The Grim did not chase us inside the narrow tunnel, cramped and unfit as it was for it. We squeezed through the cramped tunnel, overhead circular fixtures illuminating the crags of the floors and the jutting rocks and pebbles of the walls that somehow managed to maintain the foundation. We swerved through sharp changes in the tunnel's direction: left, right, down, which seemed to be taking us underneath a place.
For a while scuffled through the cave-like passageway until we reached a kind of harbor for peoples who walked on the tunnels, where we clambered onto rocks and pebbles still.
"Where is this?" I asked, ejecting dirt from my hands.
"Old Yarim," Crawford said, a wicked grin plastered across his face. Then we clambered up a passageway in the rock, coming out at last in front of a gloomy manor faced with scalloped walls bayed into three, steeply-pitched roofs slated in burnt sienna, and a tower that joined the surrounding skeletal trees in height. We sauntered on a concrete path laden with rubble, which were fringed by unkempt grass that grew knee-high, and taken over by swaths of weeds that grew from the concrete. Had it not been for these I will have mistaken it for a segment of my father's villa.
Our boots hushed through the worn-out cement to the hardwood floors of the porch. Crawford rang the bell and waited. A breeze whispered, a lonely tingle in the dreary evening of Old Yarim.
The arched door opened and a pleasant-looking woman stood on the doorway. Bronze skin moved gracefully as she bowed her head and said, "Master." Her hazel eyes sparkled in the radiance of the manor, dancing and twinkling like the stars in joy and splendor. She ushered us into the manor, her bonny brunette hair glinting in the light of the serene chandelier.
The interior proved to be the antithesis of the exterior, beige white high and low, flourishing flowers arrayed on patterned vases, whimsical painting of rabbits that proved the owner an avid fan of Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps.
"Come," Crawford said. "We must talk in the parlor." I took in the rooms as we walked into the common room. They were not plain but they were not lavish either, simple and unornamented rooms save for the pervasive rabbit paintings that seemed to be featured in most of the rooms, if not all.
We reached the common room, dim due to the draped windows, where a marble fireplace was the only source of light as the moon was for Yarim, edged by a small bookcase covered by glass. A bedside table flanked by a chair and a sofa.
I took my seat near the fire of the hearth, feeling warm for the first time in the wee hours I had been homeless after Alfred turned into a ghoul. I still felt a pang of guilt whenever I remembered his name, wondering whether it was when he saved me that he was infected by the plague.
Crawford hemmed. "You look to be musing about something, Hunter. Though tell me, what are you called?"
"Anima. Anima Diggory, good sir."
"Well, then, Anima, what might have you been doing outside of Rosalia's house; did not Virgil tell you that it was the safest place for a green Hunter like you? Perhaps he has forgotten; he has aged considerably since we have met, no thanks to the ghoul he lives with."
I do not know whether to feel indignation or sorrow. I stumble for the words. "Virgil…Virgil does not live anymore, Crawford…" I pause; "And Alice may be a ghoul but she is kind, so please…do not insult her."
He had gone silent after hearing the first statement, and I think he had not heard the second and third. His face looked sullen in the flames of the hearth then it turned into vexation until his azure orbs raged with the same tempest that had once ravished the lands of Livila and coastal towns during God's wrath in the Dark Ages. "That wrench of a woman…That bitch seducing Virgil and what did that do? It killed him! I had told him that woman was up to something; but he never listened—" he shouted, the voice echoing across the otherwise still room, "he had always been too headstrong, always following what he fancied following. Now he's dead as a herring!" He splayed his fingers across his face, sniffling occasionally when I had invoked the courage to respond.
"That is simply not true, Crawford. We did not know that Alfred would turn into a ghoul and attempt to execute us all—we were horribly unfortunate but Virgil, I believe, died for the person he loved," the words are horribly sour in my mouth but I press on, "Alice still wept when I had left the Sanctuary. She is broken by the lost as you are broken by it. I have reason to believe that your accusation of Alice is unfair and unjust—it does not take into account their mutual love for each other." I finish my speech but Crawford does not look at me, his eyes still shifting from the carpet rug to the flames of the fireplace.
"He is dead," he croaked, head still hung. "Nothing will be able to change that. Nothing will be able to console that loss; he was the greatest Hunter among us."
"Alice believe I will come next."
His azure eyes meet mine now. They are not as vast as Virgil's but they search as those sea-green orbs did before, looking for something but not quite finding it. "And Virgil agreed—if that is so, then…Ah, do not mind."
"What?" I ask, genuinely curious what he was about to say but he waves it off, stands up, and ambles to the doorway.
"Edythe will guide you to your room. I will converse with you tomorrow, Anima. It is getting late—dear me, it's half past ten already," he remarked, rather shiftily though I took no further notice of his behavior. "When the clock chimes eleven o'clock, if you are awake that time, we shall talk. You are tired, do not wear yourself out more by asking questions which will be answered on the morrow. Have good sleep Anima. If you are who you say you are, then I will do my best to assist you."