Villainess 7: Janet’s Night Training

Red Pill 29: Visitors, Accomplices

The four-poster bed was just big enough to allow Janet and her friends Mindy Kessler and Jean and Saraya Drevis to get a full night’s sleep without waking each other up, but Janet’s friends were earlier risers. Due to last night’s three-round sparring session with RuRu and DeeDee’s harrowing experiment afterward, Janet was the last to wake up. In fact, when her friends had already gotten dressed in their school uniforms with the help of their maids, Janet was still yawning and stretching her limbs before sitting up in bed and twisting her foot around her ankle joint, but she felt no pain there.

Still in her nightgown, Janet had her personal maid Susan visit Viscountess Durham at the Professor Commons Office and tell her that Janet will be absent today to recover from her ankle injury to keep up appearances. After sending off her maid and seeing off her friends, a pair of guardsmen sent by Marquess Fleming entered her dorm and greeted Janet and said they’ll be standing guard at her dorm today if she was staying here, and she said she was for today and thanked them in advance for their hard work. After they went back out and resumed their stations outside in the hallway, Janet had breakfast in bed and talked with her other maid Marin and her friends’ maids for a bit before getting up and taking on today’s warm-up sessions under DeeDee and RuRu’s guidance.

First, RuRu had Janet perform ten-minute warm-ups consisting of tricep stretches, shoulder stretches, quad stretches, sitting hamstring stretches, squatting stretches, lunging stretches, and split stretches among others. Second, after the warm-up session was a ten-minute rest period, in which Janet chatted with the five maids (including Susan after returning from her errand), her four clones (including her ex-suicide clone), DeeDee and RuRu who both coached Janet on the health benefits of stretches and rest periods, and the trio of Lady Graves and Marchioness Fleming and Abbess Diddly who came to visit her that morning and agreed with everything DeeDee and RuRu said with approving nods, before Janet resumed the next leg of her regimen. Third, after twenty minutes of stretches and rest, Janet practiced thirty minutes of DeeDee’s ‘cultivation’ session, in which she sat cross-legged on her dressing bench by the foot of her bed and focused on breathing exercises and cultivating her mana, then followed that up with another ten-minute rest period while talking with the others.

In this way, Janet repeated her regimen three more times, which occupied the rest of her morning.

Then, just before 12:00 p.m., a sweaty Janet was resting on her dressing bench when two of her clones came in and informed everyone there of their observations this morning: one clone said they saw Lady Dorian kissing the Prince and manifesting an upside-down tetrahedron over his forehead; the other clone said they tapped into the Prince’s daydream and witnessed a replay of an illicit nighttime tryst between the Prince and Lady Dorian; then they both said they saw another clone appear in front of them and raise a finger to her lips as if she knew something, before they found themselves in another dreamscape and saw the events of last night’s harrowing experiment.

After her clones left, Janet cried for a time before wiping her eyes and stress-eating the lunch her maids prepared for her. After that, to take her mind off the Prince’s betrayal, Janet told her maids to ask the pair of guards on duty outside if they were hungry, so her maids did just that and invited them to lunch with their lady, and Janet chatted with them for a time. After they had their fill and thanked her and resumed their stations out in the hallway, Janet spent two more hours doing RuRu’s stretching and resting routine and DeeDee’s cultivation routine. In this way, she kept herself busy for about half of that afternoon.

During the last half hour of it, another pair of her clones entered her dorm room, and DeeDee asked them to wait for Janet to finish her regimen before speaking. When Janet was done, she got herself washed with a wet towel, toweled herself dry with another one, and changed herself into a clean nightgown to replace the one she had sweated in during the morning and afternoon. After that, Janet sat at her vanity table as the others gathered around her and tried consoling her, for which she felt a little better.

Then her clones told everyone what Baron Palmer had told the Prince and Lady Dorian: they were getting engaged, and their engagement will be announced tomorrow morning. To this, one clone added that two of their doppelgängers had hitched a ride with the Prince and Lady Dorian in his coach, accompanied by a dozen royal guards escorting them, and were headed for the Royal Palace to meet with their Majesties. The other clone summarized Countess Valentine’s story of getting abducted and almost killed after the graduation banquet, stressing that her abductors were after Lady Bartleby at the time.

