1600 Myopia: I Mistook the SCP Monsters for the Spoiled Billionaires novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: House Rules

Winnie meets the loud sparkly brother and the dripping sister, sets a schedule like a nanny, and learns the Trust 'retires' heirs who cause incidents.

The lights came back on a second later, and nobody mentioned them.

The cold hand let go of my wrist.

"Your skin is warm," Ambrose Thornwick said, as though that were a flaw in the furniture.

"I'm alive," I said. "It's a perk."

The glitter at the end of the table made a noise.

"She said take your coat off," it whispered. "To you."

"I heard her, Jasper."

"Nobody says anything to you," Jasper said, and he sounded delighted. "Nobody says 'Pass the salt' to you."

"Pass the salt," I said, to the black column, to be helpful.

A long, dripping silence followed.

Then something slid a shaker down the table to me, and it stopped exactly at my elbow.

I thanked it.

The blue shimmer leaned toward me, smelling of rain and cold stones.

"You can't have been told what we are," said a soft voice.

"A family," I said. "A rich one. The recruiter said difficult."

"Difficult," the shimmer repeated, and she laughed in a wobbling way, like a lake in wind.

"I'm Goldie," she said. "That's my brother Jasper, who's loud, and my brother Ambrose, who is the other thing."

"Quiet," Jasper offered.

"Brooding," I said.

"Possibly both," Ambrose said.

I decided they were exactly what the recruiter had said: three grown siblings with too much money and a house so old it leaked.

Goldie's gown was soaked to the hem, and I told her so.

"It's silk," she said. "It's always like this."

"Then get a dryer. Or a tailor. Or both."

She stared at me, and a drip fell off her chin.

I think it was the first time anyone had given her practical advice.

Jasper leaned over the table, and the glitter shifted around his face in a rattling cluster.

"Do you like my sunglasses?" he asked. "I have forty-one."

"Indoors? No."

"But I'm wearing them all."

"Then you can take off thirty of them and eat your soup."

He took off nothing, but he sat straighter, and I could feel him beaming.

I stood at the head of that table with a cracked frame on my nose.

Then I did what I had done in three retail jobs and one pharmacy.

I made a list.

"Breakfast at eight," I said. "Everyone at the table. Nobody eats in their room, and nobody floods anything."

"I haven't flooded since March," Goldie said.

"Dinner at seven, with real clothes, and Jasper does the dishes."

"Jasper does not," Jasper said.

"Jasper does the dishes or Jasper gets no dessert."

There was a pause.

"I haven't had dessert in decades," he said, softly. "I'm not sure why I'm angry about that."

Ambrose said nothing.

The lamp over his head came back on, brighter than before.

A man took me out of the dining room by the elbow.

I couldn't see his face, but his grip was efficient, and his voice was the kind that sells you things.

"Mr. Roake's deputy," he said. "Your cottage is across the lawn."

"I'd like to tell my sister I got the job."

"After you sign."

He steered me to a desk and put a pen in my hand.

The contract was thirty pages long, in type so small it looked like gray sand.

I held page nine two inches from my nose and saw nothing but the gray.

"I can't read this," I said.

"Standard terms," the deputy said. "Nine thousand a week. Your sister's tuition is covered for as long as you're employed here."

I looked at the pen.

I thought of the curb, and the laundry basket, and Pippa's trophies.

I signed every line he pointed to.

"One more thing," he said, and his voice dropped as if the walls were listening.

"The heirs are volatile. If there's an incident, the Trust retires the household."

"Retires?" I said. "Like a pension?"

"Yes."

"They're old money. I assume they already have a pension."

"The Trust's retirement plan is very generous," he said. "No one has ever collected."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend