by Debi Gliori
“Don’t.” Ffup held up a paw to ward off any unkind comments, unfortunately forgetting that she’d skewered a slab of bread on each of her talons, all the better to facilitate multiple toastings.
“Oh, my,” came a languid drawl from the direction of the ceiling. “Would you look at that. Oooo no, not me. I don’t do carbohydrates. Not me, I’d rather eat bees, just as long as they’re not too fattening.” Spinning down from the top of the pantry came Tarantella, flanked by her daughters Epicsaga and Anecdota, all three of them wearing identically aggressive red lipstick. Ffup’s eyes narrowed and she shot the tarantulas an evil glare.
“At least I try to keep young and beautiful,” she muttered, extending her wings, giving a little shimmy, and then refolding herself with a leathery creak. “I mean, I haven’t let myself go since I gave birth, unlike some I wouldn’t care to mention.…”
“Come on,” Tock insisted, crooking a beckoning claw at his fellow beast and trying to persuade her to leave the pantry before Tarantella engaged first gear. “Let it go. Just ignore her. Come and have some … some …” He dried up, aware that dieting dragons are notoriously picky about afternoon tea.
“Toast,” grinned Tarantella. “Which reminds me, six loaves have disappeared down that dainty dragoness. Six loaves. Let’s see—one hundred and fifty calories a slice, twenty-five slices to a loaf, that’s six times twenty-five times one hundred and fifty …”
“That’s twenty-two thousand, five hundred calories, Mum,” squeaked Anecdota smugly, and Epicsaga, not to be outdone, chimed in with “And that’s probably the equivalent of eating ten kilos of lard washed down with a bucketful of double cream.”
Ffup didn’t blanch, flinch, or even twitch. She merely tossed her head, patted her belly meaningfully, and wrapped an arm round her mistress’s shoulders.
“Welcome home, pet,” she said, drawing Signora Strega-Borgia back into the light of the kitchen, slamming the pantry door, and propelling her mistress toward a chair. “Now, while dear Tock makes tea, let’s you and I have some proper toast.…” And rummaging in Nestor’s changing bag, she triumphantly produced a small raisin-studded loaf, sniffed it ecstatically, and then, before Baci could protest, sliced it into six slabs, popped one in her mouth—“Fuel,” she explained indistinctly—jammed the other five onto her talons and, opening her mouth, cremated the lot.
Luciano Wises Up
Snow fell steadily, flake upon flake, blown in on a wicked wind, swirling around the chimneys of StregaSchloss, melting on the windows to slide down to the sills, and blanketing the house’s many roofs and turrets in white. Snow fell on the loch shore, smoothing over the pebbles and rocks, dissolving in the rock pools and completely obscuring the path between the loch and the meadow. Hedgerows turned white, fences disappeared and the sheer weight of snow brought down the telephone cables connecting the Strega-Borgias with the outside world. Later that night, snow would turn the mountains of Bengormless into a frozen Arctic wasteland, block the rutted track between StregaSchloss and Auchenlochtermuchty with a six-foot snowdrift, and bring all traffic in the west of Scotland to a complete standstill.
Unfortunately for Luciano Strega-Borgia, recently of HM Prison, Glasgow, no one had thought to provide him with a weather forecast prior to his release. Nor had anyone thought to inform his family that he was being sent home. Now, with the phone lines down, it was too late. Standing with his thumb outstretched on a dismal, sleety road somewhere in the back of beyond, Luciano found himself beginning to think fondly of his nice, warm prison cell.
Cars slushed past, spraying him with dirty ice and slush. The thin jacket he’d been wearing on the afternoon of his arrest was totally inadequate for keeping him warm as he hitchhiked home in a snowstorm. Bedraggled and miserable, he didn’t look up when a car slewed to a halt in a lay-by ahead. Sleet stung his eyes, snowflakes melted and ran down the back of his neck, and he could see his breath condensing in sad little puffs in the light of each passing car. Moreover, he thought, now he was utterly ravenous, wobbly with hunger—mainly because he’d been too hungover to eat breakfast; speaking of which, he stank to high heaven of Malky’s raw alcohol concoction. All in all, he was feeling just as miserable as it was poss—
“I say—is that you? Mr. Borgia—heavens, man—what on earth …?”
He heard a car door slamming and a flashlight was turned on, dazzling him, forcing him to lift a leaden arm to shield his eyes.