“I remember it,” Rowena Fleming said. “The former Lady Morrow, now Countess Valentine, had warned me about them, so I informed my father, and he and Lord Fleming took measures to watch over me at the time. Too bad it was all for nought in the end,” she added with a sigh, “because I got imprisoned on false charges, anyway.”

DeeDee then separated herself from the impromptu gathering around the vanity table, loitering around the tea table and saying, “What is it?”

(And while en route to the Royal Palace in the Prince’s coach, one of Janet’s clones said, “Lady Dorian’s planning something against the Queen!”)

“Wait, what?” DeeDee said.

Everyone looked towards DeeDee after her outburst.

“What’s happening?” Rowena said.

(“Lady Dorian’s going to target the Queen,” the clone said, “and she’s having the Prince spill the beans right now on where she sleeps and when she goes to bed and—”)

“Hey, slow down!” DeeDee said. “I can’t keep up!”

(“Holy shit!” the second clone said over the connection.

“Damn that fucking bitch!” the clone added.)

“What’s going on?” DeeDee said.

(“It’s kind of complicated,” the clone said.)

“Tell it to me straight,” DeeDee said, “and go from there.”

(The clone took a deep breath and said, “Lady Dorian’s using the Prince AND the four Abbesses to set up Janet during the title confirmation this Friday. She prompted him to denounce Janet during the title confirmation, then told the Prince that ‘we’ll do the rest.’”)

“Who’s she referring to?” DeeDee said.

(“Well, there’s the four Abbesses,” the clone said.)

“I already know about the four Abbesses,” DeeDee reiterated. “Besides them, who else is she referring to when she told him that ‘we’ll do the rest?’”

(“I don’t know,” the clone said. “Listen, we’re almost at the Royal Palace. We’ll talk with you later!”)

DeeDee let out a sigh, then faced Janet and the rest without uttering a word and approached the group while shaking her head, so Rowena said, “What happened?”

“It’s sooner than I thought,” DeeDee said.

“DeeDee,” Janet said, “please tell us what’s going on.”

“Janet, Lady Dorian is setting up a trap for you at the title confirmation this Friday,” DeeDee said. “The details are still murky, but from your clones’ reactions, you must stay vigilant when you go back to school.”

“Can’t I stay here for another day?” Janet said.

“They’ll start asking questions,” DeeDee said, “and you can’t afford more rumors against you. I was going to delay it till this weekend, so you can fully recover, but it looks like time isn’t on our side.”

“Which means?” Janet said.

“Your training starts tonight,” DeeDee said.

No sooner had she said that when the voices and footfalls of several bevies of schoolgirls echoed beyond the double doors of her dorm. Now that classes have ended, Lady Kessler and the pair of Drevis ladies were due back inside her dorm anytime now, but then there arose a veritable cacophony of voices and squeals from the girls outside. So Janet’s six clones and DeeDee and RuRu and Celeste Graves and Rowena Fleming and Maxine Diddly all exited the room, passing through the walls and double doors and seeing whatever was happening outside for a time.

When they all came back inside, followed by Lady Kessler and Ladies Jean and Saraya Drevis bursting open the double doors (along with nine other clones assigned to watch over them), Janet said, “What’s happening?”

(RuRu smiled, saying, “Two dashing men—”

“—both want to talk with you,” added a smiling Maxine Diddly.

“You’ve hit the jackpot, Janet!” her ex-suicide clone said. “Ugh, I wish I’d have set my sights on those two instead of that stupid Prince!”

“I wanna be in their dreams!” another clone said, and the four other clones added their own variations of how to get to know those two scrumptious specimens—

Which prompted the Mama Goose that was Rowena Fleming to say, “Over my dead body!”

Which prompted DeeDee to deadpan at them, saying to herself, “Why do I feel like I’m in a sketch comedy?”)

“Two knights from the Royal Guard have been around here asking questions,” the green-haired Mindy Kessler said. “They want to talk with us, and that includes you, too.”

