by Nic Saint
“Right,” I said after a pause. She was right, of course. If Valerie couldn’t pay for our services, this was going to pose a problem for our accountant, who wouldn’t have any numbers to count, and to the taxman, who wouldn’t be able to tax our non-existent income, and of course a major problem for us, as we wouldn’t be making any money. Wasn’t it the business of a business to make money? Just ask Bill Gates. Would he give away Windows for free?
On the other hand, this was a woman in need, and we were morally obliged to help her. We couldn’t simply kick her out because she was poor.
I glanced at Edelie, who shrugged. It was obvious she was thinking along the same lines as I was: it’s not all about the money. So I said, “Let’s just help her anyway, shall we? Besides, it’s not as if we’re helping her. Gran is.”
“Oh,” said Estrella, clearly not happy with this.
“I can pay,” Valerie said suddenly. To my horror I realized she must have overheard our conversation.
“And for your information,” she added, with a hard look at Estrella, “I’m not a homeless person. I have an apartment and I have money to pay you.”
“Oh,” repeated Estrella, this time in a completely different tone. She looked mortified, twin dots of crimson coloring her cheeks. “I thought…”
“I know what you thought,” said Valerie, who seemed completely rid of her ghoul. I quickly checked her head but saw no sign of a knife wound there. Odd, I felt, that Gran would stab a person in the head and they would come out of the experience alive and well. But then Gran is not your regular stabber, of course. And that dagger probably wasn’t a regular dagger either.
“That smell,” she said, “is because I was nursing my daughter before I came here and she was sick all over me. I didn’t take the time to wash up as I felt an attack coming on and wanted to see you as soon as possible. I figured my safety and that of my baby was more important than looking good.” She cast an accusatory and hurt look at Strel, who was glued to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” Strel managed, casting down her eyes now.
Valerie wrung her hands in her lap. “Sofia is one of the reasons why I’m so keen to get rid of this… condition. I’m afraid that next time this happens I might attack her, and then…” She swallowed. “It will be all over.”
“What about your husband? What does he think?” Edie asked.
Valerie bit her lip. “Like I said, he’s divorcing me. He wanted to have me admitted to a psychiatric hospital but I refused. He’s… he’s fighting me for custody of Sofia right now, which is why it’s so important I get rid of this.”
“How did you learn about us?” asked Estrella.
Valerie gave her a hard look. She hadn’t forgiven her for her comments. “From my friend. She used to work for your grandmother, before she sold the store. She said if there’s anyone who can help me it’s Cassie Beadsmore.”
“What’s her name?” asked Edelie.
“Beatrix Yeast. Your grandmother gave her one of your business cards.”
I shared a look of surprise with my sisters. Even though Gran didn’t like our new business, apparently that hadn’t stopped her from advertising it.
“Sorry about jumping to conclusions,” Estrella said ruefully.
“I can pay you,” Valerie repeated. “Just… perhaps in installments?”
“We won’t fleece you,” I promised. “And if you can’t pay right now that’s fine, too. The important thing is to make sure your family is safe again.”
Besides, it wasn’t exactly as if we were doing a lot of work here—Gran was doing everything, so in fact it was she who should be paid, not us.
Gran returned, still holding onto her silver dagger, as if fully expecting she would have to use it on Valerie again. The woman eyed it dubiously. It’s not much fun, I imagine, to have someone plant a dagger in your skull. I hate it when I get a splinter in my finger, so I can imagine what it must feel like to get an entire dagger stuck in your skull. Though Valerie looked fine now.
“It’s not an actual dagger,” Gran said, in answer to my unspoken question. “All it does is temporarily stun the ghoul. Unfortunately it doesn’t solve the problem. And if repeated too often might end up harming the ghoul’s host.”
“What will solve the problem permanently?” Edelie asked.
Gran ignored her, though. “You’ll stay with us,” she said decidedly.
