annotated floorplan - simple floorplan

“These books,” Amerie said, “are a trip, and I mean that in multiple ways. But I think I’m getting dizzy and need a break.”

Sally nodded. “They get a bit heavy after a while. With lots of time, it’s great to just settle down with one and stay in it from cover to cover, so you get the full effect and don’t have the disorientation that builds up from going through them fairly fast. But that doesn’t really work on Hallowe’en for guests, so we do what we can. If you want Wanda and the games room, she’s right through that door.” Sally pointed.

“Thanks. I think I will.”

Sally smiled, and closed the book Amerie had last been reading. “That’ll be very different from reading.”

Amerie wondered what she meant, but strode across the library to the door Sally had indicated.

It took her to the room with the green-covered table and the cabinet of games. Wanda was in one of the chairs, with some sort of unfamiliar solitaire game laid out in front of her. The invisible woman looked up—it was amazing how much of her body language still came across thanks to her chosen clothing.

“Hi! Interesting time in the library?”

“I’ve had enough, but it’s been fascinating.”

Wanda chuckled. “It can be. Did you even notice that your tiger stripes wore off?”

“They did?” Amerie checked. Only her own bland arms greeted her eyes. “Damn, they did.”

“Ophelia’s potions and Thalia’s concoctions only last about an hour or so, normally. With exceptions.”

The black clothes still fit, perhaps a little less snugly but she didn’t think that was noticeable because they had, as Cosmo had said, a lot of stretch. They felt mentally less wonderful over her ordinary self, but she had to admit, she still liked them.

“Do you like games?” Wanda asked, laying a card on another card.

“Sometimes.” Amerie took a seat across from her. “Depends on the game.”

“I like most games. We can do something longer like one of the board games or something shorter like blackjack or nearly anything else you know and like.”

“Blackjack’s fine.”

Wanda gathered her solitaire game together and shuffled the deck. “Just a friendly game? No specific dealer rules, we can both do anything we want?”

“Sure.”

Wanda dealt each a face-down card, then a face-up card—a four for Amerie, a six for herself. Amerie checked her other card. An ace. So she had either five or fifteen, and the risks were low.

“Hit,” she said, and Wanda dealt her another face-up card, a two, then one for herself, a jack.

“I stand,” Wanda said. “You?”

Wanda had a six and a jack visible, plus one more card, so she had at least seventeen, probably more since Amerie had one of the aces. There were actually better odds of a three or five, given what was showing, and that would mean either nineteen or twenty-one. Amerie had seventeen, which was at best a tie but was almost certainly a loss.

“Hit.”

A king. So she still had seventeen.

“Again.”

A three.

Wanda might have the same twenty or even twenty-one... but it wasn’t likely, and getting an ace herself for twenty-one was highly improbable.

“Stand.”

“Nineteen,” Wanda said, flipping over her card.

“Twenty,” Amerie said, showing hers.

Wanda laughed. “You win.” She stacked the played cards neatly to one side and offered the deck.

Amerie accepted them, tossed the deck to her other hand in a short smooth cascade just because she could and to get a better feel for them, then gave them a swift deft riffle shuffle—she wasn’t particularly worried about anything being visible in a casual game like this, but it was an old habit.

“You are really comfortable with those cards,” Wanda observed.

“Ex-boyfriend who was really into gambling with his so-called friends. They all liked it when I was the dealer but not actually playing.”

“Uh-huh. But you still know how to play.”

“If they’d ever let me, I could probably have beaten half of them hands-down at blackjack or poker. And the other half would have underestimated me because I’m just a woman.” The pile of played cards held two face cards, a six, and ace through four with two threes, which shifted the odds and that needed to be taken into account. She dealt the cards, and kept the deck in her left hand while taking a look at hers with her right.

“Oh, I have an idea,” Wanda said, and got up. She rummaged briefly in the cabinet, and returned with a shallow brightly-painted box. “Really yummy chocolates with different fillings, there’s a legend inside the lid. Whoever wins gets to have one. You already won a hand, so you’re entitled to one.”

Amerie hesitated, but she didn’t want to hurt Wanda’s feelings by declining. She checked the legend, and chose a caramel-filled one. It took her two bites to get through it, the caramel thick and sweet and gooey, the chocolate dark with a faintly bitter edge.

“Wow. Those are really good.”

Wanda chuckled. “Why do you think I hide them?”

The rhythm of the game was familiar and helped Amerie relax; Wanda was excellent company, cheerfully more melodramatic about each loss, and downright silly over a win. Amerie’s initial thought that she’d hate to play poker against an invisible opponent was revised repeatedly—Wanda was so open and demonstrative about every emotion and thought and reaction that she’d probably be constantly giving herself away.

“You win,” Wanda said. “I’m not sure I’m even averaging one in three. You’re good at blackjack.” She sounded far more amused than upset. Possibly even delighted.

“We need to stop this. I’m eating all your candy.”

“Hm.” Wanda rested her chin on her hand. “We could change the stakes.”

“To what?”

