by Debi Gliori
A hand grabbed her wrist and hauled her upward, another hand fastening on the waistband of her jeans, dragging her in a most inelegant fashion up and over the wicker rim of the gondola and into the tar-scented safety within. Pandora opened her eyes; saw a jumble of ropes and sandbags; felt the heat from a charcoal burner positioned in the center of the gondola’s floor; craned her neck to look up at a vast canopy of swelling silk overhead; and then, at last, turned her head to look at where the pilot stood with his back to her as he helped first Titus, then Strega-Nonna, aboard.
“I…I know you,” Pandora blurted, shading her eyes against the sun and gazing at a face almost as familiar to her as her own.
“You know of me, perhaps,” the pilot said with breathtaking self-confidence before helping her to stand up. Pandora swayed, clutching one of the ropes that tethered the balloon to its gondola, as she caught a brief glimpse of the dizzying drop to the land below.
“Let me introduce myself properly,” the pilot said. “I am Apollonius Borgia, known far and wide as Apollonius ‘The Greek,’ at your service.”
Despite his somewhat haughty delivery, his tone was playful, and his eyes sparkled as he bent at the waist to sweep one hand across the floor in a deep bow that encompassed first Pandora and then Titus. Strega-Nonna gave a disgusted “Tchhhh” and stepped forward.
“You’re late, boy,” she stated. “Enough of your folderol. Children, this is your great-great-great-grandfather, Apollonius. Or is it four greats? I forget. It is of no importance. However great you may have been, boy, your timekeeping has always been appalling. What d’you have to say for yourself?”
Faced with such an enraged prune of a woman, even the greatest of heroes has been known to quail. No longer quite so proud as his portrait in the Ancestors’ Room had led Pandora to believe, Apollonius hung his head and mumbled something inaudible.
“Speak up, lad. I didn’t hear you.” Strega-Nonna was rummaging amongst the ropes and sailcloths littering the gondola floor, muttering balefully to herself, “Where is it, boy? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten to bring the confounded portal? First rule of being an ancestor: Never forget to bring your own escape route. Never. That was what nearly lost us the battle of Mhoire Ochone—”
At this, Apollonius clapped his hands over his eyes as if to block out an unwanted vision. “Stop, vecchia, I beg you. Enough. Do not remind me. That time was a black chapter in our history, and one to which I have no desire to return. You do me an injustice, besides—for here, I have the portal beside me. And”—Apollonius bent forward and hauled a large gilded picture frame upright from where it had lain unobserved at their feet—“I apologize for my tardiness, but I was delayed, unavoidably, by this…this vision here.”
And there, framed by the carved gilt of Apollonius’s portal, was Minty, her face drawn and pale, a crowd of dark shadows milling behind, her spill of golden hair the only point of light in the midwinter gloom of the Ancestors’ Room. She reached out to help Pandora climb through the picture frame, and it wasn’t until she finally stood beside her that Pandora realized what the dark shadows really were. For hundreds of years, all the picture frames had held portraits of long-dead Borgias, but now they were deserted, their canvases devoid of people. Their belongings, goods, chattels, homes, lands, and mountains—all of these were still rendered in oil and tempera, but of the ancestors not a single brushstroke of paint remained. Instead, somewhat constrained by the size of Minty’s bedroom, every one of them nodded and smiled and shuffled their feet as first Titus, then Strega-Nonna, climbed through the portal into their own time, only to discover that the past had decided to come and visit. Not only the past, but its dogs and horses as well, a fact that did not escape the attention of the huge dragon attempting to squeeze through the frame after Apollonius.
“Desist in your dribbling, dragon,” Apollonius commanded, trying to push the vast beast backward in a vain attempt to dissuade it from following. “Stay!” he barked as the gilded frame began to creak ominously around the dragon’s midriff. “No! Beast—you shall not pass.”
“Hang on.” Pandora turned back and tugged at Apollonius’s arm. “Let it come through. We could use its help with our wolf problem, and besides, our own dragon would probably enjoy the company.”
The door to Minty’s bedroom opened, and as if summoned, Ffup’s head appeared in the gap.
“Fooood,” she caroled happily; then, noticing how many humans she was addressing, her face fell. “Heavens. Where did you lot spring from? There’s never going to be enough for us all.” Then she stopped, her mouth opening wide, her wings frozen like twin exclamation points as she caught sight of the huge dragon trying to squeeze its rear through the picture frame.
