Igor stopped rinsing the dishes so he could look at me with both his eyes.

“Are you insane? Why would I have luggage? I hate traveling.” He went back to loading the dishwasher. “As soon as I moved into the shack, I threw away my trunk. I would have burned it if Mr. Noctis had allowed it.”

“The shack?”

I had assumed that Igor lived in the mansion with us. Iset hadn’t pointed out his room on our tour, but it was a big mansion, and Igor seemed like the kind of guy who liked his privacy.

Igor nodded toward the western wall. “It’s out there. You really should explore more of your surroundings.”

I waved a finger around. “Okay. A—you’re one to talk. B—where do you get off calling that thing a shack? Do you know how much people in the city would have to pay for a studio apartment that nice?”

When I had asked Conrad about the building that Igor referred to as “the shack,” the wolfman had called it “the groundskeeper’s cottage.” That had confused me at the time because Conrad was more or less the groundskeeper, and his room was across the hall from mine. It made a lot more sense now that I knew Igor had claimed it.

The exterior of the cottage matched the gray stone of the mansion, but a quick peek in the window had revealed a tasteful, modern interior that looked as if it had been renovated in the last five years.

“I earned those upgrades, young lady.”

“And no one deserves them more, Igor.” I hesitated. “So you don’t have any luggage?”

Igor closed the dishwasher and started it. “Believe it or not, I was too busy working to run out and buy some between now and thirty seconds ago.”

I groaned and dropped my head onto the kitchen island.

“You’ll spend more time indulging in your petty theatrics than it would take to buy some for yourself.”

“Darn right I will,” I said to the floor.

There was a short silence.

“You don’t want to buy some?” Igor asked.

I shook my head without lifting it from the cold countertop.

“Why?”

“Guilt.”

The next silence was long enough I raised my head to see what Igor was doing.

He was wiping off the counters.

“What?” I said. “No comment?”

“Not this time. I understand your sentiment—though I can’t approve of your melodrama.”

Mind you, this was coming from the person who’d once called me an abomination because I tried to come into the kitchen with muddy boots on.

“What should I do?” I asked him.

“Don’t put the choice to me. I’ll wrap it up, add a bow, and hand it right back. Nobody likes hard decisions.”

The ridiculousness of the situation struck me. This was a hard decision? When did I become so privileged that choosing how to get luggage for my free international trip qualified as a struggle?

“You know, you’re right,” I pulled out my phone. “I’m being stupid. This really shouldn’t be that big of a deal.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m flipping a coin.”

“That’s your phone.”

I smiled and opened my coin flipping app—an essential program I would recommend to anyone who hates hard decisions as much as I do.

“Good lord,” Igor said when he saw it. “Has technology finally gone too far?”

I ran my finger up the screen. There was the high-pitched ringing sound of a nonexistent coin, then it landed.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Heads.

Well, it wasn’t any worse than tails.

I put my phone in my pocket. “Where’s Olivia?”

“Check Iset’s private study. If she’s not there, then she’s probably in the library.”

I went to the library first. I could have gone up the grand staircase to Iset’s rooms, but then I wouldn’t get the chance to use the neat spiral staircase that corkscrewed up from the library to the second floor.

But my clever plan was thwarted. Olivia was in the library.

She and Iset stopped talking as I approached the desk where they were working. The silence got noticeably louder when I finished asking my question.

I forced myself not to fidget.

“Where are you going?” Olivia asked.

“England.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

I glanced at Darius. He was several feet away, at his own desk, typing on his laptop. He looked up in time for our eyes to meet, but he didn’t say anything.

“Jacky asked me to help him,” I said.

“I see.”

Between us were a hundred things that Olivia Oliversen wasn’t saying. I could feel them pushing against me. I braced myself.

“Yes, you may.” She looked back down at the open book in front of Iset.

I kept my stance. “I need it soon. Would you like to get it now or sometime this evening?”

She raised her head.

“Maybe after lunch?” I suggested.

The witch said, “Iset?”

The mummy’s beautiful, soft voice felt like a balm after Olivia’s clipped tones. “I’m afraid it’ll be hard to break from the spell once you start it.”

Olivia dropped her pen on her notebook. “Then I guess we’d better take care of it now.”

