Violet is aware of the visitor before his car door shuts.
She is up in her inventing room, looking through a crate full of old mattress springs, and brainstorming. Olaf, sensing she had needed some peace and quiet, had taken the neophytes to the very back of their property, intent on teaching the children how to identify poisonous plants. She could picture them perfectly, wearing trails into the dirt, Laszlo grasping for Olaf's hand, the man saying, "Orphans, never drink tea from the Hemlock Tearoom and Stationary Shop. For obvious reasons. This is hemlock, right hereā¦Don't touch it, Sassy!"
They have barely been gone fifteen minutes when the man arrives. His car is long, black, and quiet, and Violet immediately knows he is involved with VFD. It is the kind of car that could be used as a getaway ride, black smoke billowing high behind it with no trail to lead back to the driver. It could have also been used for kidnapping children in the night and forcing them into an organization. Violet knows this, yet she had no clue which she would prefer.
A volunteer and a villain, she had learned, could very often make the same mistakes.
Violet knows their house is nearly impenetrable- they had made sure of it. When Olaf had rebuilt their heartless home, he had the windows replaced with glass neither bullets nor poison darts could pierce. She had created special locks guarding every door, every chimney, and even the ventilation system was fixed with new filters that would buy them time incase of any stray Medusoid Mycelium. Jars of horseradish were even placed strategically throughout every room- hidden behind books with titles like Surviving Subterfuge or Lessons In Avoiding Entropy.
There is no way anyone could intrude unless Violet or Olaf invited them inside. This fact keeps her calm as she rises to her feet, spine straightening. The strange man has not been there one minute and Violet Baudelaire is prepared for a fight.
A few chimes from their doorbell echo through the heartless home, low and fast, and suddenly she is reminded of the Hotel Denouement's famous clock shouting, "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!"
She shakes the memory and hurries to grab a small remote from her cluttered desk. She points it to a blurry monitor, which glitches into wakefulness. She sees a tall man, his light hair wild with flips. He wears a dark leather jacket and deep black sunglasses, despite the cloudy October day. He leans in close and peers directly into the peephole as if he knows she has replaced it with a camera.
In a voice deeper than she had expected he says, "Hello, young lady. Have you been good to your mother?"
They had prepared for this. Although they have no reason to believe this stranger dangerous, Violet knew it was better to treat him as a villain than a volunteer. And that meant summoning her husband.
With calm integrity, she descends from her inventing room, feet tapping an even beat down the worn staircase. Instead of heading to the front door, she goes to the kitchen and, from an unassuming drawer, grabs a green bead no smaller than a button. She rolls it between her fingers, feeling the thin wax film, and tosses it into the kitchen fireplace. Channeling her nerves into force, Violet stamps quick and hard on the bead. A hiss like a gas leak fills the home.
Smoke as green as the floor from the last headquarters funnels straight up through the chimney. Violet grabs a small handle from the mouth of the fireplace and tugs down so a thin glass door slides to the floor, keeping the smoke going up and out.
It takes her husband about three minutes. What seems like an eternity later, she stands at the back door watching green smoke bleed like ichor to the cloudy sky before a long figure emerges from the forest, running like a man possessed with near-loss, to the back of their home. As he gets closer, she can see Olaf's dark eyes blown wide and wild with fear. She wrenches open the back door and he slides inside, legs turned strong and steady with adrenaline.
Before he can ask, Violet says, "We have a visitor."
Before she can ask, Olaf says, "The neophytes are safe."
With that, they turn in synch to the front door. Olaf glances through the two-way mirror shaped like an eye detailing of the front door and a growl leaves him. He heaves it open and the man with the sunglasses smiles. Again he repeats the phrase, "Hello, young lady. Have you been good to your mother?"
"The question is," Olaf says, his voice a warning. "Has she been good to me?"
Without waiting for an invitation, the man nods and steps inside. He looks around the home as if searching for something and only once Olaf closes the door does he turn to address them.
"Violet, Count Olaf. My name is Dashiell Qwerty, and I'm here to check on the neophytes. But, first thing's first- Do you have a library?"
Later, much later, Violet will trace their lives back to that moment, wondering if her intuition had been worth acknowledging- if, even then, she had been able to smell the oncoming doom like so much smoke in the air.
Both Dashiell Qwerty and The Hemlock Tearoom and Stationary Shop are mentioned in Mr. Snicket's Who Could That Be At This Hour?
The chapters within this story won't line up in a 1-2-3 plot, I plan on each chapter offering a new scene of a different time within the heartless home.
Thank you to everyone who has stayed with me this long- I hope you enjoy the little sequel.
Please let me know what you think!
