After the car had left, Lady Dimitrescu felt like she had also escaped the bloodhound. She picked up the candy paper that the old woman had accidentally dropped on the pavement and then returned inside. It was mere luck that Mike wasn't on the first floor when Miranda arrived. Originally, she was supposed to come tomorrow, but something changed, and she got that seamstress today. That's why Alcina didn't warn him that the village matriarch was coming.
During their talk in the garden, Mother Miranda didn't start suspecting that Alcina might be hiding someone. The only thing she said about Mike was that she mentioned that Heisenberg scrapped his car yesterday without asking permission. And that was all, since Lady Dimitrescu avoided asking more questions.
But deep inside, she was really angry at Karl because Mike's safe return to his home was made significantly harder by this.
How do we send him away now? She thought. He will end up like this goddamn Spencer, stuck in the snow!
Alcina decided that she should not inform Mike about this yet. She didn't want to anger him or make him escape secretly. But she wanted, however, to make him leave as soon as possible, as Miranda could arrive without warning and things might not end so well next time like they did in this encounter.
Mike tried to forget what just happened and thanked God for giving him another day to live. After finishing repairing the wall, he cleaned all the tools and took them back to the basement. He then began reading books in the library again, until sometime in the afternoon, Lady Dimitrescu asked him for help. She had taken a break from bottling her wines and wanted him to find out what was really wrong with her private chamber lock. Since Bela was tired and wanted to rest, she allowed him to bring some tools from her workshop and do whatever was necessary to make this thing work again. Mike had some experience with locks before starting to work as a chimney sweep, which was also the reason she trusted this old door to him.
By this time, Daniela and Cassandra were feeling better and hanging around in the castle to see how things were going today. Daniela spotted Mike trying to use tweezers to get the broken key out of the keyhole and teased him by pulling an empty trash bag suddenly over his head.
"I couldn't believe that my own child was hiding you!" She tried to imitate Mother Miranda's voice.
Mike started laughing as he clearly understood that it wasn't the evil village leader whose voice was far different.
"You are not able to scare me like this anymore." He spoke and removed this plastic bag from his face.
"What are you doing?" Daniela wanted to know, as she didn't know anything about today's problem.
"I'm repairing the jamming lock. It got stuck, and your mom used a little too much force and broke the key inside."
"I imagine that. She doesn't like small and weak things. Like men, slugs, and cellphones."
"Ho-ho-ho! Has she already forgotten that she is alive thanks to me?"
Mike resumed and spent some minutes just small-talking to her and listening to how Cassandra was sleepwalking, until it became clear that the tweezers are too soft and it isn't possible to pinch the remnant of the key strongly enough to pull it out.
"Okay, I think that a good magnet is what I need." Mike finally gave up and put these pointless tweezers back in the toolbox.
"I have one! Do you want me to bring it?"
"Yeah, but if you have a large needle, you should bring it too."
"I have an entire collection of needles. Wait a minute."
Daniela left and returned about two minutes later.
"Everything you wished, my sweet boy." She giggled and handed him a strong neodymium magnet and a four-inch-long, pretty thick sewing needle.
"Thank you!" Mike said and placed the magnet on the keyhole to test if it was powerful enough to pull this key out.
It wasn't. With a needle, he was able to get the broken part moving; however, it still stood stuck in there and refused to come out.
"Damn. This magnet is still weak. It looks like we can't go around power tools."
"Or what if I try to push it from the other side?" Daniela had a better idea.
"You mean you push this with the needle, and I use the magnet at the same time?"
"Yeah."
"It's stuck so hard that I doubt it's going to work, but perhaps you are right."
"I'll try then."
She dematerialized in the blink of an eye to use the ventilation shaft to reach the chamber like her sister Bela did in the morning, without knowing that she would almost die because of that.
Daniela was completely unaware that all the windows of her mother's private chamber had been secretly opened by an unknown intruder several hours ago, and cold mountain winds had cooled this room down to a few degrees above freezing. Feeling sudden and extremely strong pain all over her body as soon as she came in contact with this lethal air, she dropped down from the ceiling like a zapped bear from a pole pig and wasn't able to turn into a fly swarm again to escape.
"Daniela, what is happening?!" Mike shouted through the door after hearing all the horrible shrieking that followed.
