MORNING RESTLESSNESS

FRIDAY, 7:00 A.M.

Nicole’s tablet vibrated in her hands. A large image of a twitching purple envelope filled the screen. She tapped it once, and it unfolded into a letter, a reminder stating breakfast would begin in one hour. The screen switched to her map—the pathway to the Floral Sunroom tracked out for her with white dots.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered. What was the point of having a house so big, guests needed a map to navigate it? Of having Jesus knows how many staff to maintain it and no family or friends to speak of to live in the empty rooms that just sat there?

People froze to death on the streets because they couldn’t find housing, but having a Soda Room was an excellent use of space, money, and resources.

Sure.

Okay.

A grumpy morning restlessness had filled Nicole with snark and cynicism. Bodies didn’t care about vacation. Her internal alarm clock had wound itself and woken her up, right on time for a 4:00 A.M. shift at Salty Sea that she didn’t have to go to. Coincidentally, she shared a time zone with Jewel’s outrageous family estate. The ninety-minute flight and thirty-minute car ride had barely inconvenienced Nicole’s day, other than having to pack.

After waking up, lying in bed and staring at the pale yellow ceiling had felt wrong. So she’d gotten up, got dressed, and decided to use her map to wander the halls, a nice change from making lattes on autopilot. But the longer Nicole walked, the angrier she got.

A few of the doors were locked, but so far, she’d found the Holiday Wing, where each room looked like it had come straight out of a seasonal decorative catalog; two different pool rooms designed as a forest lagoon in summer and a hot spring in winter respectively; a whole room full of soda with bubbly wallpaper to match; and a fifties diner’s ice cream shop, of all things.

Every room a perfect temperature.

Every room pristine and presentable.

Every room devoid of life.

Following the map, Nicole turned the corner as two workers walked out of a room, laughing with arms full of sheets and blankets. They placed them in a laundry cart next to the door.

All the staff Nicole had seen so far wore uniforms that reminded her of flight attendants—sharp, dark blue button-down dresses that stopped under the knee, matching pointed hats, and their hair slicked back into flawless buns. A large, circular gold brooch had been pinned to the left side of their chest. Nicole recognized it immediately because the same insignia had been welded to the estate’s front gates: a wyvern wound into an infinity symbol eating its own tail, wings spread behind it. She knew it wasn’t a dragon because it only had two legs.