by Jess Webster
“Give him time, James. He might just annoy you to death.”
“Are you trying to poison the little invisible secret-seeing boy against me, Esther?” Gables asked, frowning. “That’s very unfriendly.”
“Yes it is very unfriendly, Miss Mason-Smith,” James repeated seriously. “You’re not as nice today as you usually are. Is anything wrong?”
“Yes, James, something is very wrong. Byron Gables has been annoying me all day long.”
“Miss Mason-Smith?”
“Yes, James?”
James smiled to himself. He much preferred Miss Mason-Smith’s way of saying ‘yes, James’ to Blythe Pritchard’s. Miss Mason-Smith seemed always happy and willing to answer his questions, no matter how obscure they were.
“I thought adults liked kissing,” James said.
“Not all adults like kissing,” she replied quickly.
James recognised that tone. Blythe had used it when telling him that a person inevitably loses control of their tongue on their 21st birthday and tells everybody nearby their deepest secrets. She was fibbing. James wondered why.
“I like kissing,” Gables said casually. “We should try it sometime.”
“Well I don’t,” Esther retorted. Of all the absurd things I could have said! she thought.
“She wouldn’t say that if she kissed me,” Gables said, bent over and whispering, so that James could hear him but Esther could not.
James giggled.
“What are you chuckling about, James?” Esther asked.
“Nothing, Miss Mason-Smith, just something Mr Gables said.”
“Look, you!” Esther advanced on Gables, index finger extended and looking ready to reduce him to ashes.
“Hey, I was just making conversation with your little invisible boy.”
“Well don’t!” she snapped at him.
“Miss Mason-Smith!” James exclaimed.
“I don’t think you should be friends with Mr Gables, James,” Esther explained, and levelled a look at Gables that could have frozen ethanol[57]. “He might be a bad influence.”
James Winchester, for once, did not believe a word Miss Mason-Smith was saying. She almost seemed to like being annoyed by Mr Gables. But James wouldn’t for the world have said that out loud. So he contented himself again with the knowledge that Miss Mason-Smith would protect him; Miss Mason-Smith would help him; Miss Mason-Smith would make all his troubles vanish, in time, with her kindness and her smile. Even if she was grumpy at this particular moment.
Lesson Ten: One should NEVER enter into a relationship with anyone without first investigating his or her criminal record…
or you might eventually find yourself entering into wedded bliss with a psychotic axe-murderer.
“So where are we going?” Domenic inquired some time later, as he and Blythe arrived at the airport.
“Hmm… I’ve always wanted to go to Saint Lucia,” Blythe said.
“Where’s that?”
“The Caribbean. After all, they have wedding packages with accommodation.” With some amusement she observed the frantic, entrapped look that flickered across Domenic’s face.
“Oh? Wedding packages?” Domenic asked, evidently trying to sound casual.
“Well I imagine you have certain… goals in mind,” Blythe said slyly.
Domenic shrugged, indicating that he (more or less) agreed.
She continued: “Well, I have certain objections to achieving those goals outside the confines of marriage.”
“I hope you realise this sudden outburst of morality is incredibly ironic, coming from a woman who has held, for the past three years, a job entitled ‘Deceiver’.”
Blythe wagged a finger at him, saying, “So is the fact that I’m being given moral platitudes by a former Secret Stealer. Let’s just say the past is in the past and leave it at–” Blythe stopped mid-sentence, blanching as she looked ahead.
“Blythe?” Domenic looked from her face to the general direction of her gaze.
She seemed to be staring at a trench-coat-clad, broad-shouldered man about 20 metres ahead of them. The man turned, and evidently recognising Blythe, began to smile. It seemed to Domenic, however, that there was something menacing in that show of teeth, as if the smile was not a smile, but a threat.
“Run,” Blythe breathed.
“What?”
“I said run!” She began to sprint back the way they had come, as fast as her outfit and shoes would allow[58] .
