Author's Note: I made the probably stupid decision to take part in NaNoWriMo this year, so (hopefully) I'll be working on a new story all through November. I won't stop writing this story, but I won't be able to give it my full attention until December. If you're doing NaNoWriMo too, feel free to add me as a writing buddy! My username's the same as it is here.

She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. -- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Rigmor had had an unpleasant time of it since capturing Slaugh. The goblin would not be quiet. First she locked him in the closet. He screamed at the top of his lungs until her next-door neighbour banged on the wall and shouted, "What are you doing in there? Rehearsing opera?"

Then she tied a handkerchief around his mouth and put him in her wardrobe. Like clockwork, he threw himself against the doors every twenty seconds. She lay awake for hours listening to that racket, and when she finally fell asleep, her dreams were full of rhythmic thunk-thud-crashes.

After that she put him in a box, then put the box in another box, and put that box in another box, and put the laundry basket over it just for good measure. This was less of a disaster than the previous attempts, but it was hardly an unmitigated success. Slaugh's shrieks were muffled by the boxes and the clothes in the laundry basket, and the box was too small for him to throw himself against it. So far so good, but he found that by leaning all his weight against one side of the box he could move the entire thing in that direction.

Rigmor woke up the next morning to find boxes, basket and goblin stuck in the fire escape doorway. How Slaugh had managed to open the door while in a box was a riddle for the ages.

And so, when Hjalmar finally appeared on her doorstep, Rigmor's first thought was, Thank God! Her second was, Couldn't he have come sooner?

She began speaking the minute Hjalmar was in the door, without bothering to close the door or notice that he wasn't alone.

"I don't care how we manage it, but I want that thing out of my house! It's driving me mad, it's disturbing the neighbours, it's putting my life in danger, and it's -- Who's this?"

She had finally noticed the presence of a woman she had never seen before, wearing the most old-fashioned clothes and most extraordinary hat she had ever seen -- and that was including the monstrosities depicted on some of her ancestors' portraits. Rigmor looked again and realised that the woman was in fact a girl only a year or so older than she herself was, and her skin was so pale she looked ill.

"This is Solvej." Hjalmar, for some reason, looked greatly embarrassed by the girl's presence. "She's my... friend."

As many people do when faced with a situation about which they know nothing, Rigmor put two and two together. As usually happens under such circumstances, she came up with five instead of four.

"No, I'm not," Solvej said unexpectedly, and for no apparent reason.

"I beg your pardon?" Rigmor asked, confused. In the background, Hjalmar made a noise somewhere between a "What?" and an "Oh, no".

"I'm not his fiancée, wife, lover, or whatever else you might think I am," Solvej clarified. Her accent was strange, cutting short some letters and drawing out others apparently at random. "I'm just his friend. Well, friend, travelling companion, next-door neighbour, and matchmaker, if you want to be specific, but friend will do for now."

Rigmor hadn't felt so bewildered by someone since her cousin, the notorious gossip Duke Jørgen, had cornered her at a ball and spent an hour regaling her with disjointed rumours of various family members. She did as she had done then, and focused on the important part of that explanation, ignoring the rest of it.

"If you're only his friend, why are you here?"

"Well, you see--"

Hjalmar interrupted hurriedly. "I think I should explain. She knows me better than she knows you, after all."

Rigmor thought that it would be very easy to know someone better than she knew Solvej, since she had been utterly ignorant of the other girl's existence until five minutes ago.

Hjalmar turned to her with a grim look on his face that suggested he would rather be anywhere other than here. "You'll find this hard to believe, but Solvej is a ghost."

A ghost. Solvej was a ghost. Rigmor waited to see if Hjalmar would follow this declaration up with "Just joking!" or something similar. He didn't. So, she could assume it was true. It explained why the other girl was so pale, she supposed, and it might even explain why her accent was so odd. What it did not explain was, why would a ghost be in her house? With Hjalmar, of all people? Her impression of the boy was that he would sooner die than be caught up in anything unusual. Unless... was he a ghost too?

"No, he's not," Solvej said unexpectedly. "He's as alive as you are."

"Are you reading my mind?" Rigmor demanded, unable to think of any other explanation.

"Of course not. I can't read minds. It's just that your face shows everything you're thinking."

That was quite unnerving, actually. Was everyone able to tell what she was thinking merely by looking at her?

"No; not unless they're used to deciphering people's expressions."

Rigmor glared daggers at Solvej. "Stop that!"

"Sorry." The girl -- the ghost? -- looked mildly ashamed of herself.

Hjalmar closed his eyes. His mouth moved silently, as if he were praying for patience. "Can I continue?"

Solvej waved a hand in his direction. Since she didn't bother to say anything, this could be taken as consent or disagreement; whichever the viewer chose to interpret it as. Hjalmar took it to mean "go ahead".

"As I started to say, Solvej is a ghost who for some months now has been living next door to me."

The thought of a ghost living next door to someone was somehow harder to accept that the thought of a ghost existing at all. Ghosts, in all the stories Rigmor had heard, were either sad creatures unable to move on, or menacing creatures who refused to move on and instead made life miserable for the living. They were not the sort of creatures you expected to hear lived next door to someone.

"The stories are always wildly inaccurate," Solvej chipped in helpfully. "They're meant to be. The whole point of those stories is to stop people recognising a ghost when they see one. There have been too many witch hunts and botched exorcisms when people realise someone's a ghost. A High Court of witches and wizards was specially assembled to find a solution, and they thought spreading misinformation was the best way."

Hjalmar and Rigmor both stared at Solvej. There was a long, awkward silence.

"Anyway," Hjalmar resumed, with an air of being determined to pretend no one had spoken, "she was killed by the same magician who cursed you."