"Let me out! Let me out!!!"
"What's going on there?! What happened?!"
"The room is cold! I'm freezing! Help me!"
She banged on the door as hard as she could before collapsing onto the floor with a loud thud.
"What? What the hell?"
Mike touched the floor near the threshold and realized in horror that it wasn't a prank and she was really in danger.
"Roll yourself into the carpet; I'm going to call for help!"
Seconds later, Bela and Cassandra, who had also heard the shrieking and shouting, appeared on the scene, followed by their mother.
"What's going on there?" Lady Dimitrescu was confused.
"Daniela swarmed in there and got exposed to the cold!" Mike explained while pointing towards the door. "Bela, did you leave the window open in there?"
"No, I didn't!" Bela shrieked. "I didn't do anything; why should I do this?"
"I'm talking seriously; this is not a prank. Touch it!"
She touched the threshold just like Mike before, and it felt like fire to her.
"Oh my god, mother. She's going to die there!"
Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Alcina asked Mike to get out of her way, and then she tried to break down the door by using her massive body. She went really fierce, but no matter how hard she tried, her chamber's entrance stood strongly in place as it was made of three inches of dense oak.
"Damn it!"
As she couldn't use her physical force to break through it, she ran to the bathroom to pull that infamous ventilation shaft grille down from there.
"Mike, come here! Now!"
Alcina wanted him to climb into her chamber through that shaft and give first aid to freezing Daniela until other sisters would bring some more aggressive tools from the workshop. She helped him up there and asked Mike to reach there as quickly as possible.
Daniela was lying on her stomach on the floor. She was shaking uncontrollably, and her entire body was blue from the cold. It had happened so quickly, and unfortunately, during the time when she was rematerializing, making it especially dangerous. If it had happened more gradually or at a time when she was already in her human form, it could have been possible for her to close windows, find additional clothes, and last far longer. But now, she only had seconds of usual consciousness, like a human who is exposed to a vacuum in space.
Mike violently used the hammer and chisel he had luckily taken with him to destroy the grille on the chamber's ceiling. As he had to work in narrow conditions, it took many minutes before he was able to get his way to the chamber free of this obstacle.
Don't say it was Miranda who came to retrieve her diary through the window; he thought while the grille had rumbled down and he started to fit himself through the hole that was even more narrow than in the bathroom.
The room was five meters high, and there was nobody to catch him this time. Hoping that his legs wouldn't snap, Mike let himself fall and landed painfully with his tailbone on Alcina's desk.
Mother Miranda's diary wasn't stolen, but Alcina's safe box that stood in the corner of the room behind the desk was cracked open, and its contents were thrown all over the floor. He could see mostly papers about the wine business and some broken jewelry. Something from there was certainly taken; however, it wasn't his mission at the moment.
Without wasting time on these unimportant things now, Mike slammed the windows shut, locked them, and kneeled down to the unconscious victim.
"Daniela!" He shook her body. "Hey, look at me; I do everything to get you out here. I promise."
She was completely passed out, and when he touched her skin, it felt hard and inflexible, like sheet metal.
Holy shit, she's going to die, he thought, and he embraced her to share his body heat.
At the same time, in the corridor, the situation was hell, like onboard the heavily leaking submarine. A lot of horrified maids had arrived in there, and everybody was arguing and running around, trying to find the best solution. Bela had brought a chainsaw from her workshop and tried to get it started. But since the machine was old and rarely used, it only made a short run and then died again.
Then Cassandra wanted to bring rope and lift Daniela up into the ventilation shaft with it, but she was told that she wouldn't be able to do this when the opening in the ceiling is so small. And Alcina didn't allow her to take a risk.
While Bela disappeared to search for fresh fuel and a new spark plug from her workshop, she joined with her mother to start landing kicks on the door again, and with their combined forces, they were finally able to get the first crack in the wooden surface.
"I'm almost there, Daniela!" Lady Dimitrescu kept her hope up. "Mike, do everything you can to keep her warm. We are there at any moment!"
Despite the fact that Mike took out all the clothes from Alcina's cupboard and wrapped them around Daniela, her skin turned stiffer and harder with every second and showed the first signs of calcification. It was clear that there would be less than a couple of minutes by now. And what was even worse was that Bela found no gasoline in the workshop and no spark plug either. The fuel was all used up recently for filling the snowmobile that Miranda borrowed to chase down her "missing patient".
