Everlast (The Chronicles of Nerissette) (Entangled Teen) Page 6

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I silently hoped that a year and a half of high school German would be enough for me and the door to muddle through a basic understanding of each other.

  “Wonderful,” Esmeralda said. “Your room is through there. Clothes are in the closet. Please change into something appropriate for dinner. The assembled nobles joining you tonight are a bit stuffy about those things.”

  “Okay, but um…” I crossed my arms over my chest to hide the way my hands were shaking at the thought of dinner—with nobles—in the World of Dreams. Somehow I thought I was probably way out of my league.

  “What?” Esmeralda was slinking toward the stairs but she stopped and turned to face me.

  “Where’s dinner being served?” I asked.

  “The formal dining room. Obviously.” Esmeralda’s eyes were wide, and I got the impression that if the cat could she would have rolled them at me.

  “Yeah, but how do I get there?” I wrinkled my nose and hoped she’d take pity on me and my cluelessness.

  “I’ll send one of the footmen to retrieve you,” she said with a sigh. “He’ll bring your maid a tray.”

  “Personal tutor in cool.” Heidi flounced past the cat and into my bedroom. “And I’ve got dibs on that bed. Allie can sleep in the closet.”

  “You can try, but I don’t expect you shall succeed,” Esmeralda said haughtily. The cat nodded her dark head toward me. “I’ll bid you good afternoon, Your Highness. Rest well.”

  “Right.” I took a deep breath and tried to push down the urge to seriously freak out. At least until I was alone.

  “Agh!” Heidi screamed.

  Obviously the door wasn’t the only piece of furniture in my room that had an attitude problem. The mattress had rolled up around her and was bouncing against the wooden slats across the bottom of the bed.

  “Get me out of here!” she wailed.

  “Stop!” I ran into the room and grabbed for the mattress. “Stop already. She’ll get off you, but let her go first.”

  The mattress began to spin, levitating over the bed frame.

  “It’s not working,” Heidi shrieked. “I’m going to throw up.”

  “What’s the German word for stop?”

  “I don’t know. I took French because Madame Sullivan let me skip every day since she was the cheerleading coach.”

  “Crap.” I tried to remember the vocabulary I’d learned in freshman German. Gran was right—I should have paid more attention to Frau Bittner in third period.

  The mattress quit rolling and bounced up and down, slamming itself against the wood. The bed frame began to creak, the mattress hitting it so hard that the floor vibrated.

  “Hurry up,” Heidi moaned.

  “Gestopt,” I said.

  The mattress bounced harder.

  “I’m seriously going to throw up.”

  “That wasn’t it. I know it’s close, though… Wait a second. Stoppen! Stoppen right now!”

  The mattress landed hard on the frame and ceased its antics. One end unrolled slowly, settling down before the other side unfurled and released Heidi. She stood and pushed her hair back from her face. “So much for dibs on the bed.”

  “I think things here respond differently depending on who they’re interacting with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I walked over to sit down on the edge of the mattress. Instead of attacking me, it started to warm underneath me, supporting my weight. “Well, it’s my bed. So, if anyone besides me tries to sleep in it the bed attacks them.”

  “So you’re saying if I try on one of your superspecial princess outfits it’s going to strangle me?”

  “It might.”

  She watched me warily, her hair standing up on end and the neck of her shirt torn. The other side of the mattress curled angrily, and I laid my hand against it, trying to be soothing. The last thing I needed was it attacking my new roomie—again.

  “Your bed just tried to kill me.” She said it slowly, as if trying to convince herself it was true.

  “Yep.” I stared up at the ceiling, which was covered in stars. Correction: the ceiling was painted a dark blue to look like the night sky with diamonds scattered across it in the shape of constellations. Big diamonds.

  “Aren’t you going to—I don’t know—do something about it?”

  “Right.” I plumped one of the pillows and dropped it back on the mattress. “Bad bed. No eating people. That cover it?”

  “That’s what you’re going to do? You’re going to scold it?”

  “What do you want me to do? Ground it? It’s a bed.”

  “It’s a homicidal killing machine. You need to be stern with it or else it’s going to go on a murder spree, you wimp.”

  “It’s letting me lie on it just fine. So maybe you should just stay away from each other, then if the bed gets hungry again it’ll hunt dust bunnies instead.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” she said. “I’m going to go check out your clothes. If you hear me screaming that your closet is trying to kill me, maybe, if you’re feeling helpful, you could come try to save my life.”

  “Sure thing.” I yawned and rolled over, burying my face in a pillow. “You scream, and I’ll come running. As soon as I’ve gotten some sleep.”

  Chapter Seven

  “This is the best of the bunch,” Heidi said.

  We both stared at my reflection in the mirror, and I couldn’t help but sigh. This was not good. On a scale of one to a pop quiz in Chemistry, this was possibly finding out the quiz was worth most of your semester grade. This dinner was going to stink.

  And apparently there were no jeans in my new wardrobe, only dresses. Gowns if you wanted to be picky about it—lots and lots of long, flowing gowns. The one I had on was deep ruby-red velvet with thick gold embroidery down the front. Brilliant gold vines tangled along the hem and climbed up the front of the dress to bloom into three golden roses at the neckline.