“But why me?” Janet said, thinking back through yesterday’s cluster-fuck of obstacles that morning and during lunch. “Is this about what happened during lunch or what happened to you in the morning?”

“It’s the second one,” Mindy said.

“Specifically,” the bespectacled Jean Drevis said, “it’s about the part where we ran off Mindy’s attackers. They’ve been asking about those two.”

“Ah, I see,” Janet said.

“No, you haven’t seen anything,” Saraya Drevis said, “until you’ve actually seen them yourself.”

“In other words,” Mindy added, “they’re hot.”

Then a pair of strapping gentlemen in day uniforms came into the room, their longswords hanging from the scabbard-holders of their double wrap belts around their tapering waists and their knee-length bucket-top boots thudding on the floorboards. They were heartbreakers, those two, one younger and straight-laced and the other somewhat older and rather dangerous in the way he smiled and had Janet lost in his yellow eyes for just a moment, just long enough for Janet to catch herself and blush at the fact that he caught her interest.

Now Janet looked away, rising from the vanity table to avoid looking at her shame-faced reflection in the mirror, and sat with her friends on the dressing bench as the two knights introduced themselves. The younger straight-laced one was Sir Noel Sydney, and the older one was Lord Edward Sydney, and Janet said, “Do you know Sir Kevin Sydney?”

“Of course, we do,” Lord Edward Sydney said.

“He’s our youngest brother,” Sir Noel Sydney said.

“We heard you’ve switched to his homeroom,” Edward added. “Hope he’s not giving you a hard time.”

“After meeting you two,” Janet said in a like manner, “I think I can manage.”

“Ah, a joker, are you?” he said.

“It depends on the kind of jokes,” Janet said.

Edward laughed as he and his brother sat at the tea table, occupying the two chairs that faced the girls on the dressing bench (while DeeDee and RuRu and Lady Graves and Marchioness Fleming and Abbess Diddly observed and the six clones started sniggering at Janet’s responses). At this, Mindy and Jean and Saraya asked Janet what Sir Kevin Sydney was like, and Janet answered with the truth: he was a slob and a sloth rolled into one annoying table mate that sleeps in class.

Her girlfriends gaped at her.

But Edward said, “Yes, that’s an accurate description of him. I’ll straighten him out when I have time.”

“Eh, he’s okay,” Janet said.

“Is that so?” Edward said, grinning his bad-boy grin. “Taking a liking to our little Kev already, eh?”

“Are you kidding?” Janet said.

“He tends to grow on you,” Edward said.

“I’m not into guys like him, okay?” Janet said.

“Yeah, I should’ve figured that, right?” Edward said, taking out a small pocketbook and a pen to write with. “You’re into those two-timers, eh?”

“It’s not like that!” Janet said.

(Meanwhile, the nine clones joined the spectral group around the vanity table and informed them of their observations during class: the three watching over Lady Kessler had observed the students in Classroom 1-3K spread rumors about Lady Kessler conspiring with Lady Fleming against Miss Edgeworth; and the six clones watching over the Drevis sisters had observed the students in Classroom 1-3J spread rumors of them threatening Lady Childeron and Lady Felton the day they took off from the school grounds. The import of their intelligence was as clear as day: Something big was brewing against Lady Fleming and her newfound friends.)

“All right, settle down,” Noel said, “and that includes you, Eddie. Anyway,” he added, addressing the four girls before him on the dressing bench, “we’ve come here to ascertain whatever you might know about how Lady Jenna Childeron and Lady Vesper Felton left the school grounds yesterday morning and whatever else you think is connected to their departure. We’ve already questioned the students and maids at Guinevere House last night and have talked with the guardsmen and maids at the other dorm houses all day today, including this one. We’re just tying up loose ends with this follow-up visit. With that said, what can you tell us about it?”

The girls were silent for a moment.

Then Mindy said, “Those three are bitches, I swear!”

“Who’s the third one then?” Noel said.

“Miss Edgeworth,” Mindy said.

“They’re all bitches,” Jean added, “but Miss Edgeworth is the biggest one by far.”

