Midnight's Song (40 page)

“
As the garden wilts in
autumn,

As the winter kills the
rebellious blooms

Perishes them with a chill
to the bone

Show me the way that I
might cut down the bloom

That threatens our
leader’s foothold!”

After the last line was
finished, the words on the card faded away. They faded away and
turned to ash. Though, these were no ordinary ashes. First they
were only flakes of soot, but then they rose up and circled in a
cloud. They turned from soot to color, showing sparkling auras of
purple, blue, green, and finally a cloud of gold dust. The cloud
was alive, for it spoke to Beeti.

“What do you request?” The
cloud spoke, only audible to Beeti.

“I request that you allow
me consultation with the Magistrate.”

After she uttered
the words the cloud manifested itself into what looked to be a
window, a
mirror.
It was a magnificent sight – yet keep in mind that only she
could see and hear it. Although this was very real to her, it would
appear to be a delusional rant to anyone else. Soon enough, the
portal was complete and none other than the face of the Magistrate
was floating before her.

“My servant Beeti,” the Magistrate
gloatingly uttered. “Have you done as I have
instructed?”

She pulled the vial of
darclooxide from her apron pocket and smirked. The Magistrate
quickly gave a wicked smile in return. Then, he reached his hand
out through the portal into the room and grabbed it from her,
physically taking it to his side of the mirror.

“Well done. This is
precisely what the
Master
has requested,” the Magistrate said as he
investigated the label of the narcotic.

He then reached out
and grabbed a vial of liquid off of a nearby table on his side of
the mirror, mixed it with another and then with the darclooxide.
When he did this, the bottle it was in fizzed and fumed until the
glass it was contained it seemed to ooze with
human blood.
The wicked king smiled
before handing it back to Beeti, leaving the blood on his hands as
well as hers. It was an act truly symbolic in
nature.

“Mix this with the boy’s
wine, and then place the empty vial in the child’s bedside drawer.
I will send an officer to the scene who will conclude that she was
the perpetrator. Do as the Master says, and you will also have
witnesses. Then the act might never be refuted!”

“How might they see her? The girl
would never poison her fiancé knowingly.” Beeti dreamily responded
to the mirror’s instructions.

“Come to me when he
arrives, and I shall grant you the power to appear to my nephew and
all others as Lady Elissa. Lure him into a room with the promise of
wine. You must remember to use the entire vial in his. Do not worry
– it will not change the taste or the volume of the wine. It
is
magic.
” The
man let out a wicked laugh. “Once he drinks, he will become weak
and intoxicated. Then, the two tonics will cause him a swift but
painful
death
.”

“And what if he refuses to take a
drink?” Beeti questioned.

“There is another way. He might refuse
the drink, he still shall not refuse Lady Elissa. If the boy will
not take a drink, simply sip some of the wine yourself. Sip it, but
do not swallow. It will lace your lips with enough poison to cause
death in the first person who touches them. Kiss him, and your deed
will be done.”

“Are you sure that he won’t refuse me,
Great One?” Beeti skeptically asked again. The Magistrate’s eyes
then narrowed in certainty.

“Should you appear in her form, he
would be too smitten to refuse.”

As Beeti conversed with
this strange magic, Emily was already patrolling the hallways to
see where the powerful narcotic had gone. It was a sad fact that
many of the servants in homes such as this were apt to steal
medicines from the family. It was dangerous, but no less
uncommon.

“Jak!” Emily called to her
husband in the stables after scouring the property. She had been
careful not to make open the fact that it was missing, for she knew
that would probably do more home than good. “I need to know – who
in these quarters would have reason to steal
darclooxide?”

“I reckon that there would
be quite a lot,” Jackoby slowly started. A look of confusion
overcame his expression. “But you know just as well as I do that
such poisons as that are kept well out of the reach of those
expected to steal them. Unless it was sitting out in the open, I
don’t see how anyone here could have taken it. You need to go look
back inside.”

Emily turned away from him
in frustration and began to dart, but Jackoby quickly stopped her
and spun her around. He turned her toward him in concern. Their
eyes met for the first time in quite a while, and for just a few
seconds there was quiet.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he begged.
“We haven’t spoken since…you know. Whatever trouble you’re in, I
want to help you. Now tell me what’s going on!”

“I have to go.”

“Wait, just wait!” He called to her,
but she quickly struggled out of his tender grasp.

“There’s no time! I
promise that when this is all said and done you
will
know. All I can tell you know
is this – if no one here took it, then someone in the house
did.
And that person,
along with my closest friend, are in danger until I can find out
what’s going on,” she told him before turning from him once again.
Jackoby fell back into a pile of hay and let out a sigh. He knew
that she had something grave to do, but lately he just couldn’t
understand.

“Then go,” he sighed out loud after
she had run back into the house. “Go and take care of them. It’s
not like I could be of any help to you.”

Back in the house, she ran
at top speed through the empty corridors in the Deveraux wing of
the home. She scanned all of the hallways before making her way
into Beeti’s room. Instead of seeing her asleep, the room was
empty. Now she knew that something was definitely wrong. She could
have given up – but now she had a feeling, an instinct that if she
didn’t find Beeti soon all would be lost. Grandmamma’s eyes had
been her first clue, and now she could only think of what the
prince had warned her of all those days ago.

After looking through nearly all of
the living rooms in the northern wing, she made her way to the
hallway that led to the grand staircase. It was the most sparsely
visited region in the home, but if Beeti wasn’t anywhere else she
must have been here. Four doors down, Emily could hear a faint
murmuring. It grew louder and louder until she could hear a
distinct voice ranting and raving above odd harmonies, whistling
winds, and hushed bangs. Emily instinctually fell silent,
tip-toeing through the hallway as not to make a sound. Even she
could sense the dangerous evil looming around her.