“Thank you, Mrs. Beadsmore,” Valerie said gratefully.
“You’re welcome, dear. And when we get rid of that horrible ghoul we’ll still have to keep an eye on you. At least until I’m sure the monster doesn’t return. Ghouls are very tricky to get rid of. They tend to cling.”
“Where does it come from?” asked Valerie. “Why would it choose me?”
“It didn’t choose you,” said Gran with a worried frown. “Someone else did. Someone did this to you—is doing this to you.”
“Someone… is doing this to me?” she asked uncertainly.
“Yes, dear. Someone wants you dead in the worst possible way, and not just dead, but they want you to suffer. To suffer horribly and painfully.”
Valerie’s hands were trembling now. “But… who? Who could do this?”
“That’s for us to find out,” said Gran. “And mind you, they’re not just targeting you, but your entire family, because if this ghoul is left unchecked, he will not just murder you but your loved ones as well.”
“My… my baby?” she asked, horrified.
“Everyone around you is in grave danger as long as that ghoul resides in you,” she said. “Which is why we need to figure out where it came from. Because as long as this hex is on you, this ghoul won’t be driven away.”
Gran sat down, and invited Valerie to sit down next to her on the sofa.
“Do you have any enemies, Valerie?”
Valerie shook her head slowly. “I… my ex-husband isn’t very happy with me right now. He’s trying to get custody of Sofia.”
“Could he be doing this to you?”
“I don’t think so. Having these… attacks was the reason he left me.”
“Still,” said Gran, musing.
I could see she was thinking hard, and I felt a surge of hope. If anyone could figure this out it was Gran. We just stood there like so much dead weight. One look at the others told me they were thinking the same thing.
We were hopeless as witches, and now we were hopeless as protectors of the innocent as well. Batman, if he were here, would have tsk-tsked freely, and so would Spiderman, Superman and all those other guys in tights.
Well, at least I was paying attention to what Gran was doing. Maybe I could learn something here. Though right now she was just sitting there and patting Valerie’s hand consolingly.
Just then, my phone beeped, and when I checked it I saw it was a message from a Sir Rupert Lohenstein, requesting an urgent meeting.
My lips curled up into a smile. Even though Gran had taken over the Valerie Gabby case, another customer was already lined up. Hopefully this time we would be of more use to them. Or else we might just as well stop now.
Chapter 5
Petunia didn’t know what to make of the Flummox sisters. They looked awfully young to be handling such a delicate matter as faking her death. But if Rupert recommended them he was probably right. Rupert was only very rarely wrong about something. He was the rock on whom she’d built her life and her career. In her life there was a time Before Rupert and a time After Rupert. Before, all the money she made went straight down the drain. If it wasn’t taxes, it was cheating accountants and managers, scrounging friends and relatives. She’d worked hard, and had almost nothing to show for it.
When she met Rupert she was heading straight for bankruptcy, and only through his diligent handling of her affairs had she been able to crawl back from the precipice and start carving out a truly profitable career.
Rupert, a banker and member of an aristocratic family, had money managing in his blood. And since he made her mo
ney instead of costing her, and she knew she could trust him implicitly, they’d become fast friends.
She’d donned a blond wig for the interview with the Flummox sisters, and had placed big, horn-rimmed glasses on her nose. Still she wasn’t entirely sure they wouldn’t recognize her. Hers was, after all, a very recognizable face. But so far they hadn’t given any indication, which was fine, because if they did, they might run straight to the nearest pap hotline to tell on her.
“So what you’re asking us is to make your friend… dead?” asked the blond-haired one, the only one of the three who looked presentable.
The three women had come over as soon as Rupert invited them, which was a good sign. A sign they took him seriously. They were in the sitting room of Rupert’s apartment, just a few stories below her own place.
“Yes, my friend wants to disappear,” Rupert explained. “She’s a professional artist with a very public profile and anxious to return to a life of anonymity, unhindered by the many drawbacks of extreme fame.”
