It was hard to find morning classes engaging given the circumstances. Kira couldn't get out of her own head, not just about the phonograph, but about what Joy had said.

Mara. Seriously, what was she supposed to do about that? Kira thought she'd been a pretty attentive friend the past few months, all things considered. Sure, they weren't going out to town, or eating lunch together, or spending every free moment in each other's presence as much anymore, but that wasn't a crime. Kira had beat up her cheating boyfriend, helped her get back at him, and stole her dog back from Victor. That had to count for something, right?

They were sitting next to each other, like they so often did, and they'd talked all the way up until Denby had started class, also like they so often did. Normal stuff! It wasn't like Kira didn't want things to be the way they were before she got embroiled in the thick of an ancient quest, but that just wasn't reality. She couldn't just walk away from this, not with both her brother and her girlfriend needing all the support they could get.

No, Mara would just have to continue to deal with a little less BFF bonding time. She'd be grateful if she knew the truth.

While Ms. Denby droned on about something to do with the Bolshevik Revolution, Mara leaned over and whispered, "Hey, have you heard back from Yale yet?"

That was another thing: university anxiety. Amid all the other more immediate and dangerous anxieties, that one seemed somewhat trivial, and yet Kira couldn't quite shake it. She'd gone early decision to Yale, and the decision date was creeping steadily closer— at most a week away.

"Not yet," she whispered, keeping an eye on the board. The last thing she needed was to land herself in any trouble with Denby. "Supposedly they'll start rolling out the ED decisions by the 14th. Anything on your end?"

"Nothing," Mara groaned. "I wish we could just know by now."

"Well, you know what they say," she said, lowering her voice when their teacher looked their way, "good things come to those who wait."

A knock on the classroom door disrupted both the lesson and the cliche, and Mr. Sweet popped his head into the room with a small "Hello!"

"Sorry to interrupt, Ms. Denby," he apologized.

She waved her hand, dismissing it. "No trouble at all, I was just about finished up anyway."

He nodded in a perfunctory manner. "Yes, yes, well, Ms. Valentine has asked me to check in with students about the progress of the upcoming drama module! Have you given any thought to what your final piece might be?"

Students from all houses glanced around the room at each other wearily. Obviously no one really had, but that wasn't entirely surprising. Drama was always a touch-and-go subject.

"Perhaps a school play?" Denby suggested, which honestly sounded like as good an idea as any. "I'd be happy, of course, to assist in any individual, one-on-one coaching, if that would lighten Ms. Valentine's load."

"Any objections?" Mr. Sweet prompted, sweeping the room. His gaze lingered on Kira for a moment and she shrugged. The coaching bit sounded nightmarish given the unsubtle motive behind it, but a play would be fine. "School play it is, then!"

"Awesome!" Alfie cheered from the back, ever a creative.

"Remember," the headmaster warned them pointedly, "this will count toward your final grades."

"Not awesome," he amended, slumping back into his seat; Willow patted his arm comfortingly.

Beside Kira, Mara suddenly perked up in her seat. "Can I write it, sir?" she requested, hand shot straight up in the air.

"Excellent idea, Mara!" commended Mr. Sweet. "Unless any other bright spark would like to volunteer?"

A few tentative hands raised around the room, including Fabian's and Jerome's, but Mara strained her hand higher. "Can I write it with Kira and Joy, sir?"

Wait, what?

At the mention of his daughter's name, Mr. Sweet brightened immediately. "Oh, that's even more splendid!" he exclaimed in delight. "Wonderful, I'll be sure to let Ms. Valentine know!" With that, he turned and scampered out of the room.

Joy leaned over her desk behind them and gave Mara a look. "Thanks for asking," she drawled, but she broke into a smile.

"Mara, what?" Kira asked, less smiley. She didn't have time to write a play! Certainly not in a little over a week.

"Don't worry, ladies," she assured them, casting an unsubtle glance Jerome's way. "I've got a plan."

