At the top of the main staircase, the door to the house stood open. She paused and looked around. The garages were empty. Villa Mercedes gave off a menacing air of devastation and abandonment, as if all its inhabitants had left in the middle of the night, fleeing from a curse. She walked slowly up the steps to the doorway and stepped into the hall.

“Mercedes?”

The echo of her voice vanished into a litany of empty rooms and corridors. Somber passages fanned out on either side. Alicia walked over to the entrance of a grand ballroom into which dead leaves had been blown by the wind. The curtains fluttered in the draft. The blanket of spiders had crept up from the garden and now spread over the white marble tiles.

“Mercedes?” she called again.

Once more her voice became lost in the bowels of the house. A sickly sweet smell was coming from the top of the stairs. She began to walk up, following the trail of scent, which led her to the room at the end of the corridor. She stepped into the room but stopped midway. A cloak of black spiders covered the corpse of Señora Valls. They had begun to devour her.

Alicia ran back into the corridor, opening one of the windows facing the inside patio to let in the fresh air. As she did so, she noticed that all the windows overlooking the atrium were closed, except for one in a corner of the third floor. She walked back to the main staircase and climbed the stairs to the third floor. A long corridor ran off into the gloom. A double white door was visible at the end of the passage. It was ajar.

“Mercedes, it’s Alicia. Are you there?”

She approached slowly, scanning for shapes behind curtains, or among the shadows outlined between doorways on either side of the corridor. When she came to the end of the passage, she placed her hands on the door and waited.

“Mercedes?”

She pushed the door inward.

The walls were pale blue, and displayed a constellation of pictures inspired by stories and legends. A castle, a carriage, a princess, and all kinds of fantastic creatures flew across a sky studded with silver stars over the vaulted ceiling. Alicia realized that this was a nursery, a paradise for privileged children, with as many toys as a child could dream of. The two sisters were waiting at the far end of the room.

The bed was white. It was crowned by a wooden headboard carved into the shape of an angel with its wings outstretched, gazing at the room with infinite devotion. Ariadna and Mercedes were dressed in white. They lay on the bed, holding hands, each clasping a red rose against her chest with the other hand. A box holding a syringe and glass phials rested on the bedside table, next to Ariadna.

Alicia could feel her legs trembling, and she had to cling to a chair. She never knew how long she remained there, whether it was barely a minute or an hour. All she remembered was that when she went down the stairs and reached the ground floor, her feet took her to the ballroom. There she went to the fireplace. A box of long matches sat on the mantelpiece. She lit one and began to circle the entire perimeter of the mansion, setting fire to curtains and other fabrics. When she felt the flames raging behind her, she left that house of death. She crossed the garden again without looking back, while Villa Mercedes burned, a black pyre rising to the heavens.