“If you win, which you probably will, you can ask me any question you want—but there are some things I won’t be able to answer even if I want to. If I win, I’ll find you something to do. The sort of thing you could do on your own tonight, nothing terrible.”

Amerie considered, then slowly nodded. “All right. It’s your deal.”

Wanda gathered the entire deck together and shuffled them.

And, a moment later, said, “You win. Any question and I’ll do my best to answer completely.”

Amerie thought only briefly. “There’s a reason, isn’t there, why I should keep wandering around the house doing things instead of taking Tarragon up on the offer of a nap on the bench in the kitchen and just getting through the night? Something to do with the lady making sure I ate so I wouldn’t be at a disadvantage and everyone encouraging me to keep moving. What is it?”

“Um... that’s one of the things I can’t talk about. There is a reason but it doesn’t, like, determine whether you can leave safely or anything. Since that’s about all I can say, that isn’t a real answer. Ask something different.”

Amerie had rather suspected that would fall into the ‘can’t answer’ category. “What’s the deal with the paintings upstairs that move? They’re gorgeous but, well, they move.”

“Ah, that I can answer! The artist lives here, but he probably won’t talk much if you run into him, he’s shy. He does paintings like the ones upstairs, not the portraits in the gallery outside here, and he does plaster statues, and the house brings them to a limited kind of life while someone is interacting with them. You can reach into the paintings and if it’s a close-up still-life or something, you can touch the contents. You can step completely into most of the paintings by holding both hands in front of you and just taking a step forward, and it’s absolutely safe, just a tiny little universe that only includes what Jake painted. And to get out, you just decide that it’s time to leave. The people and animals inside aren’t really alive, they just have a kind of limited script and ability to respond. The whole household loves playing with them.”

“That’s interesting. Maybe I’ll give that a try later, once I feel like I’ve recovered from the books.” There were apparently multiple ways to get out of the house while still within it.

Wanda chuckled. “Same stakes? We can keep going until you say stop or I win. And remember, eventually I’ll win even if it takes a while.”

“Yep.” Amerie accepted the deck.

She won again.

“There are things in this house, not people, other than the paintings, that are... well, magic, aren’t there?”

“Lots of them,” Wanda said. “Mistress is always on the lookout for interesting new artifacts. And honestly, they’re usually safer here than loose in your world or something. She gives jewellery and clothes to Cosmo, puts books in the library, that kind of thing, but there are other things that don’t really have an obvious home. Do you have something specific in mind?”

“In a bedroom around the corner from Cosmo I ran into a mirror that talked to me.”

“Black frame, really big? That’s Sally’s room. Sometimes she likes that mirror and sometimes she says she’s going to get help to swap it somewhere else in the house. It’s not malevolent but it can be a little unsettling when it starts doing its thing at the wrong moment. On the other hand, sometimes the insight that comes from it can be helpful, so I don’t think it’s leaving the house anytime soon. I don’t know how it works, though. Mistress might, or Maggie. Possibly Fifi does... um, Ophelia, I mean.”

“And I actually have high odds of running into other odd things in this house.”

“Definitely the people, and we’re all pretty odd. A high chance of stumbling over other things. I will tell you, for free, that there’s a telephone in Mistress’ reception room at the front, in a drawer, and it’s not connected to anything at all, no wires. If you hear it ring, do not answer it. Nobody needs that and I wish she’d get rid of it. But anything else that we know what it does is at most a bit inconvenient or strange.”

“That you know what it does.”

“There’s an occasional object that is supposed to do something but it hasn’t been seen actually doing it yet. But if they’re supposed to do anything dangerous, Mistress won’t bring them in the house, she trades them off fast.”

“That’s some comfort. That was a really thorough answer. Thank you.”

Wanda shrugged. “I play fair.”

Amerie busted on the next hand, with an eight while she was trying to bump up her sixteen.

“I was expecting that to take a lot longer,” Wanda laughed. “I’ve been thinking about what to do, and after we had that conversation about the household’s stranger objects, I have an idea. Hey, Sally! Meet us up on the balcony?” Wanda stacked all the cards neatly and left them in the centre of the table.

“Coming!” Sally called back from the library.

“The balcony?” Amerie said. “Up at the top of the stairs?”

“Up where you can look down into the great hall, exactly,” Wanda said. “The stairs right outside the door are the fastest way up.”

Amerie kept pace with her up the stairs, past the room with the chatty mirror, and to the spot where it opened up onto the well over the great hall on one side and the broad shallow main stairs on the other.

“So what are we doing?” Amerie asked.

“We have two current objects that aren’t completely understood,” Wanda said. “And one of them is that set of armour right there. Supposedly it can be worn, and grants some neat abilities, but it chooses who it accepts and no one has any idea of the criteria. It’s assumed that one of them is that it likes women. It won’t do anything for me, Sally, Fifi, Thalia, Dora, Tarragon, even Mistress and Maggie. I mean, Sally can ooze into it but it won’t respond to her. And it ignores Master and Jake and Cosmo too.” Those bright pink lips parted in a grin, and the corners of her painted eyes crinkled. “Let’s see if it likes you.”

