9:15 - 2 hours, 9 minutes until the explosion
The door swung shut behind Marisa, and closed with a loud thump. Patchouli jolted awake, with her face pressed against the table.
This part, at least, was normal.
She blindly groped for her coffee cup, and lifting it up, she found it empty.
This part was not normal.
Patchouli sat up and, after straightening her hat, looked around. A few slanted beams of moonlight from above illuminated motes of dust in the air. It was either very early in the morning or very late in the evening, and she couldn't be sure which.
But never, in all of her years spent in the mansion, had Patchouli's coffee mug been empty when she was studying. It went beyond an unspoken agreement between herself and Sakuya: It was basically a law of nature. To find it empty, was... it was simply unthinkable, that's what it was.
"Ko..." Patchouli coughed. Her throat was dry. This was what happened when her mug was empty, dammit. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Koakuma!"
"Coming!" The voice came from deep, deep in the stacks. When the tiny demon finally arrived, the shout was still echoing through the cavernous library. She landed alongside the magician and bowed. "What do you need, Lady Patchouli?"
"Sakuya. Has she been in here recently?"
"Um. No, I don't think so."
One of the (many) benefits of having a maid who could stop time was that Sakuya had usually been everywhere recently, to everybody else's perception. Patchouli had done the math once, estimating the maid's walking and cleaning rates, timing the frequency of her visits to refill drinks, and comparing the rate of dust accumulation against the average depth of dust on the shelves. Her results suggested that Sakuya experienced five or six subjective days, at least, for every one that actually passed.
It certainly raised some interesting questions, but right now, the pressing one was why her mug was empty.
"Right." With a bit of a grumble, Patchouli pushed herself to standing. "I'm going to get coffee."
9:20 - 2 hours, 4 minutes until the explosion
Patchouli hadn't set foot outside of the library in... two or three weeks, something like that, but it was still immediately clear that something was wrong in the rest of the mansion. Some of the candles had been snuffed out, leaving deep shadows across the hallway. The fairy maids, normally lazy under the best of circumstances, were slacking off even more pointedly than usual. Two of them were fencing in the hall with feather dusters, and Patchouli gave them a wide berth. When a different crowd of fairies ran past, apparently playing tag, she grabbed one of them by the wing. The fairy skidded to a stop with a squeak.
"Do you know where Sakuya is?"
"Ummmmmm." The fairy looked around the immediate area, then shrugged. "She left!"
"Do you know where she went?"
"Nope."
"The head maid is gone!" A passing fairy maid, with a saucepan on her head like a helmet, added loudly.
"... thank you." Patchouli released the fairy, who, after a slightly confused look, ran off just in time to avoid getting tagged. The fairy was probably telling the truth, she decided. Most of them were a bit more obvious when they lied, and the ones who lasted for any amount of time were usually terrified enough of Sakuya to keep tabs on the head maid's movements. If the fairy said Sakuya was gone, she was gone, and without leaving a message. Suspicious. Very suspicious.
9:35 - 1 hour, 49 minutes until the explosion
By the time Patchouli arrived in the kitchen, she was out of breath. The mansion was big, and her asthma didn't make it a pleasant walk. It was the first time she'd been in the room in months, but she had plenty of time to remind herself of the layout while she caught her breath.
Once she could move again, Patchouli opened the pantry and began her hunt. It didn't take long—since she didn't technically need to eat, and the sisters' diet wasn't primarily things one would traditionally call food, the house didn't keep a wide variety of food on hand. Soon enough, she found a canister of roasted coffee beans and carried it out into the kitchen.
Coffee. Right. Coffee. Patchouli had made coffee before, but it had been a few decades. She was certain that the library had a book that would tell her everything she needed to know, but this was an emergency. She'd just have to figure it out as she went. Besides, she remembered the basics: Grind up beans, put in water, boil.
First: Grind the beans. There was a coffee mill on the counter. Measuring a scoop of beans into it was easy enough, but milling it... Patchouli looked around. Darn. No fairy maids for her to commandeer. She'd just have to do it herself.
