Inside was an impressive collection of gowns, dresses, underclothes and other items of high fashion. It was impressive because they were stuck here in the middle of Lostwood, with nary a seamstress or dressmaker in sight. The sheer effort of getting all these clothes from wherever they came from to New Dawn would’ve been significant. There was even a rack for various sharp objects—pins and clips and combs—that might’ve been mistaken for instruments of torture if Perfidy hadn’t already spotted several of them in Lady Brenner’s hair.

And yet there was no white stick to be seen.

“Come on,” Perfidy muttered to herself quietly. It had to be here somewhere! Didn’t it?

She became more and more frantic as she riffled and rummaged through the hanging clothes, pushing the long trains of silky dresses aside as she searched. But the spaces between the garments were just that: spaces. Nothing filled those voids. She was just about to give up and assume it was an impossible task, Lady Brenner having grown wise over the months as each novice stole her magic stick, eventually deciding to sleep with it within her grasp beneath the bedclothes.

Almost as an afterthought, Perfidy shoved one final dress aside to reveal one corner of the wardrobe, a corner that was not entirely empty, a straight white stick propped up against the side, looking quite innocent as it stood there, as though it had been waiting to be found the entire time.

It was all Perfidy could do to hold herself back from snatching it and taking off, as she remembered that a stealthy exit would serve her better than a helter-skelter sprint to the door that would raise more of a ruckus than just a few creaking floorboards. Slowly, careful not to knock it over with a clatter, she closed her fingers around the stick.

Which, as it turned out, was not only not innocent, but also not interested in her plan of stealth.

Because it screamed. Loudly.

How it was possible for a stick with no mouth, lungs, voice box, or any other discernable feature that might allow it to make such a horrific sound could scream was beyond her comprehension, but that was the least of her concerns at present. Because rather than dropping the stick as it raised that keening alarm to its owner, she tightened her grip and went with her other, less wise plan: the helter-skelter sprint to the door.

All the while the stick kept up that wail, piercing her ears and the previous silence of the night, making her want to scream as well and then hurl it against the wall. Not only that, but the stick, remarkably, began to buck in her grip, swerving and swinging itself back and forth as though trying to maneuver itself free.

The first jerk nearly wrenched her arm from her shoulder. The second, which whipped back the opposite way, made her cry out in pain as her hand was smashed into the wall. Behind her, she heard an even more ominous sound: