"I'm bored. They keepus lockedinhere like animals way toosoon."

There was not enough money in the world worth this. Maybe she would just kill him now and spare his mother the trouble. “And your solution to being miserable is making everyone else miserable?” They did say that misery loved company, but Nigel did not want any company… as he thought he had made clear to her.

"Then why are you tryingtokeep it from me?" Her eyes widened. "YouthinkI am tryingto copy it? I don'tneed to do that. I'mnot Stupid!"

“What?” he asked, shrinking back a little from her glare. He wasn’t scared of her, not really, but she was kind of… looming over him. And the firelight was giving her a weird shadow… and it was late, and he hadn’t been sleeping, and he was probably going to have nightmares about this later… “I didn’t say that. I just… don’t like having people look over my shoulder. Orrrrrrrrr sitting so close to me. Can you give me some space to breathe?!”

"What are you going to do? Write me another note telling me to shut up?"

“Well, since you crumpled it up, I guess you’ll need another one, won’t you?” he replied. “I’ll write you another one, and tell you what, I’ll laminate it for you. You can carry it around with you so that if you ever forget… it’ll be there.” He flinched as the crumpled wad of parchment hit his head. “Ow.”

"You have major personality flaws, you know that?"

Nigel raised an eyebrow. “No one’s chaining you to that seat. If you don’t like me, don’t talk to me.” Honestly. It wasn’t like they were alone in the tower. Didn’t she have any girly friends she could go talk to? Up in her dorm room, perhaps? Away from him? Leveling a warning glare at her, he pushed his stuff down the table and moved another seat over. She’d better not follow him.