***Author's note: Thanks to Galatea1685 for your interest in my writing. Support from readers is my motivation to continue to write.
"Quasimodo. Can you hear me?"
The red-haired boy turned around quickly at the familiar voice. "Master?"
"Quasimodo, I need your help."
"Anything, Master," he replied in a well-rehearsed tone. Out of necessity, he had perfected the art of hiding any tiredness or resentment in his tone, regardless of how he felt. Master tolerated nothing less than prompt and blind obedience.
Then, reality sunk in. "Wait, aren't you dead? Am…am I dreaming about you bossing me around? Maybe I should pinch myself."
"No!" Claude shouted quickly. "Don't you d—I mean please!" Claude was still having a difficult time adjusting to the fact that he couldn't threaten anyone anymore. Yet another thing he did not like about being dead. Having a palace full of soldiers had been very useful.
"This is a weird dream," Quasimodo said. "You never say 'please'. I think I ate some bad food last night and now it's affecting me."
"Being dead has been quite the adjustment," Claude admitted readily. "I'm not good at it," he heard himself add. "YET!" he corrected himself hastily. Ugh, he hated the whole business of blurting out whatever was on his mind. He really needed to learn how to control that. The afterlife was so embarrassing.
"I like your new personality, Master," Quasi added generously, smiling brightly. "You are not so scary now."
Ugh. This conversation just kept getting worse. Better get it finished with as quickly as possible. "Esmeralda is in trouble!" he blurted out.
"WHAT?" Quasimodo shouted.
Suddenly, Claude's entire perspective shifted. It was like putting a jar over a candle: first the flame is burning, then it is gone. He faded rapidly into the shadows, realizing the problem immediately: Quasi had shouted in his sleep and woken himself up.
Quasi was now staring, glassy eyed, around the darkened room. "I must have been dreaming," he said to no one. "I wonder if it's about time to wake up yet?" He sat up.
Crap, crap, crap. This was not going well at all. First he had been given the news about E's imprisonment from the angel, and now Quasi was awake and they couldn't talk.
Could he get Quasi back to sleep? It was worth a try. Remembering the earlier pitchfork incident, Claude reached out to the blankets to try to smooth them down. If idiot blonde could interact with the physical world, then genius evil mastermind could surely learn.
But it wasn't simple. Claude's initial mistake was to try to reach to the blankets as if he had hands, which he didn't. Not being one to give up easily (or at all), he tried to pull his entire consciousness towards the blanket itself, feeling for its four corners, the raveled stitching around the edges, the little tear towards the top where it had caught on a nail at one point…
Suddenly he wondered why he appeared to be laying flat on the floor. Trying to look to one side gave him a strange feeling of sliding across the floor, but tangling around some large object…
When suddenly it dawned on him. He had successfully possessed the blanket.
He could feel Quasi trying to push the blankets off to get up. Claude gently pushed back. Quasi seemed to protest a little at first, but soon gave up and crumpled back to the floor. "Blankets…so…heavy…" he murmured sleepily.
Minutes later, Quasi had fallen back asleep. Claude continued his request.
"Esmeralda is being held in the dungeons of the Palace of Justice. You'll need the keys. I kept them in the middle drawer of—oh." Claude remembered that the entire place had been ransacked. "Actually, I have no idea where the keys are."
"What?" Quasi said, stirring in his sleep.
"Can you pick a lock?"
"Whaaaaaaaa…" Quasi rolled over, rubbed his eyes, and got up. "Was I dreaming? Something about…Master asking me if I could pick locks…that makes no sense." He yawned.
"DO SOMETHING, YOU IGNORANT DOLT!" the ghost shouted. Of course, no one heard him.
"Wait…is Esmeralda in trouble?" Quasi's huge hands clenched into fists. "I'M COMING TO RESCUE YOU!" he shouted, barreling down the belltower staircase.
Thankfully, most of Paris was asleep when the pajama-clad deformed boy was running through the streets. Otherwise, he would have definitely attracted unwanted attention. But Claude had scarcely given this a second thought. As he had floated through the cathedral, he had realized that there was another task to finish…
*0*0*0*0*0*
Quasimodo did not need any key; he ripped the prison door from its hinges. His next move was to smash into the stables and get Snowball to carry them back to the Court of Miracles. Clopin and Gudule Troulliefou were sobbing in relief; Es was too weak to show much emotion. Gudule managed to convince her to drink some soup, after which she insisted that she needed to sleep and didn't allow her mother to start peppering her with questions.
She knew that the conversation would quickly turn towards her baby, and she still had no idea how to tactfully explain the identity of the child's father. Gudule probably would not be too excited to learn that he was the same man who had extorted her for free labor for nearly 20 years.
For that matter, it bothered Esmeralda herself. She hadn't known about the labor camps when she married him. All she knew was that the Minister of Justice was an intelligent man who had escaped from an abusive childhood, and risen to aristocracy through his own determination and cunning. He had barricaded himself, put up walls within his mind and heart to protect him from the pain he had known all too well.
His true personality had been so different from the cold, hard mask he wore in public. The city may have known him as a cruel man, but they never watched him combing his wife's hair and deliberately pulling it down over her face to make her laugh. The city didn't see him massaging her delicate little feet. They never got to sit up in the belltower when he read to Quasimodo. (Their loss. His voice was amazing. Somehow, he never got through more than a few paragraphs without Es crawling over to curl up in his lap, listening to him softly drone on and on…)
Of course she had loved him! But now that she had learned what he had done, she felt like some filthy traitor. It wasn't fair! Maybe she should have stayed with Phoebus. He wasn't such a bad person. She could have her perfect married life with a little house and a white picket fence with a gaggle of little blonde kiddos running around.
Es was sick and tired of the drama in her life. At least when she was asleep she didn't have to deal with it. Deliberately blocking out any thoughts, she pulled her blanket up to her neck and closed her eyes.
