“What are you still doing here?”

Those were the first words the butler greeted her with when she entered the carriage with the Lord.

“The Queen told me to help Cedric,” she said. “We’re going to have to delay my return home.”

“The Queen won’t protect you from the Family,” Aaron sneered. “Besides, it’s not your choice. You put the lives of everyone at the manor at risk by staying.”

She hesitates. The demon butler had a point. She was selfish for choosing to stay here. So what if she owed the Lord a debt? He didn’t think so. But she couldn’t escape the feeling that she wasn’t meant to leave. Something tethered her to the realm.

“One more day won’t harm anyone,” Cedric said. “Besides, if she can help, it will put me in the Queen’s good graces.”

“I already gave you one more day with her,” the butler said. “You shouldn’t risk the wrath of the Family.”

The Lord takes her hand. “She’s worth the risk.”

The butler rolls his eyes. “Your affections for her are clouding your judgment. She and everyone you know will die, my Lord. The Family could easily slaughter the Queen as well.”

“Is that so? Because if that’s the case, I should be dead already,” she said, interrupting him. “The Family was at the ball today. I fought them and won. That means I can keep everyone at the manor safe.”

Aaron’s face twists into an expression that is equal parts anger and confusion. “The Family was at the palace today? This is worse than I feared.”

The Lord quickly recounts the fight at the palace, describing the walking dead and the Nefastus. He makes sure to include in great detail the ways she vanquished the Family’s forces, describing the butterflies that came out of her body and her heroic efforts to defend the partygoers.

The butler listens carefully, the confusion fading from his face. Still, the story didn’t cool his anger. He still believed the young couple was making a foolish choice.

“My lady,” he said. “Do you have control over your abilities?”

She glances down at her hands. “Kind of. I can turn this bracelet that Lillian gave me into any object.”

“What about the butterflies?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer. “They just come and go whenever I need them.”

His brows furrow, showing his dissatisfaction with her answer. “That doesn’t mean we can rely on them.”

“We don’t need to,” she shot back. “You’re basically a one-man army. You can summon fire and spit out bullets. You even kicked a goddess out of my body.”

“There are limits to my powers,” he protests.

“Such as?”

“It wouldn’t do me any good to tell you. You should know that I’m not invincible,” he said. “It also doesn’t make the decision of you staying here any wiser.”

She scoffs. "You just don't like me, do you? You'll do anything for me to leave."

"You imagine things. Besides, the Lord has been working on this case for a while now. It's not the sort of thing that can be solved in a day."

"Maybe it just needs a fresh pair of eyes," she said, ignoring the butler's insinuation of her stupidity.

“Considering the messiness of your needlework, I’m not sure your eyes will be necessary.”

She gasps, fully offended by Aaron’s remark. Before she could respond with an equally cutting insult, Cedric speaks.

“I see no harm in letting her help,” the Lord said, trying to defuse the tension between the two. He turns to her. “But I must warn you, each of the victims died in a gruesome, unique way.”

“The Queen said that the Family is behind this.” She certainly knew they were capable of it.

“Her Majesty is wrong. I’ve seen the bodies. I know how the Family kills. Alice wouldn’t waste time brutalizing the corpses that way. It’s much easier to send the Nefastus to do their dirty work,” he explains.

“What about the walking dead we saw at the ball?” She looks at the Lord and the butler, neither of them responding.

“That was an unusual occurrence,” the Lord said, finally speaking after a few minutes of silence. “The gifted don’t normally use their powers on a large scale.”

“Do they all have red eyes?” She describes the girl she saw at the ball.

“Only the ones blessed by the Mother,” Aaron said. “They’re a power-hungry lot. All of that ability at such a young age would drive anybody mad.”

“To think that I wanted to be them,” Cedric said.

The carriage pulls up to the manor. The Lord offers her a hand, allowing her to step down in a dignified manner. Well, as dignified as a girl in a ripped dress could be.

Martha greets them as they enter the manor, smiling before doing a double-take at the sight of her and the Lord.

