“First of all, I didn’t leave that day because I was sad, I left because I was mad. Mostly at myself, because I was jealous of you.” I pointed at Paisley. “You two talked to each other a lot and for some reason I got it in my head that you liked each other, and I’m not going to go into why, but that’s that. I also understand why Paisley left Sophie by the stairs, this is our house, and they had no clue about any of this weird stuff. It makes sense that she’d want to make sure that she could find her way back in case Paisley ended up getting lost. So all of this is really random power out of our control or really stupid misunderstandings that are no one’s fault. Except maybe my own.” I finished my rant with a deep breath. I could see Duncan subtly nodding along out of the corner of my eye. Paisley and Liam were both silent as they looked at me, obviously unsure of what to say. I began to feel awkward under their gaze so I deflected by turning and sitting in the center of the couch across from Duncan and Lacey’s. I pulled my feet onto the couch in front of me and rested my head on my knees. Paisley was the first to sit down on my left, then Liam followed, seating himself on my right.

“I never thought it was your fault...” Paisley attempted to comfort me.

“Except it is though. Even if me walking out because of my pettiness wouldn’t have changed anything then the fact that I kept so many secrets was. Things would probably have gone so much differently if I had told you guys about all this heeby-jeeby-supernatural-whatever in the first place.” I sighed. I felt a warm hand gently place itself on my back to my right, which felt much nicer than I’d care to admit due to the lingering soreness of my shoulder.

“It’s like you said, you couldn’t have known…” Liam tried to comfort this time, but I shook my head.

“I don’t really care who’s fault it was at this point, we’re all tired and arguing will get us literally nowhere and you guys know it. We should all just make up and take a nap or something, what time is it?” I went on, ready to end the conversation.

“A good time for everyone to rest.” Lacey answered, not bothering to check the time. I nodded.

“Well then, I’ll start, and don’t try to change my mind on things just accept the apology, and move on… Everyone, I apologize for getting jealous and for keeping secrets from you all. Especially you Paisley.” I announced to the room. Liam spoke up next.

“Paisley, I apologize for not sucking up sooner, and I’m sorry for anything hurtful I may have said earlier.” Paisley nodded in response before speaking as well.

“Liam, I’m sorry for rushing you so much, I recognize that that kind of thing is a super delicate topic, especially for those of the same gender. I also apologize for implying anything was your fault, and for taking my frustrations out on everyone here.”

“Sorry for also keeping all this a secret from everyone, and for outing you to everyone with Paisley, I got caught up in the moment.” Duncan said from across the way, then everyone looked at Lacey, who raised her eyebrows.

“I regret nothing, and I have nothing to apologize for. I don’t know why you’re all looking at me.” She adopted a sassy tone of voice, that successfully lightened the mood and got a chuckle out of everyone. Including a quiet giggle from the other side of the room, which got my attention. I lifted my head in Sophie’s direction.

“I thought you said you were tired! Go to sleep.” I called out to the lump under the blankets. A grumbled ‘I’m trying’ was the muffled response, before everyone either fell asleep on the couches or stayed awake reading or chatting…

The first thing I noticed when I awoke was that my glasses were still on. The second thing I noticed was that a hand was in my hair, combing softly; and then Paisley’s legs resting on my lap, and then I finally noticed where I was. Which was, definitely, Liam’s lap. I just barely managed to keep still without flinching up awkwardly. Liam was awake, I could see his phone screen from where my head was positioned on his chest-shoulder area (I couldn’t tell specifically). He was texting in a group chat with his parents, they seemed kind of concerned that he went on a sudden ‘trip’ with some friends and that he hasn’t had any time to contact them. I caught myself from reading the conversation anymore, afraid of being rude. So I shifted, to act like I was just starting to wake up. I tried not to be disappointed when he quickly took his hand out of my hair and out of the way as I ‘fully woke up’. Then I allowed myself to get up, not too quickly, but not too slowly. I’m sure my face was bright red by the time I turned to face him.

“Sorry, I don’t remember falling asleep…”

“It’s cool, I fell asleep too.” He gave a reassuring smile with a tilt of his head.

“What time is it?” I asked him, keeping quiet.

“Early, very early.” He glanced at his phone to check the time. “That’s about 4:30 early.”

“Ew. My sleep schedule has been destroyed.” I looked ahead of me, at Duncan and Lacey who were still asleep, cuddled together. I needed to remind him to take off his binder if he’d been wearing it the whole time.

“Mine too, which is surprising considering I didn’t even have one to begin with.” He joked. I adjusted my glasses a bit as I chuckled, then just took them off. Glasses are not meant to be slept in. My stomach made a noise as I stretched, and I remembered I didn’t really eat yesterday.

