Part I
Violet's dreams are filled with fire.
She comes awake with a strangled scream, slamming herself upright and clawing at the air. It's hot, too hot, her legs are pinned, and the room is dark dark dark and airless as a tomb. No matter how she tries, her lungs won't work, won't draw in air - panic drives an icy fist into her gut, tangles her fists in the sheets at her side as her chest heaves uselessly.
Mother, she thinks, mouths, would cry aloud if she could manage to say anything. But Mother is gone, and Violet is alone, and the world is filled with smoke and ash and shiny, shiny eyes.
The lamp on her side table clicks on, instantly banishing the shadows from her bedroom and her brain. A voice cuts through the terror, steady and gentle and dependable as the tide.
"Breathe, Violet," says Olivia, leaning over her with a concerned, grave expression. Her hair is wild and her glasses are slightly askew, but her hands are steady where they grip Violet's on the bed, tensing and relaxing over top of hers in an attempt to help her loosen her hold on the blankets.
Olivia gets one of Violet's hands free and brings it to her own chest, letting her feel the even rise and fall of her breaths, the slightly-elevated pace of her heartbeat. "Just like this, Violet. You're alright, sweet girl. Just breathe."
"S-sorry," Violet manages to rasp, but Olivia shakes her head, tightens her grip on her hand.
"There's nothing to apologize for, sweetheart. I just need you to breathe with me, okay?" Olivia's heart picks up speed under Violet's palm, belying the calm expression on her face.
Violet closes her eyes, focuses on that heartbeat, tries to focus on breathing as her guardian continues to murmur encouragements.
Safe-safe, safe-safe, beats Olivia's heart. The sheets are soft and warm beneath her, and rain pitter-patters faintly against the window. The room smells like cinnamon from the candle she'd burned earlier that evening, layered over the scent of oil and paste from one of the inventions on her work desk in the far corner of the room, the reason she'd lit the candle in the first place.
Her inventions - she turns her thoughts there, to the memory of metal and grease under her fingertips, to the whir and click of gears, to the bright burn of satisfaction in her chest whenever she steps back to watch them work.
Safe-safe. Safe-safe. Safe-safe.
Violet is not rowing through a lake full of leeches (in a hurricane) or falling down an elevator shaft (pushed by her guardian) or strapped to a hospital bed (to be decapitated). Olaf is dead and Esme is in prison and all of their enemies have been defeated. She is alive, and safe, and so are her siblings, sleeping peacefully in the bedrooms on either side of her with the Quagmires just beyond.
Air returns to her in a rush, filling her lungs and expanding her chest with a gasp that sounds rather dramatic, even to her own ears. Olivia's heartbeat begins to level off almost immediately.
"That's it," her guardian says, relief thick in her voice as she reaches up to brush sweat-damp hair from her brow, "there you go. You're alright, Violet. Just keep breathing, okay?"
"I'm sorry," Violet says long moments later, as soon as she can manage to speak coherently. "I didn't mean to wake anyone."
"Violet Baudelaire, if you don't stop apologizing for things you can't control you're going to turn me grey," Olivia says on a sigh, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. The touch warms her down to her toes, relieves the ache in her chest and the burning behind her eyes. Too late, she realizes she's crying, and reaches up with the hand that isn't still cupped in both of Olivia's own to wipe at her face.
A handkerchief appears - Violet has to blink a few times to understand in her daze that someone is offering it to her, and that that someone is Jacques, standing over her bed with the same concerned expression Olivia had worn earlier. She takes it gratefully, if not slightly bashfully - she's fifteen, for heaven's sake, even Sunny doesn't carry on like this - and dries her eyes before handing it back. He trades it for the cup of cold water he's got in his other hand.
"Thank you," Violet says, sipping at it slowly. The burning in her throat fades, as does the trembling in her hands.
Safe-safe, beats her own heart, safe-safe.
"Alright now?" Jacques asks, watching her carefully. She nods, face burning. She can't imagine how loudly she must have been thrashing in her sleep to wake him an entire floor away. It's a wonder Klaus and Sunny hadn't beaten him in here - although, she reflects, they do both tend to sleep on the heavy side, nowadays.
Lucky them.
Olivia squeezes her hand gently. "Would you like to talk about it?"
Violet can think of literally nothing she'd like to do less, except maybe face the man the nightmares feature in the flesh once more.
"No, thank you," Violet says. "I know it was only a dream."
"Yes, but your fear was real," Olivia says quietly. "Talking can help, sometimes. I know it does for me."
Violet wonders if she's still reading those books on child trauma she'd picked up when they first moved into the manor, or indeed if she'd ever stopped.
"I'm fine," Violet says, and it's true. She's happy, really happy, in a way she hasn't been since her parents died. Nightmares when she sleeps are nothing compared to the nightmare that used to be her life.
Olivia gets that look on her face, that crease between her brows, the one that says she very badly wants to push the issue. But she won't, Violet knows - Olivia never pushes, always gives her and her siblings and the Quagmires the space they need to deal with their problems, always a call away should they need her.
It had startled her, the first time Violet truly understood the extent of how much Olivia cares for them all. It still startles her, sometimes. Not even poor Uncle Monty, who had been so very kind to her and her siblings in the brief time she'd been allowed to know him, had looked at them with the open, steady devotion on his face that Olivia is wearing right now.
Olivia Caliban (well, Snicket, now) loves them, and Violet wonders what it says about her life that that frightens her, just a little bit. In Violet's experience, people who love them, especially as much as Olivia does, don't tend to survive very long.
Olivia shifts on the bed, drawing Violet from her maudlin thoughts. "If something…" Olivia frowns, bites her lip, glances back at the doorway, keeps going, "if something was bothering you, you know you can always come to me or Jacques about it, right?"
