“I need her attention elsewhere,” Eric said, giving him a look.
“Ah. Very good, sir. At once.”
Like a well-trained military horse, Grimsby peeled away, intent upon his mission.
Eric felt his shoulders relax. He could depend on the butler with his life. And now he could devote himself to his own task without worry. For tonight, at least.
Now, where would Vanessa hide the King of the Sea?
Eric wondered for a crazy moment if he could somehow get Max to help him, to sniff out the merman. Or if he could convince one of Ariel’s seagull friends to help. He glanced out a window, but there were far fewer birds in the sky now that it was dark, and those gliding were utterly uninterested in the castle and its inhabitants. He redoubled his steps to Vanessa’s room, urged to speed by the ending of the day.
He did pause for a moment at her doorway, readying himself as if for a plunge into cold water.
Dear God, what a tacky mess.
First he went to her shelf of trinkets, picking up goblets and statues and what looked very much like reliquaries but really couldn’t be, because that would be too much, even for her, right? In his zeal he forgot to be careful; suddenly he realized in a panic that he hadn’t remembered exactly where each thing sat or how it was turned. He was behaving like a reckless idiot.
He made himself stop, took a deep breath, and began again. If worst came to worst, he could claim he lost a medal or recognized one of her treasures from a book and wanted to see it close up. It never even occurred to him to blame his mess on a maid.
But he found nothing.
“Gewgaws and gimmicks aplenty,” he swore. “Devices and doodads galore—what the heck is she doing with all this?”
The shelf of terrifying, unknowable black instruments and dangerous-looking things made some sort of sense, at least. She was an enchantress. Or witch. Or something. The rest of her collection could only be explained by a childlike, endless need to find, keep, and store any sparkly—or horrifying—thing she saw.
He pushed aside books, clawed through chests, even looked under her bed and pillows. He went through the walk-in closet that led to the baths, shaking out each dress and squatting on the floor to look in the back corners, under petticoats. He tried not to think about the rumors that would result if he were caught doing that. Mad Prince Eric indeed.
Exhausted, with maybe only a few minutes before Vanessa returned to dress for the evening, he threw himself disconsolately into the poufy chair in front of her vanity. The top of the dressing table was covered with strange little bottles and jars and vessels and containers of every unguent known to man. Another ridiculous symptom of her never-ending collecting of garbage.
He looked at himself in the mirror. When they were first married—and he actually paid some attention to his beautiful, mysterious wife—the prince would watch her apply all these oils and astringents while she talked to herself, posing, primping, and making moues for her reflection.
（As time with her passed he chose instead to lie on his own bed in his own room with the pillow over his head, wishing she would shut up so he could sleep and escape his nightmarish existence for a few hours.） The way she behaved would be pathetic—if she weren’t actually evil. She always needed an audience. In public she surrounded herself with nobles and hangers-on. In private it was extremely rare that she was without her two slimy servants, or her little maid, Vareet. And when she was utterly alone, her other self was always here, listening to her boasts from the other side of the mirror.
Wait—
Eric frowned.
Was she talking to herself?
Wouldn’t a jar labeled something else be the perfect place to hide a polyp? He grabbed one and opened it up. Nothing—just some rose-scented powder.
He picked up another one.
Vanilla oil.
He picked up a third…and it didn’t feel right in his hands at all.
It sloshed. Despite its very clear label—BRETLANDIAN SMELLING SALTS WITH BRETLAND-GROWN LAVENDER FROM BRETLANDIAN FIELDS MADE AT THE REQUEST OF HIS MAJESTY KING OF BRETLAND, complete with a little Bretlandian flag—the contents flowed back and forth nauseatingly like a half-filled bottle of navy grog.
Eric’s first instinct was to shake it, but he caught himself just in time.
The tin had a pry-off cap, but as he looked around for something to wedge it off with—a knife or a makeup spade—suddenly it changed. When he tried to focus on the box, however, it was just itself again, silver, red, white, and blue.
He pretended to slowly turn away, but kept his eyes fixed on the label.