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SIXTEEN

As Lily lugged her suitcase up the stairs to the room at the top of the tower, she considered whether she should have claimed one of the guest rooms on the lower levels of her parents' house. Well, her stepmother's house, now.

But that would mean sleeping closer to her stepsisters, Courtney and Chloe, and being surrounded by the bland, impersonal furniture her mother had deemed fit for guests, while the tower had been fitted out for their little princess, with a custom made bedroom suite topped with crowns and crenelations that her mother had hand painted.

So when she threw open the door and breathed in the musty air from the untouched room, she told herself the tower was nowhere near as high as the looming edifice at Tremotino Castle, and she'd be fine here, thank you very much.

Once she'd taken down all the dust sheets, made up the bed, and set off the robot vacuum cleaner that had delighted her mother since the day her father had brought it home as a gift, Lily had no desire to sleep anywhere else. Not even her room at Mirror Academy had ever felt this much like home.

The robot played a little tune to tell her it had finished vacuuming, so Lily picked it up, to take it downstairs to empty the now rather full dust filter.

She made it all the way to the kitchen rubbish bin before the stench hit her. Worse than the dumpster outside the Academy kitchens on a hot, sunny day, just before the rubbish truck came to collect the waste. Not the sort of smell she'd ever expected to encounter in her mother's kitchen. Had someone murdered her stepmother and stepsisters, then left their corpses here to rot?

A quick search behind the benches revealed no corpses, thank goodness, but between the overflowing bin, and the dishes piled up in the sink and on every available surface, she wasn't sure if dead bodies could smell worse.

Well, at least there wasn't a flood of blue milk all over the floor, Lily told herself as she set to work.

Four dishwasher loads later, she'd handwashed the rest, disinfected all the surfaces and the sink as well, and brought down the vacuuming robot to start on the floor. The mopping robot was still charging, but by the time the vacuuming was done, it would likely have enough power to do the kitchen, at least.

Rubbish collection day wasn't until tomorrow, but she'd filled up the bins already, so she took them out to the kerb, ready to be emptied in the morning.

Only then did she dare open the fridge, to see what state that was in.

Empty. Not even a bottle of soy sauce inside. The freezer was the same.

Maybe her stepmother and stepsisters were away on holiday, and they'd told the cleaner not to come until they got back. That didn't explain why there were so many dishes, but that was a mystery she could solve tomorrow. In between doing the laundry, as the fine weather forecast for tomorrow meant she could line dry the dust sheets and keep the dryer for her clothes and the mountain of cleaning cloths she'd used in the kitchen.

"What are you doing here?"

Lily turned around. Evidently her stepsisters weren't on holiday, which might explain the mess. "Wondering why you haven't done any dishes," she said.

Courteney – or was it Chloe? The girls were identical twins, so they were hard to tell apart on the best of days – shrugged and spread her hands wide, flashing her talon-like nails. "I can't wreck my new manicure, and you know dishwashing is terrible on nails. My followers would never forgive me if I ruined this before they could see it. I have to go do a new video right away!" Courteney – for it had to be her, as she was the one who claimed to be a nail art influencer – took off before Lily could say anything else.

Chloe sauntered in, sniffing and screwing her face up. "What is that smell?"

"Detergent and disinfectant," Lily said drily. Funny that the rotten food smells hadn't disgusted her as much as the cleaning chemicals.

"Ugh. Can't you use natural products? I have a reputation as a healthy lifestyle influencer to maintain." She brandished a bag of what looked like takeaway food. "Get out of my way. I need to plate these up and take pictures before they get cold."

Well, that explained all the dirty dishes. Lily wondered what Chloe would have done if she hadn't cleaned the kitchen.

"Don't forget to load the dirty plates into the dishwasher when you're done," Lily said as she left.

Chloe just made a rude noise. She probably didn't even know how to open the dishwasher, let alone load it. Lily couldn't remember either of the girls knowing how to cook when she'd left for school, either. Or her stepmother.

Lily added grocery shopping to her list of things to do tomorrow. Brenda had given her a bag of apples and some sandwiches to take home with her – all the staff were taking things, to stop them from spoiling or getting thrown out, so she hadn't felt bad about taking them – so she'd be able to stretch those into dinner and breakfast, but tomorrow she'd need to get supplies.

One thing was certain: she had no intention of surviving on Chloe's leftovers for even a single day. Who knew what sort of fad diet she was showcasing this week?

Come to think of it, Lily didn't want to know. So she headed up to bed.