“Lord Philips!” she exclaims. “What happened to your eyepatch? And your clothes!” The maid looked like she wanted to faint.

“There was just a little scuffle at the ball,” he said, dismissing her concerns.

“And Lady Walker! Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you! Look at your dress. Weren’t you supposed to debut today?”

“As the Lord said, there was a bit of a scuffle,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant as her cheeks burn.

The maid looked like she wanted to say more, but the Lord held up a hand, silencing her.

"I apologize for our appearance," he said. "But I have some business to attend to with the lady."

"Is it so urgent that you can't change into proper clothes?" Martha crosses her arms.

"Yes," he said. "In fact, the lives of many innocent girls depend on it." He ushers Nicole up the steps to his study as the maid looked at them, aghast. Aaron exchanges a glance with Martha, throwing his hands up in surrender before following the couple.

In his study, the Lord sheds the glamour over his eye, visibly relaxing. Cedric digs through his drawers, pulling out notes and spreading them on his desk.

"There have been three deaths so far," he said, skimming through the papers. She peers over his shoulder, reading through the details of each death as he narrated them.

“Two of the victims have royal blood. The first girl, Helen Stoner, died of a snake bite. She was found by her twin sister a few nights before her wedding. The second girl, Henrietta Baskerville, was mauled by a large dog on her family’s estate. We thought the killer had a menagerie because of the way the victims died until the third murder. Our current victim is low born. Her name is Jacqueline Ryder. Based on the autopsy, we believe she died choking on a blue carbuncle.”

Something about the murders sounded familiar to her. Certain details tickle her brain, but her mind lingers over the last name “Baskerville.”

“How did you know that the last victim was killed by the same murderer as the other two?” It made no sense that the killer would suddenly stop using animals to kill their targets.

“At every murder scene, there were identical claw marks. Even though the last victim died suffocating on a gemstone, the scratches on her skin match the scratches on the doors and floors of the other two scenes,” the Lord explains.

“So we looked into those marks and found out that they belonged to a large cat,” Aaron chimes in. “Unfortunately, no one in London owns a lion or a tiger, bringing us back to square one.”

She bites her lip, reading over the case details again. She felt a strange sense of deja vu as if there was a major detail linking the deaths that she knew. It was staring her right in the face, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Baskerville. Blue carbuncle. Snakebite. The three puzzle pieces suddenly formed a clear picture.

“Cedric,” she said. “Have you heard of Sherlock Holmes?”

“I’m familiar,” he said. “I just finished The Sign of Four. Why do you ask?”

“All of the victims have deaths that match Sherlock Holmes mysteries,” she said. “Think about it. The first victim died because of a snake bite, just like the girl’s twin did in The Adventure of the Speckled Band. The second girl was mauled by a dog, something that a man feared in The Hound of the Baskervilles. And the third girl suffocated on a blue carbuncle, a gem that was found inside a goose’s neck in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.”

She pauses for a moment, gauging the reaction of the two men. She expects them to praise her for her astute observation. Instead, they look at her like she was a madwoman.

“Nicole,” Cedric said. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I thought you read Sherlock Holmes. All the stories I said were written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.

“Lady Walker,” the butler said. “The only stories written by that author are A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. All the stories you named don’t exist.”

She frowns. How could this be? Was it because the Charis Realm was a parallel dimension that these stories didn’t exist in this timeline?

“What year is it?”

“1890,” the Lord said. “What does this have to do with the case?”

She snaps her fingers, finally understanding their confusion. She points to the butler. “You were right. The stories I just said don’t exist. But that’s because they haven’t been written yet.”

“How do you know this?” Aaron’s voice was heavily laced with suspicion.

“I’m from the future,” she said. “Not this future, exactly, but from a version of it.” She explains how Lillian had formed an agreement with her in another dimension, something that the goddesses had called “Evelyn’s Realm” when she was abducted by Alice. She gives as best of a rundown as she could of her timeline, mentioning everything from cellphones to Brexit. When she finishes, the men stare at her just as confused as they were before. She couldn’t blame them.

