sure enough, she stood at the opposite end, arms folded and her tone a little exasperated.
‘You shouldn’t be down here this late.’
I brushed her off. ‘But I have a favour to ask.’
She nodded her head, the blonde curls that she tried so hard to maintain – a throwback to when she was a teenager in the 1940s, she said – flat and dropping around her ears. Her usual cap and pinafore had gone, but the black dress remained.
‘You clean the bedrooms, right?’ I asked, biting my lip because I didn’t know how she was going to react. She nodded once more. ‘Could I help out?’
She gave me a puzzled look. ‘Why?’
‘I have a little surprise for Kaspar,’ I blabbered; keen to get it out as fast as possible.
A sceptic smile grew into an excited grin on her face. ‘What are you planning?’
I had not slept a wink in three nights. Every night had been interrupted by various moans and groans. Each morning, a girl would leave. The previous morning, I’m pretty sure it had been two girls. In the end, I resolved to do something. I hadn’t expected Annie to agree, but she hated the Prince: he treated the servants like the dirt beneath his feet and worse. But when we reached his door, my resolve began to weaken.
Annie knocked and called in a timid voice through the door. ‘Your Highness?’ There was no answer. Again she knocked, harder this time. We waited a minute, and there was still no answer. She poked her head in.
‘All clear,’ she muttered and, entering, quickly began sweeping up.
‘Where did you say he kept them?’ I said in a hushed tone, afraid he might return at any minute.
‘Try the drawers in the bedside table, under the bed, behind the clock and the bathroom cabinet.’
In the back of my mind, I questioned what the hell I was doing, knowing that pushing things too far with Kaspar could get me hurt or killed, yet getting revenge on him for bringing me here, even in the smallest way, was just too tempting.
Besides, they would have hurt you by now if they wanted to, wouldn’t they? my voice said, putting into words what I had become more and more sure of over the past few days.
I began dashing about, pulling open drawers; checking under the rugs. Sure enough, in the bathroom cabinet there was a box, three behind the clock and two boxes in the drawers.
I lay down on my stomach and crawled under the bed. I fought the urge to scream as something scuttled in the shadows and disappeared between the skirting boards and floor. But I hit gold: there were boxes and boxes here, all unopened. I gathered them up and piled them on the newly made bed, along with the others. I did one last sweep of the room, checking to see if I had missed any. I hadn’t.
I returned back to the bed and began ripping the packaging open, emptying the boxes of their contents. I tipped each upside down and chucked all but one of them into the empty boxes into Annie’s rubbish bag and stuffed what had been inside them into my pockets.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I whispered. I slipped out, stopping to check if the coast was clear. I tried to walk casually down to the kitchen, knowing my eyes were shifting from one shadow to the other; sure someone was going to appear. When I reached the kitchen, I headed straight for the fridge and pulled an almost empty bottle of blood from the shelf, pouring the thick ‘drink’ down the sink. There was a definite sweetness to the smell, although that was overshadowed by the pungent stench of congealing blood. And they drank this stuff? Rank.
I left a few drops of blood in the bottom before taking the packets out of my pocket and ripping them half-open. I poked each one into the bottle, before tightly screwing up the lid and shaking it, coating each packet in the sticky liquid. I placed it the back of the fridge and headed back upstairs.
I think I know someone who won’t be screwing tonight, my voice said, dripping with glee and interrupting my thoughts. It rung in my head with no tone, no timbre, but it did not belong with my thoughts, so to save my sanity I was going to assume it was my subconscious.
Running back up the stairs two at a time, I bolted back into Kaspar’s room to find Annie finishing off and tying a knot in the bag that carried the empty boxes.
‘Are you sure he won’t just go ahead anyway?’ I asked.
‘No, ’cause if anything goes wrong, then he’s in trouble.’
I nodded and scrawled a note out on a slip of paper I had found on the mantle – ‘Always use protection, sucker!’
I placed it into the one remaining empty condom box and slipped it back into the drawer of his bedside cabinet, before darting back into my room to wait.
It was near midnight when I heard the first giggles and, peeking out from my door, I could see it was the same leggy blonde who had been over a few times. Charity, I think she was called – she was anything but.
About fifteen minutes slipped by before I heard movement and frustrated exclamations followed by a roar as my door was flung open. Kaspar stormed into my room and glared, his eyes a bottomless black.
‘Recognize this?’ he said between heavy breaths, holding the condom box up, the note scrunched in his hand. I shook my head, trying to focus on that action rather than his eyes, or worse, on Annie, in case he tried to get in my head and read my thoughts.
Charity came in behind him, dishevelled as though she had dressed in a hurry. Her bleached hair stuck out at odd angles and her bright pink lipstick was smudged across the corners of her lips. She glared at me through narrowed eyes. ‘What the heck is your problem?’ she whined, like a child who had lost her favourite toy.
‘No problems. Why, do you have one?’ I pulled my most innocent smile, aware that Kaspar looked a little more than angry.
In a blur he had launched himself across the room. He collided with my side to take me with him and I was sent rolling across the bed, coming to a halt when my head hit the bedside cabinet. I let out a scream as he landed on top of me, pinning me to the bed. I winced through gritted teeth as the corner of the cabinet dug into my spine.
‘Get off me, you horny git!’ I screeched, kicking and flailing, revolted at his closeness.
‘Why, am I making you uncomfortable? Maybe I will use you instead!’ he snarled, a tormenting smirk twisting his face. His eyes were devoid of any emotion – he meant it. Straddling me with one leg either side of my stomach, he forced me deeper into the mattress, pinning my hands above my head. He began to pull my shirt up and I heard squeals of protest from Charity, which merged with the protests of the mattress as I tried to fight free.
But then he was gone. I raised my head a little to see Fabian and Charlie wrestling him away, gaining quite a few scratches. With the tiniest sigh of relief, I scrabbled back up and pulled my shirt down back over my stomach, blushing and full of more anger than ever.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Fabian bellowed. He looked Kaspar and Charity in the eye, as though daring them to lie. ‘Are you all right?’ he added, glancing in my direction. I nodded, wrapping my arms around my middle without thinking.
‘Never mind if she’s all right, she stole Kaspar’s condoms!’ Charity