“And those bitches set us up,” the scarf-wearing Sayaya added, “with fake eviction notices that morning.”

“I was looking for Professor Palmer in the Professor Commons Office to talk about them, but he wasn’t there yet,” Mindy said. “I was going to wait outside Classroom 1-3C for Professor Palmer to arrive during Homeroom 1, but then those damn bitches attacked me in the hallway.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“Why didn’t you wait in the Office?” Noel said.

“I didn’t want Professor Durham to know about them,” she said, “but yeah, I should’ve waited at the Office.”

“Why didn’t you tell her about the eviction notices?”

“I don’t have her in any of my classes.”

“Ah, I see,” Noel said. “So Lady Childeron and Lady Felton attacked you. Then what happened?”

“We heard a commotion upstairs,” Jean said, “and chased them off when we got there.”

“Then we helped her get to the infirmary,” Saraya added, “but we saw Miss Edgeworth exiting from there. We found out she lied to the nurse on duty, saying Mindy fell down the stairs instead of getting beaten up.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“You didn’t see where she went off to?” Noel said.

“No,” Saraya said.

“What about the other two?”

“We’ve no idea where they went,” Jean added.

“Was this the first time you three have been set up?”

“Yeah,” Mindy said. “It started after we saw Miss Edgeworth setting up Janet at the courtyard fountain last Friday. We saw that bitch rip her own dress, too, but when the Prince came out and saw it, he assumed Janet did it and wouldn’t believe her when she said otherwise. Hell, even when we told him what we saw, he wouldn’t believe us and assumed Janet threatened us to say what we said. It’s crazy!”

Edward wrote more in his pocketbook.

“He even called her mom a witch,” Jean said. “I mean, who in their right mind would say something like that?”

(“Exactly!” Rowena said.

“He’s something else, that boy,” DeeDee said.

“A total disgrace of a prince, that’s what,” Rowena said.

“Just like the rest of them,” Celeste added.)

“After she ran off, he approached us and asked us what really happened,” Saraya added, “and we said we saw Miss Edgeworth rip her own dress, but he said we were lying. Can you believe that? I mean, why even ask us if you’ve already assumed it in the first place, right?”

Then Noel traded a few whispers with Edward about the nurse’s account they had received from Viscountess Durham through their father, then nodded his head and eyed Janet.

Then Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“What about you, Lady Fleming?” Noel said.

“They’ve got a taste of what those three have been doing to me for weeks now,” Janet said, remembering the string of incidents they’ve put her through. “Seven weeks if you count what happened to me this week on Monday and yesterday.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“You don’t have to list everything that happened,” Noel said. “Just the most important ones will do.”

“I was talking with Professor Durham at the Professor Commons Office that morning,” Janet said, “so I didn’t see Lady Felton or Lady Childeron at all yesterday.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“You’ve no idea where they went?” Noel said.

“Nope,” Janet said.

“What else can you say about them?”

“They did set me up again this week on Monday morning,” Janet said. “They called my mother a bunch of names, then ran off and lied to the Prince about it to screw me over. I didn’t know what they said, but I know they lied. Miss Edgeworth was with him, too, and he and I had a lover’s quarrel afterward. Well, maybe not a lover’s quarrel, per se, but . . . I’m not sure what to say about it.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“You think that’s important?” Noel said.

“Yeah.”

“How so?” Noel said.

“The Prince said I was dead to him,” Janet said.

And the three spirits, six clones, and both guardians stopped their whispering in the dorm room, and now both brothers traded glances before staring at Janet.

“He really said that?”

“Yeah.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“Anything else you observed that day?” Noel said.

“Yeah,” Janet said, thinking back to her little triumph over Miss Edgworth in her former homeroom during Homeroom 1. “There’s two more: I wanted to get back at the Prince for what he said that morning, so I gave Miss Edgeworth my engagement ring in front of everyone just to humiliate them. But when I started feeling dizzy in the hallway after that, the Prince said I was playing the ‘sympathy card’ and asked me if I was desperate for his attention, so I said I was already dead to him: I threw his words back at him.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“Did his Highness carry you to the infirmary?”