Violet understands what she isn't saying, and who she isn't saying it about, and instantly feels about a thousand times worse. "I do know that," she says, "but I promise I'm alright." It's not really even a lie. Slight discomfort is not the same as being bothered.
The voice in her head that always sounds like Klaus disagrees, but even Klaus can't possibly know everything.
"If you're sure," Olivia says, but she looks conflicted. The expression mirrors the one on Jacques' face - not for the first time, Violet wonders if they're keeping something from her. Wonders if they would tell her if she asked.
"I am sure," Violet says, and tries to smile. Jacques is still watching her though, and he reads people better than anyone she knows, so she doubts he's fooled.
But, like Olivia, he doesn't press. "Would you like to try to sleep again, Violet? Or would you rather us sit and talk with you for a while? You could tell us about the projects you're working on," he says with a nod in the direction of her desk, like he knows her inventions are the one thing guaranteed to settle her. He probably does know that, actually.
The second startling realization Violet had made about her guardians was that Jacques Snicket loves his wards every bit as much as Olivia does. It had been duty, she suspects, that had first made him seek them out, take them in, offer them his home - duty and loyalty to her parents, and that would have been more than enough, because he is kind and brave and well-read and would never ever strike her brother or lock her sister in a birdcage. But Violet knows that somewhere along the line, what began as duty had shifted to affection, which slowly but surely shifted to love.
"Thank you," Violet says, willing him to hear how much his offer touches her, because she knows it's very late and he has to drive the taxi in the morning, "but I think I'd like to try to go back to sleep, if I can."
He nods. "Would you like us to stay with you until you do?"
Violet has a flash of memory, then, of her parents doing the same thing for her when she was much younger and frightened, and suddenly wants it so desperately she aches. The idea of lying here alone, trying to convince herself the shadows aren't reaching out to grab her, is all at once unbearable. She doesn't know how to agree, though, because she's so much older now than she was when she once cried for her mother in the dark, and has dealt with so much worse than a nightmare on her own without making half as much of a fuss.
Olivia must see something of her internal war on her face, because she only nods with a gentle smile before reaching over to click off the lamp, dousing the room in darkness once more.
"You don't have to," Violet blurts, desperate not to be more of an inconvenience than she already has been, but Olivia only tuts at her.
"Just try to sleep, Violet," she says, planting another kiss on her forehead. "We'll stay until you drift off."
Violet doesn't know how to thank them for this kindness, can only nod silently as she eases herself back under the blankets. Through the hall light spilling in from her open bedroom door, she can see Jacques take a seat in the armchair by her bed, apparently perfectly content to be keeping watch over her instead of sleeping. Olivia fusses for an instant longer, tucking the blankets around her before shifting over to rest at her side, her back against the headboard.
For a moment it's awkward, perhaps because deep down, it's her parents she really wants. Violet knows a brief moment of regret for not just sending her guardians back to bed. But Olivia is warm beside her, and so is the weight of Jacques' protective gaze on them both, and exhaustion soon wins out. Even if they aren't her biological parents, Violet knows that real-life monsters have flinched from Jacques and Olivia the way imaginary monsters once flinched from Beatrice and Bertrand.
Safe-safe, beats Violet's heart. Safe-safe.
The knowledge wraps her in warmth and drags her down, down, down. Oblivion follows swiftly, and she knows nothing more until she's brought to semi-awareness an indeterminable amount of time later by the stirring of her guardians as they make to return to their own room, apparently assured she will have no more troubled dreams tonight.
There's tug on the blankets, a stroke of fingertips against her cheekbone, the scent of a library, tea and old books. The warm, calloused press of a broad palm against her brow follows after, a touch so paternally affectionate she knows that if she opens her eyes, she'll see her father standing there, smiling down at her. Something about that is wrong, doesn't fit, but she can't think why when she's so very warm and safe and drowsy, floating somewhere between awake and asleep.
A shadow flickers behind her closed eyelids. "Is she alright?"
Violet goes cold, full consciousness returning in a rush so sharp it makes her heart kick in her chest. She fights to keep from jerking, to keep her breathing even, to keep from giving any sign that her rest has been disturbed.
Her guardians' footsteps slip away from the bed and towards the door. "Don't wake her, Lemony," Jacques murmurs. "She's fine."
"Thank you for coming to get us," Olivia says. "She was terribly frightened."
"It certainly sounded like it," comes the voice of Jacques' younger brother, his dry baritone touched with concern. She knows his eyes are on her without having to open her own - she doesn't dare move a muscle.
Mercifully, she doesn't have to keep the act up for very long; the rest of the conversation is lost to her as someone pulls her bedroom door gently shut.
Her eyes fly open almost at once, exhaustion forgotten. Violet lays awake, staring at the canopy over her bed, for long after their voices and footsteps have disappeared down the hall. Her bedside clock tick-tick-ticks away the seconds until daylight.
Here's the thing: Lemony Snicket has been living in the manor for just under a month now and it's… fine. It is. She's fine with it. More than fine, really, given how happy his decision to move in had made Jacques. And it's not as though he's a stranger; Lemony has been a semi-frequent face around the manor ever since Jacques and Olivia's wedding six months ago.
It's just that while he isn't quite the strangest person Violet has ever met - a title probably held by Aunt Josephine or Vice Principal Nero - he's very, very close.
Quiet, wry, and unfailingly polite, almost rigidly so, Lemony spends most of his time shut up in his room, where the clickity-ding of his typewriter can be heard at any given time during the day or night. He comes and goes like a shadow, keeps bizarre hours, and sends communiques to unknown recipients almost exclusively via carrier bat.
He's also, unless she'd missed her guess, the thing Olivia had been subtly attempting to make sure wasn't bothering her.
