I waited until they had both disappeared around the corner before approaching the door and knocking.

I heard a sound of frustration, heavy footsteps accompanied by some sort of soft jangling, and then the door cracked open with a creak. I winced against the chill that came from inside, and my amulet pulsed heavily against my chest. “I told you I’m not hungry, Peggy,” a voice growled from behind the door. Mr. Rochester was clearly hiding, because all I could see was a sliver of the dim wall of his room.

“Peggy went downstairs,” I said. “I’m Andromeda.”

“Who?”

I hesitated. “You hired me. To exorcise your house of the Evil Eye.”

“The what?”

Did he not know what was in his own house? “The spiritual activity in your house.”

“Wait, who are you?”

“Andromeda. The debtera you hired. Sir, I wanted to talk to you about curfew—”

“Lock your door by ten if you don’t want to be eaten alive. Now get the hell away from my door.” He slammed it shut, and then I heard his footfalls recede.

I took a steadying breath.

Remember where you were this morning, Andi.

You woke up in a stall with a bunch of goats. You chased a sleazebag off with a rock.

A slightly irrational employer is nothing.

I took a third and final soothing breath, and then went back downstairs to finish my dinner.

CHAPTER 3

I didn’t care what Peggy or Mr. Rochester said. Manifestations were their most active at night, and I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity to assess them. I wanted to have a better idea of what I was dealing with when I was given the silver required to construct protective amulets to cleanse them.

I stepped into the quiet hall a minute before ten to wait—well, quiet except for the vague sound of music drifting up the stairs, muted strings plucking a tense and melancholic tune to match my anxious mood. I’d never been this nervous with Jember, but then, it had rarely been me doing the work, only observing. Besides, anticipation was always worse than the actual Waking.

The only way to truly know what I was dealing with was to experience it without my amulet’s shield. With that in mind, I gripped my amulet and whispered a quick prayer of protection before hanging it on the inside doorknob to my room and shutting the door.

There was a strange, deep sounding of a bell. The great clock across from the stairs hadn’t rung all evening, and yet now it called up to me, full of dread and warning. Three … Four … Each bell interrupted the echo of the last. Seven … Eight …