Patchouli grabbed the handle and started to crank the mill. This was not helping her asthma. Soon enough, she was gripping it with both hands, putting her entire body into each turn of the crank. She had to stop and wheeze a few times after every few cycles, and her face turned red with exertion, but she kept at it until the coffee was ground.
Next: Mix the ground coffee with water. Well. next-ish. First, Patchouli had to lean against the counter and fan herself until she cooled down again. It was another opportunity to figure out how to do this. There was an item on the counter next to the coffee mill, some sort of pitcher that contained a screen on a moveable pole that extended through the lid. A french press, she remembered, from the depths of some book she'd read long ago.
... not that she knew how to use it. It looked like a surprisingly advanced... apparatus for what she had assumed was a fairly simple procedure. Patchouli turned the device over in her hands and inspected it. Analyzed it. The mesh on the end of the pole was fine. A filter.
Ah. She'd separated enough precipitates from alchemical reactions to figure out the rest. The mesh was to strain the solid coffee from the resulting drink. It seemed surprisingly useful. She might have to acquire one for her lab work later.
Right now, though, she still had coffee to make.
Patchouli separated the plunger from the lid and pushed it all the way down into the empty pitcher, then dumped a few scoops of the freshly-powdered coffee in. All that was left was hot water.
She eyed the stove. But, no. Patchouli Knowledge, the Great Unmoving Library, the Girl of Knowledge and Shade, wasn't going to fiddle with some appliance to boil water. Even the lowliest of magicians had to have standards. After filling the pitcher, she gestured at it with both hands. A simple fire spell made a magic circle briefly appear, centered on the pitcher, and a cloud of steam exploded out of the top.
When the steam cleared, it was obvious that about a third of the water had boiled off in an instant, but it would do. Patchouli wasn't sure how long coffee was supposed to steep, so she stared at it impatiently until she felt herself starting to drift back to sleep. Right, however long that had been would have to suffice. She pulled the plunger back up, and the screen dredged most of the coffee powder out of the drink. After dumping the sludge into the trash, Patchouli filled her mug and took a cautious sip.
It was terrible.
The coffee was incredibly strong, pitch black and acrid. A fine silt of coffee powder had slipped around the filter, and it stuck to her tongue after she swallowed. But it was still coffee.
Even before the caffeine hit her bloodstream, the terrible taste jolted her awake, and as she choked the coffee down, she considered her situation. Before she could come up with a plan of action, she was interrupted by Remilia's voice behind her. "Good evening, Patchy."
Remilia stepped past her and started opening the cupboards one at a time, but Patchouli could tell that something was very wrong. The vampire's hair was sticking out in a frizzy cloud in every direction, and her stockings were uneven, with one pulled all the way up and the other bunched up around a knee. Her hat was on sideways.
Patchouli watched in disbelief as Remilia pulled a teacup out of the cabinet and filled it with water. "Remi. Where is Sakuya?"
"Hmm? Is she gone? I hadn't noticed." Remilia grabbed a canister of loose tea and, after a brief struggle, pried the top off. A cloud of it floated in the air, and the vampire grimaced as she forced herself not to sneeze.
"Koakuma hasn't seen her, and she didn't leave a note. I had no coffee when I woke up." Patchouli said this with all the grave seriousness that it obviously entailed.
"Well, we'll just have to make do, won't we?" Remilia opened a teapot, then carefully tilted the entire canister until a small pile of tea spilled out. About half of it went into the pot, and the rest scattered on the counter. After looking at the thing thoughtfully, she poured the water from her cup into the pot.
This was strange enough for Patchouli to momentarily forget about her emergency. "What are you doing?"
"Making tea, of course. One second, I need a little blood." Remilia descended into the wine cellar. Patchouli took another sip of her coffee. It wasn't so bad, now that she was getting used to the taste. Below, she could hear bottles clanking for a good five or six minutes until Remilia returned, bottle in hand. "Ah, Italian, 1928. A fine year."