Domenic tried to sprint after her, but after not having used his muscles for 200 years, walking had been tiring enough. The attempt to run drained him completely after about 20 long strides, and with a small sigh he collapsed onto the cold, hard floor.
When Domenic Mancini regained consciousness he wondered vaguely whether he was dead. This thought, he knew (despite his completely white surroundings), was absurd. One does not die from falling over. Unless one hits one’s head on something jagged on the way down. But his head did not hurt, so this couldn’t be the case. Unless one does not feel any pain when one is dead. The question was settled, however, when Domenic’s eyes refocussed.
He was not dead after all, he realised, but seated in a white room, complete with a white table, a camera in the upper corner, a mirror-window and a frighteningly large police officer regarding him with no small measure of contempt[59] . The officer was the very man Blythe had urged him to flee from. He wasted no time once he saw that Domenic was fully conscious. “Are you aware that your friend out there is wanted for the murder of at least seven men, aged 25 to 30?”
Domenic laughed. “Blythe wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“You know what her alias is? She is Blythe Pritchard, a.k.a. the Pitchfork.” The large man spoke slowly, with a deep and ominous rumble in his voice. “So named for her choice of weapon.”
Domenic gave a comical grimace. “Well, we all have our little faults.”
“Seven homicides involving pitchforks is not what you’d call a ‘little fault’.”
Domenic shrugged. First of all, he did not believe that Blythe had killed seven men. And secondly, he figured if she was game enough to like a man who had spent the last 200 years as an accursed sneak-thief, he was game enough to like a reputed murderess.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” the officer rumbled. Domenic hadn’t caught his name in the process of being tumbled into the interrogation room. He was henceforth labelled, in Domenic’s mind, as ‘Rumbling Man’. “Well, now that she has run away and left you at the airport in our custody, I feel I should show you what you’re up against.”
The impressively shouldered man laid out seven photographs on the table. Each picture showed Blythe with a different man – laughing, kissing, smiling. She looked several years younger in the first one, perhaps 20 years old. Her hair was much longer, pinned back with several locks out of place, framing her face. She wore a very appealing look in these photographs. What was it? Domenic wondered. Innocence, perhaps. Towards the later photographs her face began to take on more of the look of the Blythe he knew, with something like sadness, or hurt, behind her eyes. Probably not due to anything in particular, Domenic reasoned, for growing up leaves all adults feeling somewhat sad. Domenic had the sudden urge to ride a tricycle that was too small for him. He mentally added this to the growing list of things-to-do-now-that-I’m-not-a-ghost[60] .
“She always went for older men,” Rumbling Man rumbled. “When she was 20 – that’s the first photo – she dated a 25-year-old man. Since then she has dated six other older men, who also turned up dead. How old are you, Mr Mancini?”
Domenic smiled. Well, he had to be at least 225 years old by now, but he wasn’t about to say that to the Rumbling Man. Eventually he compromised, saying, “I’m definitely older than Blythe, yes.”
Rumble. He laid out seven more photographs. These were of seven grisly crime-scenes.
“How do I even know those are the same men?” Domenic scoffed. “You could’ve got these photos from anywhere �
� these victims are unrecognisable.”
“Oh, she did it,” the large man assured him, “and now you’re going to tell us where she’s been hiding out.”
Domenic sighed. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t believe you and I never will. And even if I believed you, I wouldn’t tell you where she is – even if I knew where she is, which I don’t.” His tone became reflective, and he realised certain truths even as he spoke them. “Blythe and I have been colleagues – together almost constantly – for several years now. I’ve seen her temper (and I know she has one) but I also know what’s past her cold bravado.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, certainly not a psychotic murderess intent on reducing me to small chunks of lifeless meat.”
Rumbling Man leaned on the table before Domenic, unconsciously (or consciously – it did not matter) flexing his arms and shoulders so they expanded threateningly beneath the fabric of his shirt.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” the Rumbling Man said with great deliberation, “but this is what I seem to be getting from you: that you’d love this murderess, entitled The Pitchfork, even if she had (as you say) reduced all these seven men to small chunks of lifeless meat?”
