Excerpt: Beautiful People

"Miss, please," one of the girls was saying, but Ginger would have none of it; when she said that no one was to enter the building or leave it until Sylvia returned, she meant it. "Just try to force your way in," Ginger had said to the landlord, who spluttered and blustered and raged outside. "It's your own property, see whether I care if you damage it."
Meanwhile, there was a semblance of productivity inside the servant house. That had also been at Ginger's behest. "In the meantime, we shall resume our daily lifestyle," she had told the assembled the maids, who had just stared at her, unblinking, like so many heifers packed into a barn. "Well? The young master said he wanted a new blanket, didn't he? You shall continue knitting one."
Their needles clacked and flashed in the dim light until one of the maids ventured to challenge her again. "Miss, you're being irrational," a voice said. Ginger surveyed the group but could not match the voice to a face; they all looked very much the same to her eyes. "If you do this terrible thing we will all be punished."
"Would you rather be punished by me, or your master?" Ginger snapped, and overturned the table on her way into her basement to brood. They all feared the master's cane, she knew, but he was outside and she was within. So they knitted.
The constant clack clack clack of their needles put a black mark on Ginger's mood as she prowled about her basement, knocking down what she could afford to knock down and straightening what she could straighten. There were bits and bobs hanging from the ceiling that glinted when they turned to catch what little light there was available to them; there were animals in cages, heavily sedated and ranging from turtles with the long necks and heads of snakes to ferrets with three sets of of legs; there were cages with nothing in them at all but owl pellets and feathers; and there was the clack clack clacking from upstairs that made her want to destroy it all.
There was a slight noise from the corner of the room like shod feet scuffing across bedrock.
"Not you too, Norbert," Ginger said, dropping into a chair in exhaustion. "All I ask for is a little peace and quiet."
"Where's Father?" Norbert rasped. That corner of the room was draped in a thick blanket of shadows; Ginger could hear the boy and smell his excrements through the bars of the cage.
"He's gone out to look for Sylvia. I told you that already. Must you try my patience?"
"You don't have much to try," the boy said with a careful level of derision. "When will Father be back?"
"If you continue to harass me then so help me God I will do horrible things to you, whatever I may or may not have promised Theodore," Nancee said, rising from her chair with unctuous, dangerous grace.
"Come down here where I can see the dimples in your cheeks and say that again," Norbert offered.
Clack clack clack.
Nancee gathered up her skirts and planted herself on her knees in front of the bars of his cage. She could just barely make out his neck, bristling with coarse, stray hairs. The sight of it made her heart pump at an accelerated rate; at the same time, she could see the vein in neck pulsing at an almost equal speed.
"There is no level of etiquette you can achieve that will pardon an ill-spoken word today," she said in a whisper that fluttered under Norbert's heavy, ragged breathing. "You are not the only were-creature of your kind in this world, and your father is little more than a passing fancy to me."
There was a sudden pounding on the trapdoor. "My lady," a voice called. "Sylvia and master Theodore have returned -"
Nancee gave Norbert one last look of loathing before bustling up to the trapdoor. She was glad that the gloom was sufficient to hide her pallor.
"Where are they?" she asked the moment her head emerged.
"They're just outside, my lady. Theodore claims that the girl is badly hurt."
If there was any blood left in her face, it must have drained away. "Well, what are you waiting for? Let them in."
The door opened with a groan to reveal the gaunt scarecrow that was Theodore carrying the rag doll that was Sylvia, both of them covered in blood. The landlord, Nancee saw, was still outside and had turned a violent shade of red. "What did you do?" Nancee asked as Theodore gave his charge up to the servant girls, who whisked her off into the corner. "What happened to her face?"