by Debi Gliori
“Luciano”—the lawyer shook his head—“you’re not thinking straight. Listen to me: your half brother is not a decent chap. He’s a killer. Always has been, always will be. Are you going to pretend otherwise, right up to the point where he’s holding a gun to your head? Or Baci’s? Or…”
He didn’t need to go any further. Luciano placed both his shaking hands on the leather of the desktop and took a deep breath.
“Right. I get the message, Ludo. What you’re saying is that it’s kill or be killed, yes? I keep this new gun hidden until my half brother, Lucifer, breaks down my door one night, and then I’m allowed to run downstairs in my dressing gown and shoot him dead, yes? This is legal, yes?”
“Luciano, if you used your gun right now you’d be more of a danger to your family than to Lucifer. You need shooting lessons if you want to avoid blowing your own toes off, or, God forbid, accidentally maiming a member of your fam—”
“RIGHT!” Luciano stood up so fast his chair tipped over onto the floor. “You don’t have to spell it out. Now you’re saying I need to be taught how to be a killer. Tricky, don’t you think?” He spun on his heel and began to pace the perimeter of Ludo’s office, massaging his temples and half shutting his eyes as he measured out first one circuit of the room, then another, his mind describing another orbit completely. “I mean,” he muttered to the book-lined wall on the other side of the room, “it’s not as if I can just place an ad in the Herald Dispatch, can I? Imagine: Tutor urgently required for learner assassin. References essential. The ideal candidate must have a flair for homicide, be able to spot the vendetta-obsessed mafioso lurking in the middle of a crowd, and be quick on the draw and even quicker to whip his weapon out of sight and pretend to be a postman when the occasion demands….”
“Luciano…” The lawyer’s face was wreathed in smiles as he shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Hours and salary negotiable,” Luciano continued, stopping mid-pace to slump with a groan onto a button-back leather sofa. “Oh, for heaven’s sake—I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“But you have begun already, dear boy,” Ludo said. “You’ve told me. Or rather, I’ve told you what you need, and now I’m telling you that I can provide the tuition.”
“You?” Luciano’s eyes opened wide and he stopped massaging his forehead.
“I know, I know. You’ve got me earmarked as a bit of a tweedy old duffer.” Ludo peered across at Luciano, adjusting his half-moon spectacles and raising his eyebrows as if to say, Haven’t you?
Luciano had the grace to blush as the lawyer blithely continued, “No matter. Suffice it to say I’m not quite such a dry old stick as most people think. One did have a previous life before hanging out one’s shingle here in Auchenlochtermuchty, you know. Some day I might even be persuaded to tell you about what I used to do for a living. For now, though, you need to learn how to fire a shotgun, and I am going to teach you.”
“But…but…,” Luciano bleated as Ludo bulldozed onward, his eyes twinkling wickedly.
“Shouldn’t be too difficult for you to learn. You don’t need to be good, you just need to be lethal. And let’s hope you never have to use what I’m about to teach you….” And pigs might fly, he added silently, a wave of sympathy for Luciano’s predicament temporarily derailing his upbeat semi-bullying approach to the whole ghastly mess. Poor Luciano, he thought sadly. The man has simply no idea what he’s up against.
And so began Luciano’s education in the use of firearms. He was a reluctant pupil, but an obedient one, and in the space of a few lessons was able to load, shoot, reload, and shoot again without nipping his fingers, dropping ammunition on his feet, or hurling his gun to the floor and stomping off in a tantrum. However, achieving a degree of accuracy in hitting a given target was going to take more time, and Luciano was beginning to suspect that time was running out. With this in mind, he embarked on a program of weight training in the hope of turning himself into less of a pathetic and weedy specimen of Italian manhood. Perhaps if he became fitter, sprouted some muscles, and scowled a lot, he might stand a better chance of defending his family from whatever it was that Ludo wasn’t telling him about.
So Luciano set about building a home gymnasium, thus sparing himself the humiliation of going to a public gym to work out in the company of the bruisers, he-men, and muscle-bound gargoyles of Argyll. In answer to Titus’s, Pandora’s, and Baci’s understandable queries about his newfound obsession with exercise, Luciano lied through his teeth.