“But you don’t know what it does.”

“It doesn’t bond itself onto someone forever or anything like that. We do know that much from the accounts of it.”

Blue goo oozed through the railing around the balcony and up onto the floor, then changed into a human woman.

“Sorry if I startled you,” she said apologetically to Amerie. “I can stick to walls and ceilings and it’s actually faster and easier than coming up the stairs. You wanted me?”

“I lost a bet,” Amerie said dryly.

“The armour? Wanda, is that a good idea?”

“Can you think of any reason it isn’t?” Wanda asked.

Sally pondered. “Nothing specific, just not knowing all the details.”

Amerie took a deep breath. The armour was still beautiful, shining stainless steel decorated with gold and copper and silver. She still could not imagine any possible way for a human to wear it, not with all of those tight spirals around limbs and abdomen, the feet and hands and helmet and breastplate and pelvis all apparently seamless. “It’s okay. I believe you that it isn’t dangerous. What do I do?”

“Probably,” Wanda said, “just lay a hand on it and... think? Want? Usually things are triggered just by willing them to do whatever they do.”

“Unless there’s a key word or phrase,” Sally said thoughtfully. “And some things start working on contact or things like that. But most things, yes, just will.”

“Right.” Amerie took another deep breath, then laid her hand flat against the centre of the armour’s chestplate, just above the modest molded breasts.

When nothing happened, she laid her other hand on the top of the delicately-shaped golden curls.

She wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting, but what happened was definitely nowhere on the list.

Every individual piece of the armour separated from the rest, rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, and snapped towards her. The steel spirals snaked themselves around her calves and thighs, lower and upper arms, her abdomen, and tightened barely to the point where she could feel it but with no pressure. The breastplate and the pelvic armour split up the back and wrapped around her torso, and the helmet did the same over her head. She felt the metal hands slide over her own and contract to a perfect fit, and then somehow, despite her boots, the metal feet echoed it, leaving her flat on the floor.

All that metal should probably have been heavy, but she could barely feel any weight at all.

She looked down, and found that the helmet’s mask didn’t interfere with her vision; a cheap Hallowe’en mask was far worse. When she held up a hand, she watched her metal-covered fingers flex and move effortlessly, her wrist bending normally, despite the lack of visible joints. The lower spiral stopped just before her elbow, then there was a sort of cap protecting the joint, then another spiral up to just below her shoulder, where it linked up with the breastplate. More vigorously, she tried bending forward, and discovered that the metal around her waist did not stop her; she squatted, and the spirals around her legs, the caps shielding her knees, cooperated. The metal covering her pelvis flared enough over her hips that the joints could move freely.

“Are you okay?” Wanda asked. “I really did not think that was going to happen!”

“I’m fine.” Amerie tried stretching, arms over her head.

It felt good. Really good.

She looked around, and strode rapidly along the balcony to one of the chairs near the windows. They were heavy-looking things, solid wood with a bit of upholstery, with backs and arms. Just as a test, she seized the back of it with one hand.

It came up off the floor as though it were a child’s inflatable toy.

“Oh, wow,” Wanda said. “You’re strong.”

“Apparently.” Amerie set the chair down, trying to be gentle, but she misjudged and it banged into the floor more loudly than she intended. “Where did Sally go?”

“To find the Mistress. Not because we think something is wrong. She’ll be extremely interested in this. If you want to see how you look, Sally’s room is right there.” She gestured. “The mirror doesn’t always do weird things. And you might want to. Because that is super-impressive.”

Amerie shrugged and took her up on it. Even walking felt like it took no effort—like she had the strength and stamina to keep going forever.

The reflection in the mirror was startling, however.

The bland facial features of the helmet now looked distinctly like her own. No skin showed; anywhere not covered, and there were very few gaps, showed only dark shadows. The steel positively gleamed; the decorative touches from the other metal, whether abstract spirals or the details of her face, showed bright and polished against it.

“That’s actually pretty cool.” She visualized any boyfriend trying to hit her, and smiled to herself. That would emphatically not work out well for them if she were wearing this.

Ségolène joined them, just a little out of breath, suggesting perhaps some unladylike haste.

“Sally is coming,” she said briefly, and looked Amerie over. “Oh, my dear, that armour appears to approve of you. It has not done so for anyone else in my household. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Amerie repeated. “It’s actually completely comfortable.”

“It does seem to give a strength boost,” Wanda added.

“Definitely. I think there might be other things too.” She was, in fact, somehow sure that there were other things. It made her vaguely sad, the thought that she was unlikely to have time to unravel all its secrets before she had to take it off for good. It made her sad just to think of taking it off.

“It’s unlikely to simply release in a short time the way effects created by my household do,” Ségolène said. “But I have reason to believe that it cannot exist at all in your world, so at the very least, at sunrise you can leave and be free of it. Possibly it will release if you simply want it to do so.”

“Okay. But I’m not actually in a hurry. Wanda said you don’t completely understand this armour. If you have anything you want to test, let’s do it.”