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“I can still hear it.”

Con sighed, and turned on his side, burrowing his face into the side of his couch. Whatever Gnar had taken earlier that evening was making him tweak in double-time, nervous, curious energy, fidgeting about the basement like he’d never seen it before, picking things up and moving things around and putting his ears to things.

Flavus, perched on the back of the couch with his schoolbook, Alice the winged tabby cat resting comfortably across his knees, looked up at Gnar, his eyes dull.

“It’s low tide,” he said, reasonably. “Even if, under some extraordinary circumstance, you could hear the ocean from here-“

“It’s not coming from outside,” urged Gnar, down on his knees by the piano bench. He was feeling along the underside of the keys, carefully, like he was searching for a secret panel. “It is definitely coming from inside the piano.” He leaned down and pressed an ear to the door above the pedals, like a man listening for a heartbeat.

Flavus made a conciliatory noise in the back of his throat, and straightened up a bit. “Actually, you know, the sound of the ocean that you hear when you put a shell to your ear is just the sound of your own blood flowing,” he said.

Gnar went still, and then pulled back, rocking onto his heels, a thoughtful expression on. “Really?” he said.

“Yes, really,” said Flavus, visibly relieved. His teacher’s mood tonight had made him anxious and tense, not even a warm cat over his knees had taken care of the twist in his stomach. “You’re just hearing your own pulse.”

“Well, I suppose that’s easily settled, then,” said Gnar, getting to his feet with a swish of his kilt, his tail windmilling behind him for balance a moment. “Oy, Con. Stop pretending to be asleep and come listen to my piano.”

Flavus sputtered for a moment, as Con sat up with a snort.

“Will you settle, if I do?” he asked, sleepily, scratching the cowlick at the back of his head. Gnar tried to smile, it came out more like bared teeth.

“Sorry,” he said. “I will try. I’ll leave the piano alone, anyway.”

“The principle being that Con, as a vampire, hasn’t much of a pulse,” said Flavus, with a sigh, as he caught on. “So if he doesn’t hear anything, there’s no ocean in your piano.”

“Exactly,” said Gnar, brightly, as Con knelt by the piano.

The vampire rested the shell of his slightly pointed ear to the door above the pedals, a look of sleepy concentration on his face as he stilled himself. A few moments passed, as everyone held their breath. Con pulled back, looking puzzled.

“Does that door open?” he asked. Gnar put a hand down on Con’s shoulder, with a little wobble to his knees that suggested he’d done it in order to keep from sitting down suddenly.

“You mean you hear it?” he asked, urgently.

“No,” said Flavus, his eyes round. “No, that just isn’t possible.” Con looked at him.

“It sounds like the ocean,” he said. “There were gulls.”

Flavus scrambled off the back of the couch, his book forgotten, Alice tumbling unceremoniously to the seat of the couch, where she squeaked, and started washing herself.

“It does open,” said Gnar, squatting down by Con, reaching for a lever underneath the keys. He gripped it, and then hesitated, looking over at the vampire. Flavus leaned down behind them, watching over their shoulders.

“What’s that door for, anyway?” he asked.

“Easy access for a tune-up,” said Gnar. He swallowed. “Should I-“

Con reached up and put his hand around Gnar’s, pulling the lever for him.

The smell of clean salt air hit them, and the roar of the ocean drifted up from somewhere below. A gull cried. The light through the door was bright and clean and very white, like a day with a high fog layer.

Con shut the door again.

“There’s an ocean in my piano,” said Gnar, quite calmly. Con stood up, equally calmly, and reached over the bar to pull up a bottle of whiskey. He took a drink straight from it.

“That’s ridiculous!” shouted Flavus, scrambling forward on his hands and knees, reaching up to pull the lever to open the door again. He stuck his head through. “I see rocks below, looking out at a kind of overhang- and there’s the sea! It’s green as a bottle!”

He let the door fall shut again and ran over to grab his book, which he then used to wedge the door open, so that he didn’t have to keep holding the lever to keep it so. He got his shoulders all the way out when he looked through again.

“This is completely impossible!” he said, and this time there was joy in his voice. “I wonder where this looks out upon? It has to be a portal of some kind- but where to? Who put it there?”

“Who indeed,” said Gnar, sounding a little bit shrill. “Who put a portal inside my piano, in my basement, in my house, in my city, without telling me about it?”

“The usual suspects,” said Con, leaning against the bar and looking complacently down at them, a glass of whiskey on the rocks in his hand. Gnar leaned back a little, looking up at the ceiling.

“It’s been here less than a week, I opened this up to get a lot of marbles out of the bottom of the piano last Sunday. Sherringford is in China, schtupping a painting. Salvius still hasn’t an invitation into this house. Armand hasn’t the raw power nor is it like his sense of humor. Tati hasn’t got a sense of humor. Clarence and Albert and Cleo haven’t got sense in general, or the raw power. Felix is on holiday in Brighton,” he listed off. “That would leave Solus.”

The three of them looked at each other.

“That really does raise the question,” said Flavus, “rather emphatically, in fact, of why.”

“Experimenting in his sleep?” suggested Con.

“…Not impossible,” said Gnar, thoughtfully. He made a little noise in the back of his throat, like there was something trapped there, and squirming to get out. “But that makes hardly any more sense! I should have felt a spell of this magnitude being performed within my wards, even if it WAS one of the cornerstones of the clan doing it! And god knows what kind of setup it would require.” He put a hand to his forehead.

“Settle,” said Con. “We’ll work it out. Can we go ask Solus?”

“I’ve dropped him down the stairs before,” said Gnar, a touch hollowly. “On accident, mind. He didn’t wake up.” Flavus coughed.

“So, no, then,” he said. He fidgeted a moment, and then his next sentence came out at a run. “Why don’t we just go through it?”

Con and Gnar looked at him, carefully. He swallowed, and shrunk back a little.

“Go on,” said Con, patiently.

“Well, if it’s been put here, it’s been put for some sort of reason, right? And clearly meant for us to find- no one could expect to put something magic and foreign in Gnar’s house and have it stay hidden. So the easiest way to work things out, from here-“

“Is to rappel our way straight down into the gaping maw of a salt-air trap,” said Gnar, placing the palms of his hands together. “Yes, good, wonderful. Excellent idea.” Flavus winced.

“Well,” he said. “When you put it like that, I mean. You might as well just close it down, right?”

Gnar looked over at the portal, propped open halfway by a book on totemic summoning, with that thousand-yard stare of his he got when he was thinking hard.

“That would really be the smartest thing to do,” he said. Con started a little. He had gotten quite good at recognizing danger signals like that, by now.

“Seal it up and study it,” said Con. “At your leisure.”

“That too would be quite prudent,” said Gnar, and now he was sounding a bit wistful.

“Absolutely top-rate sensible,” said Flavus, nodding. Con shot him a look.

“Stop encouraging him,” he said.

Gnar looked up, a grin suddenly sharp on his face.

“Flavus?” he said. “Why don’t you trot along and pack? Con, help him. No telling how long we’ll be gone.”

Flavus gave a triumphant whoop, punching the air. Con drained his whiskey in one go, and set the glass down on the counter.