A Queen and Her Kings

Mysterious Patrons and Leaky Roofs

Cassandra sighed, sat Grim down beside Skip, took a minute to gush internally about how cute the two were, and went to climb the stairs, which happened to be full of holes.

Yue noticed her absence and after a minute of quick searching looked up to see her halfway up the stairs, "What are you doing?!", he yelled up at her, flinching when Griffin and Eiji both loudly shushed him so he wouldn't wake Skip and Grim up as they tried to do a bit of dusting on the couch with their hands.

Cassandra looked down at him, "Looking for cleaning supplies. If we have to live here, we might as well make the most of it. You know what mama always liked to say, 'You take what you can get, and you make the most of it'. Wanna help?", she called down quietly, learning from her darling moon's earlier mistake.

Yue sighed, "I suppose so. Better than staying down here, useless and dusty.", he said as he began a careful trek up the stairs.

When he joined his love on the second floor, they began to open doors at random, hoping one of them would be a utility closet. They found one after five attempts, but that wasn't the only thing they found. As Cassandra began to rifle through the closet for a broom, she felt a cold hand on her shoulder. Knowing it wasn't anyone in her Court, she startled and turned around to see who it was. What she saw surprised her.

Yue stood blinking at three Casper-like ghosts as they attempted to scare them both, which of course was not working. He was an ex-mafia boss turned vampire and she was a Mikaelson and a tribrid, they were not going to be scared of Casper's bootleg cousins. Cassandra couldn't help but laugh at the scene.

The middle ghost, a rather round fellow, stopped his futile attempts when he heard her laughter, as did his thinner accomplices. They blinked, why weren't these people scared of them? Their act usually had everyone running for the hills by now.

"Why aren't you scared of us?", asked the thinnest ghost.

Cassandra finished laughing, wiping a tear from her eye as Yue chuckled, "We've seen things far more frightening than you three, little ghosts. But I will give you points for persistence.", she said as she walked up to the round ghost, who she presumed was the leader.

She smiled, "I'm Cassandra and that's Yue, who might you all be?", she asked as she held out her hand to them.

The leader reluctantly took it, gasping when he felt the warmth of Cassandra's hand. He hadn't felt anything in... seven knows when! They shook hands firmly and after they pulled back, the leader looked at his hand with unrestrained awe. Cassandra and Yue exchanged odd looks at this, confused as to what was so special about a handshake, when the round ghost shook himself out of it and answered Cassandra's question.

"We don't have names, Miss. Well, we had them once, but we forgot them a while after we died. We do know we used to live in this dorm and work at the school, but beyond that we don't remember much.", the round ghost said solemnly, as he and his companions looked down with sad eyes.

Cassandra put her hands on her hips and frowned, "Well that won't do! Everyone deserves a name. Say, how about I name you three? According to the dark mirror, I'm pretty good at naming things.", she said with a smirk.

The three ghosts looked at her with wide eyes at her claim and nodded their heads furiously.

Yue sighed, "You have got to stop naming strays.", he said exasperated.

Cassandra walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek, "Yeah, but you love me too much to stop me.", she then walked back over to the ghosts and pointed at them one by one.

She pointed at the thinnest one first, "Your name Skellington, Skell for short." , she said.

The second thinnest was next and she pointed at him, "Your Casper."