—

It was a bona fide miracle that Eddie was still standing after the hellish day and night he'd had. In all honesty, he wasn't sure how things could possibly get worse, but if he said it out loud, he was afraid the universe might take it upon itself to show him.

He was slowly ambling to his next class, lost in his own thoughts, when he suddenly felt a hand grip his sweater sleeve and yank him into the empty computer lab. Eddie was only slightly ashamed to admit that he sorta screamed.

"Am I that ugly that you have to scream at the sight of my face?" Patricia snarked, crossing her arms.

Eddie blinked, torn between relief that she was talking to him and terror that he'd already fucked up his chance. "N-No! You just—"

"I was kidding, weasel," she sighed, shaking her head slightly so that her meticulously curled hair fell over her shoulders. "Relax, will you?"

"Sorry," he said stupidly. Gods, she was beautiful when she talked down to him.

Focus, Miller, he scolded himself.

"So?" she prompted. "Are you going to show me proof about these fake messages or did you send your sister to bullshit me more?"

Eddie sucked in a sharp breath, literally leaping at the chance to clear his name. He dove into his backpack and yanked out his computer. "It's all here," he explained, shoving one of the desktop keyboards aside so his own laptop had room. "Look, this isn't my account! There's an uppercase 'i' instead of a lowercase "l" in the 'Miller' part of the username!"

"Okay..." Patricia said skeptically.

"Okay, well, here's my actual account with all my real posts! You can't fake time stamps!" he continued, tapping the screen aggressively. "And Fabian tracked the IP address! It pinged another computer on campus, but not mine!"

"Right," she drawled.

"Patricia, please," he begged. "I didn't write those messages; I would never do anything to hurt you."

She raised an eyebrow incredulously. "Never?" she scoffed.

"Never on purpose!" he corrected himself. The sad truth was, he always ended up hurting people by accident. "Yacker, please believe me. Look, whoever set this whole thing up was doing it to drive us apart, I don't know why, but I love you too much to just give up!"

Her expression shifted to one of surprise, and after a second, Eddie realized why. He'd said it. He'd dropped the L-bomb. It was the big one, the one he knew scared her because it still scared him too. After she already said she hated him! Eddie had gone and blown it, hadn't he? Stupid, stupid, stu—

"You love me?" she asked smally. "Really?"

Eddie wet his lips nervously, then jerked his head up and down. He just couldn't get his tongue to move, stuck waiting for her reaction to everything he'd just laid out for her. The ball was in Patricia's court now.

She looked down at the computer screen, then back up into his face, and he saw in her eyes that she'd come to a decision.

"I believe you," she said, voice still small.

Eddie felt his heart start to beat again. "Really?"

She nodded, a tentative smile stretching slowly across her face. "Yeah... and I'm so sorry for, y'know, reacting like I did."

He shook his head at once. "No! No, Yacker, you have nothing to apologize for," he assured her, stepping closer into her space; she allowed him.

"No, I do," Patricia insisted, a teary warble in her voice. Her hands snaked out and rested gently on his waist. "I shouldn't have said those things to you. I was just hurt, and angry... and jealous..." Her touch drifted downward, now resting on his hips; Eddie's breath caught when she stepped closer to him, sanguinely looking up through her lashes into his face. "Can you forgive me?"

"Of course," he breathed, so close he could smell her shampoo. "Can you forgive me?"

Patricia raised an eyebrow at him. "What for?" she whispered, inching closer. "You didn't write them, right?"

"No," he explained quickly; it was getting hard to think. "No, I just meant for acting like a total dickhead. About dodgeball and Ben."

The tips of their noses brushed, and Eddie's brain was beginning to short circuit. "That?" she hummed jokingly, tightening her grip marginally on his hips. "Oh, fine, I guess, I forgive you."

It took him a second to gather his thoughts. "Oh, yeah?" he teased back. This was good. Better than good. Great, even! They were bantering, it was familiar, and she'd forgiven him, he'd forgiven her, and she was safe, warm, real, and so beautiful.

