Nothingness met him when he woke. “Rick?” a breath of air escaping lips, the chill of the surrounding air biting with jagged nails as it…

She sat.  She waited. She fumed. She wasn’t one, usually, to get this angry over someone being late. But dang it he had told her…

“I hate this place,” Lavinia blurted to her handmaiden as they sat in the sitting room. “Everything about it is so… so…” She paused, the…