“MUM?” Ffup managed, her voice betraying that here was a surprise that was about as welcome as the Black Death. “Gosh!” she squeaked, pearls of sweat popping out all down her nose, her eyes swiveling from side to side as she tried and failed to find an escape route. “How…how ab—How absolutely fu-fuh-fabulous to see you again.” And unable to entirely conceal her true feelings, Ffup felt her nose and vent erupt simultaneously into flames of deep embarrassment.
Return of the Prodigal
There had been a hissed and squeaky conference on the rose quartz outside StregaSchloss between S’tan and Don Lucifer, following which an uneasy truce was reached. Don Lucifer’s original threat to dispose of S’tan by encasing His feet in concrete was something of a nonstarter: for one thing, S’tan was a hundred times more convincingly evil than the Chronostone-free demon lite He’d been when Lucifer had last seen Him; and for another, He didn’t have feet, He had two cloven hooves. Upon catching sight of these satanic appendages, both Santino and Bruno had fled howling, leaving Lucifer and S’tan face to face outside StregaSchloss’s front door. Before they could formulate a plan, the front door flew open and there, standing in front of them, was their intended victim, Luciano Perii Strega-Borgia, small, weak, and, unaccountably, smiling.
S’tan and Lucifer barely had time to register their victim’s perplexing sangfroid when Luciano stepped forward and embraced his half brother, planting a smacking kiss on both his cheeks before saying, “Big brother! How tremendous to see you again after all this time! You’re looking so well. And you’ve brought a friend too. Welcome, signore, welcome to my little Scottish home—come in, come in, both of you. Let me close the door and keep the heat in…. There, marvelous. Baci, darling, look who’s dropped in to visit.”
And knowing full well that Baci would not respond—would, in fact, be unable to respond—Luciano drew his unresisting half brother and the scowling Devil into the great hall and launched into the performance of his life, the vast surges of adrenaline coursing through his body giving him the courage to continue babbling like a maniac. “BACI? Honestly, Lucifer, signore, I do apologize. She’s probably gone upstairs to feed the new baby. She’ll be with us in a minute.”
And that, he prayed, simply wasn’t going to happen, since, if all had gone according to plan, Baci was currently behind a golden frame in the Ancestors’ Room while the changeling was hissing and spitting in a cradle in the nursery.
“Come in, come in. Come and meet the rest of the family. Let me take your coats. Lucifer, signore, fantastic fur coat you have there—and Lucifer, what a big gun you have, big brother, but you know, there’s no need for such things here—”
“SHUT UP. Just shut up, Luciano.” Don Lucifer hung on tightly to his gun, clutching it in both hands, his beetle brows drawn so far down they almost touched his nose.
His nose.
Don Lucifer’s eyes widened and his hands flew up to the middle of his face, his gun falling, unnoticed, to the floor.
“MY NOSE!” he roared. “IT’S A NOSE!”
“Ye-e-e-es, Lucifer. It is a nose.” Luciano smiled, winking at S’tan and tapping the side of his own head in the universal mime for don’t-say-anything-but-poor-old-Lucifer’s-finally-lost-the-plot-big-time before stooping down to pluck his ha
lf brother’s gun off the floor and hooking it on the coatrack beside the many jackets, waterproofs, furs, and assorted coats hanging there already. “There. Perfectly safe,” he lied, leading the way across the great hall before either Lucifer or S’tan noticed that one of the fur coats hanging on the rack was actually Knot the yeti, who reached out for the gun and disposed of it by simply tipping it down his throat.
“I wonder what culinary delights are in store for us today….” Luciano strode down the corridor toward the kitchen, followed by his stunned and unresisting guests.
“Look at me,” Lucifer whispered to S’tan. “Tell me, is this a proper nose I got, or am I hallucinating?”
“I THOUGHT WE WEREN’T ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT YOUR NOSE,” S’tan hissed. “SO WHAT? YOU’VE GOT A NORMAL NOSE AGAIN. GO FIGURE.”
“But…what the hell’s going on?” Lucifer bleated. “Like, two minutes ago I’m giving it ‘Eek eek ike squee’ like some kinda demented rodent, and now—”
“Now, big brother, remember your niece and nephew? This fine young man is my elder boy, Titus, and this beauty is my elder daughter, Pandora. Children, look, what a surprise—here is your uncle Lucifer come to visit.”
