Introduction courtesy of Mr. Poe; God rest his rum-soaked soul.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of—

"Edward. Pssst."

The inquisitive freckled face of a thirteen-year-old boy appeared quite suddenly around the door jamb of the comfortably cluttered old study. Normally the effect of a disembodied head materializing out of thin air might give one a bad start, but the young lad within the room, one Edward Gracey, was too engrossed in the thick tome balanced across his knees to notice.

"What, Asa?" he replied automatically as he flicked another page.

Asa uttered a deep snort of disapproval as he sauntered into the room and flopped down beside his friend on the dusty red chaise. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have dared so much as lay a toe upon the fabulous parquet flooring in the elder Gracey's private study, for fear of catching it from the austere Master—or worse, his infinitely scarier shadow, Ramsley the butler. After all, the children of servants had no business traipsing about the Manor with impunity, something he was reminded of on a near-daily basis. Often whilst having something flat and wooden applied forcefully to the seat of his pants.

But Edward could have cared less about all that, and seeing as how his father seldom let him out of the house, and how Asa and the other servants' children were more or less his only friends—Asa personally felt he deserved a little leeway when it came to the rules.

"Studying again, Edward? I thought your lessons were over by now. I could've sworn I saw the creaky old geezer head downstairs." That was another thing. The butler would've tanned his hide for having the gall to address Edward by his first name, when it was Young Master Gracey, if you please. He'd called him that maybe twice before Edward had begged him to stop—out of Ramsley's earshot, of course.

"He did. And it's not an assignment. It's Poe." Edward's deep brown eyes flickered broodingly across the page, as he tugged self-consciously at his green silk cravat with the hand not gripping the book. Asa looked down at his own simple, coarse shirt and plain trousers, ripped at the knee from tree-climbing, and thought with a grin that Ramsley would sooner drop dead before allowing the Young Master to dress like that. Edward was always dressed for the most proper of occasions, although his morning lessons were about the most proper event of his day. So utterly pointless. It wasn't as if anyone was going to see him, as he never went anywhere.

Though Asa was determined to change that, at least for today.

"Who's that?" he asked, feigning interest in the interest of getting Edward off the chaise. Asa, being only partially literate and possessed of a short attention span, had little respect for the printed word. As far as he was concerned, Edward spent entirely too much time reading and not nearly enough getting into trouble.

"Edgar Allan Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher." Edward nodded toward the book, a thick fringe of dark hair falling across his forehead with the gesture. "It's fascinating…" His normally soft voice trailed off to a whisper as his attention refocused itself on the page.

"But not so fascinating you couldn't put it down for a couple of hours, right?"

Edward pushed his hair back out of his eyes and peered curiously at Asa. Success! "What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly suspicious. "Look, the last time I let you 'investigate' the mausoleum you almost—"

"No, this is better." Asa brushed off the mausoleum incident with a casual flick of his wrist. "There's a traveling circus at the edge of town—Phin and I watched them set up this morning—and—"

"And you think it'd be fun to go poke the tigers with sticks."

"No, but thanks for the idea. No, it's Ezra's day off, and he said he'd take us up there. All of us. Of course, that means Prudence is going to be there, seeing as she's his daughter and all, but I figure we can lose her in the—"

"You know I can't go, Asa," Edward said quietly as he looked back down at his book, regret weighing down his voice like a pile of bricks. "My father and Ramsley would never allow it."

"Which is why you don't tell them you're going!" Clearly, Asa thought, his bad influence on Edward was not working as quickly as it should.

"You know it's not that simple." Edward, having finally extracted himself from the dreadful fate of Usher, marked his place in the book with a ribbon and sighed with a world-weariness that no fourteen-year-old boy should possess. "Even if I did manage to slip past Ramsley, he'd realize I was gone soon enough, and then I'd be in all sorts of trouble once I—"

"Look at it this way, Edward," Asa broke in, eagerly taking in the conflict in Edward's eyes. It was almost as if he could see the proverbial cherub and devil perched on his friend's shoulders, whispering frantically into each ear. "The worst Ramsley can do to you is turn you in to your father. The worst your father can do is send you away to some boarding school in Boston—"

"Milton," supplanted Edward, his eyes downcast as he slumped further into the couch. Asa grinned. One more nudge of the pitchfork…

"—and seeing as how your train fare's already paid for, you've got nothing left to lose." Asa leaned forward, hands on his patched knees. "Come on, Edward. Would it kill you to forget about being Proper Young Master Gracey for one afternoon?"

Edward's gaze glazed over as it fixed on one of the marble busts placed in conspicuous niches around the room. Asa hated those scowling stone heads, whose blank eyes always seemed to be following you around the room, and which he tried to avoid looking at at all costs. It was a harder feat in the study, where you couldn't turn around without knocking one over. The Master must have gotten a twelve-for-one deal when he picked them up in Britain.

They held no horror for Edward, having grown up around the things; but knowing what he did of the young master's early childhood, Asa often wondered if anything could anymore. Not that he would ever dare to broach the subject. Goading Edward into breaking the rules and addressing him like a fellow commoner was one thing. Entirely acceptable behavior. But bringing up the matter of his mother and siblings and that crazy business with the gypsy—that was taboo, plain and simple.

Suddenly, Edward's eyes snapped back into focus and he stood up so fast that Asa nearly fell off the chaise. "You're right," he said firmly, newfound conviction in his voice. "Let's go."

Asa grinned again and scrambled after his friend. Maybe the creepy heads were good for something after all.