“No, it wasn’t him,” Janet said. “Professor Durham told me it was Lord Woodberry who took me over there.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“What’s the other incident?” Noel said.

Janet remembered the Prince’s unwelcome visit that afternoon and said, “The Prince visited me in the infirmary after school, and we got into another argument.”

“About what?”

“He asked me if I was okay and pretended to care for me when I knew he didn’t,” Janet said. “He said I scared everyone when I fainted and asked me if I was going to hurt myself. I said I was upset with him but added that I wasn’t that desperate for his attention. Then he asked me if I took something beforehand to set him up as if I had planned it like that. It’s just so crazy: it’s like everything I say triggers him to assume the absolute worst about me.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“Can you give another example?” Noel said.

Janet thought about her interaction with the Prince and said, “Yeah. When I confronted him about what he said about my mother last Friday, he downplayed it and said I was making up excuses as if that was nothing.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“What did he say about your mother?” Noel said.

“He said she was a witch right to my face,” Janet recalled, shedding tears that she then wiped away. “He said, ‘Only a witch can give birth to someone like you.’”

Edward paused for a moment, staring at Janet, then wrote in his pocketbook.

She shed more tears at the knowledge that her former fiancé had done it with a two-faced vixen without knowing, or maybe he already knew of Lady Dorian and did it with her anyway just to get back at Janet for whatever he thought she did, whatever that was. Either way, Janet wiped her tears again and said, “I asked him if he would go after me if I tried to throw myself off the third floor, and he said he would, but I knew he was just lying. I asked him if he visited me, because I didn’t jump and die that day, and he just brushed it all off and told me to get some more rest, that piece of shit!”

As Janet started sniffling, Edward had stopped writing and traded some words with Noel, who then got up and approached the girls that were now consoling Janet. As Edward resumed writing in his pocketbook, Mindy had wrapped her arms around Janet’s shoulders, and Jean and Saraya got up from the dressing bench and hugged Janet, as well, all three now telling her to stop thinking like that.

But Janet kept going, her mind replete with the horrible image of Donny’s mangled body two stories below her in the open-plan parlor area, and said, “I wish I never fell for him (sniff). I should hate him right now, but I can’t (sniff).”

After Janet talked herself out of it and sniffled some more, her friends let go of her, and the Drevis sisters went back to their places on the dressing bench, and Noel approached with a handkerchief taken from the inside chest pocket of his day uniform and handed it to her. Janet took it and wiped her face, her eyes red now, and blew her nose and then gave it back to him, who replaced it in his chest pocket.

“Are you okay, Lady Fleming?” Noel said.

Janet nodded her head.

“Can you continue talking?”

Janet nodded again and said, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. We’ll give you time,” Noel said and went back to the tea table, where he sat beside Edward and traded some more whispers with him about the difference between what these girls were saying and what the others they had questioned were saying. Edward nodded his head and said that someone was lying and was inclined to disbelieve what was said about Janet in Guinevere house.

“I’m ready,” Janet said.

When Edward had Noel look in his pocketbook and pointed out a page to him, whispering something to him, Noel nodded and said, “We’ll try not to take too much more of your time, Lady Fleming, but you mentioned yesterday, as well.”

“Yes, I did.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“A lot happened yesterday,” Janet said.

“Keep it brief,” he said as Edward flipped to a new page and readied his pen.

“I’ll try,” Janet said, gulping. “First, Miss Edgeworth set me up in the morning by making some crap up about me hitting her. Professor Durham thought I did it and took me out in the hallway to talk about it during Homeroom 2, and then the Prince and Miss Edgeworth and Professor Palmer were there, and the Prince got in my face, and it escalated from there. Professor Palmer had to drag him away when he went after me in the classroom. I’ve never seen him act like that.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“Interesting,” Noel said. “Was that the first time his Highness went after you like that?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Did anything else happen after that?”

“Yeah,” Janet said. “Professor Durham went away after that, but when she came back, she told me that she had Professor Palmer and the Prince and Miss Edgeworth accompany her to the dorm houses to ask the maids if they saw me there.”