Patricia smiled glibly, her breath hot and sweet on his mouth. "Yeah. And Eddie?" she said, so close now that their lips were less that a centimeter apart. "I... I love you, too."

A string snapped inside of Eddie, and he closed the gap between them, bringing his hands up to her face the way he knew she liked. She laughed into the kiss, pulling him closer until they were flush against one another. It was really difficult to think about anything but her, and he found that that was okay, really. He was just so happy to have all of the ugliness of the fake messages cleared up. And she loved him, too! It was hard to believe a little over a year ago, he'd have balked at the idea of being so hung up on a girl, yet here he was, completely in the palm of her hand.

He finally had to pull away for air, and he chuckled as she chased him all the way till their lips parted. "Yacker, we have to go," he reminded her, running his thumb across her cheek bone tenderly. "Next period's gonna start soon."

"Fuck next period," she whispered fiercely, attempting to pull him back down.

"Yacker," he drew out. "Come on..."

She rolled her eyes and pulled away, and Eddie was left cold. "Fine... but just so you know, whoever was sending those messages is dead meat, so if you see me in an hour beating the shit out of some girl, don't stop me."

"Noted," he laughed.

They fixed themselves up a bit before venturing out into the hallway, where they were almost immediately intercepted by Fabian, Alfie, and KT. Mara had likely already whisked Kira away to start her dramaturgical career.

"I think I can mend the phonograph!" Fabian said by way of greeting. "Until then, we've just got to keep the pieces safe."

"And make sure that we don't accidentally help out Team Evil," KT reminded them.

Right, there was still that scary possibility. "No sinning?" he said, trying to lighten the mood. "Agh, I'm gonna miss it."

They all laughed, except for Alfie who had a slightly superior expression on his face. "You know, guys, I've been thinking," he began, "I think I'm gonna be alright."

They blinked at him incredulously. "I'm sorry, Alfie, did you just say you don't sin?" KT giggled. "You know, human nature?"

"Never!" Alfie scoffed.

Fabian bit back a grin. "Dishonesty."

"What?" he squawked. "I am Mister Honesty!" Alfie caught a the chocolate bar peaking out of Patricia's book bag pocket and his eyes lit up. "Ooo, chocolate!"

Patricia smacked his hand away. "Greed," she snorted.

"Oh, I can't be bothered," he huffed.

Fabian went in for the kill: "Sloth."

Eddie broke into loud guffaws at the expression on poor Alfie's face, and clapped him on the shoulder good-naturedly. "Face it, Alfie, you're a one-stop sin shop."

"As if," he retorted, just as the bell rang.

"Oh, Alfie," cooed KT, reaching over to pinch his cheek before she and Fabian headed off toward their next class.

Patricia reached up and pecked Eddie on the cheek before she, too, broke off and headed after them toward advanced math.

"C'mon, Alfie, let's go," Eddie prompted, trying to hide his blush.

Alfie poked him in the chest pointedly. "Lust," he said.

"Oh, shut up!"

—

Kira sighed heavily from her spot beside Willow, tapping her pencil against her notebook, while Mara rattled off all her, frankly, dogshit ideas for a revenge play. Mara was a brilliant girl and great journalist, no doubt, but she wasn't much of a creative writer— especially when she had a vendetta.

All talk ceased, though, when Jerome came into the common room, making a big show of pausing and giving Joy a once-over. "Joy, I like your hair like that," he said.

"What, brushed?" she asked with a bemused laugh.

He nodded. "Yeah, it's soft, lustrous! What does it remind me of?" Jerome tapped his chin. "Oh, yeah! Letdown."

"Ha, ha, ha," Joy deadpanned, but there was a little smile playing on her lips. "You're so funny."

They both laughed until Jerome seemed to clock onto Mara's glare; he backed down with a sheepish cough. "Right, well, see you..."

Willow waited until he was gone for her smile to split her face. "Aww, he is totally a smitten kitten!" she sang.

Joy kept her expression neutral and shook her head. "I don't think he's that into me," she pooh-poohed.