“Wait,” Cedric said, trying to wrap his head around her story. “So what year are you from?”

“2016,” she said. “I know that’s over a century ahead. But you need to trust me when I say that the murderer is clearly a big Sherlock Holmes fan.”

“And a time traveler,” the Lord said.

“Or an interdimensional visitor like the lady,” the butler said. “What are the odds of finding someone like that?”

She ignores his sarcasm. “The next murder will probably also be based on a Sherlock Holmes mystery." The issue was, which one?

"How many stories did the author write?" Cedric asked.

"A lot," she said. "Maybe fifty?" Frankly, she wasn't sure if she remembered them all.

“Well that certainly narrows it down,” the butler quipped. “Fifty possible ways to murder someone based on stories that don’t exist yet.”

She glares at him. “We just need to find something else that connects the murders.” She grabs a pen and paper, scribbling down the stories connected to each death.

“It will be the murderer’s fourth kill,” the Lord said, thinking aloud. “Maybe they’ll base it on The Sign of Four?”

“All of the titles have the letter ‘B’ in them. I’m not sure that story will work.” Not to mention all the victims were women. If she only based it on the latter detail, The Sign of Four would work. Then she’d assume that the killer would be after a victim closest to the character of Mary Morstan. And if the killer carried on with their pattern of animal-related deaths, she suspected that the next woman would die at the jaws of a crocodile. She voices this to the two men despite her doubts that the killer wouldn’t use that story.

“Plausible,” Aaron said. “I don’t think the letter ‘B’ matters as much as you think. I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with the Lord’s theory that The Sign of Four is the next story the murderer will use.”

“It just doesn’t feel right,” she said. Another theory was forming in her head, one she was more certain of. She felt that the killer was drifting away from animal deaths despite the claw marks found at the scenes. The blue carbuncle shoved down the last victim’s throat proved that. The killer was moving on to objects. She suspected that the next story the murderer would base their kill on would be A Scandal in Bohemia. There was a ‘B’ in the title of the story and a telltale photograph that was important to the Holmes mystery, two things that might interest the killer.

“I liked the first theory better,” Aaron said.

“It’s not about whether you like it or not,” she replied. “I believe that the second murder scenario is more likely.”

“Lady Walker might be onto something. I trust her judgment,” the Lord said.

“You’re taking her side?”

“No. Both are equally good options to explore. I think we need to investigate them separately,” Cedric reasoned. “I will accompany Nicole on her investigation and you can begin your own. I can’t afford to let her leave my sight, not after what happened at the ball and what my sister did to her.”

She wanted to tell the Lord that she was perfectly capable of handling herself, but when he gave her a wink, she understood his true intention. Cedric just wanted to spend time with her.

The butler, seeing this, smirks at the pair. “If you two lovebirds wanted to frolic in the night, you don’t have to hide it behind some pretend investigation.”

“Shut up,” she said, fed up with Aaron’s remarks. For a former Prince of Hell, he sure lacked the manners of royalty. But what did she know about demon etiquette?

“Look, the sooner we find the killer, the sooner you’re out of my hair,” he said bluntly.

“So you do hate me,” she said.

“No,” he responds. “I hate Lillian. I hate that we’re both pawns in her little game.”

“But you took her out of me. Shouldn’t she be powerless?”

“Lillian may be a Fallen, but the Charis Realm was made by her design. Everything you can touch, everything that happens - she made that. Even though there’s a new Mother, everything still follows Lillian’s design. You were her last creation. That makes you a ticking time bomb. The longer you stay here, the more likely it is she’ll use you to do something drastic.”

She feels her palms sweat. “Couldn’t the same be said for you? You were a former Hand of hers after all.”

“I’m a demon. No heavenly Mother created me. I’m outside of the Realm’s design,” he said. “When I was her Hand, I allowed her to use me.”

A lump forms in her throat. “I have free will. I won’t submit to her.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you’ll bring about the end of this world.”