“I didn’t recognize you. Terribly sorry. Just thought, look there, Ludo, some poor devil’s trying to hitch a lift in the most appalling weather. Come on, man, let’s get you into the car—you must be frozen stiff.” And a tweedy arm was slung around his shoulders, delivering Luciano from the slush, the chill, and the rapidly falling night.
His first impression was of warmth and a faint smell of pipe smoke. He fumbled the door shut, sank into the embrace of a battered leather seat, and saw a softly lit walnut dashboard in front of him. He peered at his rescuer, dimly aware that he’d seen him before somewhere.
“Ludo Grabbit,” the man said, thrusting out a hand to Luciano. “We have met, but it was some time ago. Let me think, when was it? It’ll come to me, but in the meantime”—a hip flask was pressed into Luciano’s hands—“drink, man—think of it as medicinal.” And this guardian angel of the highway turned round to root in the rear of his car, producing an old blanket that smelled decidedly doggy and, joy of joys, a dented tartan thermos containing the nectar of the gods. Luciano nearly burst into tears of gratitude.
“Get it down you, man,” his rescuer commanded. “Always roast and grind my own beans. Makes such a difference to the flavor—and water just off the boil, mind. Simply the only way to make a decent cup of coffee, don’t you think?”
Luciano inhaled, drank, inhaled and drank again, his senses overloaded by the sheer joy of drinking real coffee after the vile poison dished out in its name in prison. Real coffee. At last. Now he believed he was back in the real world. He was wet, frozen, starving, desperate to see his family—but he was free. His shoulder muscles, held for so long in a defensive hunch, began to loosen and relax; his fists uncurled from their clench, and a faint smile began to thaw the frozen planes of his face—the blank mask he’d been forced to adopt in order to survive.
To his horror, Luciano found his bottom lip beginning to quiver, his eyes filling with tears—Oh, God, he was out, he was safe, no one was going to slip a sharpened spoon between his ribs as he slept or showered or—He shuddered, realizing he’d been unconsciously holding his breath, shuddered again and made himself exhale a tremulous lungful. He hadn’t been so frightened since he was a child—he’d almost forgotten what fear could do. But in prison, cut off from those who loved him, from those he loved right back, he’d been petrified, literally turned to stone with terror. A sob welled up from his thawing heart, from the place where good strong coffee and malt whiskey were working their benign alchemy. No, don’t let me fall apart here, he pleaded. Not now, not in front of this kindly lawyer. No, pull yourself together, get a grip, Luciano.
Oh, bloody hell.
“That’s it,” the tweedy angel murmured, refilling Luciano’s coffee cup and passing it back along with a wedge of paper tissues and a stream of soothing platitudes. “Don’t hold back on my account. Better to let it all out. Why, you’ve been to hell and back, man. Read about it in the press.”
Luciano blew his nose in what he sincerely hoped was a manly fashion, cleared his throat a couple of times, took a deep swig from the hip flask—and burst into another bout of uncontrollable weeping.
“Takes a chap like that sometimes,” his companion said. “You just have to allow yourself time, Mr. Borgia. And don’t be embarrassed. In my experience, real men do cry, especially when they’ve been wrongfully imprisoned.”
Luciano looked up. In the scant light from the car dashboard, he saw Ludo smile. “I remember now.” The lawyer clasped his fists as if trying to grasp the memory before it slipped away. “First time we me
t. It was a party, at your place, just after you’d met your beautiful wife, wasn’t it?”
Life came flooding back to Luciano, reminding him of everything he’d so nearly lost: his family, his home, his position in the world … Of course. Ludo Grabbit, the estate lawyer, senior partner in the firm of Slander, Defame and Grabbit, W.S. It was all coming back now. Last time he’d seen Ludo was in StregaSchloss’s candlelit ivory ballroom, the low lights masking the somewhat sagging ceiling and simultaneously hiding the brown stain left by a leaking stretch of guttering on the easternmost turret—Luciano reminded himself that nearly fifteen years later, he still hadn’t attended to that repair, before sinking back into the memory of that evening, as he might sink into a warm bath.