Mara shook her head vehemently. "No, Willow's right. He really thinks you like him." Her grin was slightly evil and she twirled her pen like a baton. "We're gonna break his heart."

Kira pursed her lips and looked back down at her notebook. It was becoming abundantly clear that no good could come of furthering this revenge plot, and yet what could she say that she hadn't already? Besides, she reasoned, certain things— no matter how much you care about a person— were simply not her business.

—

Just before lunch, Eddie, Patricia and Fabian were walking back from the vending machine, when they nearly collided with Alfie coming around a corner, holding a massive chocolate cake in his arms. He grinned at them and brandished his prize. "You know what they say!" he laughed. "Finders keepers! If you want some, find me after class, because I've gotta get this bad boy to safety."

"Where did you get it?" Eddie asked confusedly as Alfie zoomed around them down the corridor. "Alfie?"

But he was gone.

"He's so weird," Patricia observed, looking over her shoulder in the direction he went with narrowed eyes.

"You're only just realizing this?" snorted Fabian.

Suddenly, KT popped her head around the corner with wide eyes; she beckoned them vigorously. "Guys, you're gonna wanna hear this," she said, before pulling back out of sight. The three others glanced at each other bemusedly, but followed her. Kira had her ear pressed up to a classroom door, and KT stood beside her, listening in to what sounded like a pretty heated argument. Before Eddie could question why they needed to listen to random people fighting, Victor's distinct voice bellowed out from within the classroom:

"Furthermore, you are interfering; you are inept; you are incompetent and indescribably useless!"

Now, they all were gathered around the door. Not only could the argument reveal information that could give Sibuna the upper hand, but it was also wildly entertaining.

"Oh, I am?!" Denby snarled. "You've just described yourself! Have you forgotten that while you've failed to make any sort of progress, I have moved leaps and bounds ahead of you on behalf of our cause?"

Mr. Sweet cleared his throat, and Eddie jumped out of his skin as his father materialized behind Fabian and Patricia. "What on earth is going on here?" he asked.

"We don't know," Patricia replied pointedly, ear still trained on the door. "That's what we're trying to work out, so if you could just keep it down—"

Eddie smacked her arm a few times to get her attention, and her expression dropped when she saw who'd spoken.

Mr. Sweet didn't look particularly impressed. "Step aside. Step aside, please," he sighed, and they reluctantly parted for him. He opened the door, and both Denby and Victor went abruptly silent, like deer in headlights. "Victor! And Ms. Denby..." The headmaster looked even less pleased, and he cast a concerned look over his shoulder at the students, before entering the classroom and shutting it firmly behind him.

It was much harder to hear now that they weren't screaming, and the bits and pieces Eddie could manage to catch didn't provide much clarity. All too soon, though, the door swung open, and the group practically went ass-over-teakettle into the classroom.

Definitely not our finest hour, Eddie thought, smiling awkwardly into his father's exhausted face.

—

"I just hope our other schoolwork doesn't suffer from our playwriting!" Mara was saying. They'd all snuck back to the house for lunch, despite it not being permitted, and the girls had fixed themselves a few sandwiches for creative fuel.

Kira honestly wished she was helping the others with the phonograph, but she wouldn't be much help beyond moral support. So, instead, she allowed Mara to drag her back into the brainstorm.

"Way to suck the fun out of it," Joy joked. "Look, it's a really great thing, all of us writing together... but does it really have to be about—"

"Jerome? Yes, it's perfect! We tell the story of a two timing rat!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, yeah," Kira drawled, half-joking. "It's practically Shakespearean."

"I've got some ideas if you'd like to jot them down," offered Willow. "One, I should probably do the costumes. Two, Alfie should so be the hero; he's devastatingly handsome. And three, you can never have enough wigs."

The girls smiled, but no one wrote anything down.

Jerome sauntered into the room and plucked a sandwich from the pile. "Just an FYI, girls, I must insist upon my own trailer, and only the purest of mineral water in my dressing room," he joked.

Mara smiled saccharinely. "Oh, don't worry, Jerome, you'll feature heavily in this production."