And he isn't, not really. He's just… he watches her when he thinks she's not looking, that's all. Oh, not in a scary way, and not anything at all like the way Olaf had once watched her, the way that made her stomach bottom out with fear and her skin crawl. No, Lemony watches her like he's not quite sure she's real, or like he expects her to lunge at him, or sometimes both at once. He doesn't, to her knowledge, look at her siblings or the Quagmires that way, and that's almost more bewildering than the look itself.
There are other things, too - she'd caught him weeping to himself in the backyard once, hunched over on a bench with his forearms on his knees, trembling like he might collapse at any moment. It had struck her heart strangely, and she'd run back inside before he could catch her watching him. Olivia had mentioned, in the same conversation she and Jacques had with them all about whether or not it would be alright for Lemony to move into the manor for a while, that Lemony was grieving the loss of someone very dear to him, and that he might continue to do so for some time. The other children, more intimately acquainted with grief than perhaps anyone else their age, had nodded along in understanding, and even though Violet had done the same, she was - and still is - desperately curious about who, in fact, could make a man like him mourn so terribly.
A thought surfaces in the dark: his name, and what her mother had once told her about her own.
"We named you Violet because it's an old family name," Mother had said, curled up next to her in their library with an open book of the Baudelaire family tree on her lap, gesturing to a portrait of an austere-looking woman several generations back. "But if you'd been a boy, we would have named you Lemony."
That name hadn't been anywhere on the tree, and six-year-old Violet had wrinkled her nose, believing her mother to be joking. "That's a silly name."
Her mother had laughed, but there was something sad about it, about the look in her eyes when she turned them back on Violet. "I suppose it is," she'd said, and that had been the end of it.
There's a suspicion there, but it's complicated and just a little bit scary, and Violet clamps down on the memory viciously, attempting to turn her thoughts elsewhere. She knows she won't fall asleep again, no matter how physically and emotionally exhausted she is, but she doesn't want to just lie here idly, either.
She could always fiddle with the toaster again, she supposes - she's done it so often she could probably take it apart and reassemble it blindfolded by now. The appliance now toasts bread to even perfection in ten seconds flat, although she thinks she can get it to work as quickly as six.
Violet sits up, rubbing at her eyes, and reaches for the hair ribbon on her side table. Clarity returns like a light switching on the moment her hair goes up, her mental fog of sleep and fear and bewilderment lifting at once.
What had Lemony been doing outside her bedroom door just now, anyway? And how had he heard her nightmare when his room is on the third floor, when Olivia and Jacques, a room away, apparently hadn't heard a thing?
Had he been lurking on the second floor? For what reason? A strange chill goes up her spine, an old suspicion tugging at the back of her brain. Her siblings are on this floor, and the Quagmires on the other side - what if he's not so noble as Jacques claims?
He'd been missing for years before he turned up at the manor six months ago, or so Olivia had said; he hadn't been in contact with anyone on the firefighting side of VFD in ages. What if that was because he isn't on their side at all? The fire-starters have to have more people on their side of the schism than just Olaf, so Lemony could conceivably be working for them. What if this, his moving into the manor, reconnecting with his siblings, is all just a ruse to snatch their fortunes and make another grab for the sugar bowl? The timing would fit - his arrival lines up with Olaf's death and Esme's imprisonment.
Jacques trusts him, she knows, otherwise he would never have let him stay here, and Kit must too, but what if they're blinded by the fact that he's family? Certainly Violet would never be able to suspect Klaus or Sunny of treachery. But if the Denouement brothers have been divided by their ideals, who's to say the same thing hadn't happened to the Snickets?
Of course, if he had been lurking for nefarious reasons tonight, alerting Jacques and Olivia to her nightmare was a surefire way to oust himself… but perhaps he was only covering his tracks, trying to win himself the benefit of the doubt before making his move.
He might seem trustworthy upon first glance, but then, so had Esme - however briefly - before she'd pushed Violet and her siblings down an elevator shaft and abducted her friends.
The longer she thinks on this, on the odd hours he keeps and the way he looks at her and the events of this evening, the more certain she is that something about Lemony Snicket doesn't fit. He's hiding something, something that could potentially endanger her family and the house and the peace that they've found here.
Determination wells up through her, settling her spirit into an icy kind of clarity.
Well, Violet thinks as she leans over to her side table, opening the drawer to reveal her parents' battered spyglass, we'll just see about that.
In all past cases when subterfuge became necessary for their continued survival, Klaus and Sunny were, for obvious reasons, always the first people Violet consulted on how to move forward. They never kept one another in the dark, not about anything, because for so long they were all the others had, and it made no sense to go it alone.
Now, however, everything is different, and Violet has no intention whatsoever of involving her brother and sister in her plans to oust Lemony Snicket. She has no wish to worry them, not when they're both so happy, not when they sleep so soundly at night, believing they're safe. She'll simply have to handle it on her own, which is fine - she's done more difficult things with much higher stakes. Searching a man's room for evidence of treachery while he's out of the house should be a piece of cake.
That, however, appears to be the single, shining flaw in her plan: Lemony's hours are so strange that there's no way to plan in advance for when he's going to be out, or know how long he'll be away. Sometimes he leaves the manor only to return in minutes, and once he disappeared for almost a week with no warning or indication he'd planned to return at all. His comings and goings are simply too inconsistent to track.
Violet considers herself something of an expert in illicit searches by now, having spent the last year of her life searching for murder weapons and the Quagmires and VFD and always, always answers. She knows from personal experience what a bad idea it is to conduct a search if you can't account for the whereabouts of the person whose things you're searching at all times, which is why she doesn't dare make any kind of move without a better plan in place.
She spends a few days puzzling over this problem, working at it the way she would a stuck gear or a rusty hinge, trying to think of a solution that would get Lemony out of her way long enough to figure out what he's hiding without also drawing suspicion to herself.
As it turns out, the issue is resolved for her when one evening at dinner, Jacques invites Lemony to ride in the taxi with him the following day, stating the need for a partner on a day trip collecting intel for Jacquelyn.
