Hot showers after a long day were one of the ways in which Yvaine relaxed.

Not a thread of cloth covered her lithe frame. The droplets of warm water trickled down her smooth, naked skin, traced the attractive curves of her body and seeped down the blue-tiled floor of the bathroom. Yvaine's hair was open and fell upon her shoulders, the ends of which were wet from the shower. She kept her eyes closed and enjoyed the sound of the water rushing past her ears, occasionally rubbing circles upon her bosom, the area of her neck directly above the collarbone and the sides of her forehead.

The hour grew late with every passing minute, yet Yvaine showed no signs of cutting her shower short. It was almost half-past seven when she had exited from Oleander's apartment and had returned to the chateâu. The serene smile on her lips showed how much she was enjoying it; the feeling of the water running down upon her, the feeling of being without care and free like a bird.

The warmth reminded her of those chocolate brown eyes of her mother, as she would look down at the toddler Yvaine with love-filled eyes. It was the only thing that she remembered about her mother, her eyes. Yvaine was barely five when her mother had died due to the lingering cancer in her body, the ailment the doctors had taken a bit too late to diagnose.

But her death had never bothered Yvaine a lot, she was after all very young when it had happened. She had barely got the chance to bond with her mother. What caused her tremendous grief was the passing away of her father when she was in the second year of her graduate program. It was tragic and sudden. One moment she was attending her classes when the cursed call came and the next she was in the hospital with the doctors declaring that her father died due to a massive cerebral stroke.

Her final year had passed in a flash. And it was decided that she would move in with her maternal grandfather in Andrasville till she got a proper job. But once more death messed with their plans and Yvaine's grandfather died alone in the chateâu just a few weeks before her moving in. And as a last favour, he had secured her the job of a librarian in the town library.

Yvaine's eyes were watery when she opened them at last. She tightly gripped the tap to the shower and turned it off. It was quite painful to think of all the deaths she had to experience in such little time and she was thankful her librarian duties kept her busy and her mind away from such dreary thoughts. Then there was the mysterious disappearance of Wilhelmina Andras, which now had become an integral part of her life.

Sighing, Yvaine pulled down a white towel kept upon a clothes hanger adjacent to the shower and began to dry herself. Swinging her hair to one side she put on the grey shirt and pants kept beside the towel and came out of the bathroom. On her way to her bedroom, she switched on the lights of the hallway, warm luminescence filling the formerly tenebrous corridors.

Unlike the hallway, however, Yvaine's bedroom was not completely dark. The windows allowed the rays of the moon to enter the space and light it up considerably. Further, the lamp beside the bed was switched on which illuminated what would otherwise have been a very dark room. With easy, languid steps Yvaine climbed up on the bed and rested her back against the headrest.

"Didn't she claim that she knew where Wilhelmina was? Maybe that's why her sister got killed! They wanted to silence her!"

The words of Amberly from their earlier meet resounded in her mind. Paisley Rose and Wilhelmina Andras, Paisley Rose and Wilhelmina Andras...what was their connection? Everywhere, Yvaine had noticed that Paisley Rose played some part or the other in the mystery behind Wilhelmina Andras's disappearance.

The death of her sister surprisingly coincided with the disappearance. Her own death occurred just days after in similarly mysterious circumstances and in none of the cases was the convict identified. And then there was that letter, thought Yvaine. Paisley Rose claimed that she knew where Wilhelmina Andras was. But how did she know? Could she be completely bluffing? But why would she bluff about such a thing? A million thoughts swirled in Yvaine's mind.

Instinctively her eyes traversed to the bedside table where was laid beside the lamp, the diary of Paisley Rose in all its morbid glory. Yvaine extended her arm lazily and touched its smooth surface with the tips of her fingers. Something told her that there was something more in it and not just empty, blank pages. It is just that she did not know how to read those unseen messages.

"Come on...there must be something you are missing," Yvaine muttered to herself, eyes scrunched in the inspection of the diary. What was Paisley Rose trying to tell them? This empty diary, could it be a mere repetition of the well-known proverb? And was it its only purpose? What you see is not what it truly is.

She was engrossed in these thoughts when the chill enveloped the room. The feeling of paralysis slowly crept into her limbs, numbing the fingers and creating goosebumps upon her skin. Cold sweat formed behind her neck and on her forehead and that was when the bone-shivering whisper resounded once more.

"Mina..."

Yvaine's eyes darted to the threshold. Instead of being empty, there stood the floating entity made of grey smoking, its ghostly eyes boring into her alerted ones. Although her heart raised its beat instantly, Yvaine did not try to pull herself away from it and she did it of her will.

"Are...are you Wilhelmina Andras?" Her voice came out in a husky whisper and for a moment the image of the beautiful girl from the newspaper took place on the phantom's face. Fighting the numbing sensation, Yvaine climbed down from the bed.

"D-o, do you know that we are searching for you?" Yvaine almost screamed as her bare feet made contact with the floor. It had turned so cold that she felt walking through sheets and blocks of ice. Nonetheless, she kept walking towards the entity, undeterred by the chill and the cold.

She was just one step away from the threshold when suddenly the entity started to move away and drifted towards the hallway and stopped near the staircase leading to the upper floors. Yvaine, hungry to find answers, rushed to the staircase when the entity floated further up the steps, followed closely. Soon the entire chateâu filled with the noises of Yvaine's noisy footsteps as she pursued the ghost of Wilhelmina Andras.

It was an incredible scene. The present chased the past, the past haunting the present. Through the dark corridors and halls and floors, two women of two vastly different worlds and time ran, one to know the truth and the other eager to reveal it. Shattering boundaries of time and fear, the chase was a spectacular vision, a vision experienced only by Yvaine.

The chase stopped abruptly in the fourth and the last floor of the chateâu when the entity stopped by a half-open moth-eaten door. And as it had appeared it dispersed into thin air while a heavily breathing Yvaine lumbered up the stairs to catch up with it. A crestfallen look evaded her face as she found out that Wilhelmina had left her.

"Why the hell did she bring me here?" Yvaine groaned to herself, making her way laboriously to the door when the entity had been standing only a few moments back. Sweat dripped down from every visible part of her body, taking away every cooling and refreshing effect of the hot shower.

The fourth and the third floor was never used for many decades. The little that Yvaine remembered from the very rare visits to the chateâu during her childhood, she recalled the grave face of her grandfather warning her not to go upstairs lest she gets possessed by demons and spirits. And now Wilhelmina's ghost had brought her here. What was the purpose, was she supposed to look inside the abandoned?

Thinking so, Yvaine was about to push open the door when her feet caught something and she almost tripped. Regaining her balance she looked down, finding something long and dark embedded in between two floorboards.

She bent down and pulled at it, trying to pry it out. After one strong heave, it came out, breaking the two floorboards from the middle. Huffing in agony Yvaine brought it in front of her, subsequently wiping the sweat from her forehead. However, she stopped mid-motion as she determined what was the object that she held.

It was a knife.