LIBRARIAN BEATRICE’S RELUCTANT PROMISE
1
She held her breath and opened the door, looking left and right down the hall.
She strained her ears but heard nobody approaching. With a satisfied clench of her tiny fist, the girl stepped onto the red carpet—and began to run.
The soft carpet absorbed her footsteps but not her worries. Not only the sound of her footsteps but also the sound of her breath was an unwelcome enemy to her now.
As she passed the rows of guestroom doors, she ran the long distance to the end of the hall, dodging the furnishings as she went. Her eyes darted to and fro, looking for a place to hide, when—
“Boo!”
A little boy leaped out from behind a pot straight in front of her. His arms were spread wide on either side of his head, and his mouth was agape, with snot dripping from his nose.
Gritting her teeth, she forced the mana back inside her before it burst out. She narrowly avoided blasting that little boy into oblivion. She gave a grateful sigh to her self-control and the boy’s devilish good luck.
And then—
“Take that, I suppose!”
“Yargh!”
She slapped the silly-faced little boy’s ear with her now mana-less hand. The boy let out a yelp and tumbled to the floor. She patted her sausage curls and said, “Hmph! Serves you right for scaring Betty. This isn’t child’s play!”
“Ahhh! Found you!”
“Ooh, there he is! She got Luca good!”
“But even if you stop Luca, there’s a second and third Luca to replace him!”
“Ack, indeed.”
Just when she thought she had won, the detached force appeared noisily and ran over to her from the opposite end of the hallway. Clicking her tongue at the loud voices, she touched a nearby door to use the Passage—
“Don’t think you’ve won.”
With a yank of her hand and a shake of her head, the girl ran from the opposite end of the hallway, stopping halfway to kick the slapped boy in the shin. He yowled in pain, followed shortly by the cries of his comrades.
“Go! Catch her!”
“Go! Get her!”
“Go! Strip her down!”
As cries of the friends of the boy she stepped on rang out from behind her, the girl ran through the map of the mansion in her mind. Then she looked over her shoulder, glared at the boys, and said, “I swear, I won’t let you little brats have your way.”
Her voice filled with determination, and her skirt gripped firmly in her fists—Beatrice ran at full speed.
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