Broom with a View by Gayla Twist, Ted Naifeh Page A

probably about two hundred years since my last visit, now that you mention it.”
    “I think in the meantime your friend Lord Lennox must have changed address,” Mr. B replied.
    The castle was now nothing more than a ruin. Several of the walls were still standing , and one tower remained intact despite all odds and notions of gravity, but beyond that, their place of refuge was nothing more than a burnt-out husk. No shelter, no food, no comforts of any kind were they able to avail.
    “I knew we should never have come here,” Vera began to wail. “And now we’ll probably be set upon by more ruffians and possibly even be killed. What will Violet’s mother think of me? Exposing a young girl to a Vampire’s harebrained scheme.”
    Violet felt her cheeks grow hot. “Hold your tongue,” she said to her aunt in a hot whisper. “It’s not Count Du Monde’s fault that the castle is in ruins. He was only trying to help.”
    “The help of a Vampire .” Vera scoffed, but at least she lowered her voice when she said it. “That’s like asking a viper for a helping hand.”
    “Oh, stop being so full of gloom and doom,” Miss Hopkins said while rooting around in her handbag. “I’m sure we’ll be just fine here with a few minor adjustments. This is really turning out to be quite an adventure.”
    “What are you talking about, Hippolyta?” Vera snapped. “Are we supposed to camp out in the open like savages?”
    Violet could listen to her aunt no longer. She needed to get away, if only for a little while, until her aunt had run short on complaints. Who could look at the unhappy senior Du Monde and blame him for such a small mistake? How was he to know that the castle was in ruins? It looked like it had been a substantial castle in its day , and one doesn’t expect that kind of thing to crumble in just a few short centuries.
    As Miss Hopkins pulled a folding table out of her bag followed , by a linen tablecloth and a silver tea tray, Violet slipped off to explore the ruins in solitude. She hoped it would be at least a few minutes before Vera was settled enough with a hot cup of tea to realize she was gone. A bit of quiet was all she craved, and the further she could get away from their little party, the better chance she had of finding it.
    Violet prowled the ruin s of the old castle in the fading light. She tried to imagine the all-but-obliterated grandeur and guess the former function of each room. The ballroom and kitchen were quite easy to recognize, but some of the other rooms left her puzzled. She spent several minutes staring down the pitch black steps that obviously led to some type of underground chambers, but a feeling of such dread overcame her that she turned and hurried away, instead choosing the stairs that ascended to the castle’s sole remaining intact tower.
    A few large pieces of rubble impeded the initial entrance to the tower, but after skirting these minor obstacles, Violet found her path reasonably clear. She gingerly pick ed her way to the highest point.
    By then it was well past nightfall, but there was something peculiar about the sky. It gave off an eerie glow that faint ly illuminated the countryside around the castle ruins. At first, Violet could not ascertain the cause, but then she caught a whiff of smoke and realized that it was X burning in the distance. The entire city-state was on fire.
    She would have liked to blame the welling-over of tears in her eyes on the ash that was drifting through the air, but it was more than that. The thought of X, that beautiful city long known as a place where magical folk lived together in harmony, being burnt to the ground tore at her heart.
    A quiet rustling in the shadows startled the girl. She turned and gasped as Sebastian, the young Vampire, was instantly there. Without a word, he swept her into a tight embrace, his arms so strong there was no struggling against them. His eyes were burning with an intensity that Violet had never seen. She wanted to