Mistakenly Eaten

16. The Ghost strikes the p********e in the library

Althea tapped her feet on the floor as she looked up at the wall clock and it was about to hit one. According to the itinerary, she was supposed to report down in the kitchen by one sharp.

She had been inside her room for the past three hours but didn’t dare to move out of the room.

Ever since the incident that happened the night before, she was scared to even think about leaving her room and the director showing up inside the kitchen, was just another horrific reminder to Althea that her stupid mishap from the night before, can lead her on her way back home.

She had risked a lot to be where she was, there was no way she was ever going to go back without winning the competition, even if it meant for her to stay quarantined inside her room.

Soon the clock struck one and she opened up the door to her room only to be surprised to find Garry standing in front of her.

“Huh?” she asked in sheer surprise and he pressed a soft smile.

“Hey! Umm… Althea right?”

He tried his very best to not come off too strongly appealed by her and Althea nodded at his words.

“Going down for lunch?” he asked and Althea nodded.

“The next round is in forty minutes, so we need to eat something before the next round begins.” She told Garry, who hummed back in response.

“So, let’s go together.” He offered and Althea shrugged.

“Sure!” the two began walking towards the staircase and being herself, Althea struck up a conversation with him. “So, Garry how did you received your acceptance letter? What was your reaction?”

Garry was slightly confused by Althea’s words at first but then remembered that her conversation was entirely centered around the competition and she was most likely asking him as a participant, how he ended up getting accepted at the secret chef’s society.

“Oh! Well, just another regular day, got the letter and voila.”

“That’s nice but my story is not that simple. Actually nothing is that simple with me and…”

“So, you have never attended any proper culinary school?” Garry asked what had been bothering him ever since he saw Althea cooking.

Althea simply shrugged, “No! have you? But I thought that they only accepted those who have never received any formal training and…”

“No! I haven’t received any formal training either.” He lied right away, hiding the fact that he had done at least five culinary courses in different aspects. He was going to go for the big chef’s hat but Gigi jumped in and asked him to rather join his field, as it had more earning.

“See! So, what made you think that I have received any formal training?”

“It is just the way you handle everything. It looked spectacular and just perfect.” Garry told Althea and she simply snorted a small laughter, as the two continued climbing down the stairs.

“Well, I am from Gragnano and it is said that cooking runs in our blood.”

As the two continued their way in to the dining hall, where the lunch was set up, Fiona watched the two engage in a friendly conversation from afar.

She followed them in to the dining room, where a table with seven dish buffet was set up, from where everyone continued filling up their plates and took seats to have their lunch.

Andrew complained inside the kitchen, busting his entire body, in order to cook and organize the lunch.

“Fire me from the competition.” He told Salva, who stood going through some more fake lines that he had prepared for himself and Serena to say during the lunch cook off.

“What? Why?” Salva asked, confused by his demands.

“I can not do this! I can not cook in stupid competitions and then cook buffets. I can only do one.”

“You are not doing it all alone.” Salva told him, pointing towards the help in kitchen that was assisting Andrew.

“Do you think they don’t want to quit?” he complained, “they are my staff and they are already tired.”

“It was just a fifteen minutes cook off in the morning and…”

“We will announce you as the winners for today’s competition so that you don’t have to cook for the rest of the week. Happy now?” Gigi told him, coming inside the kitchen.

“The rest of you need to act like participants and move out now.” Gigi told them and they did just so, gladly exiting the kitchen and joining the dining hall.

Fiona sat at a distance from Garry and Althea, watching them afar how the two interacted and laughed at different stories.

She never had that kind of interaction with Garry even in the past ten years and it was making her burn on the inside.

She couldn’t just sit back and watch Garry get smitten by another woman. Everyone on the island knew that he was hers and was definitely off limit.

Soon after lunch, another cook off began and they were asked to make a three course meal and Althea did just that, preparing shrimps in appetizers, stuffed chicken in main course and a gelato in dessert.

As they were leaving the kitchen, Althea noticed that not everyone’s food was appealing as hers. She noticed that only hers, Garry and the lean guy named Andrew had the best dishes, which made her feel slightly secured that she might secure a win right away.

As soon as they exited the kitchen, Garry was about to go and talk to Althea, asking her to hang out with him but Fiona jumped in and called Garry out.

