Home again
The guy in the lobby stares at me, his brows furrowed with confusion through the wet glass of the doors, and I look away quickly, feeling a tiny bit guilty for manipulating him. But I'd definitely do it again, given the choice. Kara shakes my arm to remind me that we need to leg it, before the very mad people upstairs come after us. And she's certainly not wrong. To the bus! I clack my way in the direction of the bus stop, before Kara raises her arm to wave me over to her car, flapping her hand to the passenger seat. I start to walk over there, and while I'm making my way over there the rain starts to get way worse, and it's growing over the soles of my shoes, leaving me squelching. I mumble to myself about how much I hate wet socks, although I usually do like the rain, and then I stuff myself into the passenger seat, awkwardly shoving the crutches into the back seat. She drives like a bat out of hell, and if it weren't for the fact that there's very few people on the roads in this kind of weather I'd be worried about a crash.
It takes less than ten minutes to get home, which I suspect would have been more like a quarter of an hour if I were driving.
When we arrive home, Blackthorn Hall looks as decrepit as ever, with the spray painted sigils still on the front door. Which gives me something of an idea, for another day. But in contrast to its usual look, there's smoke slowly puffing out one of the chimneys in the western wing. I wonder who started the fire, because we certainly didn't. Behind us pulls up one more car I don't recognise, and I remember us passing the Amour's a lot earlier so I don't think it's them. The van looks, essentially, like a colour-changed Mystery Machine, from Scooby Doo. It's a brown van with lavender flowers all over it, and I suspect it's The Gardener's. Suspicions confirmed when she steps out of the van, now clad in dirt-stained overalls and a purple shirt in the same lavender tone as the van. She walks to the car and knocks on the window, at which Kara presses the button in the front to roll down. She leans on the now open window.
She asks if this is the place, pointing lazily at the door, to which I nod. She casually strolls over to the front door and opens it easily, presumably because nobody has fixed the locks. Walking inside before I can extract myself and crutches from the car, which involves leaning very inelegantly against the letterbox, she stands at the door for a tentative moment before walking through the door and out of my sight. I don't know what might happen and I'm kind of scared to find out.
But what does happen is far more shocking than I originally thought. I hear a scream from inside the house, and I hobble to the door quickly to see what's going on.
"JOLENE!" Scream yells, running downstairs and hugging her tightly.
"Sara!" The Gardener says back, clearly just as happy to see Scream as she is to see The Gardener.
"You know each other?" I say with some confusion.
"We were roommates in uni! It's been way too long since I've seen you, honey." The Gardener says, air-kissing Scream, who's name might be Sara.
"Absolutely, I've just been so busy, my business is just blowing up right now, and I barely have time to even open my phone before someone has me working on the latest design." She sighs mournfully.
"Oh, I see." I say, not really seeing but honestly it's not my issue.