Domenic thought about that for a moment. “Well, maybe not. But the point is, I don’t believe you and I never will. So to me, the question of whether she has done these things is irrelevant. I do love her, and I’m sorry,” he leaned back in his chair, placing his arms behind his head and reclining with his feet on the table, “but I’m just not going to budge.”
“Well, Mr Mancini, if that’s your answer, I’ll know how to act.”
Rumbling Man left the room, his shoulders barely able to pass through the doorframe without needing to turn sideways. Domenic watched him go with a certain amount of regret. He wondered how many years he would spend in gaol for this. He stared at the white roof above and shrugged. Oh well, such is life, he thought to himself. And it is good not to be a ghost.
The conversation that at this time took place between James Winchester IV and Esther Mason-Smith was very long and very dull. No, really – I mean deathly dull. I relayed the dialogue to my mother and she fell asleep. (Though that’s not saying much, as she has narcolepsy.) But I won’t bore you with the details of the conversation, lest you put down this book to hit your head repeatedly against a brick wall. It mostly consisted of James trying to explain his actions to Miss Mason-Smith, Miss Mason-Smith responding with a slightly guilty-sounding “Ohh,”[61], Byron Gables interrupting with “‘Oh’ what?”, Esther telling Gables to shut up and threatening to turn him into a donkey, etcetera, etcetera.
The Secret Stealer curse stipulated that it could not be altered except by the Accursee, so there was nothing Esther could do to make Byron see or hear James. However, halfway through the conversation Esther very cleverly solved the problem by causing a pen to notate everything that she herself heard. This presented a very neat solution that did not in any way violate any clause of the curse; this way Gables could read the entire conversation. Following this, things moved along much more smoothly[62].
Suffice it to say that by the end of the conversation James was perfectly sure that Gables and Esther were deeply in love[63] , Esther was sure that she wanted to strangle Gables as soon as they got off the plane (and her sister too, if at all possible), and Gables was still sure that he wanted to kiss Esther, despite the fact that she looked completely bonkers for holding a half-hour conversation with a little invisible secret-seeing boy.
All explanations dealt with, Gables retreated to the cabin for some rest (assuring them in a very vague and unconvincing manner that the auto-pilot function would keep them from colliding with any mountain ranges), and Esther and James remained in the cockpit, happy to be silent for a time after that harrowingly irritating conversation.
“You know, James,” Esther said after a good half-hour of silent thought, “there’s never quite been a situation like this before.”
James looked over at her, his facial expression voicing his interest more than words would have.
Knowing exactly what his inquiring expression meant, Esther said, “Well, most of the time the Protector (that’s me) does their job properly, and the Secret Stealer curse stays with someone who actually deserves it (ideally not you)… but we may be able to get something good out of a bad situation.”
James remained silent, as he was sure Miss Mason-Smith must be building up to a grand point.
“Usually,” she said thoughtfully, “the Secret Stealer and the Deceiver work together to bribe and blackmail wealthy people for their silence on certain… damning matters, and all they do is get rich.”
James nodded his understanding.
“But as you and I know,” Esther continued, “a hero would never use his powers for personal gain. A true hero, that is.”
James blinked. “You think I could be a hero?” His tone was a strange mixture of incredulity and excitement.
“Think about it, James,” she continued eagerly. “You can look into the eyes of any bad person in the world and know, in one instant, what police might spend years uncovering.”
“That’s true,” James agreed, feeling for the first time as though this fully-cursed business mightn’t be so bad after all. “What you mean is, I could steal bad people’s secrets and use them to make them behave themselves!”
“Exactly! Take Gables out there, he’s got a deep dark secret you could use to make him behave.”
There was a thump from the cabin and a pained “ow”. Esther smiled at the thought of that irritating man being in pain. She also realised that he had taken the notepad and pen with him – he had been eavesdropping (so to speak)!