Curled in a tiny ball of fright inside her teapot on the china cupboard, Tarantella devoutly wished herself elsewhere. Even if her host family were behaving as if they were blind to the dangers facing them, she wasn’t. The kitchen was so full of menace, it was almost impossible to breathe, and yet there they were, the mad Borgia bipeds, inviting the Devil and his pal round for supper…. With an inaudible tchhhh, Tarantella scuttled off through her own teapot portal, heading for a safer place where, with luck, she might be able to find reinforcements.
Titus stepped forward and gave a little stiff bow. “Good of you to drop in, Uncle Lucifer. How’s my old inheritance doing? Did you manage to put it to good use? Hope you didn’t blow it all on whiskey, wine, and wild, wild women. Joke,” he added hastily as Don Lucifer’s face colored.
“My brother, what a kidder.” Pandora sighed, stroking the heads of the two enormous dogs that flanked her, their yellow eyes firmly fastened on the Don and S’tan. “Such a tease, our Titus. Don’t pay any attention, Unks—he really doesn’t mean it.”
Unks? Titus bit his bottom lip. Pandora always had to go that one step too far. For a moment no one could say a word. Struck by an overwhelming desire to snort with laughter, Titus managed to wrest control over his vocal cords.
“Drinks. Dad? Can I help?” Were the occasion not so fraught with peril, the temporary appearance of Titus’s deep and blokeish voice rather than his normal boyishly high-pitched version would have been cause for celebration, but here and now, in front of his evil uncle and his uncle’s repellent fat friend, Titus could find no cause for rejoicing whatsoever. Waiting for the unwelcome visitors to hang up their coats and follow Luciano into the kitchen, Mrs. McLachlan had counseled the children to remain calm and do their bit, but that had been before she’d clapped eyes on Don Lucifer’s accomplice. Now even Titus could sense her fear, and if the unflappable Mrs. McLachlan was having a temporary case of the wobblies, then shouldn’t they all be pressing the panic button?
“Titus, dear”—Mrs. McLachlan laid a hand on his arm—“would you be so kind as to go and fetch a couple of bottles of champagne from the cellar?” The hand trembled, but meeting Mrs. McLachlan’s eyes, Titus caught sight of her granite-hard will. “After all, it’s not every day that we have a family reunion, is it, Mr. di S’Embowelli? And if I may say, you are looking ever so much better than the last time we met….”
Despite her brave words, Mrs. McLachlan had never before felt such profound fear. She forced herself to be calm and not react. Flora Morag Fionn Mhairi ben McLachlan-Morangie-Fiddach, she recited to herself, the cadences of her own names slowing her frantic breath and stilling her thoughts. Flora, my dear, she told herself, you do not have the power to overcome this devil, but you do have something far better. You are wise, far wiser than that Hell-born thing that makes you so very afraid. In your wisdom, you know that you must observe its actions; watch as it lowers its corrupted self into a chair at the kitchen table; watch and wait, observe what it does next; marshal your strength and, when the time is right… act.
As Titus headed obediently for the cellar, Pandora also forced herself to be calm. Even though Mrs. McLachlan had warned them all to expect the unexpected and to try and follow her conversational lead, this…this sucking up to Don Wotsit was hard to stomach. Last time they’d seen him, he’d had a nose like a rat, he’d been holding a gun to Mum’s head, and the only way they’d managed to get rid of him was by wiring all Titus’s inheritance of millions into the Don’s bank account. And yet here was Mrs. McLachlan, offering him the finest champagne in the cellar and heaping compliments on his ugly head. Still, even Pandora had to admit that Mrs. McLachlan had a point: the loss of the rat nose was an improvement. But the other guy…
Pandora’s eyes slid toward the man who’d helped himself to a seat at the head of the kitchen table and appeared to be falling asleep with his head balanced on his steepled fingers and his eyes shut. He was massively overweight, a fact that might have been explained by the stained chef’s uniform stretched to bursting across his chest and thighs. Why exactly her criminally inclined uncle had chosen to team up with this obese cook was something of a mystery—especially since the cook and the uncle appeared to loathe each other, if the glances they had been exchanging earlier were anything to go by….
