“Which is you, right?” I said.
He nodded with a smile.
“I run everything inside the house,” he said. “If you have any issues or problems, please don’t hesitate to speak with me directly. I’m most often on the first floor or in the garden.”
We turned a corner and walked in silence. It occurred to me that Waev would know Traes better than anyone else in the house. He might be able to shed some light on the situation I found myself in.
“Traes is Cleb’s uncle?” I said.
“That’s’ right,” Waev said. “He’s also his godfather. In case anything happened to his sister and his brother-in-law, Cleb would pass to him to take care of.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Almost three months now.”
“What’s their relationship like?” I said.
It was a personal question and not one I expected to get a straight answer to, so it came as a surprise when Waev looked me in the eye and said, “Not good. Traes is stuck in his ways and is too used to working. Cleb needs someone to play with, someone to care for him the same way his parents used to. The staff and I do our best but we’re not blood relatives. It’s not the same.”
“Traes works hard?” I said.
“Very hard. He built the company from the ground. No pun intended.”
I didn’t understand what the joke was.
“He owns a large mining company,” he said.
I chuckled despite myself.
“From the ground up,” I said. “That’s pretty good. Awful, but good.”
“Traes is used to taking care of people, but they’re his employees. There are thousands of them. They’re at a distance and don’t live in the same house. He ensures they always have enough work but he doesn’t have to spend time with them on a daily basis or develop personal relationships.”
“That’s where I come in,” I said.
“It does indeed,” Waev said. “Right. Here we are.”
He pushed an ornate set of doors open. The room took my breath away. It looked like something from Downton Abbey—a TV series I was addicted to for a while. The colors were plush and vibrant and rich, meshing together in a gorgeous, luxurious mix.
“These are the governess’s usual rooms?” I said.
Waev opened the curtains to let the warm sunlight in.
“No,” he said. “They’re down the hall. Traes said you were to have the best rooms in the house.”
“The best rooms?” I said, confused. “But we didn’t negotiate for me to have the best rooms.”
“No. He informed me about your living arrangements before you went into his office.”
That swine…
He knew what I was going to ask for before we even hammered it out! He’d already decided what he was going to give me! And if he already knew what he was going to give me, it meant I could have gotten more!
I growled and tossed my bag across the room. It bounced off the bed and landed on the other side.
Waev looked at me inquisitively with a smile on his face.
“Don’t worry about it, Miss,” he said. “There aren’t many people he doesn’t get the better of in negotiations. Besides, you’re here to do one of the most important jobs there is. And you’ve already succeeded better than the other governesses combined. You made the young master laugh. So far as the rest of us are concerned, you’re an angel in disguise. A boy of that age should never be so sad for so long.”
The words didn’t have the effect he hoped they would. I was still fuming about Traes getting the better of me.
“I’ll leave you to unpack,” he said.
Waev shut the door behind himself and left me alone.
I was getting the money I needed, so what difference did it make?
It made all the difference!
He won and he knew it.
Maybe governesses earned more than fifty credits a week. How would I know?
I should have checked their contracts!
Urgh! Rookie mistake.
I estimated the cost of a long-haul flight on Earth and compared it to how long it would take for me to earn the amount in my old job. It was roughly about the same. Okay, so he probably didn’t rip me off. But I still had a right to be angry!
I was going to have to make sure I did the very best job I could and do better than he ever thought possible.
That would show him.
The wardrobe door hung open. When I tossed my bag, it’d knocked it loose. A sleeve poked out from behind the door. I drifted to it and opened it.
No…
I swiped through the rows of dresses. I picked one at random and held it against myself.
It was in my size. They were all in my size!
I growled and shoved the dress back in the wardrobe and slammed the door shut.
How did he do that?
Traes’ library was larger and better stocked than most public libraries back home. There were entire sections dedicated to histories both ancient and more recent, describing seminal moments in the Titans’ past that no human anywhere had even been aware of before. Just a single book could provide more inspiration for stories than Alice could hope to write in a lifetime.
Alice.
Boy, I missed her. I missed all my friends. Over the painful past few weeks, I thought about them a lot. I wondered if they were in the same predicament I was, if they too were slaves to a cruel master, or if they’d been lucky enough to enjoy a better fate.
I hoped they had.
They didn’t deserve to be abducted and subjected to the whims of a random alien species.
Neither did I.
I wondered where Asshole was. Stinky must have shat out the rainbow-colored wrapper and its key by now. Maybe I’d get lucky and it wouldn’t come out. The creature had swallowed plenty of things over the past few weeks and they’d never been seen again.
I shook my head. It was no good thinking that way. Much better to assume the worst.
Asshole got the key and released himself. He was out there looking for me. And he would find me.
But
