"Why on earth do we even let that parasite into our home?" Break lamented. "Most people kill rats when they see them in their home, not give them a cup of tea and ask them to stay a while."
"Xerx," Sharon scolded from her spot next to my bed, "Vincent is a member of Pandora just as much as you or I. I know he's unsettling, and I know you dislike him, but we must behave like civilized people."
"You don't like him either, Milady," Break pointed out.
"Does anybody?" I managed to ask, genuinely curious.
Break looked at me a moment, then he laughed.
"Oh, goodness, Red Riding Hood," he chuckled. "That's a very good question."
"Why did he come in here, anyway? Gilbert's not here, and he didn't specify any reason to me," Sharon wondered aloud.
"He wanted to scare poor little Helen to death," Break told her. "I didn't see that he had much of a good reason."
Sharon scoffed disdainfully, giving my hand a comforting squeeze. I momentarily forgot Vincent's unsettling comment.
"I believe we should keep a closer eye on him," Break suggested. "It seems he's trying to cause us trouble. I don't like the way he's been acting."
"Break, we don't have grounds for putting him on probation," Sharon told him with a sigh. "It'll look like one of your biases, and I can't say with certainty that it's not."
Break sighed in return.
"I know you're right, Milady," he told her begrudgingly. "But Vincent - " he spat the name with malice, " - is a rat. No good will come of him."
In light of what had just transpired, I was inclined to agree with him. At the same time, however, I couldn't help but see Sharon's point.
"He said he wanted to get a look at me..." I mentioned awkwardly.
Break rolled his eye.
"Nothing that man does makes any sense."
"So...none of that was even official business?"
So why did I have to deal with it?
"Goodness, no. It was just a pest wasting everyone's time."
I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid making that horrible teeth-clattering noise.
"But...no offense to you, of course, Helen; what would he be interested in Helen for?"
"Oh, it had something to do with her contract; blah blah blah. I couldn't bother to listen to most of his rubbish."
Sharon sighed.
"Well, Helen...I suppose you ought to get used to this attention. It is pretty odd that the Wolf finally chose someone o contract with, so I really should have seen this coming."
The Wolf's eerie chants reverbrated in my head at her statement, and I shuddered.
"Just what sort of person does it usually contract with?" I thought to ask. though I dreaded the answer.
Sharon blinked, turning to Break for help in answering me. To my chagrin, all the old man did was shrug and give me a vague answer.
"It's only ever had one contract that we know of. What was his name...? Ah, I believe it was a boy called Connor Faire."
I paused a moment before asking tentatively, "What happened to him...?"
"Oh, my, let me see if I remember...he couldn't control the thing, it seemed. For a long while there, people would say 'if you hear the Faire boy scream, you'll soon be screaming, too'. That Wolf devoured so many citizens that even Pandora - or, whatever passed for it in those days - was fearful of going anywhere in the vicinity of it or its contractor. After it had its fill of innocents, it turned on poor little Connor and swallowed him whole before the seal had even made a full revolution."
I was pale, I knew, paler than usual. My blood turned cold at the story's horrific conclusion, and my teeth began clattering together in spite of my best efforts.
God, am I going to follow in that boy's footsteps...?
"Don't faint now, Red Riding Hood. There's a possibility that it was a fluke, or that it merely happened because he was an illegal contractor."
Break leaned forward and tugged on the chain around my neck until the pendant seal was out in plain sight. He rested it in his palm and showed it to me.
"This here? This is what keeps all of us from becoming another horror story."
Sharon gave Break a brief, sad glance, but I didn't think to question it. Perhaps it had to do with how his own legal contract was deteriorating his condition.
At any rate, it wasn't my business.
"Alright, break..." I replied hesitantly, though I wasn't all that convinced that I wouldn't become another horror story. "I understand."
He smiled and let the pendant fall back on my chest, where I tucked it into my bodice once more.
"Right. So, don't wonder too hard about that story. My guess is you'll merely die from having too much strain placed on your body."
Because it's so much cheerier to think my chain will kill me in another way.
"In the meantime, get some rest. Who knows what could happen to someone in your condition if they stress themselves?"
I nodded in agreement and willed myself to lay back down. Part of me wanted to ask Sharon or even just Break to stay with me so I wouldn't have to face the Abyss alone. But, I knew they had work to do. They had lives to get back to that they couldn't place on hold just because the new little servant girl was scared. They couldn't babysit me all the time. So, I had to make do with the final hand squeeze Sharon gave me before they left me to sleep.