by Frost, E J
Everyone but Master Harry and Daddy’s friend Mac are already at breakfast. When Daddy asks Martyn about them, we hear they’ve gone for a motorcycle ride but promise to be back before dinner. Since I didn’t expect either of them to want to be part of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, I nod and smile at the news.
Aggie’s the only other little staying at the inn, but I don’t feel out of place in my bunny onesie at breakfast. Aggie’s wearing another of her purple jumpers with a sparkly pink sequin heart on the front and matching Keds. She tells me she and Warrin are going for a walk to the Falls after breakfast and I open my mouth to ask Daddy if I can go with them when I remember what I have planned with Austin, Hunter, and Cappa, and shut my mouth.
We’re going to try to contact Molly’s spirit.
Austin comes over to our table as we’re finishing the tomato and rosemary omelets Martyn’s made for us. He tells Daddy he’s checked on DirtyGurl this morning and, although there’s no sign of infection, her face is even more swollen than yesterday and she’s in more pain. Austin’s made her take the painkillers her dentist prescribed.
“She may be out all day,” Austin says to Daddy. “I know she’ll be sorry to miss the fun, but she overdid it yesterday. She needs to rest.”
Daddy shakes his head, but he’s smiling and I know he’s not really mad at Brenna.
“I’ll do a rota so someone checks on her every two hours, sir,” Austin says.
“Good,” Daddy says. “I want a baby monitor on her, too, if she’s that heavily sedated. I’ll get one after breakfast.”
Austin nods and then his chocolate eyes track to mine. “Emmy?”
I nod enthusiastically. “After breakfast, unless Daddy needs me?”
“I always need you, baby doll, but I’m happy to let you do whatever you want after breakfast. It’s your weekend.”
I grin at him. “Ta, Daddy.”
He reaches across the table and strokes his knuckles down my cheek, brushing off a few crumbs at the corner of my mouth from the whole wheat toast I had with my omelet. “I want my adorable baby in her bunny onesie this morning until it’s time to get ready for the tea party. If you’re too cool, I’ll bring you down some of your thigh-highs and a binkie.”
I’m not cold, particularly not with a belly-full of warm breakfast and the hot tea I’ve been drinking with it, but September in Niagara Falls is cooler than it is in the City and I wouldn’t mind socks and a binkie. “Please, Daddy.”
“Peter Aloha Bunny to do the séance with you and . . . what happened to Professor Teddington?”
“I gave him to Piper. She needed him more than I do.”
Daddy’s eyes smile. Not just his mouth or his face, but his eyes. He strokes my cheek again. “That’s my big-hearted girl. Do you want Hedgie instead?”
“No, Daddy. Hedgie might be scared by ghosts. Only Peter Aloha Bunny is brave enough.”
Daddy nods. “I see. Okay, little girl. Have another cup of tea while Daddy gets things sorted and then you and your merry band of ghost hunters can try your luck.” He tests my tea with his pinkie before handing it to me and my heart overflows with love for my daddy. I can’t let him escape without a cuddle, but he finally moves me off his lap and goes upstairs. Hunter, who spent the night in Harry and Mac’s room and took Brenna’s place at breakfast, hops into Daddy’s chair. Cappa drags his chair over and we huddle together to plan our séance.
Martyn overhears us from where he’s tidying up the breakfast tables for people who have already eaten and gotten an early start, which includes Mistress Maude, Jiro, and Laurel. Niall, Shaan, and Vashi are late, coming in after Daddy’s left, but they look relaxed and happy, with Niall holding Shaan close with his arm around Shaan’s neck and Shaan holding Vashi’s hand, so I’m hopeful they’ve worked out the issues Shaan aired last night.
Martyn whisks off to wherever he goes, and when he returns, he hands Austin a plastic bag containing a pile of folded, yellowed lace.
“Molly’s shawl. I’ll bring you gloves if you want to handle it since it’s very old now and getting fragile, but people who have tried to talk to her spirit in the past have had better success when they’ve had something of hers. I have a couple of dresses as well, but I’m not as sure she actually wore them as I am about that shawl. It’s the one she’s wearing in the cameo.”
