Part Three

The dining room disappeared around Flandre, leaving her in blackness. She still felt the chair beneath her, and could see herself only by the light of her wings. All else was a featureless void around her.

She looked around in surprise.

“Wh- what?” she said. “What happened?”

Her voice seemed to end at her own head, not even the faintest echo from nearby walls, as if limitless space stretched away in all directions.

“Remi?” She reached out to where her sister had been sitting beside her. Her hand touched nothing. She felt forward for the table, but there was only empty space.

“Patchey?” she said. “Sakuya? China? Koa? Hello! Where’d everyone go?”

Her hands gripped her chair in case it too would vanish, leaving her to fall into the void.

“Hello!” she yelled. “Where is everyone?” Worry crept into her, the fear of a child separated from her family and left alone.

Just then, either the light of her wings grew or the dark around her receded. The dining room reappeared from a dark haze, reminding Flandre how her sight returned after pressing her palms into her eyes.

The room was not as it had been a moment ago. No sparklamps lit the place. No fairies sat at the other tables, eating and celebrating her birthday. Her own family, her sister and her senior servants, were all gone. The table she had been sitting at was now several feet away, bare of decoration. The whole room looked as it did during the early hours of the morning: empty and silent, since everyone was supposed to be asleep.

Awareness of these surroundings was an afterthought. Flandre first noticed the dead body draped face-down over the table.

She slid off her chair and stepped up to the body. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks bright red. Never in her memory had she seen a corpse, but the sight of one did not frighten her. She was surprised, and that only for the deceased's identity.

She put both hands on the head, rotating it to take its face off the tabletop. Flandre gasped at the eyes looking back at her. The eyes, once vibrant and purple, were now rheumy and gray. The face, once discerning and intelligent, was now slack and pale.

“Patchey!” Flandre shook the cadaver’s head. “Patchey! Wake up!”

The corpse did not wake. Its flesh was cool under her hands. She might have kept rattling it, trying to reanimate her librarian and tutor, but something else caught her notice.

Looking up, she saw the murder weapon. The staff Lævateinn stood out of the corpse’s back like a crooked flagpole. Youkai blood stained the nightgown around the wound, welled up into a stream that leaked down the corpse’s side and pooled on the table.

“My staff!” said Flandre. She set the corpse’s head down, then bent her knees and jumped onto the table. This would have been impossible for a human girl of her height, but it was no great athletic feat for a vampire. She stood by the body, nudged it with her foot. She was careful to keep from stepping in the blood.

“Sorry Patchey,” she said, “but I need my staff.”

Flandre wrapped one hand around Lævateinn. She wiggled it back and forth, then pulled upwards. Its spade-shaped tip tore out of the corpse’s back, taking flesh and blood with it. Flandre winced at the mess. She wiped the soiled tip on Patchouli’s robe.

She gripped her staff in both hands, lowered her head, and paid a moment of silent respect.

“I’ll find who killed you,” she said. “I’ll revenge you.”

---

Flandre headed out of the dining room, intent to seek Patchouli's murderer – but she had no direction, no idea where to start. Like any child stuck with a difficult problem, she went looking for help.

Flandre stopped in the hallway. She stuck Lævateinn in her armpit, and cupped both hands around her mouth, then pulled in a deep breath and shouted.

“Hey!” Her voice bounced up and down the halls. “Remi! Remilia Big Sister Scarlet!”

No answer. She took in another breath.

“Someone killed Patchey!” she yelled. “She’s dead on the table and she’s getting blood everywhere and it’s really gross!”

Her voice echoed away to silence. Flandre planted her fists on her hips, a gesture she had learned from her sister.

“Hmph!” she said. “Never any help when you need it.”

A distant noise startled her, the sound of metal striking something. She jumped, turned towards the sound with Lævateinn in both hands.

“What was that?” she said.

Silence again. She strained her ears, listening for anything. Nothing.

“Sounded like it came from the kitchen,” she said, and she began walking that way.

