The Shadow Princess- Part 12

Icy particles danced along numb skin, its frigid warning unheeded. The ranging tempest which trapped her in this horrid place continued to howl like a lone wolf, mocking her fervent wish to escape. Genevieve felt ill, wrapping her arms tighter around herself in the darkness of Miss Matilda's second floor study, letting the snowflakes invade through the open balcony door. Unconsciously, she touched the fading ruddy imprints of fingers on her neck. She remembered the lights going out, remembered her investigation of the exposed mirror. She remembered the shadow princess' death grip, but after that everything went dark. She had no memory of what happened next, no memory for that hour forever lost to her. No memory until she awoke next to Stephen in a position she never dreamed she would find herself in. What was clear in her memory was her screams and Stephen's disturbed response which became downright petrified when she related the reason to her alarm to what should have been a pleasurable if not compromising situation. Genevieve had no desire to be alone in this house, but she could not face her friend either and he clearly needed space as well since he rapidly vacated her presence with the oddest mix of embarrassment and fear clouding his countenance. The librarian, for all her love of fiction, preferred facts and reasoned explanations. This situation was incomprehensible to her. What happened during that hour? What had Violetta accomplished by doing such a thing? Genevieve shivered, but it wasn't the ambient frost which provoked such a reaction as she shut the door and drew the drapes. A horrified scream reverberated through the manse, wafting up through the floorboards and echoing off the walls. It was a cry like the fabled banshees she'd read about so often during lonely hours alone in the library...a scream of a tormented soul in horrendous pain.