For a moment, there was silence. Then Jacob spoke up. “Hey, do you mind if I ask you guys a question?” Devorah was immediately interested- would Jacob pick another fight? A snack would have been great. But could Dev even eat? A quandary to be explored at a later date.
“Who, us?” Kefilwe answered, gesturing between herself, Nour and Mathilde.
“Yeah, kind of.” Jacob paused, clearly preparing what he wanted to say in his mind. “Do you guys ever, you know. Take those things off?” He said, gesturing to Nour and Mathilde.
“Are you referring to my robes?” Mathilde asked.
Jacob nodded. “And Nour’s whole… Thing.”
Nour decided to answer first. “Well, I can answer for myself. Unlike Mathilde and Kefilwe, I have found my costume to be exactly that- a costume. This is nothing like the garb I wear in my daily life, nor is it what I would wear to practice medicine. However,” Nour said, “I have found joy in these robes. I quite like the mystery they cast on my figure.”
“They are quite fine,” Mathilde commented. “All that deep black cloth must have been quite expensive. You look very princely.” Deep, natural dyes had been quite expensive for a long time in Earth history.
“My thanks,” Nour responded.
“As for me,” Mathilde began, “as Timothy 2:9 states, I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes. As a servant of the lord, I dress modestly to reflect my vows made as a Dominican and sister of the Teutonic Order.”
Devorah knew a little bit about cloth, but Catholic history? She was wildly out of depth here. Shooting a look at Bell, Dev knew that the half ostian was even more confused.
“So you guys never take that stuff off?” Jacob’s brow furrowed.
“Don’t you get hot though? At night?” Georgie asked.
“I cannot speak for Nour, but I am duty-bound to ensure my modesty as a sign of my devotion to our lord and savior,” Mathilde said. “As a result, I always wear this when in the company of others, yes. I would consider disrobing to sleep, had I chosen to sleep alone, but I believe it is safer to remain in a group at night.”
“I agree,” Nour said. “Both previous victims perished in the night. The choice to stay with people you can trust is the wise one.”
Kefilwe cooed, and threw her arms around both of them. “I love and trust you guys too!” Devorah could not see Nour’s face, but a soft blush graced Mathilde’s cheeks. Cute.
Gabe looked up from where he previously seemed to be deep in thought. “Maybe we should stay together too? Georgie can take the bed, and me and you can take the floor,” he said, gesturing at himself and Jacob.
Jacob didn’t seem too pleased by that idea. “I’m fine with sharing a bed if Georgie is.”
Georgie shrugged. “Don’t bother me nothing.”
The blush faded from Mathilde’s cheeks, and her face turned stony. “An unmarried man and woman should not share a bedchamber.”
“I agree, though likely for a different reason,” Nour added. “I do not believe Georgie is well enough for sexual intercourse just yet.”
Devorah and Jacob groaned in unison. She hated to be in agreement with him.
“Wait a second,” Georgie interrupted. “Why did your head go there?” She looked between Nour, Mathilde and Kefilwe, curious. Kefilwe still had her arm around Nour’s taller figure. “Are you three fucking?”
Gabe made a choking sound.
“I wish we had snacks,” Bell whispered to Dev. Dev found herself agreeing.
“I-I?” Mathilde spluttered, her face all red again. “I am a bride of Christ!”
“That wasn’t a no,” Dev whispered back to Bell, who grinned.
Kefilwe just laughed. “Aw, it’s not like that! It really is just to watch each other’s backs. But I bet Nour and Mathilde are really glad for it tonight.”
“Why do you say that?” Jacob asked, his face still stormy around the edges.
Something mischievous grew on Kefilwe’s face. “We found a ghost!” And it was clear that Nour and Mathilde weren’t happy with this, the way they tensed up.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“What did you do?” Devorah found herself laughing. It had been hard at first, but the ridiculousness of the situation combined with an old, friendly face who could see her? It was peeling back Devorah’s spiky surface, bit by bit.
“We are in the house of the devil,” Mathilde crossed herself, “and I pray God will bring us all salvation.”
“Though I am no Christian, I do believe there is something demonic following us,” Nour agreed.
Gabe lowered his head and made the sign of the Christian cross across his body as well. Georgie patted him on the back, seemingly unconcerned with the devil and the demonic for someone who had been so scared of ghosts earlier.
“What makes you say that?” Jacob asked.
“Remember how the ghost attacked us in the library?” Kefilwe said. Devorah herself would have disagreed- she wasn’t so vulgar as to outright attack someone who did her no harm. It was just a little book tossing. No big deal.
“I’ve been trying to forget, but yeah,” Georgie answered.
