Tonbeau Nuvenberg cried in Czech, “I did it! I did it!” She slapped a boxing-glove sized fist into a mitt-sized palm.
A beaker holding a transparent liquid sat on the wooden desk. In the hour since Setsura left, she’d been holed up in a laboratory in the back creating this concoction.
“Congratulations,” Takako said crisply to Tonbeau’s dumpling face. “How about celebrating your success by letting me go?”
This Takako was Takako’s doppelganger. Since being strapped to Tonbeau with Setsura’s devil wires, she was her constant companion, locked in an embrace sitting up or lying down.
Needless to say, both of them were getting tired of the arrangement.
“I’d love to,” said Tonbeau in fluent Japanese. “But considering what must be going on in that head of yours, let you get a fraction of an inch away from me and it’d be like setting free a ravenous wolf in a flock of sheep. We’re going to have to put up with each other a little while longer.”
“A little while?” Takako said with a teasing smile.
Their lips were a hair’s breadth apart, creating to the eye of someone who didn’t know better a strangely suggestive scene.
“We’re stuck together until I figure out how to extinguish you or return you to your original body.”
“There’s no way. You said so yourself.”
“Of course I did. That’s why we’re getting a hold of the Doctor.” Tonbeau removed the cover of a brass speaking tube attached to the stone wall. “Well!” she shouted. “Was he there?”
A moment later, “No,” the doll girl answered.
“What is this Doctor Mephisto up to? The Demon Physician, of all people. Is he at the hospital?”
“Yes. But he won’t answer no matter what.”
“Didn’t the pretty boy say something about Doctor Mephisto sending around a dummy of the mayor to steal the box?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, we have to consider the possibility he’s become enthralled by it. Dammit, I’ll just have to ring that man’s bell myself.”
“I can think of no one more qualified at ringing a man’s bell.”
“Hmph. A mere doll like you should show a little more deference to her mistress.”
“I beg to disagree, but you are not my mistress. You are my mistress’s younger sister.”
“And you are a lousy block of polished wood!”
Tonbeau slammed down the cover of the speaking tube and folded her arms, or tried to as well as she could with Takako strapped to her. She paced the room in a huff. Takako dangled there in front of her eyes. To be sure, it was a curious sight.
“Well, whatever. The first order of business is collecting more allies. I’m going downstairs!”
She shouted again into the speaking tube, grabbed the beaker, and headed for the door. The narrow stairway creaked as she stomped down the steps. She exited into a fairly wide hallway. Candle stands lined the walls, the flames fluttering as she passed by and pushed open a wooden door.
A low moan arose. “You awake?” she said, closing the door.
Though it was pitch black, to the eyes of the Czech Republic’s second greatest witch, everything was as plain as day.
The room was approximately a dozen feet by a dozen feet. A pungent sweet smell suffused the air. The one-armed man sat up on an iron bed against the far wall.
“I am awake,” he said with a nod, “though this aroma is on the pungent side. Could you reduce the intensity?”
“That is for the lover that hangs about you, hardly to be shook off. That ash somehow excites your blood lust. The word is, my girl here reduced that vampire lady of yours to dust.”
Ryuuki looked down at the ash covering the bed. Though turned to dust, Shuuran still tried to protect him. Perhaps she was sleeping now.
“Brings a whole new meaning to being stuck on someone. Speaking of which, you recognize this?”
Ryuuki gave Tonbeau—and Takako strapped to her—a puzzled look. Then a spark of recognition dawned on his face.
Tonbeau was holding a wilted clump of flowers in her caterpillar-like fingers. Originally cool white with large petals, they were now wrapped with streaks of brown, the glory with which they once bloomed having faded long ago.
“Moon lilies.”
“Exactly.”
“The ones that grew in the garden of Princess’s manor house?”
“The source is uncertain. Two hours ago, they were used as the currency in a certain exchange.” In place of the wooden box hauled off by the pretend mayor, the flowers had been left behind. “Besides you, I’ve heard tell that other young man—Setsura-chan’s erstwhile ally—is a traitor to the cause. When it comes to these flowers, I can think of only one use—restoring someone to his right mind.”
Tonbeau produced her hand from behind her back. The liquid sloshed back and forth in the beaker.
“You distilled the substance?”
“That I did.”
Ryuuki looked up. “Which?”
Tonbeau went over to the rope and chains hanging from the ceiling. Grabbing one of the rusty chains raised the sound of turning gears. Another figure dropped from the ceiling. His ankles were bound by iron shackles attached to chains that wound around his body.
At first glance, he looked like he’d just been hauled out of a torture chamber. Though this young man was probably otherwise fit as a fiddle. His pair of wings and bat-like appearance identified him as Yakou.
“Hey, wakey wakey,” Tonbeau patted the graceful face on the cheek.
“You’re such a boor,” Takako complained, even as a lewd light filled her eyes.
“Shut up,” Tonbeau glared back at her, though their heads were only three inches apart, so there wasn’t a lot of force behind it. The result was like two kids in a staring contest.
Yakou’s eyes opened. “What are you doing?”
“You are about to find out,” Tonbeau said with a sinister smile, the smile of a witch about to poison the virtual young knight.
She waved the beaker back and forth beneath his nose. “Drink up.”
“What is that?”
“A rejuvenating agent.”
“What are you doing, Sir Ryuuki? Stop this fatso.” Yakou squirmed in frustration. The Ryuuki below him was supposedly his comrade in arms. “They are enemies of Princess. And enemies of you. Will you betray Princess?”
To be precise, he was the archetypal betrayer, but he possessed no such memories now.
Ryuuki said, “I would prefer to stay as far away from all that as possible.”
In the face of the painful echoes in his restrained voice, Yakou’s exasperation melted away. But quickly emerged again. “Traitor,” the Elder’s grandson barked.