“Doctor’s orders,” he claimed, gasping out this utter fiction to Baci as she watched him heave and gasp under the weight of dumbbells that, to her, looked as if they were every bit as heavy as a pair of small bungalows with matching lean-to carports. A while later, when Luciano had moved on to the horrors of the exercise bike, his two older children came into the newly refurbished Chinese Bedroom and stood watching for a moment.
“But why are you doing this?” Pandora demanded, raking her father with the kind of withering glance that only a loving daughter can bestow. “I mean, it’s not as if you needed to lose any weight. Unlike lard-chops over there.”
“Hark,” Titus said. “I hear the merry squealing of little curly-tail! Bless. How happy her short life must be. There she stands, all unknowing, innocent as to the tragic fate that awaits her. The cleaver, the sawdusty abattoir floor. The (whisper) sausages, the bacon, the spareribs, the salamis—”
“Dad.” Pandora ignored Titus entirely, positioning herself between her beetroot-red, panting parent and her palely malevolent brother. “Dad, you’re not hiding anything from us, are you?”
It was fortunate for Luciano that he was already bright red, or Pandora would have immediately spotted the guilty pink flush sweeping across his face.
“You’re…you’re not ill, are you?” Giving voice to this terrifying possibility, Pandora’s voice was barely audible over the whine of the exercise bike’s whirring pedals.
Don’t, Titus begged silently. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
“I mean, you would tell us if you had something awful, like…like ca—”
“STOP IT!” Titus roared. “Just shut up, would you? Dad, make her stop, for God’s sake. She’s always doing this. I can’t stand it. Her mouth. It’s just—it’s—”
“Come on. Both of you. Enough. Calm down.” Luciano was trying to disentangle his feet from the toe clips on his exercise bike. Unfortunately, he could only manage to release himself from one, and trapped embarrassingly by the other, he was engaged in a doomed attempt to shake himself free. Trying to pretend he wasn’t making a complete idiot of himself, he carried on as if nothing was happening. “The doctor, um…he said…Ah, damn this stupid thing.”
“I thought you had Dr. Holgram.”
“Yes, Pandora, I do go to Dr. Holgram,” Luciano snapped. Now he had partially dismounted from the bike’s saddle, but with one foot still trapped, he was forced to hop on the spot as he tried and failed to release the offending toe clip.
“Well, Dr. Holgram’s female, not male. You said he said—”
“DAMMIT, PANDORA!” roared Luciano, toppling sideways and crashing into the disused fireplace, the bike slowly tipping over and falling on top of him. “Who cares if he’s a she or whatever? Whose business is it if I’ve decided to improve my fitness? Why do you and your mother always subject me to the Spanish Inquisition if I do anything out of the ordinary? Why won’t you just go away and leave me in peace?”
All of which, of course, convinced Pandora that her father wasn’t telling the truth.
“Titus?” Pandora was sitting on the exercise bike, which, several days later, was still missing one of its toe clips and looking rather the worse for wear after its brief encounter with the iron grate of the disused fireplace. She took a deep breath. “It’s just, oh, um, Titus, I know I’m probably being an idiot, but it’s so unlike Dad to pay any attention to what he looks…I mean, how he…it’s, like, he’s Dad. He’s always been, like…like…”
Titus glared at her. Slowly he raised his eyebrows. “Like?” He shrugged. “Like what? He’s like Dad always is. Nothing’s changed, as far as I can see. So what if he’s going through a keep-fit phase? Better that than turning into a couch potato.”
“Yeah, Titus. I guess you’re right.” Although she agreed with Titus’s assessment, Pandora’s voice lacked conviction. “Dad’s just getting older. Perhaps he’s having a midlife crisis thing. Probably something to do with growing bald…. It’s just, oh, he’s my dad. It’s…”
Mine too, Titus thought, wondering if he’d be forgiven for gagging his sister and locking her in the dungeons. Just for a year or so. Nothing too permanent…
“It’s just that I know him backwards. I know what he’s saying, and I hear what he’s not saying too. And, Titus, I’m positive there’s something huge going on that he’s not telling us about.”
“Pan, give up, would you? This may come as a surprise to you, but Dad’s an adult. Don’t you think that adults are allowed to keep some things hidden from their kids? If he wants to tell us, he’ll do so. Myself, I think you’re reading way too much into his health kick. You wait: Dad’s inner slob will reassert itself and will mount a spirited defense against his inner athlete. Soon he’ll be bench-pressing nothing heavier than a pan of pasta, running nothing more taxing than a bath, and exercising only the major muscle groups in his mouth. Give him another month and you’ll see….”
