A loud cracking sounded across the room and a huge, sil- ver gilded mirror fractured in half, splitting apart their reflec- tions. Elijah grabbed her hand and spoke softly. “Let me get you away from here, Poppy.”

As they moved toward the dining room entrance, one of the kit- chen servants appeared. Her brown eyes widened and then narrowed at the scene laid out before her. She hastily wiped her hands on her white apron and latched onto Poppy’s other hand.

“Run far, far away from this cursed place. Take nothing with you. His evil was contained while he was alive, but his death means…” she trailed off and shrugged her shoulders.

“What…what did he mean by “a hundred black sunrises?” Poppy asked in a tremulous voice.

 The servant smiled sadly. “Nothing good, you can believe that.” She gestured towards the hallway leading to the front door as a dozen other servants from the kitchen suddenly crowded around them. “Now, go! Take her and go!”

Elijah needed no further encouragement and pulled a dazed Poppy down the hallway, already filled with black smoke. As he opened the heavy door, she looked back one last time to say goodbye to every- thing she had ever known, and her gaze lit on Christianpaul’s smiling portrait of himself as a much younger man. She shivered as Elijah led her out the front door and she clutched his arm fearfully. Poppy knew every brushstroke of that painting and never in her life had the bastard worn a smile in it.