So it was about Vincent after all. I braced myself, following the high-class hoard into my home and shutting the door behind me, imagining for a moment that Vincent was there to offer a quiet chuckle at the tiresome monstrosity of my situation, including—in fact mostly comprised of—the certainty that I was doomed to face it all without a Vincent.

Episode 42: The Towers Entertained By The Kendricks

Our parlor was not as elaborate as it should have been, what with us dwelling at the top of the hill. But each item in our manor was sentimental and well appreciated. Where some, such as the Towers, adorned their halls with countless glittering trinkets and too much fine satin and silk, the Kendrick home was curated, reflecting my father’s hobbies and interests, with plenty of space for me to spread out my books on the ground to read. “We live here,” my father would always say, “so there should be room for living.”

But within the parlor, men I did not know and pyre slaves dressed in their black and gray coats, muzzles over their mouths, wrapped our keepsakes and ornaments with cloth, carrying them through the foyer and out the large front doors.

“Sit, child, sit,” my grandmother said, patting the back of my hand as it rested in hers. I obeyed, for there was no fight remaining in me at the moment.

“Now, I have been told there was an altercation here between the good Young Braun Tower and some pyre in our employ, but we must put all that aside for the time being, my child.”

Why call me her child so often? I glanced from person to person, at all their pinched faces, and realized with a panic that I had no idea what was going on, except that it was not all what I’d suspected. I sat up straighter in the chair, feeling my cheeks brighten with anxiety.

“There…has been….”

I snatched my hand away from my grandmother. For I had heard those words before once, in that exact same order. And I did not like what followed. And what followed then still persisted to that very day. For once those words were said, there was no reversing them. They remained said, in that manner, in that order, forever. And the truth behind them, in a rather similar way but so much worse, also remained in that manner and order forever.

The last time there “had been an accident,” my mother's body was dragged from the river bed.

And I did not have many more people to whom accidents could happen. In fact, with my grandmother currently soothing me like the maid who wrings a hen’s neck, I could count only one person to whom an accident might have happened.

I stood up, knocking over the chair I’d been set upon.

“Now, child, you must attempt to remain calm.”