I shrug, “Just thinking of hypotheticals.” My phone buzzes, so I change the subject, “Kar said he’s working on it now, and he’ll let me know. He said the location he did have for him is no longer relevant, so he needs to find him again.”
“Alright, well, it’s late. We’ve had a long day, and we’re going to have an even longer one tomorrow from the looks of it, so I think we should all head up to bed,” Van suggests, closing the discussion before it can go on forany longer, and honestly, it probably would have lasted all night if he hadn’t stopped it.
“I’m with Neith,” River and Coen say at the same time, and then grin at each other and high-five.
I burst out laughing, “That works for me.”
“That will free up a bit of space in the other rooms, too. It’s going to be slightly strange sharing a room like we did back at the academy,” Raiden says.
Griff grins, “I know we shared when we came here last time, but we weren’t here for that long, this time we’re going to be here for who knows how long. It’s going to be . . .”
“Interesting is the word that you’re searching for,” Doc smirks.
“It will be fine. We’ll make it work, we’ve shared spaces a lot smaller than this before,” Van replies, as everyone starts to pick up their bags from where we dumped them.
“Erm, guys, I don’t think that we’re going to have to bunk together,” Reed calls from the top of the stairs.
“What do you mean? House doesn’t have enough bedrooms for all of us,” I reply as I jog up the stairs with the rest of the guys. “Oh, I stand corrected. House didn’t have enough rooms for all of us.”
“How?” River asks in shock.
“Wait a minute, there are more rooms than we need,” Doc says as he counts them again, but this time out loud so the rest of us can hear him count too. “Ten. There are ten rooms.”
“So there’s a room for each of us and two spare ones,” Griff says with a slight frown.
“House must be expecting us to have guests regularly,” Raiden suggests with a shrug.
River grins, “Probably. Hey, do you reckon that House has given us particular rooms, or do you think that it’s a pick any room kind of thing?”
All of the doors in the hallway start banging, and the guys look at me in question. I raise my eyebrow, “I’m not sure what that means if I’m honest.”
“House, open the doors if we each have individual rooms,” Doc asks, and the doors open. “Oh, that’s really cool. Thank you.”
“Hey, House, do I have one?” Coen asks, trying to sound nonchalant, but there's a thread of worry hiding in his tone, which makes my heart hurt.
All of the doors in the hallway shut apart from one.
Reed smiles and claps Coen on the shoulder, “I guess that one's yours.”
“Let’s go and check it out,” River says excitedly as he nudges Coen to get him moving.
“Thank you, House,” Coen grins as we all follow him down the hallway to his room.
“Wow,” Griff mutters as we all step inside. “You definitely couldn’t say that House isn’t way more magical than it appears. This is incredible.”
“I’ll say. This looks like a completely different house,” Raiden says as he looks around in awe.
It’s huge in here, mostly because the back of the room has windows that are big enough that Coen could fly through as his dragon, complete with a balcony outside. There’s a big four-poster bed, which, quite frankly, we could all fit on with ease if we wanted to, a seating area near the huge fireplace, and a gigantic TV with game consoles. There are three doors leading off the main room. Two lead to the expected rooms, a giant bathroom with a sunken tub and a waterfall shower over the top, and a massive walk-in wardrobe.
The third door, however, leads to something that makes me want to simultaneously hug House and ask it thousands of questions because how?
“My hoard,” Coen mutters, his voice hitching. It’s been years since he’s seen his hoard. The last time he saw it was at the keep, and Kylen didn’t allow him to go back there.
“Wow, dude. There are some extremely rare weapons in here,” Ransom compliments as he looks around the weapons room, which is quite frankly bigger than the bathroom and walk-in wardrobe put together, and neither of those were exactly small.
“How is it here?” Van asks.
I shrug, “It’s House. It’s magic, and clearly a lot more powerful than I thought it was.”
