The screech it emitted next was unlike anything she’d ever heard.
It was the sound of two starving cats tearing each other apart over garbage in a smelly alley. She dropped the bag with a curse. The raccoon promptly shut up and rolled out to a sitting position where it glared at her with baleful eyes.
She was about to give up and leave without the damn coin, when her eyes caught on what she realized was a long skinny leash resting on Topp’s nightstand. Red and leather, it matched the collar.
Leash in hand, she raised her brows at the raccoon. Once more, she lunged, grabbing the collar even as the raccoon thrashed, throwing its small, fat body around. Tiny vicious claws swiped out, leaving thin red lines along her arms. Scratched and out of breath, Elysia stood up with a grin.
“Got you.”
The racoon hissed, jumping into an offensive posture.
Elysia glared right back. “You’re nothing more than an overgrown cat, and I’ve had to bathe and deal with cats aplenty.”
The tag on its collar caught the light. Crudely carved, it spelled out a name.Lina.
“Well, Lina”—Elysia smiled dangerously at the squat ball of fur—“I do believe we have somewhere to be.”
She had to laugh a little that Topp sincerely thought putting a single guard in front of his door would keep her from escaping.
“Stay in the room, Elysia,”she mocked.Snorting, she kicked a half eaten apple out of her way. Like a door and a guard would stop her. As if she didn’t know there were three separate exits from his room.
The main door. The window—which would be a death trap without the proper equipment for wall scaling. And the exit into the one place she had been traversing for years, the tunnels.
Elysia heaved, putting all her weight into moving the low slate table that sat in the middle of his living space. Books about animal welfare and a stack of paper with barely legible scrawls went flying. With a final grunt, the table was out of the way. Flopping the heavy brown and burgundy rug in half, she stared at the stone floor.
“There you are,” she whispered. Dropping to her knees, she pried at the ancient stone. She hadn’t used this exit in ages. It wasn’t exactly subtle. But she’d discovered it one early morning, when Topp had left her warm and satisfied in his bed. Snooping was in her blood, and he should have known better than to leave her alone if he didn’t want her going through his things. She wasn’t sure he even knew this existed.People really should pay more attention.
The stone gave way, revealing old rusty hinges and a pitch-black hole. Everything in her wanted to slam the stone down, and try her luck with Lewis at the door. Shehatedthis route. Several floors up in a turret, it wasn’t easy getting down to the tunnels.
She stared down into the hole, scowling. A barely human sized crawl space crunched between the floors of the castle. And she had to take a fucking raccoon with her.
Elysia stood back up and brushed herself off, her stomach dropping at the sight of the clock. Soot and storms, it was getting late. She hastily grabbed a plain black cloak from Topp’s wardrobe, throwing it on over her ruined dress. The smell of rain and earth surrounded her, but she pretended not to notice.
“Alright, Lina, it’s time for us to go.” Elysia picked up the leash and tugged until the raccoon lazily hopped forward, stillrefusing to relinquish its new prize coin. Hopefully, it would give up and drop the coin before she had to drag it very far.
“Good, good,” Elysia muttered to herself, coaxing the raccoon closer and closer to the gaping hole in the floor.
She tossed a piece of fruit down the hole, assuming bribery was the way to this creature’s heart. Lina dove through the air like an arrow, nearly tearing off Elysia’s arm out of its socket and pulling her down into the hole.
“Well, then,” Elysia shook out her arm with a wince. Grabbing several handfuls of grapes and berries, she shoved them into the cloak’s pockets. And with that, Elysia eased herself and a candle into the small tunnel.
Propped up on her elbows, she reached up out of the crawl space and pulled on the rug until it flopped over. Rug in place, she carefully took hold of the stone cover, easing it down until its weight and gravity were too much for her arms and the stone slammed down with a terrible, scraping sound. Her fingers barely dodged its fall.
Heart beating faster, Elysia double checked the leash and candle and then began scooting on her ass and elbows down the crawl space. “Come on then, Lina. We’ve got a meeting to crash.”
The raccoon hopped along easily enough. Short in stature and with an animal’s eyes, it was having a far grander time than her. Given that it wasn’t straining at the leash, it seemed like Topp had likely been training the creature to walk like a pet beside him. Looking at its furry rump bob up and down as it moved, she almost couldn’t blame him for wanting to keep it.
Elysia scooted slowly, sending the heel of her foot out cautiously each time. At the right spot, the warped wooden boards would drop out completely. There was a rope to cling to—but she hadn’t known that the first time and ended up with a broken wrist and bloodied face.Thistime, she would be using the rope.
Lina came to a sudden halt, squawking when Elysia’s foot accidentally pushed up against her fur. Elysia peered into the dark.
“Well, aren’t you clever,” she murmured.
The raccoon preened a bit as if it could understand, and Elysia prepared to drop through the levels below. Once upon a time, the drop had started in the servants’ closet in the upper floors of the turret and was used to send laundry down to the lower levels. Efficient and smart, it allowed the servants to avoid breaking their backs on the turret stairs while staying out of sight.
Now, several remodels later, someone had gotten creative. The rope wasn’t on a pulley anymore, but instead tied to the thick beam above. She didn’t know which crazy Blatz ancestor made the crawl space, or maybe it had been a servant who needed a route for thieving, but damn if she didn’t love and hate them at the same time right now.
Elysia blew out the candle and inched closer to the edge. She paused, looking between the raccoon and the rope, unsure of how to proceed. She barely managed to drop the leash when Lina took a great jump and caught the rope, swinging back and forth in the air.