She didn’t want to see Patchouli’s body again, so she didn’t take the shortcut through the dining room. She went the long way around to the kitchen’s main entrance.

She heard the sound again, this time louder and closer. It startled her again, the noise cutting into her ears against the silence. It definitely was from the kitchen, the sound of a pan falling on stone floor.

“Someone’s there!” she said, and she sprinted the rest of the way.

She batted the door open with Lævateinn and rushed inside. Her wings cast colored light all around the kitchen, throwing strange shadows over the room’s dark corners.

Flandre gasped. She slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Sakuya!”

She lay face down in a growing puddle of human blood, her arms spread as if embracing the floor. Her blood had soaked into her clothes and into her silver hair, turning it pink. Empty pans and bowls littered the floor around her. The smell made Flandre’s stomach roil.

“Not you too.” Flandre stepped up to the body, again careful not to step in blood. A ragged hole had been torn out of Sakuya’s back. It was just like the wound that had killed Patchouli.

Something else caught Flandre’s eye. Beside the body, red smears across the floor formed rough letters. They were surrounded with red speckles and splotches. Sakuya had used her own blood to scrawl out a final message.

There were only four letters. W, H, Y, and F. More blood was smeared after that, but it was too messy to read.

“Whyf?” Flandre shook her head. “Poor dumb Sakuya. I knew you were bad at spelling, but even I know that’s not how you spell wife. There’s no H. I guess even you wanted to get married some day.”

She turned, about to head out of the kitchen, but spared her maid’s body one last look.

“I’m sorry, Sakuya. Just like Patchey, I’ll find your killer and justice them to death.”

---

She went back to the hallway, wondering what to do. The culprit must be nearby, she knew. Sakuya had been attacked only a short while ago.

“I’ve gotta find who did this,” said Flandre, thinking hard. She had to figure out where the killer had gone, and who the next victim might be.

As she marched down the hallway, the light of her wings revealed a bloody streak on one wall, as if someone had dipped a hand in paint and slid it across the plaster.

“More blood!” she said. She stepped up close to the wall. The mark had neither the color nor foul smell of human blood. It was fresh, recently left by a youkai.

“Hey!” Flandre shouted. “Is anyone here?”

No reply came, but she heard a moaning from down the hallway. Flandre’s breath quickened. She dashed towards the sound.

“Don’t move!” she said. “If you’re hurt by the killer, I’ll help you! If you’re killing my helpers, I’ll hurt you!”

She almost ran past the victim. She stopped and hopped back, struggling to keep her balance. She stabbed Lævateinn into the carpet to stay upright.

“China!” she said.

There sat Hong Meiling, back up against the wall. A hole was punctured in her chest, the same kind of wound found in Patchouli and Sakuya. One arm was wrapped around her gut, the other propped against the floor so she sat upright. Blood had gushed out of the wound and pooled in the dress on her lap. It darkened the carpet where she sat, and it covered the wall behind her.

Seeing this, Flandre pictured how Meiling had come here. She had been attacked further down the hall, but walked as far as she could. She had steadied herself against the wall at least once, leaving a smeared handprint. Here her strength left her, and she slid down the wall to where she now sat.

She was still breathing.

“China!” Flandre knelt down beside Meiling, put a hand to her face. “Come on. This isn’t enough to kill you. We’ve hurt each other worse than this before.”

Meiling’s eyes, normally bright and blue, were now dull and unfocused. She seemed not to notice Flandre standing over her.

“Mistress....” Her voice was barely more than a breath. “Run... get out....”

“I’m not Remi,” said Flandre. “Did you see my sister? Where is she?”

Meiling tried to inhale, but choked on herself. Her eyes met Flandre’s. She tried to back away, but had nowhere to go.

“It’s me!” said Flandre. “Don’t be scared. I’m trying to find who killed everyone. Where’d my sister go?”

“The main... doors,” said Meiling. “Just don’t... hurt....”

She looked like she meant to say more, but could not. Her head rolled onto her shoulder. Her chest released a final breath. The light in her eyes went out entirely.