"You could be the director!" Joy blurted out, and the other three girls stared at her, stunned.

Jerome's face brightened. "I'll have your people talk to my people!" he laughed before leaving out the way he'd come.

"What?" Mara asked disappointedly.

Joy shrugged. "I panicked," she apologized, but Kira could see through it.

She just shook her head and sighed, uncapping her pen. This sucks, she thought glumly.

—

Eddie was bored of watch Fabian tinker, mostly because he wasn't allowed to help, nor was Alfie. Something about not having tact or skill. Whatever. There were other interesting things on his roommate's desk, like the clay head he had for some reason. It boinged when he and Alfie poked it, and it definitely helped pass the time... much to Fabian's dismay.

"Okay, guys... guys, listen," Fabian snapped, batting his housemates' hands away from the bust's face. "Frobisher seemed to have thought most of this through; maybe he left some spare parts for the phonograph down in the secret room."

That was less boring, and Eddie leapt at the chance. "Good idea! Me and Alfie will check it out."

Fabian released a sigh of relief and returned to his tinkering. "Okay," he said.

"But it's lunch," Alfie whined.

Fabian stared up at him, aghast. "Alfie!" he chastised. "We need to know what message Frobisher left for us!"

With a moan of resignation, Alfie relented, following Eddie out the door. "I made a sandwich and everything..." he lamented.

They snuck down to the secret room, thankful that Kira was in the kitchen to distract the others while they attempted the covert operation. "Stop!" cried the scratchy recording of Frobisher's voice from the dummy in his image. It continued its warning until, Eddie reached forward and snapped the trip wire that set it off.

"Ah, yes," Alfie sighed, looking around the dusty room. "The dust and the ever-present fear that Frobisher is going to jump out at us at any second."

Eddie snorted. "Never gets old, does it?"

Alfie shook his head. "No," he chuckled.

"Okay, looking for ye-oldey, phonography pieces," he said, scanning the room for anything that fit the description. Finding nothing upon the initial cursory look, Eddie gave up. It wasn't like Fabian actually thought they would find anything; it was clearly just a ploy to get them out of his hair.

Still bored, only now in a different place, Eddie looked for something to entertain himself with. When he caught sight of a very creepy doll, he grinned and picked it up with a poorly hidden snicker. "Hey, Alfie," he said, tapping him on the shoulder. Alfie turned around and let out a startled shriek at the sight of a doll right in his face.

Eddie cackled as Alfie shook himself out. "Yeah, yeah, Eddie. Obviously I knew it was a doll."

"Sure you did, girl," he teased, tossing the toy back down.

A few beats of silence passed, until Alfie brought up a brilliant idea: "You know," he began. "Fabian wants answers, and this guy," Alfie gestured to the Frobisher-Dummy, "is the only one doing the talking."

Eddie blinked. "What?"

Alfie nodded at the dummy with a cheeky smile. Eddie shook his head, dumbfounded. "No way" Alfie inclined his head toward the dummy even more. "No!"

Which was, of course, how they found themselves hauling the wax figure up through the floor and into the foyer, covered only by a burlap tarp they'd found in a dusty corner. It wasn't Eddie's proudest moment, but Alfie could be very convincing when he wanted to, and, really, who was he to argue with that kind of logic?

"Oh, brother," Kira groaned as she came through the living room door, followed by Mara, Joy, Jerome, and Willow. "Is that—"

"A prop!" Eddie interjected pointedly, burning under the bewildered looks of his housemates. "Fabian wants to design for the, uh, play."

"For the play you don't know anything about yet..." Mara trailed off, eyebrow raised.

"Uh, he's really keen," Eddie replied weakly.

Alfie coughed. "Really, really keen."

Victor's office door slammed upstairs, and the caretaker screamed for Trudy. The boys looked at each other in horror— that was their cue.

"Well, we better get this to Fabian! You know those artistic temperament types!" Eddie threw over his shoulder as he and Alfie shuffled down the hall with the dummy in between them. Kira rolled her eyes and followed them, with a quick wave to their friends.