"I wouldn't know."
Remilia tilted the bottle back and squinted at the cork plugging its neck. After a firm push of her finger failed to budge it, she started shaking the bottle, to no avail. Patchouli could see that she was going to be waiting a while if she wanted Remilia's full attention, so she just sipped her coffee and watched patiently. Only when Remilia summoned up a spear of scarlet energy in her hand and eyed the bottle did she say, "You need a corkscrew."
"... o-of course I do!" Remilia chuckled weakly and dismissed the bolt of destructive energy. A brief hunt produced one, and she wrestled the bottle again as she tried to drive it in.
"Do you need help? I don't think that you—"
"No, Patchy, I'm fine." Remilia finally tugged the cork free with a loud pop, splashing a little blood on the front of her dress. "What could be simpler than making tea?"
Siiiip. Patchouli watched over the edge of the mug as Remilia poured a simply startling amount of blood into the teapot. Afterward, she topped it up with water and sat it on the stove, then looked at the thing in obvious confusion. Patchouli took pity on her again. "I can boil it if you'd like."
"Well. If it's not too much trouble."
Still sipping her coffee, Patchouli gestured at the pot with her free hand, sending the mixture of blood, tea, and water instantly boiling. She used a gentler touch than she had with her drink, but steam still blasted out with enough force to rattle the pot.
It was immediately clear from the smell that something was wrong. Even Remilia cringed. After it had had a few seconds to calm down, Remilia tilted the teapot above the cup, but it was a few seconds until anything came out. Whatever it was, it wasn't tea. It was reddish-brown and nearly gelatinous, for one, and strewn with darker clots.
Remilia looked at the drink with growing apprehension, then upended the contents into the sink, filled a different cup with blood straight from the bottle, and took a sip.
"... are you going to tell me where Sakuya is?"
"Hmm?" Patchouli had to hand it to Remilia—she was doing a remarkable job at pretending that the past five minutes hadn't happened. "Oh, Sakuya? She's on vacation tonight."
"I didn't know she got those."
"Apparently I agreed to give her one evening off per decade." Remilia drained the rest of her cup in one go, then slammed it on the countertop. "But I didn't expect her to actually take it!"
"So we are without a maid for a day."
"Yes."
"What about Meiling? I'm sure that she could—"
"No." Remilia had been struggling to hide her frustration earlier, but now a scheming grin returned to her face. "I'll do all of this alone. When she gets back and sees that I can take care of myself just fine, then maybe she'll remember that it's a privilege to be a servant to a noble creature of the night."
Patchouli had heard koans that were easier to wrap her mind around than Remilia's logic, but she knew better than to try talking her friend out of this. ... she also knew better than to be nearby to see the results, especially since Remilia was already eyeing the teapot again. Patchouli managed to bow out of the conversation just as Remilia started rinsing the red goo out of the pot to try again, then shuffled back to the relative safety of the library, with her pitcher of coffee in one hand and mug in the other.
9:49 - 1 hour 35 minutes until the explosion
Remilia was not having a good day. After Sakuya had left, she'd tried to take a nap, but without much luck. Afterward, she'd had to re-dress herself, like a commoner, spent an hour trying to keep herself entertained, and now...
... now, on her second attempt, she'd almost made something that could pass as a cup of tea. There was both blood and tea splashed on her shirt, a red-brown smear of the mixture across the countertop, three cups with blood drying on them in the sink, and if she was being honest with herself, it was still nowhere near as good as when Sakuya made it. It was a little... strong. And cautiously light on the blood. And some of it had boiled out of the pot onto the stovetop. But it was still tea, kind of.
Remilia took a sip of the... beverage... as she triumphantly left the kitchen. She still had over two hours to kill until Sakuya returned, and wasn't sure how to go about it. Honestly, most of her hobbies, such as they were, involved the maid somehow. She could visit Patchouli, but she didn't want to look needy. If she wanted her companionship, the appropriate thing to do would be to send a servant to ask Patchouli to tea, but that obviously wasn't an option now. For multiple reasons.
