Evangeline fixed Chester with a gaze as unyielding as a winter grave, her eyes shimmering with a lethal, crystalline cold. "Speak plainly," she hissed. "What game are you playing with your words?"
Chester hesitated, his tongue darting out to lick his lips as if weighing the lethal potential of the truth. "Actually... the matter concerns—"
"I told you once, and I will not tell you again: no more of your damned riddles," she snapped. Her hand clamped around a heavy crystal vase on the side table, her knuckles whitening. "Speak clearly, or I will bury this glass in your skull, man!"
"Fine, fine, my Lady!" Chester flinched, retreating a step before bleeding out of the mirror's reflection with a sickening, fluid grace. He glided toward her, a silent shadow in the humid air, until he was close enough for the unnatural chill of his breath to prickle her skin. He leaned into her ear, the mockery stripped from his voice, leaving it hollow and jagged.
