It was a three-story lonely Villa, well outside town, in the open country, with a great field and a forest to surround it all. The perfect little place where to relax for weekends at a time. It was a historical 1900 building, made with red bricks and tall white windows with intricated panes and small windowsills with baskets of flowers, very Austrian. It had a red tile roof and white plaster decorations between the floors. It was big, but it looked extremely cozy and warm.

It was secluded and private, with a tall brick wall and a decorated iron gate, with a great central treble clef. Inside the gate, a well-kept light brown gravel drive led directly to the main door and the near garage.

There were gardeners in the big garden surrounding the villa, obsessively trimming the green grass and the perfectly kept trees and flowers. There were cameras on the gate and all around the wall, inside and outside.

From the road, three yards from the Villa itself Banshee was observing the place. In her arms, a thick white cat was purring with glee, as she mindlessly scratched his head.

«You can scratch my belly if you want.» the cat meowed, softly.

«River, Jesus wept, we have more serious things to think about!» she grumbled

Banshee looked at her watch. Staccato said to his Coven not to contact him from three o'clock to six o'clock in the afternoon that day.

They waited until half-past three. When it became sure that, wherever Staccato was, it wouldn't be in this particular house of his, they started with the plan.

The cat morphed elegantly in a fly and pinned itself on her shoulder. Banshee put her braid and face inside a black balaclava. She was wearing blue jeans and a black anonymous long sleeve shirt, and of course gloves.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. She had watched her arrival point very well for the last hour. She felt the fluxes bend and follow her will, their colors pulsating around her hands first, then around her whole body, twisting and turning on her skin. Detail by detail, like a puzzle, the road around her disappeared, and the house's chimney appeared. She felt the roof tiles under her feet, as she remained perfectly still, in the plain open air, up over Staccato's house.

«Neat! I always envied you teleporters!» River's little voice chimed from her shoulder.

«Yeah, and now, we go old-fashion again. Come on.» she said and checked her surroundings. The gardeners downstairs were too preoccupied with soil and plants to look up, and the chimney gave her good cover anyway. Still, she moved slowly, sliding down the sloped roof towards a back balcony.

River flew down from her shoulder, attached himself to the roof and turned into a rope ladder. Banshee grabbed hold of it and descended on the balcony, and remained still. The balcony was in the shadow of the house, and its railing was heavy and marble. If she remained crouched and still, it would have been difficult to tell her from any other shadow. River morphed back into a fly and went back on her shoulder.

Banshee passed him a button. It was just a nice, shiny steel button, that River took in his very small hinder legs and then mutated again, this time taking a little more time.

Banshee looked at the sheet of paper, shaking her head. Then, very carefully, slid it, little by little, under the French window, and inside what looked like a bedroom. She saw the sheet enter, and then morph again into a scolopendrium – disgusting but effective – with the button right on top of it.

Then, she just had to wait. She crouched even more against the wall

The "clack" of the French window sent a shiver down her spine. She turned her head.

A smiling River was standing behind the window, waving at her.

Alone.

She slithered in, and they closed the window.

No alarm was set off.

«Vopros's thingy worked like a charm. I put it right on the alarm and it all went silent.» River nodded. «We should really work together more often. I don't know, rob banks or something! This is fun.»

«Less fun, more search. That thing will block the alarm for roughly one hour,» she said.

«Roger that.»

«And turn into something... I don't know... good for infiltration and robbery.»

«Like what? A snake?»

«Nah, snakes have no hands, no... let me think.» she racked her brain, before coming up with a strange idea. «What about an ermine? Small, little hands, you'll blend with your surroundings and could look everywhere. Plus, his familiar is an ermine, so even if someone enters and sees you they wouldn't be surprised too much.»

«Uh! Nice idea!» River nodded, and in a matter of seconds a small, white ermine was looking at her, with beady eyes filled with naughtiness. He emitted a little, creepy laugh and disappeared, as fast as the wind, out of the door.

They had entered what was probably the master bedroom. It had a king-size bed that made her snicker at the thought of Staccato sleeping in it. There was a bed table on each side of the bed, but only the left one looked used. There were two books, behind a nice antique lamp, an empty glass and a photo frame. Banshee crooked her eyebrow, picking up the photograph. It portrayed Grasshopper, smiling in the hospital's garden, with another small figure beside him. Pity though that the second person beside him was heavily covered with quite a strong protection spell.

She thought about using her newly found Dispel abilities to cancel it, but Staccato would have noticed. A modified photograph wasn't the kind of clue they wanted to give him.

She put the photo down. How a person like Fabrice could end up entangled in anything pertaining to a magic conspiracy, she could not understand. Apparently, he had a whole set of personal problems. Like a sicko going around planting treble clefs in his dead fiancé. Whoever Staccato was, he had something bad for the Doctor.

She looked at the rest of the room.

The main color was a dark purple and white, and dark wood furniture, exquisite and probably ancient from the look of it. From the wardrobe to the 1700s grand piano somberly parked in a corner of the room. A magnificent piece of musical art decorated with golden details which were actual gold.

She opened some drawers, with the utmost attention not to ruffle anything, but she still had the velvety touch she hadn't used for so much time. There were police stations in Ireland still wondering how some things disappeared from the evidence locker.

But apart from a number of German and English books, an incredible amount of music sheets and so many ironed and rolled up boxers she was starting to feel bad for him, the bedroom she didn't find anything.

She left the room, went downstairs and found a great open space room that looked especially prepared to greet and have guests. Couches, tables, armchairs, a giant flat tv screen, a massive fireplace, and more expensive antique furniture. In between a museum and a noble European house. The place looked a hell for maintenance, but she had seen no servants or even a butler. She would have expected a butler.