They’d invited over two hundred guests, including Mr. Grabbit, he recalled; wishing in their youthful innocence to reach out and share their joy at having found each other with everyone they knew. And everyone had turned up, blocking the road between StregaSchloss and Auchenlochtermuchty with a procession of vehicles of every color, shape, and vintage imaginable. Estate workers, Auchenlochtermuchty locals, landed gentry, the lobster fisherman whose boat had puttered up and down Lochnagargoyle from dawn to dusk seemingly ever since time began—they all came to wish the couple well. Ludibundus Grabbit, junior partner in the firm handling all StregaSchloss’s legal affairs, had turned up with two drunken duchesses in the back of his ancient landau, producing a case of priceless Barolo as an engagement present. The young lawyer had swept Baci up in his arms, kissed her with evident relish, and pronounced her the most beautiful woman in all of Caledonia, if not the world.
And she had certainly captured every heart in the room—save for one: that of Lucifer, Luciano’s half brother, whose blackened, shriveled heart was immune to love of anything except money and power. Luciano had been astonished when his sibling had turned up at the party on a black motorbike, uncannily like the Bad Fairy in an perverse version of Sleeping Beauty. To Luciano’s shame, Lucifer had behaved like a complete thug, pinching Baci’s bottom, telling her to get him a proper drink when she offered him a glass of champagne, and demanding to know how much Luciano had paid for the engagement ring gracing her left hand. Lucifer cut a swath through the throng of guests: fishermen and duchesses alike sensed something of the night about him; some taint of darkness that clung to his person like an inkblot on his soul.
Upon first clapping eyes upon him, Latch had marked Lucifer out as a thoroughly bad lot and had followed him around all night like a kilted shadow, afraid that the Italian gangster would attempt to make off with the silver spoons. In the event, Lucifer had been after far bigger prey that the mere contents of the cutlery drawer. Latch had found him upstairs, rifling through Luciano’s private papers; rifling through them before attempting to set them alight, judging by the charred pyre of stocks and shares, bankbooks, bonds, checks, and even Luciano’s stamp collection, all of them piled high in the library fireplace, doused in malt whiskey from Lucifer’s glass and beginning to crackle merrily. Latch had taken one look, rushed into the room, seized the first thing that came to hand, and knocked Lucifer into the following day with a deftly swung reading lamp. Grabbing a soda siphon from the sideboard, Latch extinguished the flames, rescued Luciano’s soggy personal effects, and bundled them up for later drying on the range. He then turned the siphon onto the body lying on the carpet and somehow managed to get Lucifer off the premises without alerting any of the guests raising their glasses to the happy couple downstairs.
Luciano had been blissfully unaware of any of this drama—he’d only had eyes for his wife-to-be—and tactfully Latch had waited till the following morning before taking Luciano to one side to explain what had really taken place the night before. Even then, it hadn’t sunk in. Not then, nor later, much later, when repeated cards, letters, and e-mails went unanswered. Later still, when Lucifer had tried to kill Luciano and had sent a henchman to StregaSchloss to murder the family—yes, even then, Luciano had thought it was all about money. He hadn’t even begun to suspect the depth of his half brother’s hatred for him. Later still, when Titus had tried to buy Lucifer off by signing over his inheritance of millions to his evil uncle, Luciano had been sure he’d never see or hear from his half brother ever again.
Until a fellow prisoner had died in a pool of blood with Lucifer’s name on his lips, that is. Or indeed until his vicious cell-mates turned into completely fluffy bunnies at the mention of Don Lucifer.
And finally, as he sat in the semi-darkness, Ludo passed on the sad news of Munro MacAlister Hall’s murder, offering his own services to Luciano without a word of reproach. Quote, unquote: You weren’t to know, you poor souls, but MacAlister Hall was up to his neck in dodgy practices. Law Society’s been dying to do something, get him disbarred; think some of the law lords would have bumped him off themselves if they’d thought they could get away with it—kidding, Mr. Borgia, ha, ha, my little joke—but seriously, he deserved everything he had coming to him. Rumor has it, just between you and me and the gatepost, old bean, MacAlister Hall fell foul of the Em Ay Eff Eye Ay, and was found in a Dumpster out the back of a hotel sporting more perforations than a colander—
Luciano didn’t say a word. He’d been so sure he’d never have to deal with his half brother again, until now. Sitting in the front of Ludo’s car, sipping whisky and wondering why he’d been so unbelievably dumb, Luciano realized his ordeal wasn’t over yet. Somehow, he had to find his half brother and put an end to this thing. Or else face the consequences.