  “It brings out the highlights in your hair.”

  “Really?” I looked at my reflection again and turned my head slightly.

  I wasn’t fond of wearing dresses, no matter what the occasion, but if Heidi said this was the best of the bunch, and I had no choice anyway, then I might as well give it a try. As long as I didn’t trip over the skirt and fall face-first down a set of stairs in front of a bunch of strangers, I’d consider the night a success.

  “Yeah, I mean, if you like looking like you’ve got streaks of blood in your hair instead of highlights,” Heidi said. She shoved me toward an antique-looking dressing table with a gold-filigreed mirror that had rosebuds trailing along its sides.

  “Thanks. For a second there I thought you were actually going to pay me a compliment and that would have just been too weird today.”

  She pushed me down onto the padded bench. “Here, let me fix your hair. You can’t go out looking like that. Every other girl in the kingdom will use you looking like crap as a chance to steal my boyfriend.”

  “Wait, why does my hair have anything to do with your boyfriend?”

  “He’s supposedly your prince consort, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, if you look all frumpy, some pampered brat in a fluffy dress will try to take him from you. And then I’m out a boyfriend. So they need to think that they can’t get to him through your laziness. Now sit still, and let me do your hair.”

  “I don’t think whether or not my hair looks good is going to matter when it comes to your boyfriend. Even without the flirting noble girls involved.”

  “Look, one thing I’ve learned from two years of high school popularity is that every queen needs a court full of hangers-on to lord it up over. And every single one of them would like nothing more than to knock you off your pedestal.”

  “That’s sort of sad.”

  “It’s the life of a princess. If you don’t have people to torment with your superiority, then what’s the point?”

  “I don’t know, to be a leader?
To help people improve their lives?”

  “No. It’s about popularity.” Heidi started pulling the brush through my hair, not bothering to be gentle about it. “That’s the only reason to sign up for a gig like this one. Royalty gives you ultimate popularity. No one, and I do mean no one, steps on your toes if you’ve got a tiara sitting on top of your head.”

  We stared at each other in the mirror, and she jerked her eyes away from mine. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly.

  “So, let me get this straight…” I fixed my eyes on hers in the mirror and tried to keep my head still while she tore the brush through my hair. “You want to make me pretty so if your boyfriend is inclined to flirt with someone he’ll flirt with me?”

  “No, I want you to be gorgeous so that no other girl even thinks about flirting with him because they’re afraid to go up against you. That way you’re still in charge, and my boyfriend is safe. Got it?”

  “You’re not concerned that I might, I don’t know, try to steal him from you? I mean, you’re basically asking me to flirt with your boyfriend.”

  “Of course not. I’m asking you to go in there and be my wingman because you got me into this crappy mess in the first place, and you owe me. Besides, I know you wouldn’t try to steal my guy.” She jerked the brush through my now-smooth hair a final time and then began weaving it into an elaborate braid at the back of my scalp.

  “Why not?”

  “One, you’re you, and as much as you annoy me, basically all the time, you aren’t a boyfriend-stealer.” Heidi tied the bottom of the braid off with a piece of ribbon, then tugged on the ends of it and tucked it underneath somehow so that the bottom part of the braid was hidden, leaving my entire neck exposed.

  “Two, I sleep in your closet. So let me explain something to you: I’m a base during cheerleading stunts, not a flier. Do you know what that means?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “I might look cute and sweet, but I’ve got the upper-arm strength to hold another girl up over my head. By myself. That means if you mess with my man I will end you. You got me?”

  “I got you.” I nodded, and tried to seem like the type of girl you would trust your gorgeous—possibly prone-to-flirting—boyfriend with.

  She picked up a large, milky-white stone on a golden chain and dropped it over my head so that the pendant nestled in the hollow of my throat. “But even though I trust you, I don’t trust him, and I’m not just going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs while he goes out and cheats with some duchess. Even if I am nothing but a maid.”

  “Being a maid shouldn’t matter. No one deserves to be cheated on.”

  “Whatever.” She rolled her eyes at me in the mirror. “Deserving has nothing to do with it. Give a guy half a chance to move up the popularity ladder with a new girl, and he’ll drop you like that.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

  “Not every guy,” I said, thinking about Winston. We’d never talked about relationships, but I knew him well enough to know that if he were with a girl, he wouldn’t go out and flirt with another one.

  “Every guy cheats if you give him the chance.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to win that one, so I stood and made my way to the door, then tugged on the heavy gold handle. The door creaked and opened slowly.

  “Finally,” Esmeralda said from the doorway. “What took you so long? Did your maid die at the hands of the furniture or something?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know anyone was waiting out here. Besides, didn’t you say you were going to send a footman with food for Heidi?”

  “Her tray will be here after the main dinner has been served. But the cook says that after tonight, when your maid wants food she’ll have to eat in the servants’ kitchen with everyone else.” Esmeralda stood, her tail high, and gave me an appraising once-over.

