Was there ever an Aloisa or Jacqueline, a Corinne, Faelyn or Medb? Doctor Noire paid a kindness in not answering, for if they had ever been flesh and blood, each woman's wink from existence like misspent imagination could only speak to something more horrible.<br/><br/>"Your grip has faltered already, else you would not have come."<br/><br/>The eyes looking back on Danae, catlike and dark, bore witness to a miraculous breakthrough. Would Danae let herself be touched? Doctor Noire's hands did not come as the cold, severe talons reserved for bathing and grooming patients clammy and pale, but to unveil the warrior spirit behind Danae's desperation. When it was found, she nodded her approval.<br/><br/>"But your mind is suitably clear to spare yourself the fate reserved for Doctor Rehner's psychotics. With clarity, now, and with purpose, we will wait out the storm."<br/><br/>Doctor Noire's grip on Danae tightened, perhaps fearing she, too, might wink away or flow into the pipes of the manor a slithering spy.<br/><br/>"Come morning, and what fresh bedlam it brings, we will take this thing you have found down to the sea caves and away from this place in secret."<br/><br/>"I will speak only a little of the Red Woman, if you permit me stroke you to sleep, mademoiselle. She sows distrust, and has no place in my bed. You must have seen how her shape rearranges to forms a shocking parody of flesh and fabric and the blush of life. But she is tethered by red ribbon to all her little doppelgangers, and in a room all black, she cannot hide."