The three women nodded like bobbleheads. “I understand,” said the dark-haired one, pushing her glasses up her nose. She looked like an owl, Petunia decided, but at least she looked more intelligent than her two sisters.
God, they were so young! Too young, probably, to be tasked with such an important job.
“This would require an enormous amount of trust on the part of my client,” said Rupert. “Do you think you’re worthy of that trust?”
“Of course,” said the red-haired one. “You can trust us implicitly, Mr. Lohenstein.”
“Mum’s the word,” said the blonde. “So your client is someone famous, huh?”
“Yes, she is,” said Rupert. “And she wants to keep her identity a secret for now. You understand.”
“Oh,” said the blonde, her eyes sparkling. It was obvious she was one of those star-lovers, Petunia thought. She recognized the type instantly. The kind of person who likes to bask in another person’s fame and live vicariously through it. She didn’t like them. They’d been swarming around her like a bunch of buzzards ever since she got her first record deal.
“Are you quite sure you can handle this?” she now asked, unable to restrain herself. She knew she should probably just sit there and be quiet, but she had so many questions to ask, and Rupert wasn’t asking them.
Estrella looked up, and she thought she could see recognition dawning in those clear blue eyes. Dammit. It was her voice, of course. She could never hide that trademark rasp of hers, which had given her dozens of hits.
“Oh, yes, we can,” said the redhead. “We will be discretion itself, Miss…”
“Deemster,” she supplied. “Ursola Deemster.”
But Estrella wasn’t fooled, she could tell. Oh well, maybe it was for the best. If they were going to work together, they would have to know. Rupert might be big on his gut instinct, but so was she. After living at the top of the showbiz for years, she had a good sense of who to trust. And for some reason she thought she could trust these three sisters. They were a little young, granted, but they had… something. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.
“Are you sure we can trust you?” she asked Estrella. “That you’re not going to run straight to the paps and start blabbing about this story?”
Estrella’s face lit up with a smile. “Aren’t you… Petunia Hudson?”
She grimaced, and so did Rupert. “Just answer the question,” he insisted.
Estrella nodded. “Your secret is safe with me, Petunia. Oh, God, I’ve been a fan of yours for as long as I can remember. I’m a singer myself, you see.”
“Of course you are,” she said, expecting a long and boring story about Estrella’s efforts to make it as a singer, ending with a request to help her get a record deal. But instead, Estrella merely beamed at her, and she was surprised by her restraint.
“So you’re the person we’ll be helping to… die?” asked Ernestine.
She glanced at Rupert, who shrugged. Then she removed her wig and the glasses and said, “Ta-dah.”
“Petunia Hudson,” said Edelie with a slight gasp.
“Yep, that’s me.”
“I want your absolute guarantee you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” said Rupert now, wagging his finger. “Not a peep!”
“We won’t,” Ernestine told them seriously, and she believed her.
She was still concerned about Estrella, though. She didn’t look as bright as her sisters. “Are you sure your sister can keep her trap shut?” she asked, addressing Ernestine now, who seemed like the most serious one.
“Oh, yes, you can trust her implicitly,” said Ernestine. “Estrella might be a little flaky, but she’s absolutely trustworthy, aren’t you, Strel?”
If the word flaky had irked the young blonde, she didn’t show it, for she was still beaming happily at Petunia. “All right, enough with the staring already,” she grumbled finally. This was just what she wanted to get rid of.
Estrella blinked. “Of course. Of course I won’t divulge your secret to anyone.” She clasped a hand to her heart. “I’ll carry your secret to the grave.”
“Well, to my grave at least,” said Petunia. She turned to Rupert. “All right, Rupie. We’ll go with them.”
He smiled. “My advice exactly. You’re hired,” he told the three sisters. “Your task is to make Petunia disappear from the face of the earth, and make sure she’s never found again.”