  I glanced back at Heidi before the door closed behind me and saw her wince, her face screwed up into a grimace like she’d just drunk spoiled milk. Because if there was anything worse than the humiliation of the most popular girl in school becoming a maid for one of the Honor Society nerds, it would have to be other people seeing her in her new role. “Well, I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” I said.

  “I won’t be waiting after tonight,” Esmeralda said. “You can find your own way after this. I’m not a tour guide.”

  “Right. Of course.” I picked up my heavy skirts to rush after her as she scampered off. “I just don’t know how I’m going to manage. Every hall is identical.”

  “That’s why you find the signs,” Esmeralda said, not bothering to slow down. “They tell you where you are, and if you know how to use them they can take you there as well.”

  “What signs? And what do you mean they can take me there?”

  “The signs on each corner, silly. How do you think I keep from getting lost in this place? If it’s all the same to someone your size, how do you think it looks from down here? Besides, could you imagine how tired I’d be if I had to walk everywhere?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.” I wrinkled my nose. “I still don’t see the signs, though. Where are they?”

  Esmeralda stopped at the next corner. She smacked one of the bricks near the bottom of the wall with her paw, and I noticed a complicated series of scratches on it.

  “I thought those were just scuff marks.”

  “You have to get close enough to look instead of rushing past like every other biped in this place. See, that brick has three Es and then a five scratched into it.”

  I knelt down on the floor beside her and looked at the brick in question. Dead center of the brick was carved “EEE5.” “So, what does it mean?”

  Esmeralda hit the brick again. “It means that you are in the East Wing, third floor, and this is the fifth corridor. The dining room is in the main hall, so you’ll want to go all the way to EEE1 and then down to the first floor.”

  “Okay?” I stared at the runes. “Then if I want to come back here after dinner?”

  “If you want to come back you just rub the carving and tell it where you want to go. But don’t try it right now. You don’t want to get sick before your first state dinner, and the runes are a bit dodgy the first few times.”

  “Right, o-kay.” I nodded. “That’s ingenious, Esmeralda. Did you come up with it?”

  “No, a giant named Krumpwaither did. He thought it would be a convenient way for twelve-foot ogres to get around the castle.” She did that almost-eye-roll thing again. “Of course I came up with the idea. Just because I’ve taken on the appearance of a house cat doesn’t mean I’m a complete idiot.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted, Princess,” Esmeralda said. “Next time you assume I’m just a cat, though, I might have to sharpen my claws on your skirt…while you’re in it. Now, you know how to get yourself to the dining hall, and I have a dinner of my own to catch.”

  Instead of waiting around for me to answer, Esmeralda turned on her heels and ran back in the direction of my suite. Obviously I was on my own. Great.

  All I had to do was follow the signs she’d pointed out and it would lead me to the dining hall. I turned down the corridor that read “EEE4” and kept going. I turned down three more identical hallways and found myself in the middle of a large, open-air space topped by a stained-glass dome designed with elaborate pictures of not only humans, but a variety of different creatures. Above me was an image of two mermaids hugging while dragons circled overhead. Next to that was a group of women with branches for arms. And at the top of the dome was an enormous golden rose, its vines sprawling out to form frames for each of the scenes below it. This had to be the main hall. I looked up at the stained-glass rose again and took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

  I turned and walked down the wide staircase, clutching the rail and trying not to trip over my own feet. The last thing I needed to do was to fall down the stairs my first night in the castle—that would really convince people I’m their magical warrior princess.<
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  “You look beautiful.”

  Jesse’s voice caught me off guard, and I froze, looking up from my feet to stare at him. Somebody that popular couldn’t be talking to me…could he? He’d never known I existed before unless he needed help with his homework. I glanced behind me to see if Heidi had followed me down to dinner, but I was alone on the stairs.

  Jesse was dressed in a severe black suit with the jacket buttoned all the way to his neck. His left shoulder was embroidered with the same gold roses that were on the neckline of my dress. His hair looked damp and was combed back neatly, like he’d just gotten out of the shower.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You look…wow, Allie. Really. Wow.”

  “Seriously?” I felt my cheeks get warm. “You don’t think I look…”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Like a complete dork?”

  “You look different.” He held his hand out to me and smiled. “But it’s a good different. Not that you didn’t look good before or anything. You just look nice tonight. In that dress you’re just, wow. You look gorgeous, is what I’m trying to say. Very princess-like.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t help smiling back, and I came down the last two steps to stand in front of him. “You look nice, too. We’re both wearing the same roses.”

  “This goblin with these huge ears, who lives in my room apparently, said that they’re the crest of Nerissette’s royal house. Your symbol, I guess, since he keeps referring to you as Her Majesty, the Golden Rose of Nerissette.”

  “Wow, that’s a mouthful,” I said. “I was hoping we could go with just plain old Allie. You know, be a bit modern with it.”

  “I thought it fit, actually,” Jesse said, moving close enough that we were almost nose-to-nose. “But I can still call you Allie if you want? Since I’m your prince consort and all, maybe we should keep things more informal.”

  “Right.” I took a step back from him, trying to focus on what I had to do, rather than the boy currently standing way too close to me. “I’d like that.”