Latitude and Longitude

Summary: The artifact search kicks off and Secret Santa is back at Anubis

Evie's Notes: Happy Saturday! I hope you all are having a wonderful week ! As always, thank you so much your support of this story, it really and truly means the world to me 💜! I hope that you all enjoy the this new update 🌺.

The Sibuna club decided to wait an extra hour and a half after lights out to ensure that Victor and Vera had also gone to bed before sneaking down into the living room. Alfie passed out the flashlights from the Sibuna backpack to his housemates as Nina explained the plan.

"If Fabian is right, then the first artifact, the one from Jerome's rhyme should be somewhere in this space. 'In the parlor lines will lead', so I guess look for anything with lines"

The group set to work analyzing each aspect of the room. Alfie investigated the lined roll top desk and Patricia started scanning the wall paper. Jerome decided to test the floorboards, while Lili tested the drapes. Nina and Amber investigated the various picture frames to see if maybe they had held the key to their missing object. Fabian, though, stood in the middle of the room turning the riddle over and over in his mind… lines will lead… lines will give directions…

"Lines of Latitude?" he muttered stepping over to the old globe in the corner of the dining room that never got any use.

"Like directions on a map?" asked Liliana

"Is that even a thing?" wondered Alfie.

"Yeah, longitude and latitude. Don't y'all learn that in elementary school?" scoffed Nina, following Fabian over to the globe.

Unfortunately as the pair tried to pry the globe case open they found it to be stuck.

Spinning the globe, Fabian suddenly had an idea. "Nina, try aligning the arrows with Egypt"

Nina carefully spun the globe to land on Egypt. As the globe locked into place with a click, Nina's locket began to glow.

"Neens look! You're glowing!" gasped Amber.

Scanning the globe's casing, Jerome located the familiar Eye of Horus shaped hole. The Sibuna Club held their breath as Nina pressed her locket into the groove, causing a series of locks and gears to whirr to life.

"You hear that?" whispered Lili in awe to Patricia

"That's the sound of us being one puzzle piece closer to freedom" Patricia whispered back with a satisfied smirk, a golden flash flickering in her eyes.

Fabian carefully lifted the lid of the globe revealing several crystal bottles covered in spiderwebs filled with what Liliana prayed was alcohol.

Nina scanned each of the bottles before stopping on what appeared to be a cigar canister; her experience with the Frobisher-Smythes though had taught her that looks could be deceiving. Pulling up the lid, Nina found that it was not a cigar jar at all, but the end of a very long golden rod.

"Looks like we have our first artifact" grinned Jerome.

"One down, three to go" quipped Alfie.

* Scent of Lavender * Scent of Lavender *

Nancy Wilson was typing away peacefully at her desk on Thursday evening. The December sun had set long ago, making it so that the only light in the room came from the ancient desk lamp. Everything at this school was old and weird, she couldn't wait until this assignment came to an end. Looking down at her open files, Nancy's eyes flicked over the smiling faces. She just needed one of them to crack, one of them to open up and provide her the information her bosses so desperately needed. The cameras she had set up around the premises were revealing a frustrating little amount of damaging information. Nancy needed a new target as her original prey, Abigail Cowen, had been of little use to her being far too focused on university applications and crying over her dead boyfriend.

The flicker of her desk lamp and a slight breeze from the ancient ventilation system stole Nancy's attention for a second. When she looked back, a certain student's profile caught her eye. Pulling the file from the stack, Nancy reviewed it shrewdly but couldn't stop the slow grin that spread across her face. Yes… Miss Mercer might just be who she was looking for after all.

* Scent of Lavender * Scent of Lavender *

"Gather round, gather round everyone!" called Joy cheerfully as she stood on the coffee table in the center of the sitting room. Joy, in honor of the season, had donned a red and white striped knit dress, a Santa hat and a pair of black knee-high high heeled boots. In her hand she held the ragged looking Anubis House stocking, with each of the resident's names sewn onto it. Joy had bribed Lili with choco chunk and marshmallow cookies to have the girl quickly add KT's name to the stocking as a surprise for the American girl.

"Is this going to take long?" grumbled Mara, purposefully seating herself on the other side of the room from Jerome and Liliana who were curled up together on the couch. "I was supposed to be in the lab ten minutes ago, and then I'm going out with Natasha and Andrew".

"Don't worry Emmy, this'll be quick" promised Joy, shooting the girl a sympathetic smile. It sucked seeing your crush with someone else, but Joy hoped that the girl would come to realize that there were more people out there and that her perfect person was just around the corner, just like KT was for Joy!

"Oh! Is it that time already?!" asked Amber, bouncing excitedly into the room, dragging Alfie, Nina and Fabian behind her.

"Yup! The best time of year has officially arrived… Secret Santa" declared Joy, leading to ecstatic applause from her housemates. "Now, since Kara wasn't here last year, I'm going to speed run the rules. Rule one, do not tell anyone who you got. Rule two, you can't just give a gift card and call it good, people. You need to actually put thought and effort into the gift. Rule three, don't give anything mean. This isn't an opportunity for you to be petty or settle a feud. Gifts will be exchanged on the 15th, which is next Friday at our house holiday party. Any questions?".

The resounding "no's" let Joy know she could begin, reaching into the stocking she pulled out her slip of paper. Opening it up Joy did her best to hide her grin, Mara, this was going to be fun!

The other students quickly took their turns passing around the stocking and drawing their assigned resident.

"Great! Now that everyone has their secret santa, go forth and plan" cheered Joy, waving her friends out of the room with a smile.

Soon it was just her and KT left in the living room. Joy settled herself down on one of the cushions before the fireplace ready to spend the rest of the afternoon with her lovely girlfriend and a fun game of chess!

Evie's Notes 2: Thank you all so much for reading 💕! I hope you enjoyed this update, let me know your favorite part of in the comments! I hope to see you all next week 💗!

I love hearing from y'all! Let me know what you think of the chapter and the story as a whole in the comments or my Tumblr House-of-Secrets! Have a great week and stay safe! - Xo Evie🌺