She checked the whole house. Infinite rooms, or what it felt like. The place was massive and complicated, and she crossed paths with the ermine once or twice, but none of them seemed to be finding anything linking Staccato with any of the things that had lately happened.

They were running out of time.

So, it was unconventional methods' time.

She found a good spot in the center of the main room of the house. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths as she focused, feeling the fluxes around her head and tugging at them. So, when she opened her eyes, she could see the wonderful, intricated web of fluxes shining and crawling all around her. And bend. Right around a small door under the main staircase.

A door she hadn't noticed, because it wasn't a door. It was a sliding door that lost itself perfectly in the staircase, impossible to notice if someone didn't know it was there.

She slid the door open and closed it behind her. No rookie mistakes.

There was a staircase, going down, and the not so long flight of stairs ended in a cellar. A normal cellar, to the untrained eye, with shelves and shelves of what looked like expensive bottles of wine.

And the faint color of a Displace spell, coming from a rack on the far right.

A Portal.

Bingo.

She reached the rack and extended one hand in front of her.

Her hand disappeared.

She took a deep breath and passed the portal.

She found herself surrounded by a soft, dim light. Candles, or more probably magic lights, floated around, on the soft notes of light classical music that was being diffused by speakers in the ceiling. There was a strange smell, of rot and death, and it took her just some glances to see a mass of something she really didn't want to imagine what could be, right in one of the far shadowed corners of the room.

«Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!» she exclaimed under her breath. «That room!»

It was massive, like a whole floor of the villa. Wherever that place was, had no windows. And it was completely white.

She walked softly and trod carefully, hoping not to step on anything disgusting or even worst, letting some alarm ring. But, from the look of the peaceful room, it wasn't expected that anyone could get to it.

There were white bookshelves with ancient books in them, a white table with some objects on it, and a long steel table, near the southern wall, Banshee didn't want to investigate. Nor it, nor the things she thought she saw there. A cupboard on the left wall, beside the bookshelves, had some mason jars in it, filled with something that was most definitely not homemade marmalade. When her eyes caught the shape of what was almost certainly a human heart, Banshee decided that too much information could actually be a thing.

She passed near a small table, beside the horror cupboard, and something caught her attention.

There was a book, a lonely book, put on a soft white velvet cover, and with a glass case over it. It looked very old and fragile, its leather cover ruined by time. She struggled with the title in ancient Latin, but she could ultimately read it.

Just seconds before her attention got caught by something that had no reason to be there at all.

Butterflies.

Blue butterflies, floating around the ceiling of the room

Whatever they were, they weren't live, normal butterflies. They were completely blue, with decorated wings, and shimmered softly of magic blue light.

The only other complement of furnishing was a black modern grand piano and a desk in its vicinity. She scoffed. The man couldn't resist but put pianos everywhere. She moved towards the desk that showed a promising heap of papers on top of it.

She frowned. They were just a lot of incredibly complicated sheets, many of the music sheets, written with confusing calligraphy. There were some anatomical drawings with notes, some side notes with pages and book titles. She couldn't make the head and tails of anything. But Chico was some kind of Death nerd as well. So, she took out her phone and photographed everything that could look like something useful.

She looked around in the half-empty room, to look at any other possible clue she could have missed or any other papers that could finally make her time worth of that infiltration. As she was turning towards the piano, she felt the blood freeze in her veins.

Because someone was sitting there.

She could barely see the figure because it was half-hidden by the opened piano top itself, but to a second glance, it was clear there was someone. It was merely a shadow from where she stood. Completely still.

«Uh... hello?» she tried to call, starting to think about some plausible motivation for being there.

No answer.

She took some steps in the general direction of the piano.

«Is anybody there?» she called again.

No answer.

She reached the instrument and carefully peeked behind it. There were more butterflies there like they were having a dance around the silhouette.

Banshee suffocated a scream.

It was a corpse. Abandoned over the piano keyboard in a dramatic and elegant pose. Clearly a corpse, because last she checked nobody could live with grey skin, and with a body that looked clearly like someone had tried to put it together, craftily sewing pieces from different bodies into it. Still, it wasn't a grotesque asymmetrical or lopsided body, like a Frankenstein's monster, on the contrary. It had been so carefully put together, every piece fit perfectly with the others, creating a masterful harmony.

He was missing pieces though. A shoulder wasn't complete, an arm was missing the part from the elbow to the hand, and the chest was open, revealing a void where the heart should have been.

Then, she noticed the face. The well-sewn face with two dark holes where the eyes would have been, with missing lips and, from what she could see from the still uncomplete cheek, a missing tongue. And when she noticed the face, she screamed and took two steps backward.

It was Grasshopper.

Then, transfixed on the corpse, she noticed something. Something very, very wrong. Something that shouldn't, at all, be there.

Breathing.

The corpse's flat stomach was rising and lowering in a perfect breath rhythm.

She moved close, fighting against her every instinct, and took off a glove. She extended her bare hand and, trembling, tried to touch the man's exposed forearm, expecting the disgusting consistency of the average undead.

She almost screamed again.

He was warm.

Not as a normal body, of course, but he was dry and almost... pleasant to the touch. Like a deeply slumbering body. She retracted her hand.

The corpse lifted his head and turned his empty eye sockets towards her.

She yelled in terror, this time, scrambling backward, ending with her back against the white desk, risking toppling it. Her eyes were wide open in shocked horror, as the undead was rasping with his throat, clearly trying to say something. But not like the incoherent rumblings of other undead. He looked like he was truly trying to speak, the guttural noises had the rhythm and spelling of actual words.

That was enough.

She ran, as fast as her legs could possibly support her, crossing the room with its butterflies and its books and its mason jars filled with organs.

She jumped in the portal, without even looking back.