In the quiet alchemy workshop late at night, she looked up at the wall clock. There was about an hour left until curfew—about time to leave.
Shani touched the shoulder blade on the opposite side of her body with one palm, then lightly gripped her elbow with the other hand and pulled across in the opposite direction, stretching to ease the stiffness from reading so long.
The small movement, of course, caught the attention of the other person in the workshop. Putting down the notes he'd been working through, the young man stood as well, interlaced his fingers, turned his palms upward, straightened his arms, and stretched as high as he could.
Picking up the unfinished copy of Forensic Medicine from the table, the doctor walked to the bookshelf and slid it back into its place.
Victor said, "You could take it home to read, you know. I'd trust you with it."
Shani shook her head with a smile. "It's fine. The reading environment here is better—quiet, comfortable chair—and these two books are precious. If I take them back and accidentally damage them, that would be awful."
"Or… do you not welcome me coming over?" There was a teasing edge to Shani's expression, but a trace of sincerity too.
"How could that be?" Victor said at once. "Same as always—my door is always open for you."
As they spoke, the two of them went from the basement back up to the first floor. Victor put on his leather armor and belted on his steel sword, then strapped his silver sword across his back. After that, he pressed a note he'd written earlier onto the dining table, right beneath the pot of pork ragout.
"I'm walking Doctor Shani home. When you get back, eat and you can go to sleep first. Don't wait up for me tonight. I have permission to move freely during curfew—I'm going to investigate some things.
—Vic"
After leaving the message, they reached the door. Shani and Victor moved almost in perfect sync, slinging their herb pouches diagonally back over their shoulders. Then they looked at each other and smiled at the shared habit of never going anywhere without one.
…
On the road, Shani thought back to the dinner she'd eaten at Victor's home tonight. The dishes had been simple—nothing more than homestyle Temerian meat-sauce pasta. Three big pots held the pork ragout, the noodles, and onion soup. But the flavor made it obvious a lot of care had gone into it.
Shani wasn't good at cooking, but she knew how to eat. Not to mention the noodles were cooked to the firmness she liked, and the onion soup had been topped with cheese and croutons.
Even the pork ragout that looked "simple" had that texture that only came from searing the surface until it was faintly browned, then simmering it with tomato, garlic, and chicken stock until it turned rich.
Shani said, "Thank you. I only mentioned it once, and you remembered my taste."
Victor blinked, realizing she meant the firmness of the noodles—Shani liked them a little on the firm side.
For Victor—who in a past life had accumulated "a reasonable amount of dating experience"—remembering the little preferences a pretty girl let slip without thinking was practically instinct.
"It's nothing. I like firmer noodles too. Angoulême doesn't care about that—if it tastes good, that's enough for her."
When the topic shifted to Angoulême, Shani asked, "It's so late and she still isn't back—are you sure it's okay?"
"It's fine. She'll be home before curfew. We agreed on that."
"But letting her act alone to investigate a gate guard… there's still danger, isn't there?"
"I'm not worried. Someone else should be. With Catherine with her and those wild instincts, she's practically immune to surprises. Besides, she came back this afternoon—she ate the roasted chicken I left at noon, clean as a whistle."
Hearing Victor speak so confidently, Shani relaxed. She really did like that wild little sister of his.
"Honestly, you didn't have to go out of your way to walk me back," she said. "The Temple Quarter isn't that unsafe, and I'm not some delicate woman."
Victor didn't answer that. It was true—between being a doctor and the long dagger at her waist, in normal circumstances she could get home alone without issue. But since he knew there was a werewolf living nearby, he didn't want her walking by herself and taking that risk.
Soon they arrived again at Shani's rented place. This time they got there a little earlier than last time, which gave her elderly landlady a chance to raise a candle and scrutinize Victor's face, and his height, in detail.
Victor didn't care about the appraisal. He said a quick farewell to Shani and left at a brisk pace.
He had proper business to handle next. Just like the note he'd left for Angoulême said, he'd obtained a "late-night activity permit"—issued to him by Siegfried, Knight of the Rose.
It allowed Victor to go to the Vizima Cemetery and investigate, and deal with, the problem of ghouls appearing there.
…
"Night comes creeping, mind the ghoul:
He'll chew to east, he'll chew to west,
And if he finds you, he'll chew you best—
So mind you don't become a monster's meal."
—Nursery Rhyme
…
"Is that so? I see… Thank you for answering my questions and for the warning. Then I'll take this ring of keys with me for now, and return it tomorrow."
Inside the caretaker's hut outside the Vizima Cemetery, Victor—an unfamiliar face who'd shown up in the middle of the night—first produced a jug of strong liquor to pry open the gravedigger's defenses, then added a few orens to make him speak without holding anything back.
The man looked about thirty, yet his hair was already completely white. He was powerfully built, strong-limbed, dressed in rough gray cloth. Lately, with far too much work to handle, a stubborn stink of death clung to him and wouldn't go away.
That was because the city was under quarantine. The swamp cemetery wasn't easy to use, so aside from plague corpses—which were cremated and buried at the Hospital of St. Lebioda—any other ordinary dead all had to be interred in the Vizima Cemetery.
And after discovering several newly buried bodies had been dug up and mauled, the gravedigger immediately reported the ghoul threat to the city guard. At night he locked the great iron gate leading into the grounds, only allowing entry and exit during the day to avoid danger.
"It's fine—take the keys!" the gravedigger said. "I've got a spare. But be careful inside. I saw it from far off—it really was a ghoul!" Remembering the terrifying sight, his arm trembled slightly.
…
Ghouls—true to the name—are monsters that devour corpses. They appear around graveyards, tombs, and anywhere the dead are buried. For them, rotting flesh is the highest delicacy.
…
Victor unlocked the iron gate, slipped inside, and locked it again behind him. A cemetery at night was, naturally, not a warm place. With the cries of night crows calling from the branches, Victor lightened his steps and followed the direction the gravedigger had indicated.
Sure enough, he hadn't gone far before the witcher apprentice saw them—or rather, it.
They had arms and legs like humans, yet moved on all fours like dogs or badgers. Their faces were warped, and every attempt to find emotion, reason, or even a spark of consciousness in them proved futile.
They accepted only the drive of instinct:
"An endless hunger for human flesh."
Victor quieted his footsteps even further and crept closer.
There were three of them, squatting on the ground, gathered around a "dining table," eating greedily. When driven by hunger, a ghoul's alertness rises to its peak, and it will hunt living creatures without hesitation.
But right now it was mealtime. With their heads buried in feeding, they didn't notice Victor's approach.
"Only fire, silver, and bright sunlight can harm them," the apprentice recalled from what he'd read, comparing the written records to the discordant scene before his eyes. "And because they fear sunlight, they hunt only at night."
Even though ghouls share many similarities with humans in shape, they—and their terrible close kin the alghoul, and their "cousin," the bloodthorn corpse-fiend—are all post-Conjunction creatures. In other words, the very existence of these beings violates the laws of nature.
Victor stopped advancing. The witcher apprentice wasn't in a hurry to attack. He was thinking through a plan—he didn't want to start a fight and then realize he'd kicked a nest, only for seven or eight more ghouls to come swarming out to join the feast.
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