“Mr Gables isn’t a bad man, Miss Mason-Smith. I’d be able to tell. We’re just keeping this secret to ourselves to stop you from feeling bad.”
“Why on earth should I feel bad about Byron Gables’ deepest secret?” Esther said. She eyed James’ cheeky, slightly amused look with great suspicion, but decided to let the subject drop. She didn’t want Gables knowing that she was so curious – he might misinterpret. “Well in any case, it’s time the usual order of things changed.”
James smiled faintly. “That’s exactly what your sister said.”
Esther was surprised. “She did?”
“Well I can’t remember if it was exactly the same words, but I think that’s what she meant.”
“That is odd, coming from her.” Esther frowned, not sure what to make of it.
“But what about my parents?” James suddenly asked. “They think I’m missing, don’t they? They’ll be really worried if we don’t tell them something.”
Esther turned away to conceal the scowl that appeared on her face at the mention of the Winchesters, and the possibility that they may have been worried about James. She tried to think of a quick lie, but had never been very good at lying, so what eventually slipped out was this: “We can’t tell them, because they’re away, looking for you.” Oh God! she thought to herself, even as she said it, what if James ever found out the truth? He would be crushed!
“Well we’d better tell them I’m fine, at least, to save them the trouble. They won’t be able to find me, after all.”
“The thing is, James, you’re not exactly fine. And they’d never believe the truth. They’d complain to the school” (knowing that Gables was listening in, Esther carefully omitted the name of the school, so that Gables could not look her up) “that I’m a crazy person and I’d be fired.”
“I suppose you’re right,” James conceded, “but we’ll have to tell them something eventually.”
“Hmm…” Esther did not trust herself to say anything else on the subject, lest another lie, even more ridiculous than the first, escape her lips.
The police officer known to Domenic Mancini only as the Rumbling Man entered the next room, where somewhere had been watching from behind the one-way mirror.
“Well, Miss Pitchfork,” Rumbling Man said, highly amu
sed, “you’ve never quite been in this predicament before, have you? No one else ever passed.”
Blythe Pritchard opened her mouth to speak but found that she could not say a word. After several deep breaths she managed a wry, “Yes, thank you for pointing that out, Doug. But you’re right, of course. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. What do I do?”
She stood from her chair and began to pace across the room, running her fingers through her hair as if the motion would dust the mental cobwebs away from her brain and pave the way for a stroke of brilliance. “I mean, usually I have the luxury of being mortally offended, so I can leave them behind at the airport to suffer. But now he’s passed, how am I going to explain it all away? I don’t think he’ll appreciate this little intrigue.”
“Tell him the truth, and let that be part two of the test,” officer Doug Winters suggested. He spoke with great gravity and a wonderful, deep bass voice, which had the effect of making him seem very wise[64] .
“There’s never been a part two before. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to experiment with this test any further… Maybe you’re right… On the other hand,” she said in very philosophical tones, “lying comes to me much more naturally. And it would be simpler.”
Blythe saw Doug Winters shaking his head at her, on his face a bemused frown that seemed to say, ‘Will you never learn?’
Blythe Pritchard shrugged and said, “The truth is so complicated sometimes, Doug.”
“So are lies, Blythe.” He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Except lies are complicated all the time.”
Blythe, however, had spent the past three years in a job entitled ‘Deceiver’. She shrugged off Doug’s warnings as easily as a thing that one shrugs off easily[65] and opted to ignore his wisdom, at least for the time being.
Domenic Mancini, by this time, whilst staring at the white roof above, had realised something fairly important. His passport stated that his name was Robert Bradford. Rumbling Man, however, had clearly called him ‘Mr Mancini’. Which meant, Domenic reasoned, that the Rumbling Man must have learned his name from someone who knew Domenic. And the only person who knew him was Blythe. Which meant that this whole interview must have been some elaborate test to see whether Domenic would betray her.