“Well when I came back to Nour and Mathilde, I found Nour praying and Mathilde screeching about how the devil was upon them!” Kefilwe gave Nour another consolitary rub on their shoulder.
“We found a strange brooch, and the moment I picked it up, I could feel something tug on the brooch! Almost as if it was trying to tear it from my grasp,” Nour said. The line of their back was tense, even under the layers of robes.
Devorah turned to look at Bellone.
“What?” Bell said. “It’s my pin!”
Georgie interrupted and pointed at Jacob. “I told you this place is haunted!”
Jacob hushed Georgie. “So what happened next?”
“I called on Christ for mercy,” Mathilde said, “and he held back the specter for a period of time. We retreated back to our shared quarters, only for the ghost to strike again!”
Gabe gasped, as was appropriate.
“Mathilde and I entered our room, and locked it from within,” Nour began, “and all was calm for a time. Then- a chill settled over the room. Like morning frost.”
“We can do that?” Devorah whispered.
“Haha! No!” Bell responded.
“I thought nothing of it,” Nour continued, “until we heard the soft creak of the door open. Mathilde and I had our backs turned to the door. Absorbed in our readings as we were, we believed it was Kefilwe returning to us.”
“But it wasn’t!” Kefilwe said as she shot her hands up, in the perfect posture to scare. “It was the ghost!”
This time, Jacob hushed Kefilwe. He was quite drawn in to the ghost story. Jacob’s face was intent, and his body was drawn taut. Georgie listened to the proceedings with a face that spoke of great suspicion, and Gabe? Gabe was trying to keep himself from shivering like a leaf caught in a windstorm.
“It was the ghost,” Nour confirmed. “The sound of footsteps filled the room. Innocuous, heavy, similar to Kefilwe’s own when she wears her boots. But when I looked up to greet her welcome presence- no one was there.”
“Spooky,” Jacob said, expression thoughtful.
“The door was ajar. And it had been locked! Kefilwe was the only other who had the key to this room, and she had never entered. Yes, we locked it. We closed it. We heard it open and we heard the footsteps.” As Mathilde spoke, her voice picked up, growing more and more frantic. “It was not Kefilwe!”
“You didn’t do a prank, right? And now you’re not coming forward because it would be really embarrassing?” Jacob asked Kefilwe.
“No! I wouldn’t do that.” Kefilwe frowned at him. “I love my friends. I don’t want to scare them like this.”
Nour nodded in agreement. “Kefilwe would never hurt any of us, I believe her. Likewise, we have all heard hearsay of the dead walking these halls.”
“And then there was that bloody thing in the library…” Georgie added with a shudder.
“Kefilwe spoke of that on her return,” Mathilde said. “I truly fear we are in the hands of the devil.”
“This ain’t the devil,” Georgie said. “I know the devil like an old friend. This is something else.”
Mathilde turned to Georgie, aghast. “Georgiana! Do not speak of the devil in that way.”
Gabe looked up like a wild animal about to get struck by an oncoming collision. He opened his mouth like he wanted to intervene, balancing responses in his head, but Georgie spoke up first. “Why not?” Georgie demanded, face hot. “It’s true! You don’t know the shite I’ve lived with. Lived through. This place is a hell, yeah, but there’s worse out there Mathilde. And the spirits? We opened the door for them. We invited them in.”
Mathilde looked away, shamefaced.
And Devorah too felt ashamed. The Champion’s League was the worst thing she had ever been through. Unquestionably. Yet from the moment she had been stolen away until her death, had Devorah truly suffered? Not like Georgie probably had, with consumption and a life likely lived in deep poverty. And yet Devorah had spent nearly half of her time as an AI moping, crying, raging.
“No matter.” Nour spoke up. “It does not matter if it is an independent spirit or the work of something darker. I do not want this room to be tainted. Here.” Nour reached into a pouch and revealed Bell’s pin. “You three, take this.” They pressed it into Gabe’s palm.
His hand shook.
Nour continued. “I trust you with this artifact, Gabriel. And I believe your company will find a better use for this than we ever could.”
“You have our blessing. Take it away from here,” Mathilde said.
“We’ll hold onto it for you,” Jacob said. Devorah could see how he wanted to take Bell’s pin. The way his eyes tracked it, and never left Gabe’s hand revealed everything.
But Gabe just slid it into the pocket of his jeans. “I promise I’ll keep ya’ll safe. Let me know if you ever need this here pin.”
Kefilwe grinned, relieved. “Thank you, Gabe!”
"You are a good Christian," Mathilde said softly. Devorah found herself shrugging- whatever made Mathilde sleep easier at night.