Lucky Rabbit

The ‘fifth bedroom’ was just the fifth room on the right side of the hall after they went up the stairs. It didn’t stand out from the others in any particular way, other than the fact that it was directly across from the bathroom, which would be handy for late night potty breaks.

“This is fine,” Eleanor said, peering in at the sheet-draped furniture and dusty floor. Obviously, cleaning up unused bedrooms hadn’t been one of Nox and Nyssa’s priorities. Lord Winston sneezed something that could have been agreement or protest. It was always hard to tell with a dog that droopy.

The princess looked much better than she had when she arrived, though she hadn’t let go of Pandy’s hand since breaking down. Pandy hadn’t put her pendant back on, either, hoping that a familiar face would help Eleanor settle in.

Isidor hung back, looking almost as uncertain as the princess did while she threw sidelong looks at him. Once she was done crying, she’d greeted him by name, so she did know who he was, but there was a distance between them that certainly hadn’t been there before. Not that Isidor had made any great effort to befriend the other children. It was more like they’d decided he was their friend whether he liked it or not. Now that he looked his own age, Eleanor, for one, was clearly unsure how she should treat him.

“Well, um, I guess… I’ll fix the house, then,” Pandy said. It felt strange to say it like it was a simple thing, but as far as she could tell, it would be. Just put the money into the book like money in a dryer at a laundromat, and boom, new house, so convenient. Except that nothing in Pandy’s life was ever that easy. There was definitely a catch here, she just hadn’t found it yet.

Eleanor nodded, but didn’t release Pandy’s hand. “Can I watch?”

Pandy tilted her head. “I guess so? I don’t think-”

“No,” Nox said, drifting through the wall beside them. Pandy and the children all jumped, though Isidor immediately turned away and tapped the wall beside him, as if it was sheer coincidence that he’d started moving at that exact moment, and he was actually checking the structural integrity of the building. Which wasn’t good, so maybe he should cease and desist.

“Why not?” Pandy asked.

“Only the head of the family may see or touch the Books,” Nox said. “No changes can be made to a space while it has a living occupant, either.”

Pandy frowned. “So Isidor and Eleanor need to leave the house?”

“If you wish to repair the entire building at once, yes,” Nox said, floating toward the office. “I suggest having them both enter a room you do not plan to fix right now.”

Pandy’s heart-replacement-bits sank. “You don’t think I’ll have enough money to do everything.”

The elemental gazed levelly back at her. “You’ll understand soon.”

With a sigh, Pandy turned to the two children. “There’s a sitting room off the master bedroom, or you could go to the one downstairs.” She hesitated, thinking. “Unless I should fix up that one? I mean, apparently guests are going to be a thing.”

“I’d focus on the bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchen,” Isidor said, ever practical.

“You said there’s an atrium,” Eleanor said, glancing down the hall toward the faintly green-tinged light coming from beyond the office. Pandy had pointed out each room as they passed, and the princess perked up noticeably at the mention of a room for plants. Not that atriums had to have plants, and Pandy wasn’t particularly good at keeping plants alive, but…

“Yes,” Pandy said. “And two libraries. Though I don’t know how much I can do to repair books.”

The princess gave Pandy’s hand a little squeeze, then released it. She straightened her shoulders and turned to Isidor. “Do you want to play a game in the sitting room, Izzy?” she said, clearly determined to ignore any awkwardness between them. Isidor blinked back at her, but offered a tentative smile and turned, holding out his elbow. The little girl picked up one of the bundles Pandy had set down just inside her room and took the proffered arm.

Pandy watched the two go down the stairs – not without some giggling on Eleanor’s part, because the winding staircase wasn’t quite wide enough for them to comfortably walk side by side – then turned to the office. All right, so this was her task alone, and it wasn’t quite going to be as simple as throwing her clothes in the industrial washing machine and hoping it only ate one of her favorite socks this time.

The office was exactly as lovely and peaceful as she remembered, and she wished she could just wave a hand and make the rest of the house just like it. Which she actually might be able to do eventually, right? Even if this book wasn’t the magical fix-all she’d hoped for, she could still just buy paint and hire a carpenter to fix things, couldn’t she?