"Olivia is your partner," Lemony had pointed out. When he'd turned to look at the woman in question, she'd cut a startled glance at Jacques before giving a single, delicate cough.
"I… think I'm coming down with a cold," she'd said, eyes wide. Violet had nearly wanted to laugh, despite herself - Olivia is normally a better actress than that. It seems a cold is what she always defaults to when she's put on the spot, if this and the Quagmires' birthday is any indication.
Lemony had plainly not believed her, but had eventually conceded anyway to what was clearly a transparent attempt at getting him to spend time with his brother.
It's the perfect opportunity, and it takes everything she has not to smile too widely for the rest of the night. A scheduled day trip will give her plenty of time to look through his things and be out of his room with him none the wiser. Now the only remaining issue is that they're going to be out of the house while she's supposed to be at school.
This, however, has a much easier solution, and one that Olivia had practically handed her on a silver platter.
It's a wicked thing to do, and Violet feels terribly guilty before she even attempts it, but she's done far more morally-dubious things for the greater good before - poor Hal springs immediately to mind - and she sees no reason to stop now, especially when she stands to lose so much.
The next morning, Violet stays in bed far past the time she'd normally be up to get ready for school, listening to the sound of the house bustling around her, and only making a vague noise of acknowledgement at Klaus when he knocks on her door to remind her to wake up. She waits until she's heard Jacques and Lemony leave before springing from the bed and tiptoeing across the hall to the bathroom she shares with Sunny. A rag soaked in near-scalding water gives her face a warm, fevered flush, and she dabs it on her throat and hairline to give the appearance of sweat. The rest is acting, mostly - she practices arranging her features into an expression of longsuffering discomfort in the mirror.
By the time Olivia comes up to check on why she isn't downstairs with the other children, about to walk out the door to catch the trolley to take them into the city, Violet is already tucked back into bed, trying to look as pitiful as possible. Her guardian takes one look at her and blinks in shock, before quickly crossing the room to lay a hand to her forehead.
"You're burning up, poor thing," Olivia tuts, worry creasing her brow. "You must be miserable."
"I'm fine," Violet tries to rasp, affecting a sore throat. "I just wanted to lie down a few extra minutes before I went to school."
Olivia frowns. "You're not going anywhere in this condition. I'll call the school, and let them know you won't be in today and maybe not tomorrow, either."
There's that guilt again, sinking like a stone in her stomach - that had been almost too easy. While Olivia's immediate trust that she wouldn't lie to get out of school is something she'd banked on, it doesn't actually make her feel any better about herself or the situation in general.
In truth, normally she wouldn't even consider lying about this. Returning to the same school she and Klaus had been forced to abandon after the fire had been, by far, one of the more bizarre things that happened in the last several months - their old teachers and classmates and friends they'd lost contact with almost seem like ghosts to Violet now, or automatons, or any other sort of thing that isn't quite… real. But she really does like school, especially math and science, and she likes the routine of taking the trolley with Klaus and the Quagmires into the city every morning. She likes knowing that it's safe to step outside the manor, and likes knowing that Olaf isn't going to show up at the school dressed as a janitor or a lunch lady or stars, even a student and try to abduct them all. But the thing she likes most of all is the normalcy of it, the return to something of what they'd had before the world had ended, no matter how strange or uncomfortable it can occasionally be.
So no, Violet is not normally given to playing hooky, and even if she was, she wouldn't feel the need to lie about it - if she'd simply asked, Olivia no doubt would have let her stay home. Her strong opinions that children should have a solid, steady education are matched only by her strong opinions that, after everything they've been through, the children in her care should never be forced to do anything they don't want to do.
But faking sick is integral to Violet's plan - she needs to be left alone in order to search Lemony's room, and her "illness" will provide some deniability. It does not, however, make lying to Olivia any easier.
She tries to take some comfort in the fact that she's behaving like a perfect Volunteer, and manages a weak smile.
"Will you tell Klaus not to worry?"
The concerned frown on Olivia's face softens into something gently affectionate. "Of course, sweetheart," she says. "I'll be back in a minute with some tea."
She sweeps out the door, and Violet listens as her footsteps track up the hall and down the stairs to the first floor. After a few moments, the front door opens and closes, presumably to let Klaus and the Quagmires out. Sunny will sleep for a while yet, Violet knows, and the dogs spend most of their days lazing about in whatever part of the house Olivia is in until the rest of the family comes home, so for right now the manor is quiet, void of its usual bustle of voices and bodies. If she listens very hard, she can hear the faint, familiar sounds of Olivia making what is likely the second or third kettle of tea just this morning in the kitchen. It's difficult to wait, to sit here and breathe and not fidget when she knows Lemony's room is lying completely unguarded and likely full of secrets a floor above her.
But Violet is by nature a patient person, and so she can wait for Olivia to finish her fussing. It's the least she can do after misleading her so terribly.
Long moments later, she can hear Olivia making her way back up the stairs. When her guardian steps back into the bedroom with a tea tray in her hands, Violet blinks heavily as though she'd just been woken from a light doze.
Olivia sets the tray down on her side table and pours her a cup, and perches on the edge of her bed while she waits for Violet to sit up to take it from her. Violet does, the scent of honey and lemon wafting up to curl around her face. The sickness blend, then - the mixture for sore throats and clogged sinuses and fever chills. Her mother used to make something similar for her and her siblings, what feels like a lifetime ago.
There's a strange burning behind her eyes, and she scrubs at them until it goes away.
"I'll leave the kettle," Olivia says, pressing the backs of her fingers to Violet's cheeks, her brow bone. The warmth she no doubt feels is probably less to do with the washcloth now and more to do with the peculiar pain in Violet's chest, the lead-heavy guilt that's making her face flame and her stomach churn. She sips at the tea again to settle it.
"Thank you, Olivia," Violet says, meaning it for more than just the tea. The look Olivia gives her makes her wonder whether she knows that.
"I'll be back in a few hours to check on you, and see if you feel up to eating anything." Olivia continues. "If you need me, just call - I plan to be in the library for most of the day, sorting through Quigley's new inventory. I swear, between that boy and your brother it's a wonder there's any room left on the shelves at all."
Stars, Violet thinks, trying not to flinch at the statement, I forgot about that. The library is directly next to Lemony's room, something she forgot to account for in her plan. Olivia will be a wall away from her the entire time she's conducting her search.
Violet swallows down her unease. It's too late to alter the plan now - she'll just have to make it work.
Olivia takes the teacup back and waits for her to lie back down before giving her a small, sympathetic smile. "Try to rest, Violet. I'll be back in a while, okay?"
Violet only nods, watching her leave through heavy eyes. She waits for what seems like a small eternity until Olivia's footsteps retreat out of her hearing range.
And then she springs from the bed and all but lunges for her closet. She dresses in record time, settling on a pair of dark blue overalls over a simple white blouse, and digs in the drawer of her work desk for her lockpicks. Jacques had gotten her a set after she'd expressed interest in them, since lockpicking is a skill that would have been useful no fewer than a half-dozen times at least during their time on the run from Olaf, and he'd spent hours teaching her, seeming delighted at how quickly she'd picked up the skill.
She remembers how his praise of her had felt, even now, how it had lit up in her chest like a match striking, warming her from the inside out. Violet knows her own skill with mechanics, and has never doubted her abilities in that area, but for someone as generally skilled and intelligent as Jacques Snicket to acknowledge it too had been… it had just been really nice, that's all.
So Violet tucks the kit in her pocket and tries, very hard, not to feel like she's betraying him by doing this. Jacques could be seeing through rose-colored glasses, a phrase which her mother had once told her meant "seeing things how one wants to see them" but in this case means "unable to fathom his brother potentially being a treacherous villain who probably enjoys starting fires".
She grabs her tool belt too, not because she thinks she'll need it but more because she feels several times more confident just having it nearby, and takes care that none of the heavier tools are positioned side-by-side so they won't clink together while she carries out her mission.
Her parents' spyglass goes into her pocket for luck, and a maroon ribbon pulls her hair away from her face, and it's only then that she feels ready to go on.
Carefully, she creeps across the room to the door, listening for any sounds in the hallway. There's nothing. She pokes her head out, checking up and down the hall, before stepping into the corridor. The staircase at her back leads directly to the third floor, but she'd have to pass the library from that end to get to Lemony's room, and since she doesn't know if Olivia is already inside, doesn't want to chance it.
Instead, she makes for the Quagmire's hallway, aiming for their staircase to the third floor - only to bite back a very bad word she learned from Jacques when she almost trips over Charybdis, who is lying in her favorite spot at the entrance to the common room.
The dog chuffs at her and rolls over for pats, wagging her tail excitedly. Violet obliges her for only a moment before sending her off to find Olivia with a murmured command. She doesn't want the dog following her to Lemony's room and potentially giving anything away.
She quickly makes her way through the common room and down the Quagmire's hallway and to their stairwell, grateful for the afternoons they'd all spent memorizing the creaky spots on the steps for fun. Quigley is the best at avoiding them, but Violet's not bad at it herself, and soundlessly scales the steps in record time.
The corridors on the third floor are carpeted, so she doesn't have to be as careful - she passes Jacques and Olivia's sprawling master suite and the empty guest bedroom and the rec room before she finally comes to a stop in front of Lemony's door. Down the hall, the library door is open, but the gramophone is quiet and she can't hear Olivia murmuring absently to herself as she shelves new inventory, which means she isn't inside yet.
Swallowing, Violet turns her attention to the door in front of her. There are answers behind it, she knows - all she has to do is open it.
For Klaus and Sunny, she thinks, kneeling down, for the Quagmires and Jacques and Olivia and VFD.
This in mind, she withdraws her lockpicks and inserts them into the keyhole beneath the doorknob - only to blink in surprise when she realizes the tumblers are out of place.
He left it unlocked? Violet thinks, stunned. He's certainly confident in Jacques' trust in him, then, to hide his secrets behind a door that anyone could just walk through - the idea makes something angry flare to life inside of her.
How dare he take advantage of his own brother's trust like this. This thought ringing like a battle cry in her ears, she gets to her feet, closes a fist around the doorknob, and flings the door open without ceremony. She has to catch it an instant later to keep it from banging against the wall, of course, but the swift, decisive action had been cathartic in the moment.
More determined than ever, now, Violet steps across the threshold and shuts the door behind her silently before turning back to survey the room around her.
At first glance, it's all markedly underwhelming - the four-poster bed at the back of the far wall, set between a pair of windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, is made immaculately, and she can see nothing on either nightstand except the lamps and what looks from here to be a thin layer of undisturbed dust. She wonders, given the state of the bed, if he even sleeps in it.
There are books piled high next to one of the armchairs by the fireplace set into the wall at her left, ranging from every subject and size. From here, she thinks she can make out the cover of The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill, of all things, as well as a very worn, heavily-bookmarked Incomplete History of Secret Organizations. And is that… the rulebook from the Village of Fowl Devotees? She makes a mental note to flip through them all, if she has time.
But where to start?
Her gaze lands on the workspace in the back corner of the room. She knows it's a workspace only because the layout of this room is so similar to her own - the area here is closed off by a pair of cream-white curtains, concealing the desk, bay windows, and built-in bookshelves she knows lie beyond it. He must have left one of his windows open, because the curtains shift slightly in the breeze, and she can hear the gentle rustling of papers somewhere behind them.
For some reason, the sight makes her heart shift to her throat. She'd bet her family's fortune that she'll find the answers she's looking for, the answers to questions she doesn't even fully understand yet, just on the other side.
