The Infernal Devices: Alternate Universe

Chapter Seventeen: Left Behind

Kathleen's POV

I skipped breakfast because of not wanting to see Will after last night. I venture out of my room to the kitchen long after everyone would be done eating and grab a pastry. I bite into the sweet flaky outside and close my eyes at the taste. Agatha could bake like an angel.

"Why did you not go with the others?" Agatha asks me as I lean against a counter and chew the bite I took.

I swallow covering my mouth with my left hand before answering, "I didn't know the others had left. What are they doing?"

"Charlotte and your brother are visiting the last known employer of the Gray sisters' brother, William and Jem are going back to the Dark House to see if they missed anything the first time they were there, and Jessamine and the elder sister went dress shopping. I do believe the younger sister is here. Why don't you talk to her?"

I raise an eyebrow at the cook and ask, "Why would I?"

"Only you and she are left and she wasn't invited, yet her sister went to do something she may consider fun. She's young and you of all people here should know what it is like to be excluded just because you were younger."

I ponder this for a second realizing Agatha was correct in what she was saying. I finish the pastry and walk out not saying anything else to the cook. I venture my way back to the room I had visited two nights prior and knock.

I get no response and knock again before saying, "Tessa, it's Kathleen. Please open up."

I hear a small patter of feet before the door opens and she pokes her head out to look at me. "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to talk to you," I say simply.

"I meant what are you doing here? I would have thought you would be with the others."

"I wasn't invited or told to come," I say looking at her and see an emotion flash across her face that I couldn't quite discern. In this, I also noticed she seemed oddly pale.

"Tessa are you feeling well? You look quite pale."

"I feel fine," she says almost cryptically. "Come in."

I walk in to see that the room was as tidy as it was when the sisters came here. The bed was made and it looks like very little was touched in the time they were there.

"Kathleen, may I ask a question?" she says looking troubled.

"You just did," I say getting a look of annoyance from the girl causing a small smile to flit across my face. "But yes, of course?"

"Are vampires real?"