontoniel, staring miserably at the proof of his abysmal failure.
What was he going to do? How could he fix this, when he was the one who had ruined everything? It was because of him that people had been hurt, had been killed—and now this. How could he set all to rights, when he had set it wrong?
Johnnie tried to think, but his mind simply refused to work. He was done—done with everything. He was no brilliant detective, he was not a good son, he was definitely not the sort of man anyone would call lover. No wonder Bergrin had not wanted him beyond what he could give Eros.
He wiped his face, furious with himself. They had trusted him to help, and this was what he had done! Pulling out a handkerchief, Johnnie wiped his face, blew his nose. At the very least, he decided, he could make them a bit more comfortable.
First he straightened Ontoniel, until he was laid out neatly on the floor, hands folded on his stomach. Then he stood, and went around the ballroom, slowly dragging, shifting, and arranging all the others, until they were lined up neatly in two rows in the center of the ballroom. Then he went through the rest of the house, making certain the scattered servants were all right. When he was finished, he made certain the house was locked up, then returned to the ballroom.
They looked, he thought miserably, like corpses.
He hated the sight of Ontoniel like that the most, and he could not even bear to look at Phil and Zach. They had only wanted to help him, and now he would have to find their friends and tell them what he had done. What he, and he alone, would have to do to save them.
Alone. He had thought he was alone before, never quite fitting in no matter how hard he tried. But this—standing by himself in a room full of almost-corpses, with no one to help him lest he hurt still more people.
This was feeling alone, and it made him want to hide away in despair.
But his mind would not stop churning, working; against his will he started sifting through the myriad versions of the tale of the notorious Sleeping Beauty and the truth that lurked, all but forgotten, behind them. It, too, he thought tiredly, had started with jealousy.
A King eager for a child, and angry that his Queen would produce none, had taken a lover—a black witch. That affair had lasted for years, but she had failed to produce a child as well. Then, one day, his Queen had produced a child. Ecstatic, the King had cast aside his useless lover.
Days after it had been born, the child was struck with a curse that she would die on that same day in fifteen years.
From that moment on, the King and all in his kingdom worked to break the terrible curse. They did all that was within their power to break it, to soften it, but to no avail—none but the witch herself was able to break it, and she had not been seen since eluding capture on the day she cast the curse.
As her birthday drew ever closer, the King and Queen grew more frantic, more desperate. The kingdom despaired, and all who had come to love the princess wept, for soon she would be gone from them forever.
One night, several days from her birthday, the Princess went to sleep.
She never woke, nor did the inhabitants of the castle. Those who came to visit the castle soon fled in fear of the terrible magic and what it had wrought. One by one the inhabitants passed away, unable to tend themselves while trapped in a terrible sleep. Then, one day, as the cock in the palace yard crowed, the princess drew a last breath, and died on the day and the hour of her fifteenth year.
As time passed, the kingdom was lost, preserved only in tales and a rare true accounting written by an unknown source.
What troubled Johnnie most was that Ekaterina had somehow duplicated the curse. It had been done before, but by sorcerers and necromancers of greater experience, and only as an experiment under tightly controlled conditions.
He did not want them to die.
But he was overwhelmed by what he would have to do—somehow, he would have to break the curse that had been laid upon him, and hope to god it did not actually kill him. His best chance of avoiding death was to find the sorcerer who had originally cast the spell.
And assuming he actually managed the feat, he would have to go into dreams and figure out where the hell to find the magic mirror.
He felt sick just thinking about it. A magic mirror. It just could not be. There was no such thing as a mirror that would tell a man whatever he wanted to know. Whatever his father had made, it must come close, but it was not an actual magic mirror.
So he had to break his spell, learn how to get into the dream plane, then find a mirror that could be hidden anywhere.
And he had to do it in three days.
He needed help, but there was no one to help him. He dare not go to Rostiya, or even the Bremen, for fear of what Ekaterina might do to them. Bergrin—
Johnnie covered his eyes with the heel of his hands, and tried to laugh, but it
only came out a sob. He wanted Bergrin, but Bergrin was gone and it was his own stupid fault. But what could Bergrin do? It was not like he could help Johnnie retrieve the mirror, and he did not want to endanger Bergrin either.
No, he had to do this alone. No one else was able to access the dream plane. No one else would be able to find the mirror.
He had made this mess and so, Johnnie realized, he would have to find a way to fix it, whatever the cost.
The first step was to get a clear head, he decided. He would not be able to think clearly while standing here staring at his family and friends, feeling sorry for himself.
Turning sharply on his heel, Johnnie forced himself to leave the ballroom. Out in the hall, he weighed his options, then headed for the end of the house where Ontoniel's study was located. Though he had expected it to be locked, as the house was full of guests, the knob turned easily beneath his hand and Johnnie slipped inside. He flicked on a single lamp on the desk, then hesitantly sat down in Ontoniel's chair.
