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"Well…yes. Very."

All three women squealed.

"Oh my God!" Tamara exclaimed. "You stayed in a haunted mansion with a handsome ghost?"

"Uh-huh," I said, trying not to smile too much.

"Did anything, you know, happen?" Phyllis demanded.

I could feel my face getting hotter.

"Nothing I'm going to tell you about,” I said shortly.

But that only made them squeal louder.

Natalie, however, wasn't laughing. She was staring at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"So let me get this straight," she said slowly. "You got to go to a magical town, meet all kinds of magical Creatures, stay in a beautiful, haunted mansion, and spend time with a handsome ghost?"

"Well, when you put it like that, I guess so," I admitted.

"And meanwhile, I got to stay here and go to work."

I sighed.

"Natalie, I'm sorry. I know you wanted to go, but it's not like I stole your ticket or something!"

"Well, it still doesn't seem fair," she muttered.

I didn't know what to say to that, so I simply shrugged and began putting my magical souvenirs back into my purse.

Honestly, I was beginning to wish I hadn't told her anything at all, but it was too late to take it back. She knew about Hidden Hollow now—and so did Phyllis and Tamara.

Unfortunately, the questions didn't stop after lunch—if anything, they got worse. Every time I managed to sit down and concentrate on my work, one of the women would appear beside my desk and ask something else about Hidden Hollow.

Tamara wanted to know if the orcs were really as big and muscular as they were in the romance novels she read. Phyllis was fascinated by the idea of talking animals and wanted to know whether all the cats and dogs in Hidden Hollow could speak.

And Natalie kept asking about the magic.

How did spells work? Had I seen anyone casting them? Did I know how to do any myself? And why had Nana Cordelia chosen to send me to Hidden Hollow instead of her own granddaughter?

That last question was becoming particularly tiresome.

"I don't know, Natalie," I told her for what felt like the hundredth time. "Maybe she thought I needed to go there for some reason."

"But why?" she demanded. "Why would she choose you?"

"I really don't know!" I wasn’t about to tell her that Cordelia had chosen me to break Garrik’s curse—she already knew more details than I was comfortable with.

"Well, I think it's unfair," she repeated for probably the twentieth time.

By three o'clock, I was ready to scream. I had a pile of paperwork on my desk, a dozen unanswered emails, and a boss who was apparently looking for any excuse to fire me. And instead of helping me get caught up, my coworkers were making it nearly impossible to concentrate.

Finally, all three of them gathered around my desk again. Natalie was still going on about how unfair everything was, while Tamara and Phyllis kept asking questions about Garrik.

"So what did this handsome ghost look like?" Tamara wanted to know. "Was he all pale and transparent, like in the movies?"

"Sometimes," I admitted. "But he could also become solid when he touched me."