Lilith sniffed her hands. They were clean. Too petrified to speak, she felt warm liquid seep out of her nose and hit the floor. The floor slurped it up. In the same way the room below drank water, this one drank blood. Lilith went rigid with horror, expecting it to bleed her to death. She didn't dare feel around for Panther, who wisely didn't dare feel for her.

Both girl and dog sat still for what felt like an eternity, listening for any disturbance. Not a single sound reached them. In fact, it was eerily quiet. The air had a weird tinge to it, as if something dehydrated and died, leaving the faint memory of its original odor. It gave Lilith the creeps.

Gradually, light spilled from nowhere and everywhere.

They found themselves in a large windowless room, its every surface painted red. Dozens of portraits in heavy frames, shiny at one point, covered the walls floor to ceiling. There was no furniture except a pedestal in the middle of the room that resembled a thick thorny stem, the flower missing.

"It's a gallery," Lilith whispered.

"I haven't noticed." Panther inched closer.

"I think it feeds on blood. It licked the blood off my fingers."

"That's encouraging. I must say, we're having incredible luck with your emergency ballet escapade. Not to mention me getting my promised steak. Anything else it eats?"

Lilith gaped at one of the paintings. A woman's face looked back at her, and she could've sworn its eyes moved. "Don't know. Only, I get the feeling that the heads on the wall were nothing compared to these."

"Lucky for you. I get no such feeling. The only feeling I have is an intense desire to get out of here as soon as possible." Panther scratched at the wall.

Lilith regarded him. "Please stop behaving like an incongruent coward. What's the matter with you? Are you a dog or not? Can't you smell it?"

She stood and walked to the wall.

"I'll bark if you touch it." Panther shook. "I mean it."

Lilith cocked her head. "Sorry to disappoint you, but it appears this gallery is soundproof, or at least it hushes the sound, because by now grandfather would've heard us and extracted us from here. Thus, I don't think anyone will hear you. You may bark to your heart's desire."

Panther licked his muzzle. "Don't get me wrong. I love juicy steak, love it, but I'm in no particular hurry to become one."

"Thank you for deeming me idiotic enough to stick my finger into one of these," said Lilith. "And thank you for being so concerned about me. To inform you, my nose has mercifully stopped bleeding and I'm in no rush to slam my head on the floor in order to produce more blood to get us out. In case you haven't noticed, there is no bathroom in here. Not that it would help. This gallery takes blood as payment, and I'd expect it to be your turn to produce a certain fluid that will get us out of here."

"Do you propose I bleed myself to death?"

"Do you propose I do?"

Panther hung his tail.

"If you have nothing else to say, I will proceed with our investigation, dear Watson, while you stand guard." Lilith leaned closer to the portrait.

A dead face stared at her, a mask of a woman with long hair. It looked as if it could come alive any second. Something was very wrong about it, and it smelled bad.

"It's just the mansion trying to tell me something, like the heads. It's just a portrait, just a portrait..." Lilith soothed herself, but she knew perfectly well it wasn't. She sensed it on a gut level. Thick brush strokes of layer upon layer of paint covered what looked like—

Lilith swallowed, rooted to the spot. "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance observes." She whispered Sherlock Holmes' words. "Panther?"

Panther grudgingly shuffled over. "I must regretfully report that I haven't figured out a way to squeeze out of myself more blood than a thimbleful. On the other hand, a certain other liquid—"

"Smell this. I think it's skin. Smells like dry leather."

Panther sniffed. "More like dead rats?"

"No, listen. I don't think it's the mansion. These paintings are not part of it. Look at this one, it's like a face that's been"—Lilith's heart chilled at the thought—"peeled off." She covered her mouth.

"Madam, may I interrupt your important ruminations?"

"Do you understand what this means?" Lilith's hands shook. "These are...they are—"

"I'm in a dire situation here."

"What? What is it?"

"I really need to pee. Sorry, can't hold it any longer." Panther lifted his leg on the pedestal and shamelessly let out a shiny stream. His urine momentarily upset what promised to be the biggest discovery Lilith made to date in her pursuit to understand the rose garden's secret.

"Panther Bloom Junior! Oh no, you didn't!" she shrieked.

Too late. The room noticed. While it adored offerings of blood, it despised any other liquids, particularly those of animals, particularly waste products, and it began to spin, getting ready to expel them in the rudest manner possible, revolving around the pedestal.

Lilith lost her footing and slid across the room, bumping into Panther.

"My apologies," he barked, "but you suggested I produce a certain liquid."

"Not that liquid!" cried Lilith.

"It worked though, didn't it?"

The gallery spun faster. Portraits swung from their hooks, gawking at both the girl and the dog, in the blur of the movement, looking less and less like faces and more and more like roses.

They bumped into walls, speeding up, and Lilith thought she'd lose her breakfast. She clutched her beret with one hand and Panther with another. The gallery groaned. The ceiling unzipped with a crack and ejected them into the sky.

Rain drenched them. Lilith couldn't see where they were flying, but she could tell that at the end of that destination an imminent death awaited them with abated breath. For the first few seconds Lilith cried her terror and Panther barked hysterically, but then the uselessness of it silenced them both. And about time. Their flight ended as quickly as it started.

