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He tries again to get your attention, keeping his temper much better than the last man.
“Hey, puella.”
Your heart is rising into your throat and your stomach is sinking into your ass. You grip your wand and make what you judge to be the final step before you get in range of the table – and nothing. No stains. You cannot help yourself, and a small squeaky sounding sigh slips through your lips. To be sure you take another step, then two more. Still nothing. No Strange prints, and no Strange boots.
“Puella, that doesn’t go anywhere – it’s the kitchen.”
And sure enough, he is right. What you figured to be another half of the dining room, or a hallway leading to rooms for rent and perhaps a second staircase does in fact turn out to be the kitchen. You can see a harried looking cook tending to something on a stove, while an assistant runs ingredients over to him. You are not in range of either of them, but as there are no Strange prints leading into the kitchen, you figure that you should leave well enough alone, at least for now. Quietly thanking the man, you reverse your path and retreat from the room. As you pass the table of the man you upset, he starts in on you again, but blessedly, his dining companion is not having any of it, and you are able to leave the common room without further incident.
The one person who you were not able to check on was the proprietor, as his boots and perhaps half of his mass were behind the counter … and while you are just noticing now that there is in fact a door in the shadows behind him, it looks like it leads to an office or some manner of storeroom, not anywhere that would lead outside. Beyond that, he seems to be enfeebled by his weight to the point that he does not do a lot of walking. If you can get a chance later, then certainly, you would like to check his boots – and for that matter, the boots or shoes of the cook and his help – as well as this Bertram. But right now, you have eliminated six out of … uh, ten? That is counting everyone you have seen so far, plus one for Bertram. The cook could have more help though, and there has to be other servants kept on to tend to the rooms as well as the guests. You just don’t have any idea where they are at the moment.
Anyway, right now, you need to find the room that the prints lead to. Once you get to the staircase, you make sure that no one is coming, and more importantly, no one is watching. When you are as certain as you can be that the coast is clear, you climb up the steep stair, onto the second floor, following the prints. They take you down the entire length of a hallway and around a corner before they come to a door in a jumble, with some on top of others. In addition to the footprints, there is some Strangeness on the door and its frame as well, as if someone brushed up or leaned on it. It is the first Strangeness that you have seen here that was not a partial footprint – but it is not the last.