The courage that had driven her up here in the first place, that had lead her to lie to her guardian and sneak into the room of a man she barely knows and doesn't trust, fails her in an instant.
What if he's involved in something horrible?
Stars, what if he isn't, and this whole thing has been a massive overreaction?
Swallowing, she turns away, deciding on a dime - and without thinking about it too much - to begin her search in the most obvious spots first and work her way around. She starts by looking under the bed, frowning when she finds only dust bunnies and a discarded sock.
Alright, so possibly that's a little too obvious. She keeps going.
The armoire across the room contains only suits in various shades of grey, and in various states of wear, as well as carefully-folded ties in deep blues and blacks. She'd already known that Lemony is a man given to fading into the background, and his wardrobe only confirms it. There aren't any interesting secret compartments though, and no figurative or literal skeletons jump out at her, so she moves on.
A quick search of his dresser reveals nothing of interest, and while his closet is full of odd and assorted items, rather than clothes - cracked picture frames containing blurry photos of unknown people, a set of costume dragonfly wings, an empty pickle jar, a faded menu from a place called Black Cat Coffee, three rusted swords, and several rolls of film with bizarre titles, one of which, curiously, is Hypnotists in the Forest - there's nothing important here, either. The only thing her search has accomplished so far is confirm her belief that Lemony is strange.
Frowning, she sits back on her heels, her gaze slipping back to the workspace on the far side of the room. A shiver runs up her spine, and she scowls.
This is ridiculous, she thinks, irritated with herself for hesitating for so long. I came up here to find answers, didn't I?
A little fear had never stopped her before, so why is she faltering now? Slowly, she gets to her feet and makes her way across the room.
Get scared later, she thinks, and with a bracing inhale, throws the curtains back.
For a long moment, she doesn't understand what she's seeing. Papers and curios are scattered seemingly haphazardly over every available surface: the desk, the bookshelves, the floor, the window seat. It's all arranged carefully around the typewriter on the desk, as though it had been the point from which this chaos had exploded. The walls are lined with paper too: pictures with threads of string connecting them, handwritten notes and newspaper clippings and pages torn from books. Scattered throughout are various strange odds and ends - feathers, ribbons, thumbtacks, magnets, a snakeskin, part of a wig, and a hundred other objects she can't make out from here, and all of it annotated with a spiky scrawl that must be Lemony's own handwriting.
And at the center of it all are pictures of herself and Klaus and Sunny, pictures of each of their past guardians, pictures of the places they'd lived, and everywhere, everywhere, Olaf.
The sight of his face even after so long, even just on paper, makes her breath catch in her chest, makes her fingers ball into fists, makes the blood rush to her legs with the instinctive urge to flee-flee-flee.
She staggers back and back and back until she hits one of the bedposts, slams her eyes closed and tries desperately to remember how to breathe.
He's dead, she reminds herself, trying to blink away the afterimage of him leering over her in that hospital bed, of him striking her brother, of him shoving Aunt Josephine over the side of his boat. He can't hurt me or Klaus or Sunny ever, ever again.
It takes her long moments to reopen her eyes, and longer still to fight the panic down, and longer still than that to settle her heartbeat in her chest.
Safe-safe. Safe-safe. Safe-safe.
"Ridiculous," she murmurs several minutes later, when she has regained a little more control. "Some Volunteer."
She's only a little unsteady on her feet when she moves back into the workspace, trying to make sense of what all this is. Research, clearly, but why? And for what? Who would be so invested in the unfortunate events of the lives of the Baudelaire orphans?
And it is just her family he appears to be investigating - the only mentions of the Quagmires, of anyone, she sees now, appear to be addressed in connection with her own family's lives and no further. The weight in her chest sinks and sinks until it settles in her stomach, heavy and hard like a stone.
But who is he reporting to? she thinks, a trifle desperately. A quick rummage through the papers on the desk reveals no answers to this question, only a handful of increasingly bewildering directions to someone only referred to as the Kind Editor.
Stars, Violet thinks, biting her lip. She was supposed to get answers, not more questions. Things are supposed to be easy now, she's not supposed to be scared and suspicious and frustrated anymore, not when they're all supposed to be safe.
The only thing she can think to do from here is go get Olivia - Olivia who always figures out the right thing to do, Olivia who will help her work this out, and even if she might be a little upset at first for the lying and the sneaking around, it will be worth it to just get this horrible fear out in the open, to cut off whatever Lemony is trying to do at the knees.
This plan in place, she turns to leave - but then her eyes catch on the suitcase under the desk, tucked almost completely out of sight.
It's probably empty, Violet thinks, even as she turns back, kneels down, drags it closer. It's not heavy, but she can hear something shift inside. Like the door, it isn't locked; it's just an ordinary suitcase in a plain, faded brown, fastened both with clasps and leather buckles. She undoes both with her heart in her mouth before gingerly flipping the lid.
The only thing inside is a book of some kind, but not bound in the traditional sense - the two-hundred-or-so pages are held together by a faded red ribbon, and nothing else. The edges are wrinkled and tattered with age, yellowing just slightly in the creases and curling at the corners, and there are curious splotches here and there, staining the paper and smudging the ink - tear stains, she notes with surprise.
But the thing about it, the thing that nearly stops her heart, is that it's handwritten, and the flowing, dramatic scrawl belongs to her mother. She'd recognize it even in the dark.
My Dearest Darling, it begins, the spaces between the words looped with enormous, curling hearts that flow so naturally with her script they appear to have been drawn almost absently, as though the words themselves weren't intimate enough, couldn't contain the depth of the emotion her mother had been trying to convey.
And they are intimate, Violet realizes as she skims down the page, only comprehending about every other word in her shock - but what little she does pick up paints a vivid, completely undeniable picture.
Mother was in love with Lemony Snicket.