Something leafy and tangled caught them, cushioning their fall. They landed deep inside a very thick, very wild, and very large rosebush, coming to a crashing stop in its middle.

"The rosebush woman!" Lilith yelled, blind from panic. "She's tearing us apart! We need to get out of here! She's eating us!" Lilith thrashed, cutting herself and ruining her ballet attire.

"It's rather futile to escape! In case you thought she hasn't noticed us by now, you're terribly wrong!" Panther yelped. "I think we're being digested alive!" He gave a few exaggerated cries of pain. 

"Don't you fall apart on me, Panther! Let's show her!" Lilith broke stems left and right, oblivious to cuts, furiously fighting the beast she thought was the rosebush woman.

It took them both a good minute of battering the poor shrub to realize that nobody was attacking them. They landed in an ordinary bush, and it blissfully ignored their presence like any normal bush would. On top of that, it oozed a deliciously normal rose fragrance.

Panting, Lilith and Panther looked at each other and then at a face that appeared through the thicket of leaves.

"Ed? Is that you? Oh, please excuse my tattered appearance," Lilith croaked, wiping her filthy face and smoothing her torn tutu. "How did you find us?"

Ed pointed up.

"You saw us flying?"

Ed grinned affirmatively.

"But how did you...do you just know where to expect people to drop from the sky?"

"Dogs, not people," Panther growled quietly.

"Okay, if you want me to be absolutely grammatically correct, a dog and a person."

Ed waved his arms about, slapping his forehead.

Lilith felt her face stretch into a silly smile.

It took them a few minutes. After much grunting and heaving and puffing, they rolled onto the wet grass.

Rain turned to an annoying drizzle.

Panther shook with a grace that would make any wet dog jealous. Lilith brushed herself off as best she could. "Thank you so much for getting us out. You're amazing. You always happen to be at the right place at the right time. Remarkably, you also happen to have a knack for disappearing when—"

Ed stared at Panther.

Panther produced a doggy smile.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I don't believe I've introduced you. Ed— Panther. Panther—Ed. Ed, Panther is my best friend, and he can—"

Panther bit Lilith's ankle.

"Ow! I mean, he can be rather irritating sometimes."

Panther coughed what sounded close to cow manure. He extended a paw.

Ed shook it.

"Where are we, anyway?"

They stood by a tall rosebush that grew in front of Ed's cottage. Lilith wondered if it moved. A small traditional fachwerk house, it sprouted from the ground like a dwarf covered in beams. Its backside bordered the garden's fence, beyond which the Grunewald forest stood sentinel. Its façade faced the sea of scarlet roses.

"This is where you live, right?"

Ed nodded and mimed energetically.

"Wait. We flew all the way here from all the way over there?" Lilith gaped at Panther, who pretended to be an ordinary dog in front of this strange mute kid, grinning idiotically.

The drizzle trickled out and stopped.

"Please, excuse me while I try to comprehend this. The mansion spit us out. We flew over half a garden, landed in a bush, and survived. Wow. This is crazy." Lilith felt her well- controlled demeanor crack, as it habitually started doing in Ed's presence.

He studied her with utmost concern. His cookie aroma enveloped her. Embarrassed, Lilith had to admit that she missed him. There was a swell in her chest, a flush in her face, and a ridiculous desire to hug him and sniff his hair. Lilith fought it, fought it, and lost. She promptly flung herself on Ed in an attempt to express her gratitude for saving them, surprised at herself for doing it.

Driven by some mysterious force to share, clutching on to Ed for dear life, Lilith recounted every event that transpired since she lost sight of him in the kitchen, from finding his note, to Alfred demanding her to become the Bloom heir, to the sleeping pills, to the crow pecking her head in the morning. Here, Lilith took a shuddering breath and launched into explaining how she and Panther were locked in her room, how they escaped, how the second floor drank water and the third one drank blood, and how they stumbled into a gallery full of dead faces. She conveniently avoided mentioning Panther's ingenious escapade invention.

An awkward pause spilled into the air.

Lilith let go.

Ed stood very still. His pale face was pink, as were the ends of his ears. His eyes turned slightly misty, and it wasn't because of the moisture in the air.

Panther raised an ear and unashamedly shook the water from his coat. Lilith was about to chastise him, when an echo of distant shouts reached them, punctuated by Bär's barks and crow cries. The garden moved as if disturbed by a multitude of people running along pathways.

"Fantastic. Let me hazard a guess at who they're looking for." Lilith wiped her face with the sleeve of her leotard, which was also uncharacteristic of her. "You don't happen to have some sort of a hiding cave, do you?"

Ed flipped two thumbs up and motioned for him to follow. They trotted to the cottage. Only now did Lilith notice that her ballet slippers were sodden, she was wet and cold, and—

"My beret," she gasped. Her insides turned to ice at the thought of Alfred finding it in the red gallery, knowing that she'd been there, that she broke his rules again.

Ed pressed his ear to the door and listened. After a minute or two he put a finger across his lips, carefully turned the handle, and beckoned them in.