“Father, when will you return? Have we not established ourselves enough?” The nitwit begged, bowing, then slamming his head into the polished tiles.

  Oddon watched his father make a fool of himself before the portrait of his grandfather hung on the wall where the two staircases met. This pathetic sight had stung his eyes every morning since his days as his father’s heir. But in this house, he had come to expect a plethora of unpleasant things, so he reacted as he always did by not reacting at all and ignoring the senile old husk of a man on his way down.

  “Good morning, sir.” The wooden dolls all said together, pausing their cleaning routine to greet him.

  “Have I done a good job, sir?” One asked from the ceiling, dangling from the chandelier it’d been polishing.

  Reaching the front doors, he opened them wide, seeing Raven’s ugly mug staring back at him, empty-handed and one day late, his mere presence a stain on the limestone steps descending to the driveway.

  “Good morning, Mr. Orion, sir.”

  “Spare me that nonsense. Where is the boy? And why is it now that you come crawling back to me after abandoning your job?”

  “Fine, I’ll spare you the pointless formality and speak my mind. At no point have I agreed that I’d put my life at risk over your son’s foolish decision. The boy nearly killed me.”

  Oddon scowled. “Utterly prideless. Tell me, how was he able to get the better of you? You literally have the ultimate advantage of surprise.”

  “I don’t know how, but he saw me in the shadows. I thought I'd be able to get out of sight and strike later, but when I tried it, he surprised me by making himself glow, forcing me into a pathetic position. I was at the very least able to see where he headed as I escaped. By coincidence, I passed under a house that was home to a dozen magical orphans just at the right moment to see him enter. This all took place after I followed him on the train to East Toadorr junction by the way.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Dear?” A chilling voice bit the back of his neck softly.

  Oddon looked back. “Zariatha?”

  With the elegance of a swan, she moved past him, taking his place in the doorway to face Raven.

  “I see you haven’t brought us the boy.” She said, sighing.

  “No, I haven’t, Mrs.”

  “Give us a second.”

  She turned to head back inside, pulling Oddon in with her before closing the doors with a sweep of her hand.

  “What exactly do you want with the creature anyway?” Oddon asked.

  “What do I want with it? What do people want with money? What do people want with power? What do people want with legacy? With pleasure? With joy? What all people want is more, nothing more than that. Greed is in our nature. You don’t need a reason to fuck me more, do you? I feel you’re underestimating the creature's potential. With some refinement, we’d be able to reconstruct matter itself. We could produce infinite quantities of any resource and restore the youth of the aging. Your grandfather would return to something very special.”

  ”Fine, I’ll contact White, and have him help Raven.”

  She smiled. “Good boy.”

  She set back off to the stairs.