Titus might as well have saved his breath. Closing in on StregaSchloss were several entities that were determined another month was a luxury none of the Strega-Borgias would live to enjoy.
Hello, Baby
The nearest hospital to StregaSchloss was housed in a tiny prewar building surrounded by beautifully maintained lawns and gardens. The actual hospital consisted of two microscopic wards—one for men and one for what the Ward Sister referred to as “my ladies”—an administration office squeezed into a broom cupboard, and a maintenance and cleaning department sharing space with an outside toilet. When Baci and Luciano’s car drew up in the darkened parking lot, at first they were convinced that Latch had mistakenly driven them into someone’s private garden.
“This can’t be it.” Luciano peered blindly into the blackness beyond the car windows. “Are you sure?”
“I’m absolutely positive.” Latch turned round to face his employers. Baci’s eyes were closed and her breathing was ragged, and Luciano had the eyes-out-on-stalks appearance of someone teetering on the edge of hysteria. Just as Latch climbed out of the driver’s seat and came round to open the rear doors, reassuring them that this was indeed the West Argyll Cottage Hospital, a beam of light cut through the darkness and a woman’s voice greeted them.
“You’ll be the Siggy-Borshters, I assume. Your staff phoned to let me know you were on your way….”
On the point of correcting this woman’s hideous mangling of his surname, Luciano managed to stop himself in time. He also suppressed the involuntary squeak that had risen from his throat at the sight of the flashlight-bearing gorgon glaring across the parking lot. As wide as she was tall, Sister Passterre stood on the doorstep of her hospital like a condensed Doric column, sweeping the beam of her flashlight along the path leading up from the parking lot, her face set in the kind of expression more commonly found on a pit bull. Sister Belinda Passterre (known to her ladies as the Blister Plaster) was a woman not to be trifled with. Her most stubborn patients became strangely compliant and putty-like under her care, preferring to subject themselves to a thousand humiliations rather than incur her wrath. Such was her reputation that the most arrogant of consultants quailed before her, regressing in an instant to the stammering, quivering medical students they had once been, many years before.
However, Baci didn’t turn to putty and nor did she quail. Instead, with an apologetic smile for Luciano, she turned round, climbed back into the family car, and slammed the door shut. Seconds later, Luciano, Latch, and Sister Passterre heard the distinctive wail of a newborn.
Secretly watching this drama unfold from the vantage point of Ward One’s bathroom was a middle-aged man with both legs encased in plaster. He watched intently, hidden in the darkness, through a window that stood slightly ajar, all the better to remove any trace of the small black cigar he was enjoying while the gorgon Passterre was otherwise occupied with matters obstetric. Some weeks previously, this man had been admitted to the hospital following an accident that had washed his broken body onto the shores of Lochnagargoyle. When he recovered consciousness, the nonappearance of any concerned relatives phoning on his behalf and his apparent ignorance of who he was, how he’d broken both his legs, or where he’d come from had led the medical staff to diagnose him as an amnesiac. This misdiagnosis was one that the man with the broken legs was keen to encourage. For one thing, he wasn’t a man—he was a demon—and for another, as his broken legs had mended, so too had his memory.
Now, fully recovered, he knew that his name was Isagoth, and he also knew that he was in deep trouble. He’d been thinking about this, thinking dark and increasingly more desperate thoughts, when the Volvo had pulled up outside the hospital and events had taken a decidedly dramatic turn. To his astonishment, Isagoth discovered that he recognized the driver of the car: it was none other than dear Mr. Butler, the one he’d brainwiped several months ago and left for dead on the front steps of that ridiculous house—what was it called? Strega-something? How curious. Ssso, Mr. Butler, Isagoth thought, staring out of the window at Latch. What brings you to this little hospital? Visiting? Then the rear door of the Volvo had opened to disgorge a hugely pregnant woman and a thin, hysterical man.
Yesssss, Isagoth hissed. He recognized them too. They were the employers. Not only of Mr. Butler, but also of that creature, that Flora McLachlan woman, that infernal, interfering…Smoke hissed from between his teeth and coiled upward to wreathe his head in thin gray wisps. If that woman hadn’t got in his way, he’d not be in such trouble now. No…Isagoth sighed; now he’d be home in Hades, back in S’tan’s good books, not hiding out here in this backwoods hellhole, too terrified to let S’tan know that he, Isagoth, onetime Defense Minister of Hades, had been outwitted by a mere Scottish nanny….