“Gigi is calling for you.”

“Me?” he asked, slightly confused and Fiona simply nodded.

Garry shrugged and walked to meet Gigi who was inside the security room, making sure that even though all of the house staff was gathered around in the kitchen, he had to make sure to keep a good check on the security.

Knowing that she got at least five minutes on her hands, Fiona than decided to execute her plan.

She immediately walked up to Althea and tapped on her shoulders just as she was about to climb up the spiral staircase.

“Hey! Althea, right?”

Althea nodded and read the name tag on Fiona’s chest.

“Hi, Fiona.”

She stated with a soft smile but Fiona was not going to have even the slightest sense of sympathy for the woman, since she was a volatile target for her.

“Salva is asking you to get some cookbooks for him from the library and bring them to him in the kitchen.”

“Me?”

The order was quite confusing for Althea, making her wonder why Salva would select her for such a detectible task.

“Yeah! The library is down the hallway to your right. It is open and you will find the cookbook section on the top shelf, you can use the ladder.”

With that Fiona swayed away, leaving Althea confused.

“What kind of books did he ask for?” she inquired but Fiona pretended to not to listen to Althea anymore and simply went down the hallway, opening up the last door in the corridor and getting inside.

Althea sighed, having no other choice but to simply comply to Salva’s demands.

She walked down the corridor and turned right, rendered in sheer awe, at the large book shelves the covered the entire space, present by the glass windows of the house, that led right towards the back porch of the house.

The view at the back of the house was magnificent, warn grey sand and darkened sky, all looking like a perfectly calm storm approaching. The white foamy waves hitting the sand on the beach, looked extremely alluring to Althea.

But she was at the library to complete a task and given to that, she grabbed the wheeling ladder and looked over at the top shelves to find any cooking or recipe books and finally her eyes landed on a section.

She began climbing up the ladder and at the same time, Fiona entered Nicholas’s office, glad that she was able to find him then and there. She knew that he didn’t leave his office much lately and was usually confined to that area most of the time.

“Hey!”

Nicholas looked up from his iPad and c****d an eyebrow at Fiona. Ever since he came back from the island, she was popping up around him every now and then, trying to cheer him up but Nicholas didn’t show much of a positive response to her.

“What do you want?” Nick asked in a plan tone, continuing to scroll through his iPad.

“Well what can I want from a depressed man?” Fiona scoffed, “Except… you know there is something quite suspicious going around the house, have you noticed it?” she asked and Nick looked up at her, finally giving her his entire attention.

He was still quite skeptical about the events from the night before and Fiona’s words suddenly seemed to alarm him.

“I think I just saw someone in the library that I haven’t seen before. Looked like a woman, about this tall…” she rose her hand up in the air, about the same height as Althea and Nick’s eyes bulged out.

“Where did you see her again?”

He asked, jumping up and out of his chair.

Fiona smirked, finally she had hit the bulls eye.

Althea on the other hand, stood on top of the ladder, going through the scrolls of the books that were present on the top most row of the book shelf.

She had already picked out three thick cookbooks and had then placed on the top paddle of the shelf. She finally picked out one and seeing that she had enough books in the hands, she picked them up and took one step down to get down from the ladder.

Her feet was still up in the air, with weight in her arms and her balance still wobbly when Nicholas called her out, standing right by the bottom of the ladder.

“What the hell are you still doing here?”

The loud voice startled her, rattling her balance. Her feet missed the step, sliding down from it. She lost her balance and fell right down from the ladder, which was at least one story high.

Books went flying down on the ground, creating a loud thud and Fiona gasped in complete shock, realizing that her plan might have gotten a bit out of hands.

When she and Nick walked out in the library, she didn’t expect Nick to get that flabbergasted and call Althea out in such a rash manner.

Althea came flying down from the ladder but Nick was quick enough to open up his arms and caught her right before she fell down and hurt herself.

Althea’s heart was beating loudly inside her chest, with her eyes shut close, as she clung on to whatever she could feel in her arms, that was protecting her from hitting the wooden floor underneath her.

Slowly she opened up her eyes and the first thing she saw was something sparkling blue, looking right back at her.

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Welp, what do you think will happen now?

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