APIBAGS Chapter 29

I went to find the butler for the first time in a while. The servants who had been in the middle of reporting something to him ducked their heads so low it looked like they were trying to avoid being touched by my shadow, and quietly ceased to exist. The fact that this was considered an improvement in their behavior was, if anything, bleaker than before.

"My lady? What brings you here...?"

"I need something."

"What might that be, if I may ask."

"I understand a maid called Daisy used to work here?"

The butler was silent.

"The one who went to the convent. That Daisy."

He knew exactly who I meant. I knew that he knew. This had taken on the atmosphere of a detective interviewing a witness who had decided to proceed carefully. The monocle wasn't helping—it gave him the look of a man who ran an information brokerage as a secondary enterprise, or possibly a quiet sideline in assassination.

"She does have an address, I assume? It would be strange if she didn't."

I persisted, and eventually a second piece of information emerged. I'd known there was more. He'd been holding it.

"Ainoa Orphanage?"

"She is an orphan, or so I was told. If she has left the convent and is staying somewhere, it would likely be there."

An orphanage. So Daisy had grown up in an orphanage, been taken on as a maid to a villainess who made her miserable, fled to a convent where a deranged priest gave her fresh trauma, and at some unclear point in the timeline had been captured by slave traders before escaping with Jelly.

Somehow... Daisy's backstory was considerably denser than Kanna's. Was the actual female lead Daisy, and had I been wrong about everything? I'd assumed she was a love-obstacle—a narrative complication inserted to generate friction—but perhaps that had been a misreading.

Well. I'd see when I got there.

I'd changed into modest outdoor clothes and packed plenty of gold coins before coming to see the butler. Outside, a carriage was already waiting. Not a Rohanson carriage—a hired one, it seemed.

"Sir Jelly arranged it."

I felt briefly guilty about the unkind thoughts. Jelly was rough around the edges, yes, but he paid attention when it mattered and did what was asked of him without much fuss.

"Pretty good, right?"

Jelly looked insufferably pleased with himself, claw-marks still decorating his face.

"Where's Pudding?"

"Here."

Jelly handed Pudding over. The issue was that bringing a cat on a carriage journey meant dealing with the fact that carriages jolted considerably—

"Pudding, do you want to come along?"

Pudding nodded.

There was no undoing it now. Pudding wanted to come, and so Pudding was coming.

"Where shall I take you?"

The coachman Jelly had arranged was extremely polite. He did appear to have a habit of scratching at his neck; the visible skin there was red. Some sort of irritation, presumably.

"Ainoa Orphanage, please."

Well. That had nothing to do with his driving skills.

That day, Daisy had gone to visit the orphanage she'd depended on until a few years ago. After escaping from the temple, she'd rented a room at an inexpensive inn, where she'd done nothing but eat and sleep and watch her money disappear at a brisk rate.

When she counted what remained, the balance was higher than she expected—and then she realized she hadn't visited the orphanage recently.

'I'm due.'

Daisy had always set aside a portion of her wages for the orphanage, out of gratitude to the director who had taken her in. Sometimes she brought bread and fruit for the children along with the donation.

She had stopped by before entering the convent. That she remembered. And today, for no reason she could identify, she missed the younger children with an unusual, unpleasant sharpness. With that feeling sitting in her chest, she bought an armful of gifts and set out.

The orphanage looked strange when she arrived. The kind of strange that was hard to describe but immediately visible. There was no sound of children anywhere.

Daisy frowned, but walked inside without hesitating.

No one was there.

She went from room to room, opening doors, calling for the director, calling for the children. The building gave nothing back but her own voice. Had they all gone somewhere together, on some kind of trip? She tried to hold onto the possibility.

Then she opened the door to the director's office, and found something that had no business being there—a pattern she recognized immediately.

It was drawn in blood on the floor. The same circle. The one that thing wearing the young lady's face had drawn. The same one Daisy herself had accidentally completed.

'Why is this here?'

For a moment, her mind simply refused. Why was this circle drawn in an orphanage, and where had everyone gone? An ugly shape was building in the back of her mind, spreading through her like cold water, raising every hair on her arms, tightening around her throat.

Her legs stopped working. She crawled across the floor on her knees to reach it. It was a summoning circle—the genuine kind, the kind drawn to call forth demons. And that color—that particular thick, dark, wetness—was printed in her memory with perfect clarity. The metallic smell reached her before she'd consciously registered moving toward it.

