The red-hot brass notary tip of Matron Bell’s hickory pointer sliced through the air like a blowtorch.
HZZZZZZZT.
With one violent, sweeping motion, the eight-foot entity dragged the glowing brass point across the tongue-and-groove white oak floorboards.
A deep, smoking trench gouged half an inch into the wood three feet in front of Julian’s boots.
Inside the trench, a thick line of carmine-red chalk hissed and bubbled with unholy administrative heat, radiating a blinding crimson glow across the cloakroom. The toxic heat vaporized the old floor varnish, releasing thick, acrid fumes that smelled of burnt camphor, synthetic arsenic, and roasted mutton tallow.
Julian Vance stood his ground, his work boots planted side-by-side on the clean wood. Behind him, Elena leveled her liquid nitrogen canister, her knuckles white against the stainless steel grip, while Lin Mei pressed her back against the grey steel cabinet of the Master Clock Relay.
Between them and the double doors of the Midnight Study Hall hovered Matron Bell.
Her physical form had undergone a monstrous reconstruction. The liquid nitrogen frost from the third-floor corridor had melted into a greasy, gray slush that dripped from the hem of her ankle-length charcoal cape-coat. Her elongated cervical column -- now stretched to an impossible eighteen inches -- was reinforced by four brand-new, six-inch naval brass collar rings that clicked and ground together with every micro-saccadic movement of her neck.
