Emma waited until she was quite sure she was alone. The police were gone. Charlie was gone. She walked all the way around the outside of the house, calling for the daemons one more time. Then back inside, trying not to look at the portraits on the wall. She left all the lights off, just in case they wanted to come home. She even left the door unlocked, just in case. Then she closed her eyes and screamed. Frustration, anger, sadness, exhaustion, she couldn’t tell. But she was glad she was in the country now, and people had a little more space to scream if they needed to.

  Emma found grandmother’s clothes in the room at the base of the tower below the library. It used to be her bedroom, but it was refitted into a dense forest of clothing. Too much for the wardrobe in the corner to bear, garments suspended from clothing lines spanned the room. It was chaotically arranged, but thrown together as an artist might throw paint to join colors into something beautiful. Emma’s hand hovered by the light switch. She thought about the teeth in the oven, and how there was no knowing what could be in here. But no, she decided to keep the light off.

  This was her kingdom now, and a witch would not be afraid. Yet a witch must be prudent too. She compromised by snatching the nearest black dress which hung from a line. She raced upstairs to leave it in the library before going back to the laundry room to retrieve the sewing machine. It was a struggle getting the heavy thing upstairs, but she wanted everything in the library. She conceded at last to turn on the library lights, and hoped this wouldn’t stop the daemons from letting themselves in downstairs. Finally she brought her egg in her backpack to the library and stored it below the desk. She closed the door behind her and let out a long sigh.

  Emma stared at the real flames guttering up from the iron chandelier and shivered in their warmth. The dress she seized in the dark turned out so perfect it might as well have been handed to her for a present. The black lace curled into delicate little roses along the collars and cuffs. The buttons were shaped like little skulls. No, they WERE skulls: those belonging to some small rat or rodent. They were polished so brightly they appeared more like jewelery. Grandmother had some wonderful necklaces, something Emma would have to search for during the day.

  Once her sewing machine was set on the desk, Emma turned to the library shelves. It was all so overwhelming, and she didn’t know where to start. She returned to her desk and looked at the contracts. She ran her finger down it, and watched a bit of dried blood flake off the lettering. One of the phrases read:

  As long as there is life in me,

  you will serve my every need.

  When I’m gone, you will be free,

  returning home at last to sleep.

  “Returning home to sleep,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Well that’s going back to the daemon world. That’s a bit like a banishment, isn’t it Mr. Egg? A very useful thing to know.”

  Emma then matched the phrase to the contract in daemonic. Now she had a starting point, and returned to the shelves to look for something similar. Indeed after a few moments she found a ponderous red leather tome which matched up. She dropped this onto the desk with a loud thud. A nova of dust breathed around her.

  Next Emma held her black lace dress against her body, and noted the pattern in the fabric where she would begin to hem. Then considering, she moved it up another inch along her pale thigh. Who was going to tell her otherwise? She decided to cut off the arms and make it short sleeved as well. It all seemed a bit too suffocating for her.

  She turned through the pages of the daemon book while she worked. Not only were there large colored pictures on nearly every page, but occasionally even passages written in English! Emma was so excited she nearly sewed her fingers to the dress. She flipped on until the picture of a large glass window caught her eye. On one side of the window was a cottage wall, and on the other side a vast landscape of barren wasteland. It reminded Emma of the bathroom mirror which looked into another world. A mystery for another time.

  Below the picture was a block of text in very neat English. It read:

  The window home spell:

  What do you do with daemons when you’re done with them? Did they never learn to wipe their feet? Do they leave an awful smell? Have they started fires again? By now you may be tired of your new company. Send them home without a fuss with this simple three step spell. What you will need:

  Ingredients: Three animal skulls in a line.

  Step 1: Speak the daemon’s true name.

  Step 2: Hold evidence of the harm it caused.

  Step 3: Speak the words, printed below.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Emma looked at the skull buttons of her lace gown and smiled wickedly. A very practical woman, grandmother was. She looked back to the contract, and found the signatures where the daemons left their true names. All six of them were there, but they were written in the strange daemonic lettering she could not pronounce. And as for evidence of the harm, what could that be? Some charred wood the daemons burned? Who did she have to convince anyway? Was she going to have to prosecute the daemons in court before a judge?

  She held the dress straight and made sure the little bones were in a line. Then she retrieved the hunting rifle from its case by the chair and lay it on the desk. That’s like evidence, isn’t it? When it fired it almost got her in trouble with the police. Surely that’s proof of harm. Then clearing her throat, she read the spell.

  Window home, made of bone,

  dead lords sitting on their thrones.

  Window home, all alone,

  gone to gray worlds to atone.

