Chapter Text
So of most of the weird and quite possibly illegal happenings on the campus of Silas University, this by far had to be the oddest. Will was never late.
If Carmilla Karenstien knew one thing about her nuisance of a little brother, it was that despite how much crap he talked and how big that mouth of his was, he always showed back to the dorm on time. Hockey was at seven every Wednesday, and Carmilla scarcely bothered to cook dinner earlier when she knew Will would be straight back at six thirty on the dot as if the world depended on it and she could just goad him into cooking instead. Perhaps that was the main perk of sharing a dorm room with him. He was just so easy to irritate into doing things.
The room itself was nice too, Carmilla supposed. She had a hankering suspicion that Mommy Dearest had something or other to do with the fact that she and Will had effectively secured the most lavish of dwelling spaces. The room was more like a small flat or apartment than a little college dormitory. carmilla hadn’t thought much of it when she’d first entered. It wasn’t much different than their place back in Berlin, minus most of the state-of-the-art architecture. Will whined about there being no TV for a while, and Carmilla had told him oh-so-endearingly to stuff it, before Mama had finally given in and bought a flatscreen for them to put up. Thus meaning that Carmilla could no longer get her daily dose of Faulkner or Kipling without hearing the obnoxious blaring from that oddessy at all hours of the night.
She’d considered pouring coffee on it more than once, but hadn’t-mostly because she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to.
She’d only started getting a little concerned at half past night and he had yet to send some sort of halfbrained text or something letting her know he’d decided to crash at a friend’s place or something like that. It wasn’t as if she was going to jump straight to some frightening conclusion straight off the bat. Knowing Will he had probably found some fraternity to mess around in, or had gone to a local tavern to watch the game despite being woefully under the age of twenty-seven. Though they were technically twins, born about ten minutes apart, Carmilla had emerged into the world first and counted every damn second of those ten minutes as her God-given right to mess with him once in awhile.
But still, as brainless and irresponsible as he was, Will never really just dropped off the charts like this. Not often, anyway. The only time Carmilla could recall the dark-haired boy storming off had been back when they all had lived in the same house, the memory of which was often befuddled with bad and good times both.
While her Mother could handle an industrial cooperation with ease, she sort of slipped up in other areas of responsibility.
But they’d been out from under her roof for nearly a year now, and all were better for it...So what, exactly, was Willy-boy up to tonight?
It was nearly eleven when Carmilla finally decided to text his phone-a simple ‘If you finally ended up getting laid I’m going to eat my own sock’-and left matters to rest.
Until morning came. And William Karenstien did not come with it.
Carmilla was not one to get paranoid in the slightest. That wasn’t what she did. Even when her elder sister had run away from home, she had always assumed that she’d be fine, and she was right nine times out of ten. Even as she paced the emptiness of her dorm room, glancing at the expensive furniture that littered the place, she accused herself of being silly. He was more than likely fine. He’d probably crashed at a friends place, and would come back later on and laugh at her for worrying.
She sighed and sat back down upon her bed, hand reaching for her book only to hear a faint rustling as her hand passed over...Paper? Sitting up again, she realized that this was the case. A note of some kind had been left on her bed, maybe from the night before, without her realizing it. Quickly, she felt a small smile tug at her mouth. So Will was fine, after all. He’d probably set out for morning classes. She turned the note over, fully expecting to see her brother’s untidy scrawl.
Dear student,
Your roomate no longer attends Silas University, either due to
Discovering a separate curriculum which better suits their interests,
Decided to return home to pursue a different career option
Returned home due to a family event or for various personal reasons.
Exit procedures have comments, and no action on your part is required.
And that just was asking for her to be as big of a bitch about this development as possible, wasn’t it?
Being raised by a business executive had passed many skills onto Carmilla, and being as politley impolite as possible was just one of many. During the course of the next five hours, the dark-haired girl had made about thirty phone calls, mentioned being closley related to the owner of Rook Industries a handful of times, and had flat out threatened to solve this issue Spartan style and kick someone off of a cliff if nobody explained what the hell was going on.
No luck.
She ran a hand through her hair in what felt dangerously close to defeat as evening settled over the campus. She was in the midst of being put on hold for the tenth time that day when the unmistakable creak of the door behind her signaled someone’s entrance.
“William, I swear to all that’s Holy if this was some kind of a prank no one is going to find your remains-”
“...Who’s Will?”
Carmilla paused mid threat, which was a rare occurrence in itself. Unless William had gotten his hands on Estrogen overnight, that was a girl’s voice. A girl Carmilla was certain had no business being in her dorm at all.
She swiveled her chair around to see that, indeed, a girl had entered. More than entered, actually, she had set her backpack aside and was eyeing the left over Chips Ahoy bag with professional interest.
“Wrong dorm, sweetheart.” she said swiftly. “The girl-scout meeting is down the hall.”
“Uh...Nope, pretty sure I’m in the right place!” the blonde haired atrocity said in a gratingly chipper manner. “Dorm sixteen, yeah?”
“No.” Carmilla said sharply, finally hanging up the phone when the elevator music just got a little too close to her sanity. “Hate to break it to you, but this is a private suite and my brother happens to already live here.”
“Oh?” the intruder cocked her head at that. “Where’s he?”
“Not here.” Carmilla replied. “But I intend on getting him here again soon right after I clear up things with the woefully inadequate faculty. So get lost.”
“Gee, really gifted in social conversation, aren’t you?” She replied, nose wrinkling slightly as her nerves were finally touched. “Look, I don’t know where your brother is, but I’m apparently supposed to be living here a while. So….Look, how about we try to be civil? Here, I’ll start over.” The girl, who was reminding Carmilla more and more of the poster child for wayward lead brownie counsellors, drew herself up straight as if to look more presentable. “I’m Laura. It’s nice to meet you.”
Carmilla did not humor her.
“And I’m the Duchess of Austria. Beat it.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Laura said through a barely concealed snicker. “Pretty sure they had a code of conduct in royalty. And I’m also sure it had something to do with cleanliness.” she added, hazel eyes sweeping over the scattered food wrappers, empty cans and clothes littering the floor like a carpet.
“I like things on display. It’s like a museum. Of me. And not you. So take that backpack and hit the bricks, sunshine.” Carmilla replied with a roll of her eyes, turning her chair back towards her desk.
“No can do.” Laura said stubbornly. “This is where i’m supposed to be living, and you’re going to have to at least tolerate it, unless your brother spontaneously had his own second coming.”
“He won’t need to do that when I’m going to be dragging his punk ass back here before you can eat all those cookies you’ve been eyeing since you got in here.” Carmilla replied nonchalantly.
“Then go ahead and get him, and I’ll hit the road and find somewhere else. Somewhere...Cleaner.”
Carmilla could hear the disgust in the girl's voice, and smirked to herself. She had ways of driving people out of places where she didn’t want them. Her darling Mother knew that very well.
This girl, of course, would be no different.