As soon as she sat down at the desk, the stack of books reappeared in front of her. This time, Pandy took a moment to look at the spines of the other two books. The second one read FAMILY HISTORY, and the third one said FAITHFUL FOUNDATION. Pushing the top two books aside, Pandy ignored the world going grayscale as she picked up the final book. It was thin, by far the smallest of the three, and when she flipped it open she found that all of the pages were blank, except for two.

“Nox and Nyssa,” Pandy murmured, tracing her fingers over the letters on the first page. As she did, more words appeared.

NYSSA - Apparition

Condition: 64%

Cost to Repair: 3600 LF/180000 Mana/18000 CP

Loyalty: 78%

NOX - Apparition

Condition: 39%

Cost to Repair: 6100 LF/305000 Mana/30500 CP

Loyalty: 42%

Wait, Nox was only forty-two percent loyal? Should she even trust him around the children? And why did it cost so much to bring them up to full strength? Not that Pandy was sure she wanted an Apparition with low loyalty at full strength. Unless helping Nox was exactly what she needed to do to earn his loyalty? This did explain why he kept ‘testing’ her, though.

But no, she should definitely start with Nyssa. Nyssa seemed nice. For an Apparition. And weren’t Apparitions supposed to be terrible, almost mindless creatures capable of nothing but violence? But who had written the books on Dark elementals? Not Dark elementalists, apparently, because Nox and Nyssa were far from mindless, though Pandy did have suspicions about who was behind some of the attacks she’d fended off while making her way through the house.

Laying the book back down, Pandy leaned her head on the back of the chair and groaned. Yes, this was already more complicated than she’d hoped, and she hadn’t even gotten back to the actual house yet. She glanced briefly at the last unopened book, but honestly she had very little interest in the history of a family she wasn’t even part of. If M. Piers was an example of the kind of people they were, she probably wouldn’t ever want to know about them. Besides, if there were living family members who weren’t terrible people, Pandy would probably feel guilty about stealing their house, and she didn’t need that kind of energy in her unlife.

So, back to the house. Pandy had more than two thousand gold to spend, and it shouldn’t cost that much to fix up two bedrooms – three if you counted hers, but honestly, when was she going to sleep there? – and at least one bathroom. Isidor had a good point about the kitchen, too, because the children were going to have to eat. But Pandy couldn’t ignore Eleanor’s not-quite-a-request either, though. The atrium was lovely even in its dilapidated condition in Gacha Love. Pandy could only imagine how beautiful it would be when filled with comfortable seats and growing things.

Leaning forward, she picked up the AVINGTON HOUSE book, coming to her feet with a soft sigh of resignation. The other two books disappeared back to wherever they went when they weren’t there, and Pandy walked across the soft carpet to the door, which was closed again. Opening it, she turned to the right, but stopped before she could take more than a step. Reluctantly, she admitted the atrium had to be the lowest priority. Practicality must rule the day.

“I wish you had a map,” she muttered to the book as she made her way to Eleanor’s door. Obligingly, a neatly-drawn image appeared on the blank page before her, and she halted midstride. “Wait, what? What else can you do?”

Using her free hand, she tried pinching and pulling the page like she would a phone screen, but not surprisingly, it didn’t respond. If Queen Louisa knew about the books, this was probably a real thing from this real world, so it wouldn’t act like an electronic device from a completely different planet. Still, if Pandy ever figured out how to alter this spell, she knew what she’d do first.

“Okay, how about this,” Pandy muttered, and tapped on the rectangle representing the room in front of her. It lit up with the first color she’d seen while holding the book: red. The outside wall was only a soft red, but there was a bright red patch on the wall between this bedroom and the one next door, and the floor was a blotchy pinkish-red mess.

Opening the door, Pandy stepped inside, and as she did, words appeared on the right-hand page.

