Episode 38 - The Escape
“You found it, I recon?” I said to Scarlet as she stood at the bedside.
“Yes, Sebastian,” she responded. “It’s right where you said it was.”
“A lock?”
“No, the wall is a fake. There is a small crevice in the paint, hinting that it’s a revolving door. There are no indents in the paint suggesting a lock of any sort.”
I sighed and stood from the bed, gently brushing Yumi’s hair out of her face. “Just a moment longer, master.”
I then lifted her out from the bed, bones chilling as she remained deadweight, and I set her back into the suitcase just the way she was in it.
“Wait in here,” I told her. “We will do the rest.”
I then closed the case and locked it shut, gazing up at Scarlet as she stood next to me silently, clearly trying to act calm.
“I picked you to help because you are very attached to master,” I said then, “but you were also an assassin. You know how to play grifter and commit the crimes and sins. In this case, you know how to remain calm and play the sweet guest for Madam Claudia. I picked you for those reasons. Now… show me I did right and help me steal it back.”
Scarlet nodded, expression growing stern.
We then opened the bedroom door, me carrying the suitcase now as we peeked into the darkness of the halls.
“Sebastian…?” Scarlet whispered.
“She’s in her bedroom,” I replied then, seeing an unfamiliar soul hovering down the hall. “We must hurry.”
We then snuck down the halls, ignoring the banging from the wind and the tree branches cracking across the house.
As we continued forward, we finally made it to the linin closet.
I held the suitcase carefully, gazing over at Scarlet.
She just stepped upward and pressed the wall in, immediately pushing open the wall as if it, itself, was a door.
After glancing back to find Claudia still in her room, we stepped in, and I closed the secret door behind us, enclosing us in darkness.
I could see, but I knew Scarlet could not.
“Do you still have that stick stuck in your hair?” I asked Scarlet.
“Uhm… yeah.” Her voice came out from the darkness. “From the storm.”
“Hand it to me,” I said then, “and the flask in your jacket.”
She made an impatient sound, but did, pulling the stick from her hair and the flask from her pocket, giving them to me.
I just gazed down at my tailcoat. “You poor thing… I put you through so much.”
But I tore it, hearing its rip as cries of pain, but I fought down my own despair and spun the torn fabric over the top of the stick.
I then popped open the flask and dumped the fabric in alcohol, handing it back to Scarlet.
She took a swig then, swallowing it before sighing, and she pushed it back into her pocket.
But I pulled a match from my sleeve and flicked it with my thumb, immediately igniting it as it blazed.
I then hovered it upward, over the make-shift torch.
Sure enough, it blazed, burning brighter than the sun itself.
I waved off the match and tossed it aside, looking down at Scarlet as I held the suitcase in my other hand.
I then continued down this empty, dark hallway, and Scarlet followed me.
It was silent in here… just a small skitter of rats and the peeps from the mice, and our crackling, scraping footsteps.
Until… finally… we made it into a room far down the hall. A storage room of sorts.
Scarlet immediately got to searching, rummaging through belongings and scraping across shelves…
But I already saw it.
My eyes darkened as I clutched the suitcase tighter, and I stepped over to it. “Scarlet, come.”
She paused what she was doing and stepped over to me.
I handed her the torch. “Take this.”
She did, capturing it in her hands as I gazed down at the small, frail cloth under the dim lighting.
I recognized the black cloth with small frills, a large, red, ribbon-like “X” across the front… and the strings that were meant to be tied behind the head.
Master’s eye patch.
Just what I was looking for.
I took it then, holding it tightly in my hands as I gazed back at Scarlet. “Let’s go.”
She nodded, once.
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