I unpack my heavy backpack and ignore the shadows that dance around me. I have nothing to worry about. It’ll all work out the way it should.
I just have to make sure the group stays together, including Finn, who very nearly bowed out twice already. I can’t help but admire that he showed up. Finn was there when it started. He should be here now, when it ends.
Because Zac was wrong: I can and will design life exactly to my preferences.
Four
Carter
“Everyone, listen up,” Ever shouts down the hall, leaning out of their room. “If you haven’t changed yet, do so now. I want to make the most of the time we have.”
“Suit up!” Liva calls, following Ever’s declaration.
In my room, aptly themed “haunted mansion,” I deposit my suitcase on my bed and massage my arms, then begin to unpack. I know it’s important to keep up appearances, but this was blatantly ridiculous. If my parents want to show off wealth, they could’ve bought me a fancy backpack too. But no, they said, traveling around with a backpack looks cheap and vulgar. I’m staying at the Konigs’ cabin, aren’t I? I shouldn’t look out of place.
I wish I could’ve told them I was going to look out of place regardless. Liva’s style is effortlessly elegant. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I try, I’m always going to look tacky in comparison. Even this room, done in subtle shades of black and gray, is decorated to understated perfection. If Liva wanted to hurt me, this would be the perfect way to do it—invite me to this cabin and remind me of everything her family has and mine doesn’t.
She wouldn’t care—doesn’t care—about something as small as a suitcase. But try explaining that to my parents. It was hard enough explaining that I couldn’t skip this weekend. They didn’t want me to make a bad impression at work by taking vacation time. No matter that it’s technically only an after-school job and I’m not supposed to work full-time. “You reap what you sow,” as my mother is fond of saying. “Work hard, keep your head high, and you’ll get what you deserve.”
If those words were true, we’d have a cabin of our own, and the status to go with it. My parents work as hard as Liva’s father. I work harder than she does. And it’s not like we have it bad, at all. Not like Ever.
But we don’t count in any way that matters. Liva’s after-school job is as her father’s assistant. I work in the same office, but all I’m tasked with is pushing papers.
Once I get to college, I’ll find a way to change that, by any means necessary. A flicker of guilt pulses in my mind, but I push it down. I’ll show them all.
“Don’t you have any passions you want to pursue?” Ever asked me not too long ago.
I laughed at them. “Passions don’t pay the rent, Ev.”
They narrowed their eyes. “Humor me. What would you do if you had the choice? If you didn’t do it for the money?” There was something else they didn’t say, but they clamped their mouth shut.
I’d never truly considered that before. And maybe it was because we’d just solved another case in our game—the murder of a jeweler—but one answer immediately came to mind. I’d major in journalism. I’d still be an inquisitor, but I’d travel the real world. I’d go everywhere and uncover secrets and find truth and challenge the lies we tell one another.
I’d be brave.
Still. “Does it matter? I don’t have that choice. And don’t tell me you would do anything different in my shoes.”
They smiled, and it cut straight through me. “You’re right, I wouldn’t. I’d take your job. I’d go to college and learn everything I could get my hands on. I’d make sure Elle would never have to worry about food and heat again. And I would eat fresh pears every day.”
With that, they’d gotten to their feet, and I didn’t know if I’d won the argument or lost it.
I kick my shoes under the bed. I take out the various pieces of my costume and dig up my coin-slash-dice purse from my suitcase. Inside are my trusted twenty-sided and thirty-sided dice, in various blues and purples, and a handful of Gonfalon coins, fake golds and silvers and coppers.
I toss it onto the bed and start to peel off my T-shirt, when a loud shattering echoes to my left. Not in here—the adjacent room. Like something—or someone?—crashed to the floor. I pull my shirt back on and dash out.
All the other bedroom doors are closed, and no one else seems to react to the sound, though I can’t imagine I’m the only one who heard it. But the door next to mine is ajar.
I knock and push it farther open. “Hello? Anyone here?”
The door swings open. It’s the bathroom, and it’s empty.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I see movement.
A figure. Watching me.
My heart slams in my throat, and I swirl.
No one’s there.
Just the door of the medicine cabinet. It’s swaying above the sink. When it falls back in place, I laugh nervously. The person I thought I saw was just my own reflection in the mirrored door. But then the reflection fragments into a dozen smaller ones, like my face is cut to pieces, and I realize the mirror’s been shattered. The only thing holding the shards together is the frame surrounding them.
I reach out to touch it, and the reflection of my finger fragments into half a dozen pieces too. Three pairs of eyes stare back at me.
“Bad luck to break a mirror.”
I nearly jump out of my skin. Maddy leans around the door. She’s already dressed and pulls an opera cape around herself. It’s dark green, lush and rippling. Her brown eyes are focused on the mirror.
“I didn’t—” My voice cracks and I clear my throat. “I didn’t break it. I found it like this.”
“Mm-hmm,” she hums, as if she doesn’t believe me. “Get dressed, Carter. You’re late.”
I want to argue that I really didn’t do it, but she’s right. I’ll have to tell Liva about the mirror later.
I push past her and back into my room. Despite the summer warmth, the rooms are uncomfortably chilly, and I make short work of changing into my Gonfalon outfit. I strip down to the linen pants I wore on the way up—they double as fairly fantasy-looking—and pull a moss-green tunic over my head. It’s long, reaching almost to my knees, and it’s worn and faded a bit. But lived in, not old.
Liva made these tunics for us two years ago, for our annual WyvernCon trip. It was the first time we all dressed up, and as our own characters, no less. I told my parents we were going to a convention, but I didn’t give any other details. I didn’t change until I got to Maddy’s house to pick her up, to avoid awkward questions. I didn’t relish the idea of explaining any of this to my parents—and my mother would be certain the tunic was a dress, and then we’d get into an argument about that.