Lucky Rabbit

Fortunately, the door swung outward, so Pandy used her impressive Agility score to remain behind it as it opened, summoning her clothing as she did so. She was pretty sure Chancellor Augustus Blackwood hadn’t gotten an eyeful this time. Maybe half an eye, at most.

Several seconds passed until the chancellor said, “Ah, Ms. Wellington?” in a tone with which Pandy was very familiar. That tone said the speaker wasn’t entirely certain the person they were addressing was sane, and people used it a lot when speaking to her. Honestly, Pandy couldn’t even blame him for it.

“Yes?” Pandy said, not moving from behind the door. She was fully dressed now, but that wouldn’t erase his memory of the last minute or so. On the other hand, if she just stayed back here long enough, surely he would get tired of waiting and just…go away?

“Do I want to know why you’re standing outside my door in a state of…dishabille?” Was he laughing at her?

Pandy cleared her throat. “No. I mean, yes?” She had a reason. Of course she had a reason. But what was it?

A polite silence waited for her to fill it, but eventually Chancellor Blackwood urged, “And?”

“I…I wanted to…,” Pandy choked, mind racing through all of the possible options. There were just so many. Sleepwalking? Hunger? An early morning search for the nearest bathroom? A cunning plan to die of crippling mortification?

“I need my…schedule! Yes.” That made sense. Theoretically, she worked for him, which made him her boss. Bosses handed out schedules. Logic! More silence from the far side of the door. Seriously, how much patience did he have? Pandy would have been falling over herself with questions by now. How could he just wait?

“Your schedule is the same as it has been since the first day of school,” he said finally, and his voice was so gentle that Pandy dared to peek around at him, only to find that he wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he was staring at a falconet woven into the rug with a level of focus usually found only in professional ornithologists.

“I…forgot?” she offered, and he glanced up at her in startlement, only to look even more surprised as he took in the high neckline and long sleeve visible past the edge of the door. Color rose in his cheeks, and he cleared his throat.

“I do apologize,” he said formally. “I must have been mistaken when I… I thought that you-” He coughed again, then turned and reentered the office, leaving the door open behind him. Crossing to his desk, he removed something that looked remarkably like the manila folders found in Pandy’s world. It seemed that effective design was effective design no matter where you found yourself.

Pulling out a single sheet of paper, Mr. Blackwood placed it on the pristine surface of the heavy wooden desk and spun it around to face Pandy. She looked down at it, blinking as she realized that it held a schedule, neatly charted out and looking almost exactly like one of Clara’s class schedules in Gacha Love. Most of it was white, with the exception of five gray blocks neatly lined up across from the words Small Group. Breakfast on Monday, lunch on Tuesday, and dinner on Wednesday and Thursday were also shaded in.

“As you know,” the chancellor said, and if Pandy hadn’t known better, she would have thought his lips twitched just a little as he spoke, “you were hired as an…in-house substitute. If someone else is ill or absent, you cover their class. Otherwise, you attend meals, assist as needed, and have your own Small Group.”

Behind the metal-rimmed glasses, his eyes were watchful as Pandy took all of it in. That…didn’t sound so bad. But why were Ms. Wellington’s job tasks so light? It sounded like she would work a maximum of, what, ten hours a week, most weeks? Assuming that she actually planned classes or graded homework, that might go as high as fifteen, but that wasn’t even part-time, especially not for Pandy, who often had two eight-hour shifts in the same day, albeit at different jobs. Then, of course, there were the weeks when she couldn’t get work, and-

“How much do I get paid?” Pandy blurted, before her brain actually had time to process the fact that the real Ms. Wellington undoubtedly knew exactly how much money she made.

Mr. Blackwood blinked. His lips twitched yet again, then pressed firmly together. “I don’t know,” he said in an absolutely deadpan voice. “You would have to take that up with your actual employer.”

Her actual employer? Did he mean the Shadow Exchange? Or whoever hired Ms. Wellington through the Shadow Exchange? How far had she just shoved her foot in her mouth? Far enough so she could kick herself in the rear? Because it certainly seemed likely.

Pandy backpedaled so quickly that if she was in the circus, she probably would have earned a standing ovation. “Oh, yes. I knew… I mean, obviously. I just wondered if you…knew…” Her voice trailed off as her wobbly, metaphorical unicycle fell over, and she grabbed her skirt in suddenly sweaty hands. “I feel quite faint. I should really…get back to my room. Now. Maybe before now. Earlier than now. Not that I could… I’m just…” She turned, moving toward the door, only to have a firm hand grip her arm and pull her around.

Chancellor Blackwood laid the back of one cool hand against Pandy’s suddenly sweaty forehead. He frowned. “You do feel warm. I’ll have Mistress Rose-”

“No!” Pandy squeaked. “No, Timon is… He’s doing a great job.” She twisted her arm so her wrist slipped through his grasp, grateful for the free self-defense classes she’d attended at various times throughout her life. With Pandy’s luck, it had simply seemed like a good idea to know how to protect herself. Besides, free things were meant to be taken advantage of. She didn’t know how many cookies, shirts, and pens she’d gotten by going to open houses and grand openings, even though she never bought anything.

The chancellor dropped his arm, looking bemused. “Timon is doing a great job. Timon?”

Pandy nodded vigorously, taking another step backward. “We don’t need to disturb Mistress Rose.” Or anyone else who might feel the need to check Pandy’s non-existent wounds. “I’ll just go lie down. But maybe,” she gave him a hopeful look, “I won’t quite be ready for lunch tomorrow?”

Once again, his lips twitched. Pandy was honestly beginning to wonder if he had some kind of tic. “Maybe not,” he agreed gravely, finally backing up toward his desk. “Go then, Ms., ah, Wellington, and get some more rest.”

Pandy stepped backwards, bobbing an awkward little curtsey, because that seemed like the kind of thing a teacher would definitely do after they finished talking to the chancellor. Didn’t it? Or should she bow? In any case, there was that tic again, and Pandy quickly closed the door between herself and the man who now stood behind the desk, watching her like he’d just found a small, rather wonky pearl inside a clam and didn’t quite know what to do with it. Pearls came from clams, didn’t they? Or was that oysters?

Adopting a brisk, ‘I know what I’m doing’ sort of pace, Pandy made her way down the hall to Ms. Wellington’s office and suite. Since she did not, in fact, have any idea what she was doing, it was probably good that she didn’t see anyone else, though the sounds coming from inside the various apartments indicated that other people would soon be heading down for breakfast.

Pandy opened the door to her office, finding that it turned as easily beneath her hand as it had before, and promptly froze as she saw Timon standing half-in, half-out of the suite. Was he entering or leaving? Had he tried to wake the fake-Wellington in the bed? There was only one thing to do, and Pandy crossed her arms, bracing herself for a Difficult Task.

“What are you doing?” Pandy demanded, making her voice as cold as possible.

Timon looked from Pandy to the inside of the small apartment, confusion writ large on his face. “I- You- How?”

Pandy lifted one side of her upper lip in a carefully choreographed sneer of derision. “I went out. That’s all you need to know.” She flicked her eyes past him. “Did you bring my breakfast?”

Timon stiffened. “It’s on the table. But you-”

“Went out,” Pandy repeated, raising her lip until it probably looked like she was having some kind of spasm. She flicked her fingers at him, stepping to the side. “You may go.”

She wished she had one of the little copper coins that were just enough to buy a single flower or play a game at one of the festivals. She would flip it to him as if it was an insulting sort-of-tip, like leaving a penny for a waitress, something that had happened to Pandy more than once. Like it was her fault there was a roach in the fried mushrooms or walnuts in the nut-allergy-lady’s Waldorf salad. Who ordered a salad with nuts and then asked to hold the nuts? And Pandy had definitely written ‘NO NUTS’ on the ticket, no matter what the kitchen said!

The boy’s face stiffened, and he closed the door to the suite with a little more force than was absolutely necessary. “Fine. Then you’re obviously well enough not to need me. I have other patients to tend to.”

She did the finger flick again, like she was brushing away an annoying insect or some of the fur that always announced the passage of the old lady in apartment 3B, who had fifteen cats. “Good. Toodles.”

Timon stopped halfway across the room, mouthing ‘Toodles?’ like it was a foreign language, and Pandy circled around behind him, blocking his path back to the apartment door. She made a little shooing motion, and the young man finally shook his head, then hurried out through the door Pandy had left open behind her.

Immediately, she crossed the room and closed it, which was good, because he had stopped in the hall right outside and was opening his mouth as if to ask a question. Pandy shut the door in his face, before turning and bracing her back against it, like he was going to try to break in. After a moment, footsteps sounded in the hall, and Pandy swallowed hard, once again glad she was no longer able to vomit.

She couldn’t just melt down, or sneak back down to Thaniel, though. First, because someone would definitely hear or see her, and second, because she had to try to figure out what Timon had seen. She glanced longingly at the desk, which probably held things like, say, Ms. Wellington’s schedule, but opened the door to her room instead.

It was about as large as Pandy’s old studio apartment, and had a similar layout, probably because it was a good layout for an apartment. Right inside the door was a small sitting/living room type space, containing the small table and the fluffy, surprisingly comfortable chair. The closet she’d missed in her initial, dimly-lit inspection was to her left, just before the vanity and its chair.