“China!” Flandre yelled into her face. She grabbed Meiling’s body by the shoulders and shook her. “Wake up, China girl! You can’t die! It’s against the law!”

She did not wake. Flandre may as well have been beating a mannequin. She let go of the body, slowly stood. Her face felt tight, and her eyes burned. This was too much. Everyone was dying. Each time she came closer, but was still too late. Maybe she would be in time for the next murder, if she hurried.

Her head snapped up, and she looked down the hall.

“Remi!” she said. Taking Lævateinn in hand, she sped off down the hallway.

---

Flandre understood Meiling’s final words to mean Remilia was trying to escape the mansion. The nearest exit was the main doors that lead out to the courtyard. There Flandre now ran, as fast as her legs would take her. She whipped down hallways. Had anyone been around to notice her passing, it would have been as a rainbow-colored shooting star followed by a gust of wind.

“Remi!” she called down the halls. “Wait for me! We can fight the bad guy together!”

That was her last hope. If a killer could defeat Patchouli, Sakuya and Meiling all within a few minutes, then Flandre could only stand against him if by her sister’s side. Together, surely, the two of them could handle any threat.

She came to the front foyer. A flight of stairs led down to the tiled reception floor. She leaped off the higher level, letting her running momentum carry her down. The stairs blurred below her feet. She landed on the hard, cold floor with her knees bent, the jewels of her wings clattering together like misshapen wind chimes.

“Remi!” she yelled. The room was empty and dark, but for the circle of light her wings cast around her.

“Flandre.”

Flandre’s heart jumped in her chest. She looked around the room, unsure from where the answer had come.

“You’re here!” she said. “I can’t see in anything. Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m right in front of you,” said Remilia.

Flandre squinted into the darkness. When she looked hard enough, she saw two dull points of red light hanging there: her sister’s eyes. She stood perhaps ten paces away, more than half the distance to the doors. Flandre stood and started walking over, intent to batter her sister with a relieved hug.

“Stay back!” Remilia yelled. “Not one step closer!”

Flandre’s feet pattered to a halt. “Why? What’s wrong?”

Closer now, she could better see the light of her sister’s eyes. They weren’t bright scarlet as they normally would be in this darkness. Her eyes were dim, fading in and out like cooling embers.

“What’s wrong?” said Remilia. “I need to explain something, and you need to listen. Try hard to understand, all right?”

Her voice was not well. She spoke with labored breath, as if some weight kept her from taking in a full chest of air.

“All... all right?” said Flandre. “I’m listening, Remi.”

“Good,” said Remilia. She took as deep a breath as she could. “A night like tonight, in a house like this, with several people stuck together in it, is an example of a closed instance. This means everyone here is accounted for, and nobody leaves or arrives. It means when the night ends, there must be the same number of people here as when the night began, with one exception. That exception is murder.”

“I know!” said Flandre. She pointed back into the mansion. “Patchey, Sakuya, China! They’re all—”

“Listen!” said Remilia. “The most important part of the closed instance is liability. If the mansion’s occupants each turn up dead, then one of the survivors must be the murderer. As the cast of characters shrinks, the likelihood of each survivor’s guilt increases, until that likelihood becomes certainty. Finally, the point comes when only one survives. The last man standing logically must be the same who eliminated all others.”

“What’re you talking about?” said Flandre. “You don’t sound like you. You’re talking like Patchey. Are you saying you know who killed everyone?”

“I do indeed,” said Remilia. “She has been standing in this very room for the last minute.”

Flandre gasped. “No! You couldn’t have—”

“Not I.” Remilia stepped forward, her faded eyes bobbing up and down in the dark. “In a well-told murder mystery, the culprit’s identity will surprise you.”

Remilia walked into the circle of light, and Flandre saw how difficult that had been for her sister. She too had a bloody hole in her chest, the same wound everyone that had killed everyone else. They had all been murdered from the same weapon.

