Dear Diary,

Well, I am writing to you still as a slave. Today we freed Lady

Ulma, but decided that Meredith and Bonnie and I should remain

"personal assistants." This is because Lady Ulma said Damon would

seem odd and unfashionable if he didn't have several beautiful girls as

courtesans.

There is actually an upside to this, which is that as courtesans we

need to have beautiful clothes and jewelry all the time. Since I've been

wearing the same pair of jeans ever since that b*st*rd Old Drohzne

sliced up the pair I wore into this place, you can imagine that I'm

excited.

But, truly, it's not just because of pretty clothes I'm excited.

Everything that happened since we freed Lady Ulma and then went to

her old estate has been a wonderful dream. The house was run down,

and obviously the home of wild animals who used it as a lavatory as well

as a bedroom. We even found the tracks of wolves and other animals

upstairs, which led to the question of whether werewolves live in this

world. Apparently they do, and some in very high positions under

various feudal lords. Maybe Caroline would like to try a vacation here

to learn about the real werewolves though-they're said to hate humans

so much that they won't even have human or vampire (once human)

slaves.

But back to Lady Ulma's house. Its foundation is of stone and it's

paneled inside with hardwood, so the basic structure is fine. The

curtains and tapestries are all hanging in shreds, of course, so it's sort

of spooky to go inside with torches and see them dangling above and

around you. Not to mention the giant spiderwebs. I hate spiders more

than anything.

But we went inside, with our torches seeming like smaller versions

of that giant crimson sun that always sits on the horizon, staining

everything outside the color of blood, and we shut the doors and lit a fire

in a giant fireplace in what Lady Ulma calls the Great Hall. (I think it's

where you eat or have parties-it has an enormous table on a dais at
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one side, and a room for minstrels above what must be the dance floor.

Lady Ulma said that this is where the servants all sleep at night, too (the

Great Hall, not the minstrel gallery).

Then we went upstairs, where we saw-I swear-several dozen

bedrooms with very large four-poster beds that are going to need new

mattresses and sheets and coverlets and hangings, but we didn't stay to

look around. There were bats hanging from the ceiling.

We headed for Lady Ulma's mother's workroom. It was a very

large room ...

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