Page 84 of Monster's Mystery

“Clarissa?” I whispered, overcome.

“Bruce?” she croaked, her voice hoarse from disuse. “What happened?”

“You’re here! You’re really here!” Bruce kept alternating between touching her face and petting her hair.

“We should gather our things,” Hazel said, gesturing to the stairs.

One of the men started to say, “But most of us don’t have—”

Hazel cut him off with a glare. “Upstairs. Now,” she said firmly.

Aiden and I were the first ones to catch on, and we headed up the stairs to the common room to give Bruce and Clarissa some privacy for their reunion.

“I’ll show you my room,” Hazel said, grabbing my hand. “If you want to see it.” She looked past me at Aiden.

“I’ve been here all day. I’ve seen the rooms more than I’d like,” Aiden replied.

“Yes, please,” I said eagerly.

Hazel smiled and tugged my hand, leading me into the first room. It was simply furnished with a bed, desk, and chair. “I didn’t see this room very often,” she said. “Just to sleep in, really. Although once the others were here, I retreated more often just to get some peace and quiet.”

The thunder of eleven pairs of feet echoed on the stairs and I chuckled. “That’squiet?”

“With the door closed, it’s not too bad,” Hazel said. “Better than downstairs in the lab, where everyone decided to congregate and ‘be helpful’.” She used finger quotes.

“I take offense to that!” said a voice, the owner popping his head into the room. “Some of us were very helpful!”

“Sure, if you call rearranging my notes helpful, William.” Hazel rolled her eyes.

“They made more sense in sequential order,” he protested.

Hazel pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Maybe you should leave now,” I suggested pointedly.

The guy opened and closed his mouth a couple times, but after glancing at Hazel, he nodded at me once and left.

“Thankyou,” Hazel said with a groan. “It’s been like that the whole time. Everyone thinks they know my system better than me.”

“There’s a reason why you were chosen to be Professor Calderwood’s TA and not them,” I said, patting her hand supportively. I looked around the room again. “Why is this here? Or rather, I guess the question is,howis this here?”

“Bruce built it,” Hazel explained. “Ever since he arrived in the present, he’s been coming here and making it ready for us.”

“Which brings me to another question,” I said, half interrupting her. “Time travel?”

Hazel snorted a laugh. “He wouldn’t tell me more than that either. He doesn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands, and although he trusted me with the revival of his wife, I think time travel is a whole other beast entirely.”

I raised my eyebrow at her pun and she smiled at me innocently.

“Well, let’s gather your things, then,” I said, wanting to be busy to avoid thinking about... well, everything. “Ummm, where are your things?”

“I don’t really have anything with me,” Hazel said. “I’d like to bring my notes. I’m hoping that Bruce will let me use this experiment as part of my thesis on unusual plant life.”

“Unusual,” I repeated in disbelief.

“I would hardly call this normal,” Hazel said, not understanding me.

“I was thinking the term was far too mild, actually,” I said.

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