The thought drives the breath from her lungs. A series of memories spring to mind, then: Lemony weeping in the garden, the way Olivia couldn't meet their eyes when she carefully talked around the subject of who he was mourning, the way her mother had looked the one and only time Violet had ever heard her say his name.
The way he'd looked at her, the very first time she'd met him behind the greenhouse, the way the sight of her had seemed to cause him physical pain.
Stars, Violet thinks, and nothing else. Stars.
Violet has always known, has always been told, how very much she looks like her mother, but it's never seemed more poignant than it does now.
That's why he watches me, she thinks, instantly feeling more foolish than she ever has in her life. Because I look like someone he loved.
But… when had he loved her? And why had they separated? Her mother had clearly adored Lemony, a thought which makes her mildly uncomfortable, so why hadn't it lasted? Was it something to do with Violet's father? And where does he fit into all of this? Her mother had talked about her father with this same language, or similar, more than once - her parents had used to make a game of making their children gag at the breakfast table over their exaggerated but sincere affection for one other.
Violet frowns, shaking her head - the sheer number of questions flying at her is starting to give her a headache. Suspicion returns the second she looks back up at the papers lining the walls - her mother's love doesn't explain the research, or who he's writing to, or to what end. That is still very much the most important question on the table; the… letter? Book? in her hands will have to be set on the backburner until it gets answered.
She shifts, about to rise, when something slips between the papers in her hands to land on her lap.
Upon first glance, it appears to be a simple square of white paper, with the words Violet loves your cat! written at the top in her mother's handwriting. Frowning, she flips it over, only to blink in shock when she sees her own baby picture staring back at her.
In it, she's wearing a simple white dress with a yellow sweater that was later passed down to Sunny, and holding a stuffed black cat she remembers very well. It had been a raggedy old thing, even back then, but Violet had loved it more than any other toy, even the mechanical ones she was more prone to dissecting than actually playing with. She'd named it Hedy, after one of her favorite female inventors, and had slept with it every night for years.
She'd taken to keeping it in a place of prominence on her dresser as she grew older, unable to pass it along to Klaus or Sunny, wanting to retain that piece of her childhood for as long as she could.
It had burned, of course, along with everything else she'd ever owned or loved, and she's stunned to realize how much she misses it, of all things. It takes her long moments to blink away the sting of tears from her eyes.
She tries to focus. Lemony had given her the cat? And the note says "your cat"... had he given her his own childhood toy? Why on earth would he have done a thing like that?
She tries to order the facts she's discovered so far. One: Lemony and her mother had, at one point, been very deeply in love. Two: something had made them split up. Three: Lemony had given her a toy that had probably been very precious to him, since based on what Jacques says, the Snickets hadn't retained much more from their childhoods than she herself had.
It all adds up to… nothing. At least, nothing she can see. She needs more data before she can come up with a coherent hypothesis.
Violet looks down at the letter, then at the door, then the letter again.
I came up here for answers, she reminds herself. This could be the only way to get them.
She swallows, and starts to read.
It's not an easy task, working her way through the pages in her hands. For one thing, the letter is dripping, running over with the kind of soul-deep, passionate love Violet has only read about in stories almost too dramatic to be taken seriously, which is unsettling, because she knows her parents had loved each other too. But this, this thing that had once connected Lemony Snicket and her mother… this is something else. Not better, maybe, but definitely just… more.
For another thing, in-between the declarations of love and the laments about why they can't marry - something she has yet to actually parse out a clear answer for twenty-two pages in - there are entire paragraphs so bulky and out of place they can only be in code, and she hasn't spent near the amount of time in the cryptography section of The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations as Klaus has. The only cipher she can clearly identify and understand here is Sebald Code, and she only recognizes that much because she and Isadora have spent several afternoons trying to figure out how to work it into poetry for fun.
It's arguably the simplest of the VFD codes - all a person has to do is look for the mention of the ringing of a bell, and then note the first word after that, and then count off ten more words until they reach the eleventh, which is the next word in the code. This pattern continues until the word "ring" is mentioned again, signaling the end of the secret message.
She tries to decipher as she goes, which makes the entire task take longer, but she can't quite bring herself to stop. She knows she ought to make her way back to her room before Olivia realizes she's missing, but this, what's here in her hands, it's a piece of her mother, something she'd once touched and labored over with her own hands. The handwriting, the ink, the papers, the words, even the ribbon - they all came from her mother. If she closes her eyes and breathes deeply, she thinks she can even catch a strain of her perfume, still lingering after all this time.
It makes her want to cry again, but the feeling is familiar by now and so is swallowing it down.
She presses on. The codes are mostly warnings: beware of O, we are being watched, can we trust G, the eagles are circling. Threats long since dealt with or expired or carried out.
But nowhere, either in or out of code, does her mother ever give a clear answer as to why she is ending her tension-filled relationship with Lemony Snicket - nothing is explicitly stated except the same line, over and over again: we can't, we can't, we can't.
I want to, but we can't.
I promised, but we can't.
I love you, but we can't.
Violet has no idea how long she spends pouring over her mother's words, ignoring the passage of time and the shift of the sun in the windows or the hunger in her stomach or the ache in her body from sitting in the same position for so long, desperate as she is for answers, answers, answers.
On the one-hundred-and-eighty-sixth page, she encounters the seventeenth instance of Sebald Code so far, and rifles through what few blank papers she's been able to liberate from Lemony's desk to make notes on. She's already filled them all up with translations - she could kick herself for not bringing her commonplace book along with her, which she mostly uses these days for notes on her experiments. Frowning, she picks up the fountain pen and decides to just write on her forearm instead.
But this code is different from all the other codes, because the first word in the line is her own name.
She blinks, double checks, goes over her other notes to make sure she's been doing it right this whole time, triple checks. But no, she's right - Violet is the first word in the code. Her hand trembles strangely when she goes to write it down on her arm, starting at the top of her wrist in case it's a long message. She sort of hopes it isn't, considering.