A Blot on the Landscape
At first, when Latch led Rand into the kitchen, Baci thought that Knot had somehow given birth to a baby yeti, so furry had the boy become. Tock emitted a loud honk of alarm and leaped to defend his mistress, baring his teeth and lashing his tail from side to side in a virtuoso display of reptilian aggro. Ffup choked on a mouthful of toast and sprayed crumbs across the kitchen—much to the disgust of Tarantella, who dropped down from the top of the dresser to stare at this new arrival.
“What on earth is that?” the tarantula demanded, gazing at Rand’s wildly gesticulating limbs. “It looks like one of us. On steroids,” she added darkly, fascinated despite herself by the spectacle of a human hairball.
“Help,” the hairball squeaked, its voice muffled by an abundance of matted fur around its mouthparts.
“Hard to see how,” murmured Tarantella, recognizing the voice, but not its owner. “What do you need? Hairbrush? Razor? Lawn mower? Weed whacker? Overnight immersion in a vat of industrial-strength hair remover? Wax. That’s it. You need waxing. You know—melt, spread, and rrrrrip. Problem solved, hmmm?”
Baci winced, and under his fur, Rand paled.
“Nnno,” he whispered. “Not the wax, please …”
While they waited for Minty to recover from her Rand-as-hairball-induced faint, Pandora tried to resuscitate Titus’s computer. This consisted mainly of turning it off and on while pressing various combinations of keys.
“I don’t think I’ve got enough fingers to do this,” she complained, both hands spread across the keyboard while she held down two more keys with her elbow. She glared at the monitor, and in response it flickered, its hard drive emitted a series of lackadaisical clicks, as if summoning a pet dog, then, with a ghastly nails-on-blackboard shriek, it booted up and spat Pandora’s CD of photos all the way across the bedroom.
“Uh-oh,” breathed Titus, retrieving the ejected disk and gazing at it in dismay. “Oh, dear. It’s horribly chewed. Looks like it’s gone ten rounds with a combine harvester.”
“I imagine that means I’ve lost the photos,” Pandora muttered, trawling through files on the newly awakened computer with little hope of finding her missing data.
“Just don’t go raking through my—er—private stuff, right?” Titus said, turning back to where Minty still lay unconscious on the floor. After a pause he took a pillow off his bed and attempted to lift her head onto it. He couldn’t bear the thought of all that golden hair spilling acros
s the rarely vacuumed grunge on his bedroom floor. Ughh. He didn’t want her to regain consciousness and discover she had bits of fluff stuck all over her. Or worse. Mind you, he thought, his pillow wasn’t exactly whiter-than-white; he tried to recall when, exactly, he’d last thought to launder his bed linen.
That was one of the problems about Mrs. McLachlan having vanished. He found himself constantly missing all the things she did every day; the little things, none of which had anything to do with being a nanny but everything to do with making a house into a home. Things like laundry, like folding all his T-shirts. Perfectly. Like they’d been folded when he’d bought them. Little things like remembering to replace the bog-roll in the toilet. No one seemed to do that anymore. Things like hanging out the bathmat to dry—that way you didn’t step out of the bath onto the toweling Swamp-Thing From Fifty Fathoms With Added Verrucas.
He gazed at Minty, watching her eyes move from side to side as she dreamed. It wasn’t just a question of being able to bake his favorite raspberry muffins, he thought, tears beginning to form in his eyes; it was remembering that they were his favorite food, writing down the recipe, and tucking it safely into a drawer against the possibility that she might never return. He now realized that Mrs. McLachlan had been passing her knowledge on to her unknown successor, sharing her baking secrets so that the children she loved would have some comfort after she’d gone. Titus stared unseeing at the body on the floor; remembering how he and Pandora had stood in the map room, holding their breath, every atom of their beings focused on the tiny fragment of vellum that bore the only evidence that their nanny had survived. He recalled that moment clearly—the colors of the map so vivid; the whole thing a little work of art. But back then he and his weeping sister had barely registered the skill of the mapmaker, hardly noticed the exquisitely drawn sea serpents or the banks of pillowy clouds or the etched perfection of the foam and spume frozen on each impeccably limned wave. No. Titus and Pandora had eyes for one thing and one thing only. A little island; thrusting itself out of the loch where no island had ever been before; its shores pebbly, a tiny lochan in its exact center, painted in a shade of blue identical to that of the unconscious Minty’s eyes.