“Jesus how am I not dying of starvation right now?” I wondered aloud as I gently pried myself out from under Paisley’s legs. Silently congratulating myself on not waking her.

“Everyone’s been a little preoccupied by some prophetic quest that we’ve all been looped into, I think.” He answered lightly.

“Pfft, right. That. Sorry for dragging you into all this by the way.”

“Hey, we did apologies last night, all is forgiven. Besides, it's kind of fun in a way? I feel like a supernatural detective a lot of the time. So whenever it’s not overly stressful and chaotic, and we all calm down and look for things and solve mysteries, it kind of brings you that sense of satisfaction.” He explained.

“... Yea, I guess you’re right.” I thought about it for a moment, and while the stressful moments were very, very, stressful. The other moments where everyone gets to just sit around and talk, and uncover the mysteries of this place. Well, let’s just say those I could get addicted to, if there wasn’t so much potential for peril. “I’ll admit it is more fun with other people rather than just Duncan and I.” I said as I walked to my closet to retrieve today’s clothes.

“So how long has he been in on this? Just cause I’m curious...”

“Hmm, I think it was the day before the masquerade? Yea, that’s about right. For some reason he’s the only one who can read the journals. So he acted like he was the ‘guy at the computer’ while I was ‘the field guy’.” I recalled.

“Ha, ha. I could imagine that happening.” He was hovering near the doorway to the closet while I rifled through my sweaters.

“After everyone wakes up what if we all went out? We could borrow my parent’s car and go out for breakfast and go to the library to take the investigation somewhere else. I think we could all do with getting out of the house for a while.” I started, but got distracted as I pulled out a tan shirt and a red sweater. “what... red? or tan… hnn...”

“Red. And I think that’d be a great idea, though it’s supposed to rain in a little while if that’s going to be a problem.” He shot back quickly, which caught me a little off guard, as I hadn’t realized I was talking outloud. I nodded anyway and took the dark red sweater off the hanger, then turned to my shelf of shoes and retrieved some similarly colored rain boots.

“Rain shouldn’t be a problem, I am a fan of the rain anyway.” I grabbed some black pants, and boxers, and socks. Then a towel, after a second. “I’m going to take a shower. In fact, we should all take one before we go. Stressed out teenager has a very particular scent.” I joked as I walked to the bathroom. I shut the door to the sound of Liam’s laughter. On the other side of the door, I had a small private smile to myself before I got to work on getting clean.

By the time everyone had woken up and showered, it was a decent hour in the morning to go out and get breakfast. We took care of the dog’s needs and bid her goodbye before piling into the car. Alice and Lacey got along incredibly well, she mostly followed Lacey wherever she went the whole time during this whole fiasco. Paisley was the one to drive us all to our local Perky’s, a 24/7 chain breakfast joint. On the way there, Duncan, Lacey, and Liam called their parents (and work, for Duncan) to reassure them things were okay and to tell them a pre-agreed on story that we all came up with so there were no loose ends to be tied up. Most parents ended up settling down, though Lacey’s parents and Duncan’s workplace were still on edge. We were waiting in the parking lot of the Perky’s by the time the last call ended. The atmosphere was much lighter now that everyone had slept and left the house, I guessed the talk the day before helped a bit too. It was almost normal, while we sat and waited for food and talked like normal teenagers. Eventually though it was time to leave, so we all piled back into the car and drove to the local library to see if we could find anything relating to the castle. Paisley spoke as she led us all into the library.

“Owen and Duncan, find the librarian and see if you can find out if there were any books donated here from our house, you two have the most luck with libraries and books. Liam and Lacey, you can choose to help them out with that if you want, but I want someone to look into newspapers and such for the house and maybe find out who our JOwner really is. Sophie and I are going to do our own little ‘search’ in the kids section.” Everyone nodded along to her orders, except Sophie.

“No! I wanna help too!” she shouted, catching on that Paisley was going to try and distract her with picture books. She carried her little pack around with her as she trotted in front of the group, and began to fish around in it for a bit. Paisley was patient as Sophie pulled the book that Liam gave her from the pack. “I wanna find out what all this is!” She handed the book over to our older sister. I wasn’t sure if an encyclopedia on plants was going to help but you never know I supposed.

“Alright, I can see if anyone here has a translated version of this.” She said as she looked at the foreign words on the cover. From there, we all dispersed to complete our tasks. This was a large library, with two floors, possibly a basement as well. The library in this town was much better funded than the one from my old home if I had to guess, based on its appearance. Duncan and I made our way to a clerk first.