“Only one left,” said Remilia, her hand clutched over the wound. She pointed at Flandre with her free hand, trembling all over. “The killer is always the last one you expect.”

With that, Remilia’s strength ended. She fell to her knees, then her face, and lay there still.

Flandre stared down, her mouth hanging open.

“Me?” she said. “I killed everyone?”

---

The foyer’s sparklamps blazed to life. The room was fully lit. Flandre threw her hands over her eyes, shocked at the sudden brightness.

“You solved the mystery,” I said. “Too late, sadly, but such is often the case in tales of who dunnit.”

Flandre looked up, saw me standing where her sister had died on the floor. I held my spellcard folder to my chest, and it was significantly lighter than it had been an hour ago. I had burned up many of the slips of paper it recently contained.

“Patchey!” Flandre jumped forward and clamped her arms around me. “You’re alive!”

“Of course I am, Little Mistress,” I said, patting her on the back. “You must have realized the whole experience was fiction. If a youkai like myself or China died, there would be no corpse left behind. If Sakuya were challenged, her opponent’s blood would wet the floor in at least equal measure to her own.”

Flandre pulled back. “Are the others all okay too?”

“They are,” I said, “cleaning up after dinner. Your sister took the liberty of placing your gifts in your bedroom, except for mine. She gave me permission to lead you through the mansion in the process of discovering your present.”

“Some present!” said Flandre, her face bunched into a pout. “I was scared half to death!”

I smiled. “I take that as the highest praise. The best tales will evoke emotional response in us.”

“So that’s what you meant when you said you were giving me mystery?” she said. “I never found out who the killer was.”

“You did. Remilia revealed it at the end of the story.”

“I didn’t kill anyone!” Flandre stomped one foot on the tile floor.

“Are you sure? The narrative did not reveal what actions the main character took before the story’s beginning. It started with Flandre Scarlet sitting at a table, upon which rested the remains of a recently-committed murder. Through the story’s length, were several clues indicating the murderer’s identity. No mystery is complete without clues.”

“What clues?” said Flandre.

I nodded towards the stairs. “Let us rejoin the others, and I will explain.”

Flandre did not object. I guessed she would be happy to see everyone whole and well, but she did not rush ahead. She kept pace with me. We reached the stairs and climbed them.

“First, most obvious, was the murder weapon,” I said. “You saw right away that I had been killed with Lævateinn, just before you promised to revenge me. The fatal wound in each other victim matched. This is part of the concept known as modus operandi, the similarities in method for a string of crimes. Second, Sakuya died while writing out a message.”

“You mean whyf?” said Flandre. “She just doesn’t know how to spell, is all.”

“That may be, but murder mysteries will hide clues in plain sight. The smears after the letter F meant that Sakuya had more to say, but she became incoherent due to blood loss. The letters W H Y F were not the whole message.”

“Then what was the rest of it?”

“You can guess,” I said.

We had reached the top of the stairs and entered the mansion’s hallways. They were lit at regular intervals with sparklamps. Fairies occasionally passed us on their duties. Flandre had a hand on her chin, thinking over the riddle. I could not help smiling, watching her apply reason.

“Well,” she said, “she knew she was dying, so she’d try to keep it short.”

“She would,” I said.

“And since it was one of us who killed her, she’d want to know why. Ah!” Flandre tried to snap her fingers, but made no sound. “She was asking, Why, Flandre? Why did you kill me so much?”

“Or indeed, at all?” I said. “The third and final clue: China recoiled when you tried to help her.”

“Oh. I thought that was just because I beat her up all the time.”

“Art imitates life.”

We approached the dining room, where the fairies were cleaning up after the party. The mistress and her senior servants were elsewhere, I assumed, except for Koakuma. My assistant helped the fairies take down the decorations.

“But wait.” Flandre grabbed my sleeve, pulling me to a stop before we entered the dining room. “So that was my whole present? Seeing everyone die and getting the panties scared off me?”

“Not at all,” I said. “That experience was a preview, something to whet the appetite. The true gift is here.”