I can't say I blame him, Rigmor thought, and promptly did a mental double take. Had she just agreed with the Magician on anything?

"I won't agree to killing the goblin," Hjalmar was saying. Rigmor glared at him. He didn't seem to notice as he continued, "and setting it free would lead the magician right to you, but Solvej has an idea that might work. I'm afraid it will be very inconvenient, though."

"Tell me, then I'll decide."

Hjalmar looked to Solvej. The ghost, who had been sprawled out in Rigmor's only -- and decidedly the worse for wear -- armchair, sat up and straightened her hat.

"It's really very simple," she began.

In Rigmor's admittedly limited experience, those words always preceded something that was not at all simple.

"There's a sort of spell, a shielding spell, that will hide you from the Magician. I can cast it on you, but for it to work you would have to stay in the same building as me."

Rigmor considered this. "So you would have to move in here?"

Try though she might, she couldn't imagine Solvej living at 13 Aesvic Lane. She also couldn't imagine what the other lodgers and Mrs. Bendtsen, the landlady, would say if Solvej took lodgings at 13 Aesvic Lane.

Unbidden, an idea wormed its way into her mind. What would happen if Mrs. Bendtsen and her extraordinary ribbons met Solvej and her outlandish hat? What would their opinions be of each other's headgear? Or would each be so impressed with the other's fashion choices that they would imitate it? Rigmor imagined Mrs. Bendsten wearing Solvej's hat, or Solvej wearing Mrs. Bendtsen's ribbons.

"Well, I suppose that would work," Solvej was saying, "but that wasn't-- Why are you laughing?"

Rigmor forced the smile off her face and the image of a ribbon-bedecked Solvej out of her mind. "No reason, really. I just had a funny thought."

Solvej shrugged, as if to say it was of no importance. "As I was saying, we had a different solution in mind. We thought that you should move next door to us. Well, to me, really, since Hjalmar wouldn't know a shielding spell from a water-boiling spell."

"Hey!" Hjalmar protested, looking offended. "I resent that!"

"It's true."

"I know it is, but I still resent it!"

Rigmor found herself reminded of the quarrels that frequently broke out between her more temperamental ladies-in-waiting. She'd thought such immaturity was exclusive to the upper-class idiots who populated the court. Apparently, she was wrong.

Since it seemed Solvej and Hjalmar would remain embroiled in their disagreement unless she did something to remind them of her existence, she took a leaf out of her mother's book.

"Ahem!" she said loudly.

With one "A-hem!", Queen Maibrit had silenced quarrelling noblemen, long-winded ministers, and, on occasion, her husband and daughter. Rigmor's "Ahem!" was not quite as authoritative as her mother's, but it got the job done. Hjalmar and Solvej abruptly stopped arguing and looked suitably ashamed of themselves.

"Let me see if I've understood you," Rigmor said once there was total silence. "You've found a way to prevent the Magician finding me, even if the goblin tells him where I am, and all I have to do is move from this house to yours."

"That's it in a nutshell," Solvej agreed. "Oh, but if we go with this, you won't be able to go outside unless I'm with you. Like I said, it's inconvenient."

Rigmor considered the situation. On the one hand, she knew virtually nothing about Hjalmar, other than that he came from some little village in the middle of nowhere, and she knew nothing at all about Solvej, except that she was a ghost and apparently insane into the bargain. Common sense told her that she should have nothing to do with them. On the other hand, there was the Magician, who she knew would drag her off to his horrible kingdom if he got his hands on her.

Some people say it's better to choose the devil you know than the devil you don't. In her opinion, this was rubbish. There was a chance that the devil you didn't know was not, in fact, a devil. There was no such chance with the devil you did know. So really, there was only one choice she could make.

"What's some inconvenience compared to being safe from the Magician?" Rigmor asked rhetorically.

And that was that.

~~~~

It proved easier to make a decision than to carry out that decision. First Rigmor had to let Mrs. Bendtsen know she was going to move out. Then she had to rent a room in the house where Hjalmar and Solvej lived. Then she had the joy of packing her belongings, dragging them (with Hjalmar's help) to her new lodgings, and then unpacking them.

The only good thing was that Solvej had put Slaugh under a sleeping spell for the duration of the whole chaotic business.

"I feel rather like we're being cruel to a dumb animal," Solvej remarked as she checked the spell was still in place.

"What else can we do?" Hjalmar asked, rubbing his forehead as if trying to stave off a headache. "I wish I never left home. Since the dratted goblin appeared, I've felt like I'm living in a whirlwind."

"Oh, boo-hoo, poor you," Solvej said unsympathetically. "This is hardly a walk in the park for me, either. In the past week I've used more magic than I've used since my death, and keeping that sleeping spell in place is enough to send me to sleep."

Apparently, this business was not good for Solvej's temper. Hjalmar would be more understanding if it wasn't having an adverse effect on his own temper.

"You're a ghost. You can't get tired."

Solvej drew herself up to her full height like a snake preparing to strike. "And what do you know about it? Are you a ghost? No! So keep your opinions to yourself!"

The argument deteriorated from there. By the time there was a knock at the door, they were both yelling at each other so loudly that, if Solvej hadn't shielded her rooms with a sound-muffling spell, they might have brought the roof down. Neither of them heard the knock, not even when it was repeated more loudly. At last Rigmor pushed the door open, her face as black as a thundercloud.

"I thought we were going to do our utmost to avoid suspicion," she said, glaring at them both. "Tell me, someone. How is bellowing at each other not going to raise suspicion?"

Hjalmar winced. Solvej looked slightly ashamed.

"Now come and help me get these suitcases unpacked."

Rigmor turned on her heel and stalked out. Hjalmar's eyebrows shot up.

"And this is what you want me to marry? An arrogant know-it-all?"

Solvej didn't bother to reply.