Violet.
She counts off ten words and stops at the eleventh, as usual.
Is.
Another ten words.
Your.
Violet freezes, her breath caught in her chest, her blood chilling, the pen poised over the skin of her wrist.
It comes to her then that she doesn't have to keep going. She can leave, right now. She can stuff the pages of this letter back in that suitcase and flee the room and pretend she never saw it, and no one will ever be the wiser. She doesn't have to do this. She doesn't have to finish the code.
She can just… stop.
We would have named you Lemony, Mother had said. But why would she have wanted to name her child after an ex-romantic partner when she was married to another man, and why would she not have named Klaus that when he was born, unless -
Violet counts off ten more words. Lets out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Counts them off again. Restarts at the beginning of the paragraph, counts again. Four times. Six. Ten.
The last word does not change. The code remains exactly the same no matter how many times she counts, no matter which way she looks at it, no matter how much she wants it very much to not say what it says.
Violet is your -
"Shouldn't you be in school?"
Moving with a speed only someone accustomed to being ambushed can possess, Violet leaps to her feet and whips around in the same movement, heart both in her throat and in her stomach at once, braced back against the desk.
Lemony Snicket stands in the doorway, watching her with an expression that Violet couldn't name if she had a hundred years to work it out. It's not sadness, or anger, or confusion, or pain. It's all of them at once and none of them at all, and stars, he's going to kill her or she's going to be sick or the world is going to end.
He was supposed to be gone all day. It's the only coherent thought that makes it through the sheer, pulsing panic in her skull. It's followed swiftly by: Why did he come back early? And again: He's going to kill me.
She tries to say something, to make an excuse, to demand an explanation, maybe just to open her mouth and scream, but nothing happens. The room tilts oddly, and her arms have gone numb to the elbows. She's still holding the letter.
Lemony's eyes are briefly fixated on it, like he'd very much like to snatch it away from her, but then his gaze shifts to her face and his eyes go wide, like he's startled by whatever he sees there. He blinks several times, opening and closing his mouth like a fish, before settling into something like resignation. His shoulders drop from their previous tense position, and he seems to fold in on himself, no easy feat for a man as tall as he is.
Then, very slowly, he raises his hands and spreads them out by his sides, keeping them clearly in her line of sight. And then he carefully and deliberately moves away from the door and keeps moving until he's past the fireplace, far away from her and well clear of the only exit in the room.
It takes her long, stupid seconds to realize he's giving her space to flee.
Trap-trap, trap-trap, trap-trap. The rhythm of her heartbeat changes, alters to something so hard and quick it's almost painful. He's a Snicket, he's clever, he's going to lunge for her the second she bolts, he's going to kill her, stars, he's her -
"It's alright, Violet," he says, very softly. The expression on his face is so incredibly sad she thinks he might start weeping on the spot.
It's too much to bear, all at once. She takes her chances and sprints for the door, moving faster than she ever has in her life. She's out of the room and down the hall in what feels like milliseconds, not even sure where she's running to besides away, away, away. Lemony makes no move to chase her, and she doesn't hear him following - she doesn't stop to wonder why.
She runs directly into Jacques as he's coming out of the library, colliding with him so hard it almost knocks her to the ground. Her mother's letter goes flying from her hands in a dramatic rustle of paper.
Jacques catches her by the shoulders in an instant, steadies her seemingly on reflex. "Violet, what on earth - ?"
He takes a second to look at her, then, and his eyes go grave with concern as he reaches up to feel her forehead. "You're white as a ghost," he says. "What are you doing out of bed? Olivia said you were ill."
Violet jerks away from his touch, finding her voice in a hot rush of anger. "Did you know?" It comes out in some kind of strangled half-yell, and Jacques blinks at her in surprise. She's never raised her voice to him or anyone else in this house before.
Olivia pokes her head out of the library at the sound, and her eyes go wide when she sees Violet. "Sweetheart, what's wrong?"
"Did you know?" Violet repeats, unsure why she's unable to elaborate, to say anything else. Her ears ring strangely, and the numbness in her arms has spread nearly to her shoulders, now.
Olivia's brow furrows for only a moment, but then something seems to connect in her head, and her face drains of all color so quickly Violet almost thinks she's going to swoon. Instead, she locks eyes with Jacques, whose shoulders have gone so stiff it looks almost painful, and Violet has her answer.
"You did," Violet says, almost unable to breathe beneath the weight of the realization, "you knew he was my - that I was his -" She can't complete the sentence, can't force the words over her tongue.
"Violet," Olivia tries softly, taking a half-step towards her as though afraid she might spook. Her eyes are filled with tears. "Violet, sweetheart, please listen -"
"You knew," Violet says again, backing away, and she thinks her voice might be getting louder but she's not sure, "you knew, and you never said a word."
"Violet -" Jacques tries, but no, no, she doesn't want to hear it, doesn't want him to explain.
"You're just like everybody else," she says, and watches the words hit home, watches them both flinch as though she'd struck them. And then she turns and flees in the other direction, ignoring the calls of her guardians and Lemony standing in his doorway and everything but the urge to just run and run and run.
She bolts down the stairwell to the Quagmires' hallway and keeps going until she reaches the common room, the steps to the first floor, the kitchen, the backyard. Her feet carry her as though they're moving on autopilot all the way into the greenhouse, where she slams and locks the door and finally stops moving, only to sink down to the floor to bury her face in her knees.
It's then, and only then, that she allows herself to cry.
A/N: Here it is, folks! The long-awaited sequel to We Built Our Own House! There will be one more chapter after this, so stay tuned! I really hope you enjoy!
Special thanks to lady-stormbraver for her amazing beta skills! You are my sunshine!
Don't forget to leave a review!
Sincerely,
Starcrier.