“Mariana House and Guinevere House?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “Professor Durham said Miss Edgeworth had the Prince wrapped around her finger. Like, when the Prince was hell-bent on finding out what the maids saw, she started crying, so he just let it go as if Miss Edgeworth was controlling him.”

“Was that what Viscountess Durham said?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

Then Noel paused for a long moment, catching Lady Fleming’s gaze with his own, till she looked away and said, “Is there something the matter, Sir Sydney?”

“Yes, because it’s about you,” Noel said. “Just know that we already heard what happened to you at lunch yesterday before we were even assigned to this case. Rumors don’t spread that fast on their own. In other words, it means that a group of unknowns (whoever they are) have full control over the rumors about you, Lady Fleming. Based on the preliminary findings of the homeroom teachers at school and our own findings in the testimonies of the students and maids and guardsmen at the dorms, we’re certain of a conspiracy against you. With that said,” he added, glancing at the four young women, “we’ve already got a good idea of what happened at lunch. What we wanna know is this: since you four are exceptions, what other incidents stick out?”

The girls were silent at first.

(“Should we tell them?” Janet said in her mind.

“Don’t make it obvious,” DeeDee said. “Just point them in the right direction, and they’ll do the rest.”)

Janet thought about it, rifling through the list of incidents the Prince and the vixen had put her through, and said, “From the entrance ceremony to now, I’ve noticed the timing of these incidents: first, Miss Edgeworth suckers me into overreacting to something she did before she goes off to the Prince; then the Prince comes in and confronts me about it without listening to my side of it. It’s happened like that for seven weeks now, yet even by the fourth week, I still thought I had friends.”

“Lady Felton and Lady Childeron?” Noel said.

“Yeah,” Janet said.

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“I had them warn Miss Edgeworth about her conduct around the Prince, but that was all,” Janet said, shaking her head at the way it turned out. “That vixen must’ve turned on the waterworks at the right time when the Prince was nearby, because I noticed later that week that my so-called ‘friends’ no longer spoke to me and were avoiding me.”

(At her words, Celeste Graves leaned over and said something to DeeDee, who nodded her head and manifested two books in her hands and gave one to Lady Graves. While DeeDee looked through the pages of Lady Children’s book, Lady Graves looked through Lady Felton’s book.)

Janet noticed what they were doing but tried her best not to make it obvious as she said, “They just kept their distance and followed me whenever I walked through the hallways, but when I confronted them, the Prince came out and accused me of harassing Miss Edgeworth as if he was waiting for me.”

“When did this happen?” Noel said.

“Friday afternoon,” Janet said.

“In the fourth week?”

“Yeah.”

Edward wrote more in his pocketbook.

“Jean and I heard about that, too,” Saraya added.

“Same week?” Noel said.

“Yeah,” Jean said. “But even before that, Sara and I had seen his Highness beating up a student named Lord Gavin O’Neill in the first week of school, and we never saw him after that. We thought his Highness did something to him, but we decided not to report him to the professors.”

“And why is that?”

“Are you kidding?” Saraya said.

“It’s because it’s his Highness,” Jean said.

“You’re talking as if he’s above the law,” Noel said.

“After the way he’s been treating Janet without any reprisal, he may as well be untouchable,” Jean said.

“Well, until yesterday, that is,” Saraya added.

Edward wrote in his pocketbook, but Noel traded whispers with him, and Edward nodded as he wrote.

Then Noel said, “Was Lord O’Neill in your class?”

“No, he wasn’t,” Jean said.

“Then how do you know his name?”

“We heard the Prince asking who he was,” Jean said. “He gave out his full name and title and confronted his Highness about his actions against Janet at the time.”

“I see,” Noel said. “Any other incidents?”

“No,” Jean said, shaking her head. “We didn’t see anything else after that, but we heard about what’s been happening with Janet from the other students, especially that fourth week. They were chummy and disgusting about it, too.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

Then Noel said to Mindy, “What about you?”

“On Thursday of that week,” Mindy said, “Jean and Sara and I saw Miss Edgeworth and the Prince and Lady Childeron and Lady Felton hanging out together in the ground-floor parlor area as we headed downstairs. We didn’t stick around for long, but just as we exited through the entrance doors, I happened to look over my shoulder and found Miss Edgeworth looking at us. It was kind of creepy.”