'What is this...'

At this point, the circle was simply following her. There was no other way to describe it.

Where was the director? What had happened to the children? She could still see them vividly—running toward her when she came in, calling her name with their whole faces. If they had been used as offerings for this—

Daisy searched the orphanage again. Every room. Every corner. No children. No director. No bodies either. Just the circle, drawn in blood, sitting at the center of the floor.

She sat beside it for a long time. Then she stood on legs that shook, and walked out. She couldn't stay any longer. She was running, really, though she would not have called it that. She needed to see someone alive. Anyone at all.

She was walking with her mind half-gone when a carriage swept past so close that a wheel the height of her body rolled by directly in front of her face. She stumbled, sat down hard on the ground.

"You bloody fool! Have you got a death wish?!"

The coachman screamed it without slowing. She didn't know what noble passenger might be inside, but most carriages, once moving, refused to stop lest they displease their high-born riders.

Daisy sat in the street with the insults still ringing, not particularly reacting to any of it. A passerby stopped, looked at her, looked at the retreating carriage, and made a noise of irritation.

"Who's the fool here, honestly. Are you all right, miss?"

He helped her up. Then, without being asked, he brushed the dirt from her clothes.

"Thank you," Daisy said. "Thank you so much." She said it twice because once felt insufficient.

"Are you unwell? You should go home and rest..."

He patted her shoulder in a way that was genuinely kind, and then he went on his way.

Daisy turned those words over in her mind, then buried her face in her hands. Tears threatened to spill again. Go home. To where? She had sold her house. The convent was no longer a place she could return to. The orphanage—

'Director. Everyone...'

"I should find a guard—"

No. Wait. Stop. There was no body. People had simply vanished, and there was a summoning circle drawn in blood, and no ordinary guard had any way to address the ordinary circumstances let alone this. And now that the circle had appeared—

Someone else. She needed someone else. Someone who could actually do something about this, immediately, right now—

Daisy flagged down a carriage.

"To Rohanson—the Rohanson estate, please."

'If you need help, call on me again. Next time I'll charge properly.'

'If there's a wish you want granted, come find me. I'll hear it out.'

She thought of them both—the demon, and Evangeline. Come find me if you need help. Had they meant it? Would there be help waiting, if she went?

Rationally, she knew the temple was where she should go. But the Grand Temple was not a place Daisy could simply walk into; last time, gaining access had taken three days. Three days was far too long.

And even if she managed it, they would still be in the middle of investigating Father Berga. Finding the orphanage's missing children would get slower, not faster.

But Evangeline—

Evangeline would know about the summoning circle. That much was certain.

"Five copper, miss."

Daisy reached for her purse to pay. But no matter how much she searched, the purse wasn't there.

The coin purse was gone.

Where, where had she dropped it?

She understood, then—the full picture of it: the man who had helped her, who had brushed her clothes so carefully, and when it had happened. She didn't feel angry. She didn't feel very much of anything.

"If you've no money, you'll have to get out."

"I'm in a hurry. Please—I'll pay you later, I promise—"

"Now listen here, young lady." Not unkind, exactly, but firm in the way of someone who had made up his mind before she'd finished speaking. "Do you think I haven't heard that before? People like you say they'll come back with the money and then you're gone—I've been taken in more than once. I'm sorry, but you'll need to find another carriage."

Daisy climbed out.

She began to walk. One step, then another, slowly at first. Then faster. Then she was running.

The Rohanson estate. There'll be something there.

She ran until her lungs pressed at the limits of what they could hold, then walked until she could run again. Her calves ached. Her feet grew heavy. She ran for a long time, and then the estate gates were in front of her.

"State your business."

The gatekeeper was a stranger. Someone hired after Daisy had left. A familiar face would have been easier—she could have said something simple. She thought for a moment.

Then she said the name.

"Evangeline... Lady Evangeline. I've come to see Lady Evangeline."

It was the first time, since that day, that Daisy had acknowledged out loud that the thing inhabiting the dead young lady's body was what the world called Lady Evangeline. That she herself had used that name.

It felt like killing someone who had already died.

"The young lady is currently away from home."

Now, of all times? She had said to come if Daisy needed help, and yet—

Daisy lowered her head.