She led Alex down a hallway and through a set of sliding doors, where she paused and held out a small paint roller, brush, and tray covered with what looked like yellowy mucus. “I cannot decipher what it is about you to make your presence so electrifying. Maybe it’s your appearance.”
“My appearance?” Alex asked, coming through the sliding doors and entering a ballroom that might once have been stunning. Windows stretched from the floor to a ceiling littered with chandeliers, like a field of butterfly cocoons. Spiderweb cracks speckled the glass, casting jagged shadows along the chipped paint of the walls. A crippled grand piano with a protective coat of dust cowered alone in a corner. Alex sidestepped around the blotches and rusty brown stains on the floor, hoping it wasn’t blood.
“You do look so much like them,” Duvall murmured.
She had Alex’s full attention now. “Them?”
“I meant to say her. Your mother, of course.”
“You said them. Is more of my family here?”
“No.”
“Of course not,” Alex said more to herself than to Duvall. “Why is everyone related to me gone?”
“Some people just have magic in their souls. It is unfortunate that they are the ones who don’t get to stick around long enough to reach their full potential. The brightest lights burn out the fastest, or maybe they are just more difficult to conceal.” She shook her head at Alex’s bewildered expression. “Don’t be fooled by the utopian pretense of Eidolon. There is a reason why our city is surrounded by walls and gates, among other invisible barricades.” Duvall’s voice lowered. “Even though our little Garden of Eden itself has been known to contain its fair share of snakes.”
“What?”
“Never you mind.”
Alex couldn’t drop the subject. She clutched on to it, grasping for any tidbit of information about her family. “Can you tell me what happened to my mother?”
Duvall leaned over a bucket that reeked of old gym socks and rotten honey. “Unfortunately, I don’t know. Nobody knows. She disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Presumably gone, I’m afraid.”
“Why is that presumed?”
Duvall poured some of the goop into Alex’s paint tray. “Fear. People are afraid of the unknown. And no one could predict the extent of what your mom could do.”
“But Ellington Reynes told me that my mother didn’t have any special talents.”
Duvall adjusted her shawls, and her jewelry clinked softly. She reached into the bucket and extracted another paint roller. “Sometimes a mind will take its time before opening itself to its gifts. Some buds wait longer to blossom.”
“And why would anyone assume she had something worth waiting for?”
“There was enough evidence.” Duvall allowed Alex to ponder the meaning of this. After a few minutes, she clunked one of her heels against the bucket. “The Rhodo gel has a little kick to it, doesn’t it?”
“It stinks.” Alex lifted her paint roller from the tray. The mixture clung to it like a gigantic wad of yellow bubblegum. It pulsated, gripping the side of the container like the tentacle of a squid.
Duvall hummed a tune, harmonizing with the squeak of her paint roller spreading the gel over the wall. With her free hand, she held out a stone and extended it in Alex’s direction. “Tell me. Were you immensely strong-minded in life?”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked, gingerly dipping the tip of her brush into the goo.
“Oh you’ll need much more than that,” Duvall barked. She placed her hands on her hips, and the paint roller continued to spread Rhodo gel along the wall all by itself. “I mean, were you intelligent?”
Alex attempted to let go of her roller as Duvall had done, but it slammed to the floor with a clatter and a splat. “Average, I guess.”
Duvall seemed disappointed. “What about your strength?”
“Physically?” Alex laughed and picked up her roller. “I could barely lift my pencil without breaking a bone in my finger.”
“Any special gifts?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“If you had them you would understand.” She twirled the stone with her fingers. “You weren’t one of the gifted, were you?”
“Huh?”
“Magical?”
“Not that I know of.” Alex slopped a glob of gel against the wall, where it stuck like superglue. She kneaded the slime with the brush in her other hand to try to smooth it out.
Duvall placed her free hand back on her paint roller, which squeaked like a rusty old swing. Finally she said, “Undoubtedly your bloodline runs deep here. There are few explanations to explain why you are so skilled. Heredity might be the answer.”
Oh my gosh, thought Alex, not her too.
“Spirits evolve like anything else. Members of certain spiritually inclined families are more talented. Where did you say you were from?”
Alex swiped her hair from her eyes with her forearm. “Parrish, Maryland.”
The creaking from Duvall’s roller ceased abruptly. “Come again?”
“Parrish? It’s a tiny town outside of Annapolis.”
Duvall turned and began painting feverishly. “That’s a busy town.”
“Not really. It’s actually pretty small.”
“I wasn’t referring to the physical world, my dear.”
Alex dipped her roller into the tray. “I suppose there were a lot of ghost stories. Is Parrish like Eidolon?”
Duvall shook her head. “Not the same at all.”
“Then why is Parrish is so”—she used the word Duvall had provided—“busy?”
“Some towns just are, my dear.”
Alex didn’t appreciate the vague answer. She absently rolled the goo onto the wall, lost in thought.
“Pick up the pace over there. We need to coat the entire perimeter, but just about six feet or so. It doesn’t have to be higher than the height of the average human. No one is going to back into the wall twenty feet up.” Duvall’s bony arm swept the length of the ballroom. “Newburies will be ballroom dancing in here. Once the guests are chased into the room, they have to make their way through the horde of masked dancers, who have various weapons to flash in their faces. There’s also a stunt guest who runs through and gets stabbed, a scene that propels the other guests to the walls, where they have to fight their way out of the Rhodo gel.”
“Sounds traumatizing,” Alex said.
For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the clinking of Duvall’s bracelets and the shlop of the slime bucket. It was quite uncomfortable, especially since Duvall kept staring at her and inching closer with the stone. By the time Calla arrived to save Alex, Duvall’s outstretched hand hovered close enough that if Alex had turned her head, her nose would graze the rock.
“Paleo ordered me to come and get you.” Calla shriveled under Duvall’s piercing glare. “We, um, we’re supposed to begin walkthroughs as mock visitors.”
“Oh,” Alex said, absolutely relieved. “Professor, would you like me to finish before I go?” They had barely finished one wall. The room was so massive Alex doubted it would be coated in time.
Duvall was mumbling words under her breath, words that made no sense. “No, dear. I’ve got it under control.”
“Okay,” Alex said, backing away slowly. She followed Calla toward the front foyer of the mansion, but halfway there, she realized she had left the paint roller but accidently taken the brush. She darted back down the narrow hallway.
Alex reached the ballroom and gripped the side of the door, preparing to deposit the brush quickly and avoid another weird conversation. When she rounded the corner, she stopped dead in her tracks. Duvall had vanished, and in her place, covering every inch of the enormous room, was a thick, dripping layer of gel. How had she finished so quickly?