From a hidden pocket in my dress, I produced a small book. Its papers were aged and the spine bent, but it had many reads left in it. The cover showed the author’s name imposed over a silhouette of a lone man standing on a cliff. He looked over a distance of water to a far island, where the outline of a mansion could be seen. The story’s title was printed below the cover art.

“I knew it!” Flandre took the book, looking it over. “I knew you were gonna give me a book.”

“The gift is more than a bound stack of paper,” I said. “I offer you the gift of mystery. Please give it a chance, Little Mistress. I will even read it to you, if you do not wish to read it yourself.”

She looked up at me. “Is it good?”

“One of my favorites. Think of it as similar to what you experienced tonight, except with characters you do not know quite as intimately.”

“Ooh!” she said. “Other people dying. I like that! When will you read it to me?”

“Whenever you wish,” I said.

---

It so happened that Flandre’s wish was not at the moment. She took the book, with as much apparent happiness as she had received her other gifts, but then she left me. She headed upstairs to find her sister and her other gifts. I let her go. The night was young, and my main business for the evening was accomplished.

I stepped into the dining room, past the working fairies. Koakuma noticed me.

“Welcome back, Lady Patchouli,” she said, pulling a cloth off a table and folding it around her arms. “Did your present go all right?”

“Well enough,” I said. “It was incomplete, but Flandre seemed not to notice, so the work can be considered a success. Let us return to the library.”

“Um, okay,” she said. “Lady Scarlet told me to stay and help the fairies—”

“I am relieving you of that duty,” I said. I turned and headed out of the dining room.

Koa hesitated. She looked back and forth. The fairies in the room ignored her. Koa put down the folded table cloth and hurried after me. Her slippers made quick brushing noises on the floor.

Together, we went to the main stairwell. Koa was two steps behind me, as usual.

“Lady Patchouli, can I ask... how did Flandre react when she saw me die?”

“She never saw that. The mistress kept me from the library for the final hour before the birthday dinner began, so I had no time to complete the illusion. I was not able to present your fictional murder.”

“Aw,” said Koakuma. “She didn’t even notice I wasn’t in it?”

“No, but no need to be upset. Flandre has known the mistress, China, Sakuya and myself far longer than she has known you, and she has the mind of a flighty child. She will come to value your friendship in the coming years.”

Koa’s eyes grew wide. “Years? You mean I can stay that long?”

I glanced back at her. “Must every detail be expressly stated? Yes. Your residence here is permanent, so long as you perform your duties.”

“Oh, thank you, Lady Patchouli!” she said. Her voice increased in pitch by one octave. The giddiness of it grated on my ears.

We had come to the stairwell. I stopped at the landing’s threshold, the toes of my slippers at the edge. Koa was about to walk past me. I grabbed her by the wrist and held her in place.

“Wait a moment,” I said.

Koa looked back at me, confused. “Sorry?”

I have difficulty describing the emotion that occurred in me at this moment. I felt a sudden aversion to returning to the library. This is unlike me, and it surprised me. The library is my refuge, my place of learning, where I research and do the work I love.

The stairwell shaft stretched deep below me. Sparklamps lined the walls down, and the stairs spiraled into the basement level.

The library, I thought.

The idea did not quite trigger claustrophobia, but I felt the fear of it. I inhaled sharply.

“Lady Patchouli?” said Koa. “Are you okay?”

Her words reached me from a distance.

“Koakuma,” I said.

“Yes?”

“We are not returning to the library now,” I turned my back on the stairwell, began walking down the hall.

“But?” she said. “I have to find the rest of Proust—”

I stopped, looked back at her. “Your duties are to me, Koa, not to a dusty bunch of books. Follow!”

“Y-yes, Lady!” She hurried after me.

We went down the hall together. I had no idea of a destination, but we headed in the direction of the mansion’s main entrance.

“It is fitting you should mention that piece, however,” I said. “We shall do as its title suggests.”

“I don’t understand,” said Koa.

I glanced at her. “We are going for a walk.”