The Curse of the Osirians

House of Locks

"Yeah, either Victor or the flesh eating zombies," Alfie added as he raised his hands up to Nina's face as I snagged the seat next to her, which was on the corner, leaving me next to Jerome. He leaned over and nudged me so I copied him and nudged him back. I wasn't really used to anyone doing that other than Nina, but it was kind of nice.

"No zombies. Mostly rat bones," I told the table.

"Cool," Alfie said as he went to sit next to Jerome.

"Was it really scary up there?" Mara asked from the other side of the table.

"I thought it would be worse. It was actually kind of cool. We might move up there," Nina said, trying to sound confident.

"Don't you think she was brave?" Amber commented. I smiled at her.

"Even you have to admit, Patricia, Nina and Layla passed their initiation test with flying colors," Fabian pointed out.

"No. They didn't bring anything back did they?" Patricia argued.

"Well actually," I told her with a smirk as I reached into my school bag and pulled out the two old books I had snagged last night and showed them to the table. She hadn't specified whether we both needed to bring down an item so I made sure to grab two just in case.

"Yes!" Alfie cheered as he raised his hand over Jerome's head for me to high five. Patricia got up and stormed out of the room. Hah! I thought proudly as Mara chased after her.

We finished up breakfast and got ready for class and were heading out of the house when Fabian came running up behind us.

"Hey! Nina. I just wanted to ask if you didn't mind if I...do you fancy walking over with me?" He asked. I smirked as I crossed my arms and stared at him, deciding not to point out that he hadn't bothered to include me in the conversation.

"Yeah. Ok. Sure. I would "fancy" that. Sorry. This all just takes some getting used to. But this is weird even for England," Nina said as Fabian suddenly bent down near the bushes and started rummaging around.

"No, no wait, I'm just looking for something," he called over his shoulder.

"That much I got. What are you looking for?" My sister asked.

"Hang on, hang on," he shouted.

"I'm hanging," she called back.

"Yes. I got it!" He said triumphantly. I grinned at their little Fabina moment as Nina reached out and removed a leaf from his hair as Alfie and Jerome ran past us. I chuckled as I noticed Alfie had stolen one of Jerome's shoes, causing him to have to hobble after him.

"Unless you wanted that there," Nina commented as she dropped the leaf and Fabian tried to hide his red face.

"I think this needs to find its way back into Victor's key box before it's missed," he said, holding up the attic key which my sister quickly snagged. We had talked it over this morning and decided we wanted to go back up and investigate the eyes that we had seen. She didn't fail to tease me about my excitement over our little Harry Potter-like mystery.

"No actually because we're going to need this when we go back into the attic," she told Fabian.

"You're going back up into the attic?" He exclaimed in shock.

"It didn't sound so crazy until I said it out loud," Nina replied as she glanced at me.

"Why would you risk getting caught again?" Asked Fabian.

"Even though we were terrified when we were up there, it was the first time since we've been here that we weren't thinking about gran.
Or trying to get Patricia to like us. And we just, we really need to know," Nina tried to explain.