Luke entered Wednesday's room. The space was similar in size to the other rooms in the mansion, but its tidiness and meticulous order made it stand out.
The four-poster bed dominated the center, built with black wood and carved with intricate details. It had a canopy made of black velvet, which was pulled back to reveal coal-black sheets adorned with white skull embroidery.
The walls were a dark gray shade, and an iron chandelier hung from the ceiling, lit by candles that bathed the room in warm light.
"If I had a chandelier that big, I'd have better lighting," Luke said, eyeing it enviously. He had to light dozens of candles to get decent illumination.
"You complain too much about lighting for a clairvoyant," Wednesday commented, walking over to an antique wooden desk.
"What can I say? I'm a fan of electricity more than candles," Luke replied, shrugging.
Although he liked staying up late, he always preferred to do so with the comfort of modern technology. At first, charging his phone and MacBook had been a challenge in this mansion with no electricity. Eventually, he bought a power station that charges with solar energy. It cost him over $7,000, but it was worth every penny.
"With that thing you bought, you can power dozens of electric lights; just plug them in and stop complaining," Wednesday said, opening one of the desk drawers.
"It would be an aesthetic crime. All this gothic decor would lose its essence with LED bulbs," Luke replied, crossing his arms.
Wednesday flashed a sarcastic smile, not looking up from the drawer. "Sure, because your gaming console, massive TV, high-end computer, and that phone you never let go of are totally in sync with the gloomy atmosphere, right?" she said with a mocking tone.
"That's different; they're modern necessities you wouldn't understand," Luke said, chuckling.
"What you need is to accept that you're addicted to technology. It's only going to burn out your brain," Wednesday replied, pulling a manuscript with many pages from the deep drawer.
"Stop criticizing me," said Luke.
"Stop complaining," Wednesday shot back, turning around and handing him the manuscript.
"Oh, that's a lot of pages for a first novel," Luke commented, flipping through it.
"Six hundred sixteen pages," Wednesday replied.
Luke closed the manuscript and noticed Wednesday's broken raven necklace, the one he had given her, sitting on the desk.
"Couldn't you fix it?" Luke asked. Ever since that day, Pugsley had stopped setting lethal traps to kill him. At their lunches, he seemed paler than usual, and his usual dead-fish expression was even more pronounced.
"No. Gluing the two pieces back together would leave it misaligned. It would be… imperfect," Wednesday responded with a calm that anyone else might mistake for indifference, but he noticed it—a faint shadow in her eyes, something only someone who knew her well could pick up on.
Luke stayed silent for a few seconds, watching as Wednesday's fingers touched the broken necklace. Something didn't quite match her usual indifference.
"Wait here," said Luke, taking the necklace from her hands
Wednesday raised an eyebrow at him. "And what do you plan to do? Fix it with a spell?"
Luke just gave her a half-smile before turning and leaving the room. With his telekinesis, he opened the door.
After a while, he returned. In his hands, he held two necklaces, each with half of the raven. Without saying a word, he approached Wednesday and held out one of the necklaces.
"One for you, and one for me," he said, extending one half of the raven to her.
Wednesday looked at him for a moment, her dark eyes resting on the necklace and then on him. Although her expression remained almost unchanged, Luke noticed a different glint in her dark eyes.
"Not bad," Wednesday remarked as she put on the necklace. Luke also put on the other half.
After that, they headed toward the tower where Morticia's study was located. After a few minutes of walking down dark corridors and making several turns, they began to ascend a spiral staircase. Every so often, a lit torch was embedded in the hard stone walls.
The staircase ended, and they walked a few more steps until they stood in front of an enormous door.
Wednesday pulled two small, flat papers from her sleeve. She crouched down in front of the door, where a small gap between the wood and the floor allowed a slight draft to pass through. She slid the papers through the opening, gently pushing them to the other side. Then, she stood back up and looked at Luke.
"We'll enter with your Shambles. When we do, since we're not going through the door, we'll be detected as intruders, and the traps will activate. Where are they?" Wednesday asked.
"Right on the first tile, where you left the papers, spikes will shoot up. After that, arrows will fire from the front and side walls," Luke responded, having already expanded his domain over the room.
Small holes were hidden in plain sight on the study walls, from where the arrows would emerge, similar to the mechanism in the underground chamber. Likewise, spikes would shoot up from the floor, aiming to impale them.
"The arrows will be easy to block. Their speed isn't much. The only problem is the spikes, since we'll appear right on top of them," Wednesday said, pausing and looking at him calmly. "But with your flight, it'll be simple. I'll leave it all to you."
Before Luke could add anything to the plan, he felt Wednesday's cold, pale arms slip around his neck, holding him. Using Shambles is easier when both people are close together.
"Guess I have to do all the work," Luke said with a half-smile, extending his hand and positioning his fingers.
In a blink, they disappeared and reappeared on the other side. The papers were gone; they had swapped positions with them.
Despite the physical barrier of the door and walls, Luke was able to bypass them by expanding his domain, using his clairvoyant sense, which gave him precise control over the space. This, combined with his telekinesis, allowed him to swap places instantly with the papers on the other side, effortlessly moving through physical barriers.
The instant Luke's feet touched the room's tile, he flew up, moving away from the ground. Just seconds later, three gleaming metal spikes shot up from the floor at high speed.
The spikes were nearly a meter tall, but Luke had already lifted off, avoiding them. That wasn't all, though. Dozens of arrows launched at incredible speed from the walls.
With his recently enhanced and well-trained reflexes, Luke reacted in time. Using his telekinesis, he stopped all the arrows, which hovered around him and Wednesday, who maintained her stoic expression.
With a simple nod, Luke let the arrows drop to the floor and then landed softly beside Wednesday, who released her hold on him.
"Nice place," Luke remarked, glancing around his mother-in-law's study. After spending these days with the Addams family, it no longer seemed strange to him that a room would have lethal traps capable of ending a person's life.
On the center wall, there was a large desk with a grand chair behind it, and an oversized window covered by blood-red curtains. Rows of shelves filled with books, jars, and other items lined the side walls.
"Doesn't your mom turn off the candles when she leaves?" Luke asked curiously, following Wednesday. The chandelier lighting the room had all its candles lit.
"It's inefficient. This isn't a place for sleeping; it's better for the candles to stay lit. It'd be annoying to turn them on and off every day," Wednesday replied as she began searching the shelves for the book.
'Magic candles, classic,' thought Luke, joining in the search.
After a few minutes, they found the Book of Shadows written by Goody Addams.
The book had a dark, aged leather cover with an embossed pentagram. The spine was reinforced with strips of ancient metal, and it was clear at a glance that it easily exceeded a thousand pages.
"Finally, I have you in my hands," Wednesday murmured, touching the spine of the book. She could finally read the famous book her ancestor had written, with whom she had even had visions and spoken in cryptic ways.
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