“We tried meeting Janet after that week,” Jean added, “because we kept hearing about the incidents between her and Rosalie and the Prince as the weeks went on.”

“But Lady Childeron and Lady Felton kept warning us off from meeting with Janet,” Saraya said. “Up to last week, they’ve been warning us to stay away.”

“Then this week,” Mindy said, “those two bitches gave us fake eviction notices, and then they beat me up in the hallways, and it looks like they’re setting up Janet to take the blame for their disappearing act.”

While Edward wrote in his pocketbook, Noel looked over what his brother was writing and traded some more whispers with him, and Edward nodded and kept writing.

While the brothers were occupied, Janet rolled everyone’s observations through her mind, then flashed upon a memory and saw that DeeDee and Celeste were still reading the profile books out of the corner of her eye.

(“DeeDee, Celeste,” she said in her mind, making both women look her way, “I was with Lord Woodberry on Thursday after school that week. We were at a dessert shop, but I don’t remember which. Anyway, we were having ice cream, and I was venting my frustrations to Lord Woodberry at the time. Does that have anything to do with this?”

They both kept reading for a bit longer, then switched books between themselves and checked out what the other was reading, all while RuRu and the clones and Rowena Fleming and Maxine Diddly were peppering them with questions.

After they closed the books, DeeDee gathered them up and said, “That afternoon, Miss Edgeworth brought Lady Childeron and Lady Felton and his Highness along with her into the Student Commons Town and had them spy on you and Lord Woodberry at the Sweet Dream dessert shop.”

“WHAT?” Janet said, struggling to keep her cool and hoping her questioners hadn’t noticed.)

But they had noticed, all right, both of them looking at Janet for a spell before trading a glance with each other and then whispering amongst themselves.

(“Since the Prince and Lady Felton had something against you already,” DeeDee said, “all Miss Edgeworth had to do was to give the wrong context and lie about it.”

Now Janet saw it all: the first step involved Rosalie getting Janet in trouble with the Prince over and over; the second step involved roping in the Prince and Lady Felton with a lie about Janet messing around with Lord Woodberry; and the third step involved roping in Lady Childeron with a spy mission on Janet and Lord Woodberry at a dessert shop that Thursday afternoon. Coupled together with what happened that Friday, in which Lady Felton and Lady Childeron had suckered Janet into a vulnerable position that the Prince then used to further tarnish Janet’s reputation, Janet lost it . . .)

And screamed, “DAMN THAT FUCKING BITCH!”

Janet was up and pacing about the room and squeezing her hands into knuckle-white fists and looking like she was going to hit someone. So the Sydney brothers and Mindy and the Drevis sisters (and Janet’s clones and DeeDee and RuRu and Celeste and Rowena and Maxine) got up and asked her to calm down, but Janet was having none of it. And when the pair of guardsmen entered and said the same thing, they just added more fuel to the rush of thoughts racing in her head.

None of their words reached her (not even the telepathic ones from her clones or DeeDee or RuRu or Celeste or Rowena or Maxine), for she was thinking and overthinking to the point of obsessing over the Prince’s involvement in the sick chain of incidents that started with Lady Dorian’s setups that took away the Prince from Janet’s side and later took away her former friends and had them and the Prince taking active roles in Lady Dorian’s setups against Janet, having them switch sides through a sick change of context that reframed something as innocent as Janet venting out her frustrations to Lord Woodberry into something as depraved as the Prince shagging Lady Dorian’s ass in his dorm room after nightfall, while Janet was fast asleep and unaware of their doings. As the sequence replayed itself in Janet’s mind, she found herself wide awake and feeling her heart drum-rolling in her chest and realizing that she can’t hear what everyone was saying and then realizing she was hyperventilating before succumbing to a sudden tightness in her chest, as if she was having a heart attack, while the whole room started to swirl around her and tip her off her feet—

Into somebody’s arms, into Sir Noel Sydney’s arms, who had broken her fall on the way down.

