Locke Down

Chapter 25

Laurel's POV

Locke has been gone majority of the day, but it hasn't bothered me too much. My brother had stopped by yesterday, and while I'm disappointed I never got to really see him before he left, I'm excited to finally have my lab equipment. There's so many questions that have come up in the last month and I need answers.

We need answers.

I had roamed through majority of the castle earlier, trying to find an empty room I could use to set up a lab for myself. To my surprise, it's seems as though every room is filled with something. I have no clue how someone could own a house this big, let alone so have so much stuff, but I'm continuously amazed as I continue room after room with no luck at finding one bare.

Dex told me before that it didn't matter, I could use any room I wanted, but it felt like a wrong to have someone remove all the furniture from a space when there was bound to be somewhere in this castle that was unused. Or so I thought. I mean seriously, how many "sitting rooms" does one person need? Or bedrooms for that matter?

I had stopped by the grand ballroom to take another peak during my search, but found even more hidden treasures afterwards. Not only did I come across a giant library that would put most to shame, but there's also a gym, an entertainment room, and a huge indoor pool. A freakin indoor pool. I've officially declared the East Wing the place to be and have already begun my speech on why we should move our bedroom to this side of the castle.

I venture up to the third floor, figuring it's nothing more than storage space and I'm mostly right. There's not near as much square footage up here as there is on the bottom two floors, as it's pretty much a large open layout. There's multiple boxes stacked to the side collecting dust but I don't go through them, not wanting to evade Locke's privacy. The space is actually pretty empty except for some old furniture and clothes laying about and it doesn't look like someone has been up here in a long time.

I track back down the stairs, the long path curving to the left, almost making it 180 degrees before stopping on the oak wood of the second floor. My feet come down heavily against the treads, slightly frustrated I haven't found a spot yet and it's seeming as though I'm just going to have to clear out a room for myself. I turn to go back down the hall once I hit the landing but I pause as my eye catches a door under the stairs.

I open it up and a huge smile grows across my face at what's inside. Nothing.

Well practically nothing.

"Holy Harry Potter!" I jump up and down, way too excited about claiming this for my lab.

The space underneath is actually quite large, considering the size of the damn staircases in this place, and it looks like it's only used as a storage room. A shelf with some cleaning supplies sit against one wall, while coats hanging on a rack are placed in the middle.

I shove everything to the side and begin to clean the space a bit before grabbing my equipment and setting it outside the door. It takes me majority of the day to get things ready since I have to make sure area is well sanitized before I can really set up.

I sit on the floor, sorting through my bags full of items I've used in my previous experiments. Some leftover samples of things I've created are also placed in the bag making me grin as I think back on the memories and trouble I've gotten into in the past.

So many of them were done with Kline by my side and it makes me miss him even more. Why the hell couldn't he have just shown up today like he was supposed to? Then we could have spent a few days together and caught up on everything going on in each other's lives.

I take out the hair styling cream I made that turned his hair blue and snap a picture of it before sending it to him. It's still one of the funniest memories and I know he'll laugh too once he gets the picture.