There was no attempt to hide the vanity, though before Pandy had dug through it, there really wasn’t any need to do so, since its pots, paints, and brushes were actually quite pretty and had been neatly lined up. Still, nothing about the room indicated that Ms. Wellington ever intended to have company, including the fact that the single fluffy chair was oversized for the small space, and took up at least one-and-a-half normal chairs’ worth of room.

The bed was tucked against the back wall. It was no larger than the little twin bed Pandy had gotten for five dollars at a garage sale on a particularly cold and windy day. Apparently, the former owner had gotten tired of chasing the thin mattress when it blew away down the street, and didn’t want to clean the mud and grass stains off of it. Pandy considered the find one of the few pieces of good luck in her life, even though the mud was quite red, and it was a bit unnerving to look at. Still, the man running the sale had assured her that it was just mud, and she had no real reason to doubt him, especially when the police kept driving past. If the police didn’t think they needed to stop, it was fine, right? She just flipped the mattress over and slept on the other side.

This bed was narrow, especially for Ms. Wellington’s comfortably padded frame, and it was still piled with the blanket Pandy had draped over the stuffing she’d rearranged the night before. Pandy started to edge past the covered tray on the little table, then hesitated and lifted the lid, smelling the rich warmth of herbs, some kind of grain, and what was probably chicken broth. She was not going to miss out on another meal simply because she didn’t have thumbs.

As far as she could tell, the blankets were undisturbed. Hopefully, that meant Timon hadn’t bothered to do anything but come in and leave the tray. It would be just like him to try to sneak in and out without having to deal with Ms. Wellington at all. Especially since it seemed clear to Pandy that no one believed she was actually in any real danger, and therefore didn’t actually need caring for. There was a small pot of tea on the tray, along with a terse note instructing her to drink ‘every drop’, but one sniff told Pandy that would be going into her inventory until she could find someplace to dump it.

All right, that was it. Pandy glanced at her stats, seeing that she had almost seventy minutes before Shifting Faces ended for the day. She also didn’t have anything in particular to do today, since Thaniel should cover for Bunny, while Timon would be loath to return for another round of being insulted and belittled. It was, however, quite possible that Mistress Rose would come by at some point, and she wouldn’t be put off by a pile of straw and bedclothes.

“Better to get in trouble for leaving when I’m not supposed to than have her find this,” Pandy muttered to herself as she pulled the blanket back. It was worse than she remembered, with bits of straw everywhere, the coils of wood jumbled together, and the abandoned nightgown collapsed in the center of it, for all the world as if the bed had slurped up its occupant like a noodle.

Pandy stuffed everything back together as quickly as she could. There was still a noticeable lump in the middle, and when she gingerly sat down on it, she felt like she was sitting on a bale of hay, not a bed. Apparently the ‘springs’ had to be placed in just the right way in order to work, and Pandy definitely hadn’t gotten it right. Still, when she stretched the sheet over it all and tucked it in as tightly as possible, it looked like a bed, and that was really what mattered.

As Pandy stepped back to admire her handiwork, her gaze was caught by something out of place. Frowning, she stared at what she had taken for a tapestry or some kind of cloth hanging on the wall above the bed. But, glancing around, she realized that there were no other pictures hanging anywhere. Nothing personal at all, in fact, if you didn’t count the cosmetics and clothes. So why was there a tapestry of – Pandy squinted – a bird placed far above most people’s line of sight?

No. Not a bird. A falconet. Which meant it didn’t belong to Ms. Wellington, but to the school. Pandy climbed up onto the bed again, carefully avoiding the potentially hazardous center, and stretched up to push the cloth aside. The material was heavy, but, as she’d suspected, behind it was a set of sheer fabric curtains, covering a window so small that even a child would struggle to climb through it. Still, her questing fingers found a small latch, which she flipped open before pushing the window up, allowing a cool, refreshing breeze into the stuffy room.

Pandy pulled herself up, her much-improved Strength allowing her to do a proper pull-up for the first time in either of her lives. She gazed out through the window, arms not even trembling, seeing the stable and Brook’s pond ahead and to the left, and the sort of woody, park-like area that lay between the stable and the gardens spread out in front of her. The benches and winding paths were empty at the moment, though Pandy could see a few people moving around in the stable.

An unfamiliar movement stretched her lips, and it took Pandy a moment to realize that she was grinning. There was an oak tree directly ahead of her, with a thick branch extending toward the school. Someone had trimmed the branch back, but its solid, blunt end hung about ten feet from the window. A particularly acrobatic squirrel might be able to make that leap, but neither woman nor rabbit could.

Unless, of course, that rabbit had a Strength of eighteen, and an Agility of twenty. And, if she did miss – because this was Pandy, after all – she was undead, and a fall of fifteen or twenty feet definitely wouldn’t kill her. Probably. Though she might need a little help putting herself together again afterwards. Still, Pandy now had another, far less noticeable, way to get in and out of Ms. Wellington’s room.