I hold out my hands for the bag and when Austin passes it to me, I examine it eagerly. I see what Martyn means, it’s recognizably the tatted lace shawl Molly’s wearing over her shoulders and across her breasts in the picture on the inn’s website. There’s a plain, metal stickpin in the bag, too, wrapped in its own baggie so the metal doesn’t interact with the lace, the sharp end carefully capped with wax, which is so very Martyn.
I hand the bag to Hunter who inspects it from all angles like a different perspective will reveal Molly’s ghost.
“I’d recommend trying in the library,” Martyn tells us. “That was the nursery when Molly lived here and one of the more haunted rooms in the inn. The most active room is the kitchen but I can’t let you in there I’m afraid. Health and safety.”
We scamper like puppies, or maybe like bunnies since I’m wearing a bunny onesie, into the library. Austin goes off to get the Ouija board while we rearrange chairs into a circle around a card table. Daddy brings me my thigh-highs, bunny, and binkie and I feel like a séance queen, perched in a big leather reading chair, wrapped in my Ravenclaw blanket, with my bunny in my lap.
While Austin’s unpacking the Ouija board, a crowd gathers: Luisa and Vic, in more of their gorgeous period clothes, Daisy and Piper, who are smiling at each other this morning but not the way lovers do, Bravo and his little, Yumiko, and Master Ryan and his wife, Tania. Bravo and Ryan decide to go to the gym with Daddy and Niall. Martyn turns off the electric lights and opens the curtains wide, gets a few folding chairs so everyone can watch the séance, and tells everyone there’s no food or drink in the library but there will be tea and cakes in the bar when we’re done. When I say he mustn’t go to so much trouble, he just pats me on the head and whisks off.
Hunter drapes himself in a cozy throw off one of the couches in the room, puts Molly’s shawl on his lap, and holds out his hands. I clasp one and Austin clasps the other, even though I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to put our fingers on the planchette.
“Oh, spirits—” Hunter begins before Austin elbows him.
“Don’t be a dick. Everyone put two fingers on the planchette, lightly, and think of a question you want Molly to answer. Emmy, ask your question first.”
We rearrange ourselves, with Austin elbowing Hunter again when he pushes the planchette across the board to rest on “yes.”
“Molly, did you lead Daddy into the middle of the maze yesterday?” I ask.
The planchette doesn’t move. Well, at least it doesn’t move until Hunter moves it again, which gets him an elbow in the ribs that makes him take a hand off the planchette to rub his side while grumbling at Austin.
We go in a round robin, with each person asking a question. Hunter’s is rude. Austin’s is “What did you die of?” Cappa’s is, “Did you and Teddy really get married?”
The planchette doesn’t move in response to any of our questions. We wait for several minutes but don’t feel anything. Hunter throws his hands up. “Molly’s not here.”
The planchette moves. Really. I definitely didn’t put any pressure on it and by the surprise on Austin and Cappa’s faces, I don’t think they did, either. The planchette slides so the hole is over the 2, the point at P, then moves to the 9, pointing between the W and X.
“Two. Nine. Or P and W,” Hunter says, leaning over the board.
“Tomorrow’s the twenty-nineth,” I whisper, something I know without having to check a calendar because I’ve been so focused on the date of my collaring.
The planchette slides so the hole is over the “yes,” then slides again so the hole is over the 8, then the 9, then the 4.
“Eight. Nine. Four,” I b
reathe.
“Or W, X, R,” Hunter says.
I shake my head. It’s definitely the hole we’re supposed to be reading through. That was clear when Molly’s spirit used it to indicate “yes.”
The planchette slides so the hole is resting over the “d” in “goodbye.”
“She’s gone,” Cappa says.
“Did you feel her?” I ask. I didn’t feel anything mystical, or even drafty.
Cappa nods, the curls at the back of his neck brushing the collar of his white shirt like fingers of ink. “Motherly. She’s not scary at all.”
“Let’s ask Martyn what eight-nine-four means,” I say, clapping my hands together.
