CHAPTER#27

"Tired of this enchanted furniture bullshit." He stood up and got knocked over by a dresser drawer that had been fired at him from the armoire across the room. Tink flew into a rage and leaped on top of it, smashing the drawers before any more could slide out. She made the whole thing tip onto its front, whaling on the back with the hammer.

Ears ringing, Mike shook his head and sat down on the squirming pile of bed beneath him. This bedroom was still properly furnished and he feared that anything could ambush them at a moment's notice. Tink joined him, breathing hard from exertion.

"Fucking Rat King." She scowled at the ruined furniture across from her.

"I agree." He stared at the dresser. Why hadn't it attacked him while he was breaking the bed?

It was the same with the books. They had only attacked when they had opened the secret passageway.

"Triggers. They operate on triggers." He looked at the bed. "I was too fast for it, but this one attacked when someone landed on it." He looked at the drawer that had hit him. "And my guess is that one attacks if someone gets too far away from the bed. Maybe."

"Then they are traps?"

"Potentially." The only way to know for sure would be to identify some enchanted furniture and then see if they could avoid triggering it. But then how would they know it had been enchanted?

"Tink hate rat house." She gave the toppled dresser a kick.

"Agreed." He put his hand on the door. "Cecilia?"

The banshee passed through and came right back.

"You're not gonna like it." She shook her head.

"Rats?"

"Worse." She took the doorknob and opened it for him. The door swung out into a dimly lit storage room about twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long. It was lit from above by flickering fluorescent light tubes that cast ominous shadows in every direction. At the far end was a set of double doors. The cracked floor was made of concrete and the room was punctuated by metal pillars.

Along the walls, like silent guardians, stood random bits of furniture. Each one looked cobbled together from random household items. To make matters worse, several of them had sharp, glistening blades attached to their makeshift limbs.

Tink stuck her head around Mike, then looked up at him. "Tink know where knives went."

…

The group was huddled on the floor, staring at the mock map Mike had made of the hallway. He had used his knife to carve wooden blocks from the still flopping dresser, lying the pieces end to end. The smaller ones had already stopped shaking, and the larger ones were weakening. Cecilia hovered overhead, and Carmina stood amongst the blocks.

Carmina had gone first, flying along the ceiling and then back again. Cecilia had become invisible, traversing the same distance. The furniture had remained stationary, meaning that the trigger was likely visual in nature. Mike held the invisibility potion in his hand, wondering if it could be of any help. It would only work on one person, and he and Tink both needed to get to the other side of the room.

There was a hole in the floor at the other end, which led into an office. He doubted that the furniture in there was safe either, and worried that if they ran for it, they would get trapped between two sets of murderous furnishings.

"What do we think?" He looked at the others.

"If Tink right, not all activate at once." Tink flicked the first block away from the others. It tried to flip itself at Mike, but only succeeding in trembling. "We smash one at a time."

"And if I am right, the trigger for the others will be the first objects activating." He shook his head. "I really want Tink to be right, but I don't want to find out the hard way that she isn't."

"If Mike is right, the best option would be to run and hope there is a delay." Cecilia tapped on the thin disk Mike had set down to represent the hole. "This room was mostly empty, and we might be able to bottleneck them. They aren't smart, by any means, and could catch on each other."

"Which leaves us these." Mike indicated three taller blocks. Carmina and Cecilia had described them in much detail, and they all agreed that these were the most dangerous of all. The first was a large china cabinet full of dishes. The thing looked heavy, but he suspected that the dishes would be like the projectile books from the library. The next was a sofa that had rickety legs added to it, the top cushions stitched together for some unseen reason.

The last was a mannequin dummy with a pair of arms attached. Instead of fists, it had been given knife hands. The rest of the stuff in the hall seemed just put together experimentally, but these three seemed the most suspicious of them all.

"The objects don't seem to be sentient. Maybe we could lure them out first?" Cecilia pointed at the blocks. "I could make them chase me and disappear?"

"That's not a bad idea." Mike looked at the model he had built. "There is a hole in the floor right before the double doors. I wonder if stuff would fall down there? What's on the other side of those doors anyway?"

"Let me check." Cecelia blew Mike a kiss and vanished from sight. Several minutes passed before she reappeared.

"The double doors are another dead end. It's that weird rock from before."

"Fuck!" Mike threw one of the blocks. It bounced off the bed, which flopped in response.

"But good news! The room through the hole is one of the rooms in our house. The door is locked, but Abella is still waiting on the other side. She wants to know if she should break down the door or wait for you."