Pandora shivered and looked away, her gaze falling on the glass-paneled doors of the cabinet that housed StregaSchloss’s hundreds of cookery books—a collection of stained and well-used volumes lying higgledy-piggledy across the shelves, books that bore witness to thousands of meals eaten by generations of Strega-Borgias over several centuries. Pandora shivered again, her thoughts returning to the stranger at their table. There was something indefinably…dark about the fat man, she decided, trying to pin down what exactly she meant. It was as if he were a one-man dead zone, as if he came from somewhere other than Earth, somewhere in which light and sound traveled differently….
All at once she realized two things: one, she hadn’t heard him say a word; and two, although she could see everyone in the kitchen reflected in the glass doors of the cabinet, she couldn’t see him anywhere. By rights he should have been visible, seated in the carver chair in between Strega-Nonna and her dad. However, according to the glass, the carver chair was empty. Pandora was just about to try and whisper this to Mrs. McLachlan when the fat man’s eyes slid open and he stared straight at her. In that instant, Pandora felt a moment of fear so intense that, to her horror, she realized she was about to throw up….
“DON’T WASTE YOUR BREATH.” The hideous voice seemed to broadcast itself from every direction at once, as if someone had installed hundreds of speakers on every available surface in the kitchen.
“LET’S JUST CUT TO THE CHASE, SHALL WE?” it continued as Pandora ran for the sink, constrained even under such dreadful circumstances by the kind of upbringing that forbade her to throw up over her shoes. “I KNOW YOU’VE GOT MY STONE HIDDEN HERE, AND I WANT IT BACK. AT LEAST ONE OF YOU KNOWS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, SO I’M JUST GOING TO ASK YOU ALL A FEW SIMPLE QUESTIONS UNTIL ONE OF YOU TELLS ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW.”
In the stunned silence that followed this utterance, everyone in the kitchen was unable to avoid hearing Pandora being violently sick in the compost bucket.
Close to the Brink
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Isagoth hissed, fumbling in his sodden coat pocket for the key to his rented car. After the vomiting-in-revolving-door incident, Baby Borgia had slept deeply for approximately forty-five seconds before waking up and starting to shriek all over again. Despite himself, Isagoth was deeply impressed: the newborn baby had a prodigious talent for howling like a soul in torment. In times gone by, Isagoth used to visit the barbecues of Hades, just for the pleasure of listening to the sinners howl and shriek as the duty demons roa
sted them on spits. But this…this tiny purple-faced boy was a born screamer. What range, what volume, what…What the hell was he doing trapped in a car with this deafening human dwarf? Isagoth leaned forward, rested his forehead against the steering wheel, and found himself unable to stifle a sob of despair. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of running away—simply undoing his seat belt, opening the driver’s door, and legging it…sprinting flat-out to…to…to any where the baby wasn’t. However, he reminded himself, that wasn’t an option. Fool that he was, he’d promised S’tan to personally oversee the destruction of Luciano Strega-Borgia. So unless he wanted to spend the remainder of eternity turned into a tub of low-calorie dairy product—turned into the very substance he appeared to be coated in—then he’d better Get On With It.
Drawing in a contaminated lungful of sour air, Isagoth winced at the sight of the stringy white curds dotted across his jacket. Not only was the infernal infant loud and squeaky, he also appeared to be stuffed to bursting with disgustingly rancid, wet cottage cheese—a singularly charmless substance that had erupted from the baby with no warning whatsoever…. Still, the sooner he got the job done, the sooner he could get rid of the baby and change out of these revolting rags. Gritting his teeth, he poked his key into the ignition, turned it, and…and absolutely nothing. Biting down on a howl of frustration, Isagoth tried again. Still nothing. Further attempts were equally fruitless. The car was dead. Now, when he needed it most, it wasn’t working. Isagoth rolled his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Had ever a demon suffered so much in the cause of spreading a little unhappiness? Could things possibly get any worse? As Isagoth stared bleakly through the windshield onto the vista of the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms parking lot, the sullen November sky gave him an answer. Rain, at first in spits and spots, then drops, then sheets, began to fall, pockmarking the snow, exposing the tarmac beneath, hammering on the car roof, pouring along gutters and down pipes and swirling past the rented car in which Isagoth and the baby sat, competing with each other to see who could howl louder and longer.