We scramble to tidy up the room and then into the bar where Martyn’s already pushed two tables together to make a little buffet and set out plates and cakes. There’s no tea, though, so I’m hoping he’ll come back soon. I plonk myself down to wait, not very patiently, and Luisa sits beside me in another of the comfortable, leather wing chairs while Cappa perches on the arm of my chair and plays with the bunny ears on the hood of my onesie.
“Does eight-nine-four have any meaning to you?” Luisa asks me.
I shake my head.
“There’s a theory about how Ouija boards work that has nothing to do with spirits,” Luisa says. “It’s called the ideomotor effect. It’s unconscious movement and with an Ouija board, it’s your brain talking to itself. The significance of twenty-nine is obvious, so I’m wondering if the other numbers have meaning to you?”
“Not that I can think of.” I roll the numbers over in my mind, but I can’t come up with anything.
“Eighteen ninety-four?” Cappa suggests. “Could it be a year?”
I can’t think of any significance to the year. Molly lived and died in the late seventeen-hundreds and my books are set at the beginning of that century. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that happened in that year is the Hershey Chocolate company was founded, which I only know because I went to Hershey’s Chocolate World a few years ago with my friend Gracie and her son and remember the date being on one of their displays.
Unfortunately, when Martyn comes in to serve tea, he can’t think of any significance to the numbers, either. We sit around throwing out increasingly wild ideas until Vashi disappears for a few minutes and returns with a wicker case that gives off a wonderful, earthy smell and a very stained, brown towel. She orders Daisy out of the chair across from me in a very unsubmissive way, spreads the towel across the small table, and gestures to me to put my hands on the towel. When I do, she takes a squeeze bottle with a long metal tip out of the wicker case, shakes it, and squeezes out a thin line of greenish-brown paste across my forearm. She wipes the tip off on the towel with a quick, flicking motion, then starts drawing small loops off the line. I’m awed by the pattern she quickly develops, of a crown with flowers and vines and spirals rising off the line. Once she covers my arm from forearm up with the cool paste, she reverses direction and works down my arm to my wrist, creating a lattice that she fills with flowers. She ends with another crown on the back of my hand, then gestures for me to move my other arm closer. We’ve barely spoken while she’s been doing the henna. I’m just enraptured, watching her work.
Once she’s finished the design on both arms, she takes out a spray bottle and mists both of my arms with a clear liquid that feels sticky on my skin. “Sugar water,” Vashi explains. “It will keep the henna paste moist for a while to give you a darker stain. Let it dry now.”
“Thank you, this is so beautiful.”
She smiles broadly at me. “We will do a full bridal set for you in January, yes?”
I nod and almost clap before I remember not to move my arms. “I’d love that.”
“Very good. I have two spare tubes of henna, if anyone else would like a design?” she offers to the room.
Everyone wants henna.
Daddy, Niall, and the other people who went to the gym return as Vashi’s finishing a small, floral design on the backs of Fleur’s hands. After admiring my henna, and the tiny, French braids Laurel has done all along my crown while we’ve been watching everyone else gets theirs, Daddy says he’s going to check on DirtyGurl and clean up. I look a question at Vashi and she nods. “Keep the henna out of the water until tomorrow.”
I’m glad Daddy gave me a bath last night. I wouldn’t want to be stinky for the tea party. “When should I take the paste off?”
“It is better to let it dry up and fall off on its own, but I will take it off you before bed if it has not fallen off.”
“Okay.” I pause by her chair to kiss her on the cheek before I run after Daddy.
While he showers, I tell him all about the séance. He puzzles over the numbers for a while, too, but can’t come up with anything.
“Spirits work in mysterious ways,” he tells me.
I shake my head at him. “You don’t even believe in ghosts.”
He crosses to the closet and takes out a dry-cleaning bag. “What makes you say that, little girl?”
“I asked you if you did months ago and you said you didn’t.”
Daddy’s forehead beetles with a frown. “I don’t remember that.”
I realize why he doesn’t remember and kick myself. It was when he was injured. “Doesn’t matter, Daddy.”
“It matters because I don’t remember what you told me. Do you believe in ghosts, sweetie?”
“Weeell, I believe in something. I’m not sure if it’s ghosts or psychic echoes or what, but I think there’s a lot of things science can’t explain.”