The witch motioned for me to follow as she passed. We went out of the library, climbed the front stairs, flipped around the banister, and walked back to her rooms.

When she opened the door and went inside, I stopped.

“May I come in?” I asked.

“Fine,” she called.

She disappeared into her walk-in closet while I looked around the bedroom.

There was a lot less black than I thought there would be. Either she didn’t bother redecorating when she moved in, or her love of the color didn’t extend beyond her wardrobe. I saw a black sweatshirt hanging off the back of her desk chair. That was all. The rest of the room was done in a muted Victorian color scheme, similar to my room’s. I wandered over to the desk. It was covered in books, notebooks, post-it notes, and random objects. I glanced at an open notebook and saw a sketch surrounded by her neat, cramped handwriting. I looked away before she could find me there and accuse me of snooping.

When I turned, I saw that she made her bed.

She was sixteen…and she made her bed.

It galled me to think that she was more mature than I was. I made a mental note to clean up my own bed once I got back to my room.

She came out of her closet with a large, black, carry-on bag, laid it on her bed, and started going through all the pockets to make sure they were empty.

“Why are you always bothering Conrad?” she asked.

The assault was so sudden, I couldn’t prepare myself for it. The blow hit like a cannon ball.

Olivia continued her inspection, completely unconcerned.

Since she wasn’t in a hurry, I had a few seconds to try to compose my thoughts. I never got past the foot-wide hole her comment had left through my chest.

“Wha-what makes you think I’m bothering him?” I sputtered.

“You’re always following him around and harassing him.”

“Harassing him?”

“Patting his head, tugging his ears—that kind of thing. And that stunt you pulled this morning with Kappa. Did you think you were being cute?”

Was the room swaying or was I?

“Has he said something?”

My tone was more confrontational than I had meant it to be, but Olivia didn’t comment.

“Not everyone is going to tell you to your face that you’re bothering them,” she said. “Some people are too nice.” She zipped up the bag and held it out to me.

I snatched it from her. “At least that’s not a problem you have.”

I turned to leave, but I hadn’t gone two steps before I turned back. I hoped she couldn’t see the tears gathering at the edges of my eyes.

“And I don’t follow him around!”

I forced myself to walk out of the room and down the hall to my bedroom, but that used up all the self-control I had. Once I locked the door, I fell to the boards, content in the knowledge that no one was around to see my hysterics.

But maybe collapsing was enough drama. I shed a few tears, but they had the decency to be silent. Then I got to lay there, feeling embarrassed and wretched.

Olivia had a point. Conrad was really nice. And he was shy. If I was bothering him, he probably wouldn’t tell me.

“I’m not following him around,” I muttered to the crack in the floorboards.

Maybe if I repeated it enough, I’d believe it was true. But I doubted it.

I did follow him around. Not on purpose, but whenever I was bored or wanted company, I went hunting for him. I knew all his favorite places in the mansion.

My cheeks burned.

“I wasn’t trying to be cute,” I hissed.

That, at least, was true.

Cute? What kind of ego would that take? I was a bald zombie. I was only…playing. Having fun. I never wasted a single second worrying about how I looked. There didn’t seem to be much point.

But Olivia obviously thought I was trying to be cute.

Did Conrad?

My stomach turned until it was upside down. I tried to breathe slow so I wouldn’t heave. On hands and knees, I crawled over to my bed and dropped myself on my mattress.

I was being stupid. Again. It seemed like the day for it. There wasn’t any point in worrying about the past. I couldn’t change it, so I had to let it go. I had to think about something else.

My stomach moaned.

Yeah, right. I could try to think about something else. Or, if I was going to obsess, I could at least be sensible about it.

I liked Conrad, no matter what he thought of me. I didn’t want to annoy him. The solution to that was easy. All I had to do was stop teasing him. I would leave him alone and give him some space.

I nodded. The motion felt confident. Good girl. I had found a reasonable way to think.

The heartache had permeated all the way to my bladder by then. When I felt the dull whisper of pain, I put a hand over my abdomen.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve enjoyed this.”

Get up, I thought. Do something. Get your mind off it. Take a bath and read some comics or something.

Yeah. That sounded good. I went to run some hot water, leaving my bed unmade.