Chapter 6
I liked the woman. Though I wasn’t a big fan of her music, she was all right. She was a little eccentric, to be sure, but weren’t all artists? One more so than the next. But judging from our conversation she was also a levelheaded woman, who knew exactly what she wanted.
“So you want to die,” I said now, leaning in.
She nodded. “Yes, I do. And I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Not even your family?” asked Edelie.
She pressed her lips together. “Especially my family! Bunch of vultures.”
“Oh, all right,” I said, feeling I’d opened a can of worms. I vaguely remembered Petunia had a sister, and that relations between the two had never been cordial. She’d once wanted to launch her own career, and when her debut album flopped she’d blamed Petunia. I could see how that would strain relations to the point she’d want her sister to think she was dead.
“The thing is that Miss Hudson has amassed a vast fortune over the years,” explained Rupert, “and that she has very few true friends. I mean the kind of friends who would still be her friends if she were suddenly broke.”
“None,” said Petunia as she stared at me from beneath lidded eyes. “If I declared bankruptcy tomorrow I wouldn’t have a single friend left.”
“That’s… terrible,” I said sympathetically.
She shrugged. “The price of fame. Once you reach the top of your profession you lose a lot of people and you gain a lot of scroungers. The only friend I had was my mother, but she died last year, so… I’ve got nothing left to live for, really, and I refuse to keep feeding the beast of fame. I’ve seen it all, done it all… survived them all.”
“What about The Blackguards, your bandmates?” asked Estrella.
“What about them?”
“Aren’t they your friends?”
Petunia laughed a throaty laugh and lit a cigarette. “No, not exactly! That’s just a business arrangement, honey. We’re not exactly holding hands backstage singing Kumbaya before a show.”
“You’re not?” asked Estrella, sounding disappointed.
“No, not exactly,” said Petunia as she took a long drag from her cigarette. “Look, showbiz is a tough business, and full of backstabbers. Let’s just say I’ve got armor plating in my dress each time I associate with my bandmates.”
“They would… stab you in the back?” asked Estrella, incredulous.
“Sure they would. Anything to get their grubby little hands on more of my money. No, I’m not going to miss that bunch of nags when I’m gone.”
The tubby little banker struck me as a true friend to Petunia, possibly the only friend she had, and her next words confirmed this.
“The only one who will know about this are the three of you and Rupert. I just don’t trust anyone else, least of all The Blackguards,” she scoffed.
“So how do you want to do this?” I asked.
“I want this to go off without a hitch. I want to keep all my money, of course, and I want to go someplace tropical and fun, where I can live comfortably and in absolute anonymity. I’ve been working nonstop since the seventies, so now is the time to relax and enjoy life for a bit.”
She took another drag from her cigarette and I wondered how long it would be before this habit killed her, for real this time.
“Did you have a specific place in mind?” Estrella asked. It was obvious that the first chance she had she would be vacationing there, sharing a hammock with Petunia if she could.
“Aruba. In fact the house has already been built. It’s pretty much ready to move into.”
Rupert’s eyebrows rose. “Is it, now?”
She placed a hand on his arm. “I wanted to keep it a surprise, Rupie. I’ve been planning this for a while, but didn’t want to say anything.”
He seemed a little hurt by this. “Oh, all right.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t approve.”
“Oh, but of course I approve. I think you’ve earned a respite, my dear.”
She grinned. “I sure do. Now, how are we doing this?”
“As far as the paperwork goes, I’ll take care of that,” said Rupert. “I’ll discreetly transfer all the money and the proceeds of the sale of your properties, darling, and I will take care of the inheritance part as well.”
“Nothing goes to my family and nothing goes to The Blackguards!” warned Petunia. “Not a single cent, you hear?! Not one cent!”
“Whatever you say, darling,” he said soothingly.
She grinned. “I like that. Not one penny. That’ll make them bleat! I just wish I could see their faces when they find out I left them nothing!”