FIFTH BEDROOM – Enchantments x1 [Shelter]

Physical condition: 53%

Cost to repair: 198 G/17 Wood/4 Metal

Magical Condition: 71% 

Cost to Repair: 29 LF/150 Mana/15 CP

Okay, that wasn’t bad. Pandy took a quick look at her stat sheet, and saw that she’d recovered enough Mana to repair the enchantment, but what did Shelter do, exactly? Was it worth fixing it right this minute?

Shaking her head, she started feeding coins into the book. When she fumbled on, she discovered that they didn’t have to go into the crease between the two pages. She could touch the gold to any part of the book and it would suck in the coin. It took a little while to reach the full one hundred ninety-eight, but once she did, a sort of overlay appeared on top of the shabby, dirty room. It showed flowered wallpaper of some indeterminate color, a solid wooden floor that looked like it had been freshly stained and polished, and the old waterstains on the ceiling vanished.

Pandy waited. The overlay waited. She took another step into the room. The scene shifted slightly, but didn’t apply itself to the actual space around her. She tapped the page, which rustled but otherwise didn’t respond.

“What now?” she asked, squinting at it. As she did, she saw that the words on the right-hand page had subtly changed.

FIFTH BEDROOM – Enchantments x1 [Shelter]

Physical condition: 53%

Cost to repair: 0 G/17 Wood/4 Metal

Magical Condition: 71% 

Cost to Repair: 29 LF/150 Mana/15 CP

“Okay, so you know you have the money, but you also need the wood and metal?” she demanded, lifting the book so she could glare at it. The pages drooped, map and words vanishing as a shower of coins poured out of it.

Pandy growled. Now she was going to have to put all those coins back in, and she still had no idea where she was going to get the required materials. The office door hadn’t forced her to give it wood. Had it?

Quickly, Pandy returned to the office, touching the door, which indicated that it was now fully repaired and powered. All good. Then she frowned and touched the doorframe, which actually looked slightly rougher than it had before. And, yes, its condition was worse, and it now required one wood to repair it completely.

“So you can use one part of the house to repair other parts? Why didn’t you say so? That seems counterproductive, though.” Pandy said to the book, whose pages still looked slightly ruffled, even though it was lying flat again.

Back to Eleanor’s room, where Pandy pulled up the map before looking around with fresh eyes. There were four cloth-covered lumps in the room, and she pulled the sheets off the first of them, revealing what had once been a nice wardrobe, and was still in decent condition in spite of the fact that one of the doors had broken from its hinges and was lying propped against the rest of it. The next sheet, the largest one, had been covering a bare bedframe, which was also in acceptable shape other than the lack of a mattress.

Pulling off the last two sheets revealed a table whose top was covered in suspicious stains and cuts, as well as what had probably been a chest of drawers, but at some point had been crushed by something else larger and heavier than itself. Metal handles still dangled from it in approximately the right area to be drawer pulls, which was the only reason Pandy felt she could make a guess as to its original shape.

Glancing at the coins that had rolled all over the floor, Pandy tilted the book, hoped she was right, and pressed a bit of the broken dresser onto the page. The dresser vanished, and when she glanced at the page, she saw that she now needed only two wood and one piece of metal.

“All right, now we’re talking,” she said, and repeated the exercise with the old table. That got the wood requirement down to zero, but apparently there was no metal in it. Not a single screw or nail? How did it stay together then, magic? A question for another day.

Back out in the hall, Pandy looked for something made of metal. Doorknobs, of course, but they’d need those. Hinges and handles were probably her best bet, if she couldn’t count on getting nails or screws out of furniture. She entered the next bedroom – the fourth, if the naming scheme remained consistent – and sent a water-warped armoire into the oblivion of the book.

Having provided the necessary materials, Pandy laboriously gathered every coin from the floor of Eleanor’s bedroom and fed it back into the book. As the last one vanished, the overlay became almost solid, though she could still make out the peeling wallpaper and waterstains through it.

“Yes, do that,” she said to the air, and everything shifted, the image settling into place as if it had always been there. The furniture was still damaged, but the room itself was perfect, with pretty paper on the walls, gleaming floors, and a smooth, white ceiling. Pandy pumped her arm in celebration. All righty, time to clean house.