“When shall I do this?” Beeti again
dreamily asked the dark powers before her. “When shall I carry out
this most brilliant plan?”

“Wait until the old woman is dead,”
the Magistrate responded. Though, Emily only heard silence in its
place. “Wait exactly 6 hours from the moment of death, then carry
out your deed. Winston will be dead, the girl will be ours. Then
the power shall remain mine, and the money shall remain
yours.”

“Yes!” She suddenly let out a wicked
laugh, her eyes glazed over.

It was clear now that this evil which
had taken root in her was not just her own – but it was also
something willed into her by…something else. At this moment, Emily
quietly gazed through a crack in door and witnessed Beeti in silent
horror. Never before had anyone in the household seen such evil
come over her. Beeti’s nature was quiet, conceited, and petty. She
was jealous as her daughter was – but not…overcome by darkness like
she appeared to be now. Emily was presently unaware of any of the
things that the Magistrate had been saying, but Beeti’s villainous
echoes were enough to give her a terrifying shock.

“Wonderful,” the woman said. “When the
old woman dies, I shall carry out the plan. Elissa will be gone,
the kingdom ours. When the girl is dead, I’ll never have to worry
about my life or my title ever again!”

Emily could barely
keep herself from gasping aloud. She tried to purse her lips as
tightly as possible, to glue her feet to the floor as quietly and
firmly as could be. Yet, the next sight that she saw was not
something kept solely to Beeti’s eyes. Even though there was
apparently nothing and no one else there – somehow, something could
be seen on Beeti’s hands that was entirely terrifying. Emily
glanced through the crack and saw that somehow, Beeti’s hands were
covered in what appeared to be
human
blood.

At the sight, she ran.
Remembering what the prince had said about fleeing, she searched
the halls for me. If this wasn’t danger, then she wasn’t sure what
was. Now she knew the truth – Beeti was planning to kill me. She
didn’t know that there were others she had in mind also.

“Elissa,” she mutedly called my name
as she searched the hallway by my room. She didn’t want to draw
undue attention to this, for she had no idea what was going to
happen next. “Elissa!”

She came to my door and frantically
twisted the knob. Somehow, it was locked. She reached into her
apron for her keys and shook as she tried to figure out which of
the 110 on the hook would have been the right one. In her moment of
panic, she simply couldn’t put it together. For her, finding the
right key was like trying to find the right piece to a jigsaw
puzzle while attempting to dodge bullets in combat. Within a few
seconds, she gave up and somehow mustered enough strength to kick
the door in. Even after this momentous feat of strength, when she
saw the empty bed on the other side she was terrified.

“Elissa!” She called out
again as she scurried down the stairway in the servants’ quarters,
far from where I was hiding.

She spotted Haley King in
the kitchen, grabbed her by the collar and asked if I had been
there. She asked one other servant, then two. Finally, she asked
Jackoby in tears. No one had seen me, but they were all filled with
the utmost concern. In the next two minutes she was forced to give
a heated explanation to everyone in the servants’ quarters about
what she had just seen. She knew that telling them all like this
may not have been the wisest idea, but as of now it seemed my best
hope.

“It’s Beeti,” she
first told them in tears. “I just heard her talking about doing
away with the Lady! She was sitting in the room beside the
staircase…perhaps alone, but it sounded like she was talking to
someone. Then I looked in…and I saw it – I saw her with
blood
on her
hands!”

“Calm down, calm down,”
Jackoby softly comforted his wife at the sight of her
hyperventilation. “Now, what about Elissa? Did you see or hear
anything that might indicate that she is in danger?”

“That’s just it,” she choked. “I heard
her saying…at least I think I heard her saying…that she plans to
kill her as soon as Lady Abilene dies! I don’t know, perhaps she
meant to kill the Lady of the House also.”

“Don’t blubber in nonsense,” Haley
remarked. “You could’ve just been hearing things.”

“I wish it was so, perhaps
it is…but you see, now I worry. I went to go find Elissa
afterward…just to be sure that she was alright. Perhaps as a means
of consolation – something to reaffirm that I must have only been
thinking nonsense…but when I looked –” Emily’s tears came out at
full-force now, and she could hardly go on. The whole room urged
her to finish now, but she simply couldn’t.

“Where is Lady Elissa?”
Jackoby sternly asked. “Is she alright?”

“No,” Emily
struggled to speak. “Well, I don’t know. I went through every room
in the house and…and…Lady Elissa is
gone.”

It was at this point that
the servants began to bicker amongst themselves. At first some of
them disagreed that this could be fact – but Jackoby looked into
his wife’s eyes and knew. After two minutes of bickering, he took
his wife’s hand and stood up on a plain wooden table by the door,
hoisting her up to stand beside him.

“Everyone, listen!”
He shouted. “You might disagree with
my
wife’s
account, but I know that none of
you are loyalists. Whatever she’s seen or heard – Elissa is
missing. We must find her, and we must warn her of whatever danger
we might face. The rich don’t know the meaning of our kinship – but
Elissa does! We have to find her,” he continued, “because we can’t
leave one of our own.”

“Elissa’s one of us!” Haley King
shouted. She turned to the crowd of servants as well. “You know
what has been done to her – and you know how Beeti’s treated us!
Everyone’s been behavin’ strange lately. I wouldn’t put it past
her.”

The crowd in the tiny room expelled
into a series of cheers and unanimous uproar. There were 20, maybe
30 there. Although it was never spoken of, everyone knew that there
were also many working in this house who were also rebels. They
stood up and decided to send help, trying to devise a plan. Though,
it proved useless and the room quickly fell back into disorder.
There wasn’t one legitimate plan of action until a single voice
spoke up from the doorway. A meek, shrouded figure opened the door
and made her way to the front of the crowd.