Remilia strolled as she weighed her options, and barely ten meters out of the kitchen, she tripped over a discarded fairy maid uniform. The vampire stumbled a few steps forward, nearly spilling her tea, and her already-crooked hat slumped down over her eyes. Grumpily, she pushed it back up, then turned around and kicked the uniform against the wall.
That was one thing to consider. She'd been doing her best to ignore the misbehaving fairies, because this was another sort of thing that Sakuya was supposed to deal with, but there was only so much abuse that she could let the mansion's dignity take. So... perhaps it was time to deal with this situation.
Yes. Yes, that was what she would do.
9:55 - 1 hour 29 minutes until the explosion
"You fairies. What are you doing?"
Finding a group of fairies had been easy enough: Just head toward the shrieking and giggling. As soon as she found them, though, it made her even more worried over the state of the mansion. They'd taken up position in one of the laundry rooms, and judging by its state, it wasn't their first stop. A pile of glasses sat next to three bottles of wine in the corner, while one industrious fairy tried to open them. Another fairy was standing on top of a table with a basket full of clean laundry and tossing handfuls at the third, who was using a ladle to try batting them out of the air.
At Remilia's statement, all three paused and looked to the doorway. Judging by the red glow to their cheeks, they'd already managed to split at least one bottle of wine already. "The head maid's gone!" the one on top of the table announced cheerfully, as she pulled a stocking onto her head like a hat.
"Yes, I know. And do you know who I am?"
The three fairies squinted at Remilia. One hiccuped. "Um?"
These poor, ignorant fairies, Remilia thought. They simply had no idea who they were dealing with, it was obvious. She grinned smugly, revealing a single blunt fang, and rested a hand on her chest as she spoke. "I am Lady Remilia Scarlet, the head of this household."
Remilia had been expecting that the fairies would quake in terror, or perhaps fall to the ground and start stammering apologies. What she was not expecting was for one of them to smack the other in the shin with a ladle, leading to a loud giggle and the renewed game of... whatever the hell they thought they were doing. The third fairy, after popping the cork from a bottle, thoughtfully said, "Oh, right!"
Remilia watched in outraged disbelief as all three fairies went back to what they'd been doing before. "Do you not know what that means?"
"Ummm..." The fairy in the corner tilted the now-open wine bottle back and took a gulp from it as she considered. "That means you're the lady who drinks all the tea, right?"
She couldn't believe the... the ignorance, the insolence of these fairies. "No, it means that you're supposed to follow my orders."
The two fairies who had been playing with laundry now fell to the floor, with one beating the other over the head with the ladle. The other fairy was now very intent on drinking, and didn't seem to be paying much attention. Remilia's fist clenched. If these fairies didn't recognize her superiority, then...
… then she would make them.
"You are my maids!" A spear of scarlet energy appeared in Remilia's hand. "And if you will not obey, then...!" She hurled the bolt, and it blasted through the air in an instant and impacted the empty wine bottle. The bottle vaporized with a sizzle and a flash of light that filled the room.
That got their attention. All three fairies immediately stopped and stared, wide-eyed, looking from Remilia to the scorch mark where the bottle had been. A stunned silence—and the smell of burnt glass, for that matter—hung in the air for a moment, until one fairy said what was on everybody's mind: "W-whoa! That was cool! Do it again!"
Remilia was momentarily surprised... and then, that confident grin returned to her face. "Ah, did that get your attention?"
The fairy with the drinks quickly emptied the open bottle of wine into the collection of cups, then propped it up for a new target. One of the overfilled cups of wine was pressed into Remilia's hand, and she took a sip as she summoned another spear of destructive energy. "Now, let me show you the power of a true vampire."
As the second bottle exploded, the room filled with applause and raucous cheers. The fairy with the wine was already opening a third bottle.