Fifteen
C harlotte DuCaral might not be the monster I’d imagined her to be, but I hadn’t yet given up on her mysteriously missing brother. I had to find out if she was hiding the young master behind the attic’s boarded windows, and in order to do that, I had to go to the attic.
Although my day pack—with its specialized contents—was inaccessible in the kitchen, I wasn’t wholly unprepared to deal with a potentially violent pseudovampire on my own. Before I left the lavatory, I pulled Lizzie Black’s rowanberry necklace from beneath my kimono and let it fall in plain sight upon my breast. Wearing the necklace might not be as effective as threatening the young master with a stake, but I figured that if push came to shove, it would buy me enough time to escape the attic with all my veins intact.
“It doesn’t matter whether I believe in it or not,” I said, my voice echoing from the lavatory’s tiled walls, “as long as he does.”
My feet were absolutely freezing by the time I left the lavatory, but they warmed up when I sprinted back down the corridor. I slowed my pace as I approached the music room, tiptoed stealthily past the door, then took off again at full speed, hoping to reach the attic before Mr. Bellamy returned to retrieve the tea trolley. I didn’t think Charlotte would notice my absence. She seemed far more interested in Kit than she was in me.
I paused at the end of the corridor to listen for the telltale squeaking of Mr. Bellamy’s leather shoes, but I heard only the distant drumming of rain on the porch’s roof. Reassured, I darted onto the staircase, wincing as my feet came into contact with the frigid marble.
Again I paused, this time to peer upward. Since I didn’t have a flashlight, I was relieved to see a weak golden glow above me in the Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
141
otherwise impenetrable gloom. I remembered the wall sconce that had guided our steps in the entrance hall and guessed that Mr. Bellamy left a handful of sconces on at all times, like night-lights, to illuminate the stairs. After all, I told myself, Miss Charlotte would want to visit the attic, as would poor deluded Jacqueline, though for very different reasons.
My impulse was to take the stairs two at a time, but the lighting was so poor that I forced myself to climb at a measured pace. I didn’t want to risk falling, not only because I might hurt myself but because I might drop the slippers. If anything would end my private tour of Aldercot Hall prematurely, it would be the sound of those ridiculous pointy heels clattering down the stairs.
The marble staircase ended at the third-floor landing, where, as I had predicted, a wall sconce like the one in the entrance hall glimmered faintly in the darkness. I was at a loss as to where to turn next until I caught sight of another sconce shedding a soft pool of light halfway down the corridor on my left.
I sprinted to the pool of light and cautiously opened the doors nearest it. The first three opened onto empty, echoing chambers that might once have been used as bedrooms.
“Why hang blackout drapes in empty rooms?” I muttered as I closed the third door. Then I shivered as the answer came to me.
Since the bedrooms, like the entrance hall, contained no carpeting or upholstery, the drapes hadn’t been hung to protect precious fabrics from the sun’s harmful rays. Blackout drapes had been hung throughout Aldercot Hall in order to protect someone who couldn’t bear the touch of sunlight on his skin because he lived his life as though he were a vampire. It was the only rational explanation.
The fourth door opened onto a flight of wooden stairs leading upward. In a house like Aldercot, wooden steps signaled behindthe-scenes rooms meant for servants rather than guests.
“The attic,” I breathed, and the chill that gripped my heart had nothing to do with the unheated corridor. Will’s drawing had
142 Nancy Atherton
flashed into my mind unbidden, and I knew that if I closed my eyes, I would see the crimson tips of Rendor’s vicious fangs as clearly as if the drawing were in my hand. But I didn’t dare close my eyes.
The feeling of dread that trickled through me was so unnerving that I might have had second thoughts about tackling the young master on my own if I hadn’t suddenly recalled Kit’s plan to fend off Henrietta with my slippers. I promptly placed one slipper on the floor of the corridor and gripped the other like a hammer, with the heel pointed away from me. I was pretty sure that no one had ever confronted Count Dracula armed with nothing more than a string of dried berries and a fluffy slipper, but they were the only weapons I had to hand, and I was fully prepared to use them.