However, he reminded himself, all was not lost. A smile straight out of a horror film hovered around his mouth as he saw what fate had delivered straight into his hands. Cigar trembling in his grip, the demon Isagoth could hardly believe his luck. There, out in the parking lot, wailing its outrage at being born on the backseat of a middle-aged Volvo sports wagon, was Isagoth’s ticket back home to Hades. What was more, he realized, hugging himself with glee, was that with a newborn baby as leverage, he’d be able to upgrade his ticket to first class. Out in the parking lot, lights were going on, white-jacketed hospital personnel were appearing, a porter was trundling a wheelchair across the tarmac, and no one was paying any attention to the patient with the broken legs who was hobbling down the corridor as fast as his crutches could carry him in search of a telephone.
“Baci, cara mia…” Luciano was barely able to speak, so blown away was he by the speed with which he’d become a dad for the fourth time. It was as much as he could do to stop himself bursting into tears at the sight of his wife being assisted into a wheelchair and gently rolled across the parking lot, their tiny newborn child wrapped in her arms.
“Mr. Borshter?” The Ward Sister stepped across his path, her deepening frown indicating exactly how affronted she felt by the Strega-Borgias’ decision to have their baby in the parking lot. “I’m going to have to insist that you take a seat in the waiting room, Mr. Borshter. Just while we get your wife and baby checked out. If everything appears to be…normal”—here she gave the sort of sniff that implied that this was a possibility that she very much doubted, normal not being an adjective she would ever apply to unscheduled deliveries in parking lots—“then you’ll be allowed to see your wife tonight for ten minutes before going home. That is, you going home, and she staying put.” She held u
p one scrubbed red hand to forestall any objections from Luciano and raised her eyebrows in a highly challenging manner, as if to say, Go on, punk, make my day. I dare you to raise an objection.
Luciano wisely kept quiet, consoling himself with something that, in his innocence, he didn’t realize was a complete fiction: his certainty that no harm would befall his wife or baby as long as they were in the care of Sister Passterre. Meekly, he followed her through the front door of the hospital, blissfully unaware that anything more malign than a stray bacterium could be lurking in the shadows within.
Lightly Toasted
The phone rang in the great hall at StregaSchloss, its urgent shrilling causing everyone within range to run to answer its summons. Thus Titus, Pandora, Minty, Mrs. McLachlan, Knot, Sab, and Tock were all in time to witness Ffup playing butler.
“Hellurrrr,” she murmured throatily, her normally harsh dragonish tones muted down to a husky purr. “Strrrega-Borrrgia rrresidence. Ffup here. How may I be of assistan—?”
At which point Minty briskly plucked the receiver out of Ffup’s paws and hissed, “You may be of assistance by going downstairs to the dungeons and reading your baby a bedtime story.” Then she turned her back on the gaping dragon, changed her tone completely, and said, “So sorry. Bit of a mix-up there. You’re through to the Strega-Borgias. Can I help?”
Pandora glanced up at the landing, where Mrs. McLachlan stood smiling down at Ffup’s indignant splutters and snorts of flame as Minty shooed her dungeonward to her neglected baby, Nestor. Considering that the first time Minty had clapped eyes on Ffup, the young woman had fainted dead away, it was remarkable that she now felt brave enough to push the huge beast around, Pandora thought. As well as being brave, Minty was also tactful, always deferring to Mrs. McLachlan, consulting the older nanny over every decision regarding what had been, until recently, Mrs. McLachlan’s sole responsibility. Now the two nannies effectively job-shared—a state of affairs that suited everyone perfectly, allowing Mrs. McLachlan to recoup her strength after what everyone referred to as her “accident” in Lochnagargoyle. This accident had been a weird near-drowning occasioned by Mrs. McLachlan’s throwing herself into the loch on purpose and, even more weirdly, not washing back upon the loch shore until almost two months later. Far easier, Pandora thought, to refer to the whole thing as an “accident” and mentally file it under “Forget.” One day, she vowed, one day when Mrs. McLachlan is one hundred percent better, I’m going to ask her what really happened, but not now.
