The harpy's breathing speeds up at Phi's panic, growing ragged and hungry. As the ticking intensifies so does the throbbing in her skull.
"Oh," she says quietly, and wraps her claws around the key's shaft - not enough to stop its motion, but enough to cause friction. "Ohhhhhh," she moans, watching as its body twitches in response, feeling the gears fighting to keep turning against the resistance. What a marvelous weakness.
"You'll die if I pull this out," she muses, "and live again if I return it?" She weighs that concept carefully. It seems impossible. She's never seen a dead thing come back to life.
"I don't believe you," she says, and jerks the key free.
She gasps in mild surprise as Phi actually freezes and falls silent, then shudders with instinctual pleasure at a clean kill. Half-true, so far. She considers the key in her claw for a moment - it seems unremarkable, just a larger type of the thing she knows as a key. She drops it unceremoniously and turns her focus back to the corpse laying before her.
She nudges it with a foot once, just to make sure, then grabs an arm and tugs it. Heavy, cold, maybe a little stiffer than a normal corpse, but otherwise just a corpse. She roughly kicks it over, then leans down over it to investigate more closely. Jointed, almost like an insect. Could it be pulled apart just as easily?
She grabs a scruff of its dress in her mouth and pulls, snapping the straps and exposing it down to the chest. A knuckle of one claw traces over the bare... flesh? appreciatively. She licks her teeth, then lowers her mouth to the motionless throat and carefully bites down. She jolts at the unyielding sensation, like chewing on the bars of her cage. After gnawing experimentally for a while sits back up, leaving a thick layer of saliva smeared on the maid's neck.
She sniffs along the strange body, making absolutely sure there's nothing living hiding away. She buries her nose into the crotch of its dress and inhales deeply, then lifts her head, still a little baffled that there's nothing identifiably organic anywhere.
Her mind whirls with possibilities, the fun she could have with this strange body... and then her eyes fall on the key again. It feels silly to even try, but if it's true?
She pushes Phi onto her stomach again, limbs cocked at odd angles from the rough treatment. She picks up the key, stares at the keyhole, and slips it back in.
Nothing. As expected. Ah- but didn't it say...?
She grips the key in her teeth, and gives it a turn with a twist of her neck.