"Ta-da!" Alfie said once they were safely in Fabian and Eddie's room again. He removed the tarp with a flourish.

Fabian seemed appropriately unimpressed, as did Kira, who flopped onto Fabian's bed with a snort of laughter. "So," he started, leaning back in his chair to glare at his two friends, "when I said to look for something like this"— he held up what was probably some sort of phonograph part— "you guys... bring that."

The boys flanking the dummy nodded sheepishly.

"Epic mission fail," Kira cackled, unable to hold back her laughter anymore.

The door opened, and for a split second it was a mad scramble to cover the wax figure. However, when Eddie realized it was just Patricia and KT, he relaxed, offering them a smile. Upon seeing the boys' newest toy, they simultaneously raised an eyebrow. "New roommate?" Patricia quipped, and KT smothered a giggle at Fabian's deadpan expression.

They entered, and KT shut the door gently behind her before crawling onto the bed beside her girlfriend and pressing a kiss to her cheek.

"You have to get it back to the secret room," insisted Fabian.

"Not with Victor on the prowl," KT remarked.

"Well, we have to get it out of here, at least." Fabian rolled his eyes, pointing at Eddie, then at a box full of phonograph pieces. "Can you bring that box over to the bed?"

"Sure," he said, slipping past his roommate and moving to pick up the box. The moment his hands clamped around the handles, however, the world whited out.

It faded back to color in the shape of the secret room, and no sooner had he gotten his bearings, did a loud crash draw his attention to a hooded figure standing before the wreckage of the phonograph.

I'm in the past, he realized passively, while he actively geared up to take the culprit on.

"Who are you?" he demanded, but the figure would not turn. Eddie moved to grab their shoulder, but a whisper behind him once again drew his attention:

"Osirian..."

He whirled around, on edge. "Who's there?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. Seriously, was this vision trying to give him whiplash?

A low, mean laugh chuckled behind him and Eddie pivoted for the third time, only to come face to face with Robert Frobisher-Smythe as he rose from the chair the dummy once sat in. "It was one of your little friends," he sneered, "Osirian." Suddenly, he was much closer, hissing in his face like a snake; the sound echoed in the tiny room as though they were in a cathedral. "You have a viper in your nest," Frobisher warned smugly. Eddie jumped at a sudden hand on his shoulder that spun him around roughly, and his stomach dropped at the sight that greeted him: the twisted expressions of his friends greeted him, each one slightly colder than the next. His roommate cocked an eyebrow menacingly; Alfie threw back his head and laughed; his sister stuck her tongue out; KT waved at him with a smirk; Patricia simply winked. He felt sick, too stunned to do anything other than stare as they each raised a hand to cover their eyes in the familiar symbol for Sibuna, while the other ones flashed scarlet.

The vision ended abruptly, and it sent Eddie stumbling back into Fabian's wardrobe when he wrenched his hands away from the box that had triggered the vision in the first place. His heart thundered in his ears, and he was greeted by the same line-up of faces, only this time their expressions held no malice; instead each one was flooded with worry. One of them was lying.

"Eddie, what happened?" KT asked worriedly

Kira took a step closer and placed her hand on his forehead like the doting sister she always was when he had any sort of nightmare, asleep or awake. She jumped, though, when he flinched away from her violently. "Eddie?" she prompted softly. "Are you alright?"

The realization doused him like a bucket of ice water: Eddie couldn't trust any of them. One of them had... had...

He stood up sharply, forcing Kira to step backwards into Alfie. What was he supposed to do? Or think? This was... Was his vision wrong? It had to be, right? Unfortunately, the prickle on the back of his neck warned him of the opposite and he felt faint. No... he was dealing with a wolf in sheep's clothing, and while he might not have known their motivations for doing so, if he didn't figure it out fast, he'd lose the flock.

"It wasn't one of Team Evil that smashed the phonograph," he managed after a moment, eyeing each of their innocent expressions uncertainly. "It was one of you."