  The clocks struck midnight. The varied calls and chimes from at least a dozen of them echoed from downstairs. It was a harsh, discordant sound. They all rang together, which was peculiar, because previously the clocks all displayed different times. Emma held her breath for a moment. And puffed out in disappointment. Then she noticed three skulls in her dress had gone dark. It almost looked as though a darkness shone from them, or that they were gobbling up the light around the skulls. They continued to turn blacker before her eyes, until soon they were so engulfed in shadow she could hardly see them right before her.

  There were only nine skull buttons on the dress. She moved the dress around in the light, but those three skulls stayed engulfed in shadows no matter what. She hated the idea of having wasted them. She plucked at one of the shadow skulls and watched it dissolve into dust. She grasped at the others in frustration, only to watch them vanish before her eyes. The dust stirred and whirled into the air: a little cyclone of its own.

  But they weren’t lost for nothing. She looked up from the dress straight into one of the rodent skulls floating in the air before her. It was insubstantial and translucent, with a clear view of the bookshelves on the other side. More solid by the second, it was drinking in the swirling the dust to form itself. It was growing too, larger than all three of the little skulls put together now. It was about the size of a sheep skull when the window opened. The top half of the skull dissolved away, and the dust reinforced the rest of the budding structure. Inside the skull was another world.

  “Gone to gray worlds to atone,” Emma repeated the line in a whisper.

  It wasn’t like an ordinary window, or even like the bathroom mirror, where everything on the other side was the same size. Instead she was looking through gray clouds from a bird’s eye view at a landscape far below. There was a castle made of black obsidian stone. It didn’t look built, but rather carved straight from the sleek mountainside. The dark shape of birds spiraled in the air around treacherously tall towers. Jagged outcroppings of stone along the towers looked like claws raking up at her to snatch her from the sky. The air above was a sickly yellow color, and she thought she could even faintly smell a sulphuric breeze wafting out of the skull.

  The viewpoint of the window descended toward the obsidian towers. One of the flying things she thought was a bird wheeled away from the others to spiral upward towards her. When she got closer she could tell it was a deamon, with yellow eyes the color of the dying sky. It looked like it would sail straight out of the skull and into the library, but Emma didn’t flinch away. It flew directly before her and paused, beating heavy leather wings to suspend itself in the air. It looked directly at her. The window must go both ways.

  The daemon then turned and dove back toward the castle. Emma willed herself to follow it, and found her perspective keeping pace. They sailed together straight up to one of the towers where the daemon perched atop the railing of a marble balcony high above the ground. The daemon stood tall and stretched its wide wings before retracting them into its body. The substance of its wings added to its stature, until presently it loomed above Emma. It was much larger than her little chickens, and walked on two feet like a man. It looked back at Emma, and then led her inside an open door into the tower.

  All of this witnessed within the black animal skull suspended in the air. The dust continued to swirl around, and it was already beginning to disperse. Her image was becoming less opaque. At this rate it would be gone in a minute.

  “Please hurry!” she said urgently to the daemon.

  It did not turn or make any sign of having heard her. Instead it brought her inside to a chilling chamber. Jagged black obsidian columns held up a high arching chamber. At the far end there was a throne made entirely of bones. Arm bones and leg bones mostly, knitted together like interlocking logs to construct its base. The back of the chair was made of rib bones, with three human skulls along the top.

  The daemon was walking toward the throne. The shadows around the room sprang to life. A dozen daemons like him now entered from every direction. They were all moving toward the throne. Some of them were carrying something large on their shoulders, but Emma couldn’t see it well on account of how much taller they were. They were blocking her view of the throne where most of the activity seemed to be taking place. It was all completely silent, and getting harder to see by the moment. The whole scene was hardly more solid than smoke now.

  “Out of the way!” Emma pleaded. “What are you up to? What’s going on?”

  The daemon directly before her turned and looked down at her. It unexpectedly bowed graciously low, and backed away to the side. Other daemons now seemed to notice her for the first time. They bowed as well, stepping back into separate aisles to clear her view.

  “Oh my goodness,” Emma said. Shocked, bewildered, and finally terrified at last.

  Sitting on the throne of bones was perched a dead body. But not just anybody. It was Grandmother Orwell, dressed in white robes like a priest might wear. Her skin was pale and taunt, her stiff head thrown back unnaturally. On either side of her, the daemons knelt to the ground before Grandmother Orwell. It looked like they were praying.

  And they were gone. Smoke in the air. A hint of lingering sulfur. Three of her nine skulls were gone, although there must be more in the closet somewhere.

  Emma quietly stood up and turned off the lights. She lay down in the bedding which smelled of grandmother and closed her eyes. She didn’t toss and turn, but simply lay there and didn’t sleep for a long time. Not until it was almost morning, and even then, she did her best not to dream.