Then Janet found herself looking up at everyone else in the room staring back at her and asking her if she was okay as Noel lifted her back to her feet and led her over to the dressing bench, where she sat and rested the palms of her fists over the tops of her knees, trying her best to control her breathing and the racing heartbeats drumming in her chest.

When her heartbeats had settled and she was able to catch her breath and calm down a bit, Noel was at her side saying, “Are you okay, Lady Fleming?”

“I . . . I think so,” Janet said.

“Do you need me to send for a doctor?” Noel said.

“No, I think I’m fine,” she said.

“Are you sure?” he said.

Janet nodded (and said in her mind, “What was that?”

“It looked like you were having a panic attack,” DeeDee said. “Looks like I’ll have to delay the training.”

“No, it’s fine,” Janet said.

“I can’t have you train in that condition.”

“It’s fine, DeeDee,” RuRu said. “Reactions like this are very common amongst darkness affinity users. She needs to confront this head-on before it settles into her system.”

“Are you sure about that?” DeeDee said.

“Trust me, I know,” RuRu said. “I’ve been through this myself, so I know what it’s like.”

DeeDee nodded and said, “Then you’ll handle her training for now.” Then to Janet, she let out a sigh and shook her head in a grimace and added, “I’m really sorry, Janet. I didn’t mean to set you off like that.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m past it now.”)

Then Janet looked over at the guards her father had sent over and said, “It’s fine, you two.”

“Are you sure, Lady Fleming?” one guard said.

“I’m okay,” Janet said. “You can go back to your stations.”

Both guards traded a glance with each other, then bowed to Lady Fleming, and the other guard said, “If that’s your wish, then we’ll do as you say.”

The guards exited the room, closing the double doors behind them, and resumed their prior guarding duties.

“Can you continue?” Noel said.

Janet nodded again and said, “I know how it happened. I know why it turned out like this,” and she leveled her eyes on Noel’s and added, “I’m all right, believe me.”

With that, Noel and Edward returned to their places at the tea table, while Mindy and the Drevis sisters sat on the dressing bench alongside Janet (and her fifteen clones and DeeDee and RuRu and Celeste and Rowena and Maxine all returned to their places around Janet’s vanity table).

Once everyone was settled, Noel leveled his gaze at Janet and said, “What happened, Lady Fleming?”

“I was with Lord Woodberry that afternoon,” she said.

“On the fourth week of school?” Noel said.

“Yeah, after classes,” Janet said.

“And what were you doing with Lord Woodberry?”

“I was venting my feelings to him at a dessert shop,” Janet said, remembering what DeeDee had told her. “I didn’t see them at the time, but Miss Edgeworth must have taken the Prince and Lady Felton and Lady Childeron to the dessert shop we were at. Lady Felton already had it in for me because of my friendship with her fiancé Lord Woodberry, and the Prince had it in for me because he thought I was bullying Miss Edgeworth, and so Miss Edgeworth must have framed it like I was cheating on the Prince with Lady Felton’s fiancé. The next day, when I confronted Lady Felton and Lady Childeron for following me,” she added, “the Prince came in and accused me of bullying Miss Edgeworth in front of everyone in the hallway.”

Edward wrote more in his pocketbook.

“So due to this misunderstanding,” Noel said, “they became active participants in Miss Edgeworth’s setups against you. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Janet said.

“What about before that?”

“It was only Miss Edgeworth doing it,” Janet said. “She’d do things like spill ink on her dress and then go to the Prince, and the Prince would confront me about it, and it would blow up into an argument. It was like that before it all changed during the fourth week.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“Did you talk with Lord Woodberry about it?” Noel said.

“No, I didn’t, but I wish I did,” Janet said, shaking her head at the way Rosalie twisted things around like that. “If I’d have known that, I would’ve tried clearing it up between the Prince and Lord Woodberry, but I doubt the Prince would even believe us at that point.”

Edward wrote in his pocketbook.

“And the fact that you didn’t try to redress it, even if you were unaware of it,” Noel said, “convinced his Highness of your guilt in concealing it from him?”

“Yeah,” Janet said.

To Be Continued