Cerise crouched by the pile of books and touched one of the leather-bound covers. Slick slime stained her fingers. She picked up the edge of the book and pulled. A page ripped, and the book came away from the floor, leaving some paper stuck to the boards. A long gray and yellow stain of mold crawled across the text to the cover, binding the pages together.
"This is an old mess," Richard murmured.
"Yes. Spider didn't do this."
Dread stirred inside her. Anybody could've ransacked the library - the house stood empty for years. Still, something didn't quite fit. A burglar looking for things to steal wouldn't have torn the books apart.
Cerise circled the book pile. She hopped over the ruin of the table to get a better view of the walls, slid on a slimy patch, and almost fell on her butt. Deep gouges marked the old walls. Long, ragged, parallel strokes. Claw marks. She spread her fingers, matching the wounds in the wall, but her hand wasn't big enough. What the hell?
"Come, look at this."
Richard leaped over the book with his usual elegant grace and touched the marks. "A very large animal. Heavy - look at the depth of the scars. I'd say upward of six hundred pounds. An animal would have no reason to enter the house. The place has no food, and it sits in the middle of the clearing. And if this was an animal, we would see other evidence: feces, fur, more claw marks. It looks like this creature broke into the library, demolished it, and left."
"As if it broke in to wreck the books on purpose."
Richard nodded.
"William said he saw a monster in the forest. It looked like a large lizard."
Richard frowned. "What was he doing in the forest?"
"Lark was showing him something. The monster attacked Lark and William fought it off. Apparently Grandmother Azan helped."
"You like the blueblood," Richard said carefully.
"Very much."
"Does he like you?"
"Yes, he does."
"How much do the two of you like each other?"
She couldn't hide a smile. "Enough."
Richard tapped the side of his nose with one long finger.
"Please," she invited with a wave of her hand.
"We know nothing about him. As a blueblood, he may have certain duties and obligations back in his world. Maybe he's on leave from the military. What if he has a wife? Children? Could he stay with you if he wanted to?"
"He's no longer in the military and he has no one."
"How do you know?"
"He told me."
"He could've lied," Richard said gently.
"He's a changeling, Richard. He has a hard time with lying."
Richard drew back. He opened his mouth, obviously struggling. "A changeling," he finally managed.
She nodded.
"What ..."
"A wolf."
Richard cleared his throat. "Well."
She waited for him.
"It could be worse," he said finally. "Efrenia married an arsonist. Jake's wife is a kleptomaniac. I suppose, a psychopathic spree killer isn't that odd of a choice, considering. We'll just have to work around it. Gods know, we've had practice. He's certainly good in a fight."
She smiled. "Thank you."
"Of course," Richard said. "We're family. If you love him and he loves you, we'll do whatever we can to let you be happy."
Cerise turned to the corner, where a small bookcase used to contain the planting journals. The book case lay overturned. She picked it up and wrestled it upright. Nothing, except a puddle of soggy pulp that may have been a book at some point, but now served as a shelter for a family of muck bugs. The journals were gone.
They left the library and headed to the kitchen. Both windows stood wide open, the freshly installed metal grates catching the light of the morning sun. Dead leaves rustled on the floor. Shards of broken pottery crunched under Cerise's foot. A shattered plate. And a knife. She picked it up. A thin paring knife that was missing its tip. A dark brown stain marked the blade. She scratched at it and the dark brown crumbled, tiny flecks floating to the floor.
"Blood," Richard said. "The entire blade is stained. This knife went into someone."
"Grandma could've been cooking something."
He shook his head. "Anything she cooked would've been drained of blood. This knife went into a living body."
Cerise looked at the knife. Three inches, maybe four. "It's too small to hurt anyone. I could kill someone with it, but Grandma? She would faint first. Besides, they died of plague."
"Supposedly." Richard strode to the sink.
"What do you mean, supposedly?"
"We never saw the bodies. Look, dishes."
The sink held a small stack of dirty dishes. To the right two dusty glasses sat in a tray upside down. Grandfather set the glasses right side up to dry. He thought they ventilated better. Her grandparents used to bicker about it.
Cerise came to stand by the sink. "So Grandmother was washing the dishes, when something attacked her. She grabbed the first knife she could find, turned ..." Cerise turned with the paring knife. "The knife broke."
"She must've grabbed a plate, probably several, and threw them at her attacker."
Cerise put the knife on the counter. "And then?"
Richard touched her elbow, steering her from the sink, and pointed to the cabinet. Stains marked the doors, dark patches on dark wood. A thick crust had formed on the cabinet doorknob. Several long silver hairs were stuck to it.
"Whatever it was knocked her down." Richard spread the leaves off the floor, revealing a long dark smudge. "And dragged her off."
They chased the trail of blood through the kitchen, down the hallway, and to the bedroom. Blood spattered the walls. Dried to nearly black, it spanned the boards to the right and left of the headboard as if someone had bathed in blood and then danced around.
"The bed," Richard murmured.
He grasped one side of the torn mattress, she grasped the other. Cerise heaved. The mattress gave, rising off the floor. A large fuzzy blotch of mold marred the underside. It didn't look good. Cerise leaned closer and rubbed at the mold with her sleeve. Dark brown. Blood. Nobody could bleed that much and survive.
There was no plague, no fever, no sickness. Her grandparents were murdered.
She looked at Richard. His face was controlled fury.
"The family lied to us," she said.
"Yes, they did."
THE kitchen buzzed with angry voices. Forty-six adults, stressed to the limit, trying to outscream each other. The insult to the family was monumental. Gustave kidnapped, Genevieve fused, the house of cherished grandparents robbed.