The thing was now just beyond the door. It was unleashing a rain of stabbing blows against it. The tips of its weapons poked through the wood, appearing like the silver beaks of some ravening flock. Desdemona knew it was only a matter of seconds before the barrier would be rent.

At last she found the card she was looking for. It had a sextet of gleaming golden wands clashing before a robust sun. Below the illustration, the card bore a single word of Latin text: Victoria.

She hopped over Celeste’s hunched form and slapped the card’s face against the door.

The assault from What-Had-Been-Mother ceased instantly.

Bolstered by the effectiveness of her spell, Desdemona began to drag the card across the door, forming precise geometric patterns with great skill, just as Mother had tutored her to do.

From the landing there came the faint noise of slithering, of something slinking back down the grand staircase.

“Is it gone?” Celeste asked in an uncharacteristically small voice.

“I think so…but I’m not sure.”

“What happened to Mother?” Celeste asked and immediately began to cry again.

Desdemona pulled her sister close and tried in vain to console her. The rapid, mumbled assurances had some effect, for Celeste’s sobs eventually softened. In time the master bedroom’s silence was only occasionally punctuated by Celeste inhaling sharply.

A form darkened the second storey window. Its shadow fell lean and crooked across the bedroom.

Celeste was the first to look out the window. Once again she started to scream. Though she harboured no desire to see, Desdemona felt her head turning to face the shape at the pane.

The entity was hovering on the other side of the glass. The swords were still gripped in its gory fists. It was smiling, smiling… By now the face had suffered so many contortions that its original traits were lost. It was now a mask, no longer human; the effigy of some chasmal entity that should not be witnessed in the world that lay outside of Dream.

“No!” Desdemona cried. The card still between her fingers, she leapt to the window and pressed the image of the Wands firmly against the glass.

The thing lost its grip on its weapons. Desdemona could hear them clattering against the stone walkway so far below. She traced the protective designs on the window, then the other two windows that flanked it.

“Help me, Celeste!” she instructed as she opened the slat cupboard and began to wrestle free the cumbersome sets of storm shutters.