not just a doll

For a hundred years, little Vesper sat on the spell books and never moved. The candles burned down, the skull kept watch, and her little black boots never got dusty. Visitors thought she was just a doll in a cape. They were wrong. On the night the moon turned red, the bat on her necklace began to warm. Vesper felt it that old tingle behind her teeth. Her red eyes blinked. Once. Twice. "I think tonight's the night," she whispered, her tiny fangs catching the candlelight. The spell books creaked open on their own. The potion bottle behind her rattled. The wind found the crack in the castle wall. Vesper giggled, stood up on the wooden table, and spun her cape wide. The red lining flared like wings. And then she wasn't a doll at all. With a soft poof of lace and satin, she folded in on herself smaller, darker, faster until a little bat with red bows still tied to her ears hovered where she had been. Her bat pendant jingled as she rose. She squeaked once, happily, and darted past the candles, past the skull, straight out the high castle window into the night, where all the other night things were waiting for her.