She had only a large fire axe suitable for this mission, but even then, it could have taken at least half an hour before she had a chance of getting through this unusually strong door.
It seemed that nothing could save Daniela anymore, and she was going to crumble to the dust between Mike's hands. But then, however, a miracle still happened.
To everybody's surprise, chambermaid Maria suddenly showed up in the corridor with the attacker's AK-47 rifle that the mistress had decided to keep for the night shift girls who guarded the castle while everybody was sleeping. The gun had one full magazine left, and that was exactly what was needed.
"Mike, get down!" She screamed as hard as she could and stood in front of the door like a soldier on the firing line. "I'm going to shoot this door!"
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
An ear-splitting hail of bullets penetrated the door in a half-circle pattern around the lock, effectively cutting it out like a jigsaw.
"Try now!" She said this to Alcina, who ran against the door and slammed it open.
She stormed into the room like a tornado and grabbed her daughter on her lap.
"My little daughter..."
Everybody was terrified to see how bad Daniela's condition was, and they all couldn't believe how a simple spring cold had almost killed her. Lady Dimitrescu asked them to leave and carried Daniela into the bathroom, where warm water was already running. Mike stayed in the corridor and guarded the entrance to the chamber. He felt extremely bad and guilty, even though the diary he had brought into the house wasn't stolen and likely played no role in this crime.
*
Luckily, it became quickly clear that Daniela was going to survive. Being submerged in warm water almost immediately changed her body from a dark blue stone to a normal appearance again. But it still took some time before she regained consciousness, and Lady Dimitrescu hoped that she wouldn't suffer from any permanent damage.
"I'm sure that our new maid did this!" Cassandra already had her theory. "Miranda sent a shitty thief to us!"
"We will find that terrible person." Alcina sobbed while carefully warming Daniela's head with a hot shower. "You can torture this bitch or man-thing like you want and drink all the blood; I won't hold you back."
As saving the daughter was more important than an investigation, it was too early to say who was responsible and what was taken. But Cassandra really wanted to cut Linda in half with her sickle; she hadn't liked this girl since their first meeting.
"Should I drain this bitch to make her drowsy at least?" She wanted to know.
"No, Cassandra." Bela grabbed her before she could exit the room. "You are not going anywhere, and we are not going to solve this like that. Put away your sickle and sit down!"
She had to stay in her room and obey her mother and older sister, even when she had the horrible urge to take revenge.
When Daniela's condition in the warm bath slowly improved, Bela was the first one allowed to leave the bathroom and start finding out what really happened in her mother's chamber. She asked Mike to leave, as there wasn't any need for him anymore, and then put on some thicker clothes.
After the windows were closed and the door destroyed, the temperature in the chamber was slowly equalizing, but it was still too low for the lady's daughters to enter there in their usual dresses. Bela still entered and found almost immediately that a bag with two hundred thousand lei was missing from the safebox. Other items, like jewelry and documents, were just thrown across the floor.
Under the vanity table, there was a pretty large hole sawed crudely into the floor. Whoever this intruder was, she must have had access to the blueprints of this castle to be able to do this.
Large areas under Alcina's private chambers were completely unused. Just like the ballroom next to the opera hall, these areas were sealed from the rest of the house with masonry or wood. The thief had used another ventilation shaft on the first floor to gain access there and then navigated through these large, sealed spaces to get herself to Lady Dimitrescu's chamber.
Once there, she had blocked the door's lock by putting a screw through the jamb and tongue, making it impossible to turn the key. She cooled down the chamber for the case if daughters should appear, cracked the safe to get the money, and then tied a rope to the edge of the balcony to use this for escape through the garden.
As the rope was very dirty, there was no other possibility that it had been stolen from Mike's tool bag.
Later, when Daniela had woken up and fortunately sustained no permanent injuries, Alcina looked around in the garden and saw someone's footprints on the snow heading towards the village.
"I want that maid's head!" She cursed and then walked back into the house.
As it was proven now that the burglar wasn't in the castle anymore, the rest of the finding-out process was easy. She just called everybody together in the main hall to see who was missing, and great was her surprise when it turned out that the missing girl was nobody other than her longest-serving maid, Ingrid.