Daddy lifts an eyebrow at me as he lays the bag on the bed and unzips it. Colors explode out of the bag: teal green, deep purple, eye-searing orange.
“Daddy,” I breathe.
“You can’t have a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party without a Mad Hatter.” He says, taking a purple velvet top hat out of the bag and spinning it on his finger.
I called it the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party on the invitations for the littles, so they’d feel free to dress up any way they wanted and so Laurel wouldn’t feel out of place if she wanted to be scaly. But I never, ever expected Daddy to dress up as the Mad Hatter.
“Daddy, that’s so cool.”
He draws striped black and teal trousers up his long legs. They have bell bottoms that flare high above his ankles. A bright red dress shirt gets tucked into the trousers and Daddy buttons an orange waistcoat over it before shrugging on the purple and red checked jacket. He hands me a long strip of black cloth that’s dotted with eyes. I loop it around his neck and tie a big loopy bow in front. He plonks the top hat on his head and spins in a slow circle so I can see him.
“How do I look, baby doll?”
“Frabjous, Daddy.”
He chuckles. “Cynnie sent me pages of instructions. There are shoes and socks, too, but I think I’d rather go barefoot.”
“I’m just going to wear socks, Daddy.”
“Are you going to get ready now?”
I nod. “Will you dress me?”
“Aw, little girl, I’d love to. Bring me your outfit.”
I pull the bag out of the closet and lay it out on the bed next to his. Daddy unzips the bag and draws out my outfit with a big smile. He turns it around in his hand and shakes it at me so the fluffy, white tail wiggles.
“That should be a butt plug,” he says.
“I couldn’t find one with a butt plug, Daddy.” Which is true. It’s also true I didn’t look very hard or try to modify the outfit myself. As soon as I saw it, I thought it was perfect. Cynnie called it a fairy bunny: a fitted white bodysuit trimmed with hot pink, fake fur, the cotton ball tail, white lace gloves that go almost to my shoulders and matching thigh highs. There’s a black waistcoat that goes over the bodysuit, complete with pocket watch and gold chain, and a black bowler hat with fluffy white and pink ears. Daddy helps me into the costume piece by piece, kissing each bit of skin before he covers it with clothes and I’m so loved up I can’t stand still by the time he’s settli
ng the hat on the top of my head.
“Spread your legs and pull the bodysuit aside, little girl. I want to lick your pussy.”
Now I can’t stand up. I follow Daddy’s instruction and grab on to the bed’s poster when he dives in on my clit with his tongue. He licks me with long strokes until my legs are trembling and my belly’s clenching.
He puts his palm flat on my tummy and rubs to calm me down while giving me soft kisses on my mons.
“Good girl. Now I can go down to the tea party with your taste in my mouth.”
That idea makes me glow as he takes my hand and leads me downstairs.
Martyn’s set up the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in the “sunroom,” an old, glass greenhouse that juts at a right angle off the main inn. The greenhouse is a little dilapidated, with lots of cracked panes and old, wooden racks along the glass walls that must have once held plants. Half of the greenhouse floor is printed concrete, green with age, and the other half is mossy loam that will be soft to run around on, although it will probably stain my socks something rotten. Martyn’s set up card tables and folding chairs on the concrete pad with wonderfully mismatched plates and cups and silverware amongst blowsy bouquets of hearts playing cards and poppies, brilliant in the sunlight. I dance around the tables, taking it all in.
“What do you think, little girl?” Daddy asks.
“It’s perfect, Daddy!”
“Would you like to call everyone together?”
I nod and rush back out into the inn where I stand at the bottom of the central staircase and shout, “Don’t be late! Don’t be late! For a very important date!”
I hear giggles from several directions. Yumiko, in a green and purple dinosaur onesie, emerges from the bar, followed by her daddy, Bravo, several of the Blunts house subs, and Luisa and Vic. Doors upstairs open and close and Vashi appears in a hot pink and red sari. She’s followed by Shaan in a bright blue linen suit. She smiles at him as he offers her his arm and they sweep down the stairs. As I’m admiring them, Sammi and his daddy, Jack, appear from the back of the inn, carrying a huge cake between them. It’s as big as a table itself and frosted in glowing colors.
