by Nic Saint
“Whatever you say!” she yelled back to the disembodied voice, and then, suddenly, it was all over. She fell down with a thump on the hallway floor, next to the credenza, and the ceiling closed over her with a soft Whump!
When she looked up, she saw that both the small whirling disk and Severin Lobb were gone, the return to normalcy so jarring that it took her a moment to catch both her breath and her sense of orientation.
“Wow! That was great, you guys!” she yelled. “Can I go again?!”
But if she’d expected Alice and Reece to pop out from behind a curtain to give her a high-five, she was mistaken. Instead, there was the scratchy sound of a key in the lock, and she watched Alice stride in, looking a little haggard after a long working day. And as she stared expectantly at her friend, it became obvious to her that Alice had had nothing to do with this.
Chapter 3
“Hey, honey,” said Alice, wondering why Fee was sitting on the hallway floor. And why her cheeks were so red and her eyes so wide and shiny.
She threw her keys on the little plate they’d picked up in England, and checked her face in the mirror over the credenza. She thought her pixie face looked a little pale, and her blond bob a little lackluster, but then she’d just spent her day with people looking a lot less lively. In fact as unlively as you could get. Working at the mortuary wasn’t perhaps her favorite job in the world, but it wasn’t the worst one either. At least it was pretty peaceful. And it wasn’t as if she had to do any of the gruesome stuff either. That was all Uncle Charlie’s responsibility. She just took care of the customers—the live ones—and from time to time assisted her uncle in dressing up the stiffs.
Business was booming lately, with a spate of deaths hitting Happy Bays. The downside was that she had to work harder than ever, the upside that her bank account was feeling very happy lately, with all the cashola flowing in.
Only now did she notice that Fee was staring at her, panting slightly.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Either you just played the most elaborate trick on me,” said Fee, “or I just got a visit from an emissary of Allard called Severin Lobb who said he was going to destroy me and my realm if I didn’t hand him back the Ring of Hodd and cease all cooperation with a guy named Mortdecai, an evil being intent on destroying Allard’s rightful rulers and their world.”
Alice stared at her friend, trying to process this. She knew Fee as just about the most levelheaded person on her very short list of friends and acquaintances, and this frankly wasn’t the Fee she knew and loved. “Allard? Severin Lobb? Mortdecai? What the heck are you talking about, hon?” she asked, walking past her friend and into the living room. Frankly she was starving, and could use a slice of pizza or a chicken wing around now.
Fee followed her into the living room, after darting anxious glances around, as if fully expecting something or someone to pop up out of the blue.
“Did you and Reece hire an actor and George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic to play this trick on me or am I just plain losing my mind?”
Alice laughed. “As if I’ve got the time or energy to set up something like that. Why? Some guy show up with a singing telegram just now?”
Fee stared at her. “If it wasn’t you… Maybe it was Reece?”
“Don’t think so, Fee. Reece is on location in Vancouver. Some science fiction extravaganza. Even gets to wear a spacesuit and everything.”
Fee eyed her intently. “This Severin Lobb was a spaceman.”
They shared a grin. “So it was Reece, huh?” Then her face fell. “But why didn’t he wait until I was here?!”
“Maybe he messed up the timing?”
“Oh, crap,” she said, rooting around in the fridge. “I hope he’ll be back.”
“Oh, he definitely will,” said Fee. “I gave him your carnival key.”
Alice laughed. “Good thinking.” She found an old piece of garlic bread and shoved it onto a plate and into the microwave.
Immediately, Fee took it out again, and said, “I’ll cook you something. You must be starving.”
“Well, I am,” she admitted, giving her friend a grateful half-hug. Then she plunked down on the couch and saw the upturned Jennifer Boiler. “You started on the book already? How is it?”
“Not as good as Reece’s actor friend. You should have seen it. The special effects were amazing! Almost as if I was in Disneyland or something.”
She wondered why Reece hadn’t told her about his big surprise, but then that was Reece for you; he loved to play tricks on people. She just hoped next time he’d tell his buddy to wait until she was home to enjoy the show.
Moments later, Fee had whipped up a plate of spaghetti with her very own extra-special sauce, and Alice was happily ladling it up. They were both seated in front of the TV now, and while some dumb old horror movie played, Fee told her all about this recent adventure.
“I don’t know how he did it,” she gushed, flapping her arms. “I mean, it was as if I was actually flying, up there in the milky way or something. And then I was being dumped back on earth. It was an amazing experience.”
“He must have spent a fortune,” said Alice between two scoops of pasta.
“Yeah, well, he can afford it. How much is he getting paid for this new movie? Ten, twenty, thirty?”
“No idea, but I’ll bet it’s a lot!”
“I think he can afford to hire a guy to look like Legolas and turn our house into a Disney ride.”
“He looked like Legolas?”
“I think so. He’s the one who gets to be the king, right?”
“No, that’s Aragorn, silly.”
“Well, he looked like Aragorn but with Legolas hair, then.”
“Wow,” said Alice under her breath, and stared at the screen, where a big, hairy monster that looked as if it was made out of papier-mâché was attacking the heroine, who was screaming her head off.
“I didn’t see any wires, though, or any other equipment.” Fee shook her head and leaned back against the couch pillow. “I don’t know how he did it.”
“They’ve got ways,” Alice opined. “They’re Hollywood, remember?”
“Yeah, but it was like I was really flying. It was amazing.”
“Did you take pictures?”
Fee laughed. “Pictures? Are you kidding me? I was too busy flying!”
“You should have taken a selfie with this Severin Lobb guy. Put it up on our Facebook page.”
Fee leveled a skeptical look at her. “I’ll ask him next time I see him.”
“We need to spruce up our Facebook page, remember?”
“Of course I remember, but I don’t think our customers are into guys in gold tights.”
“Everybody is into guys in tights, honey.”
Alice and Fee had decided to expand Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room into cyberspace by establishing an online presence. As an experiment they now sold cookies and other pastry online, and so far the orders were pouring in.
Fee had long done a regular baking column in the Happy Bays Gazette, and a YouTube channel to go along with it, and they’d recently started that up again, in connection with the online store. They had a Facebook page and a Twitter feed but the only thing missing, in Alice’s opinion, was some juicy content to keep the masses entertained and coming back for more.
A man in gold tights doing all kinds of acrobatics was all they needed.
“I wonder what he meant by realm,” Fee now mused.
“Huh?” she asked, pulling her mind back from picturing men in tights.
“Realm. He said he was going to destroy our realm if I didn’t cease my association with this Mortdecai, whoever he is.”
“Johnny Depp,” stated Alice. “I actually liked that movie. Very funny.”
“No, it wasn’t Johnny Depp. I asked him and he didn’t seem to like it.”
“Must be one of Reece’s friends with very little sense of humor, then.”
“Did you ship out those orders? And put up the new prices?” Alice asked, wrenching the conversation back into the more materialistic realm.
“Yep, done and done.”
“What did your mom say about this new venture of ours?”
Fee shrugged. “Mom doesn’t know why people can’t just come into the store. Why they have to order online in the first place. Plus, she’s afraid we’re going to burn ourselves out by taking on more than we can handle.”
Alice laughed. “Burn ourselves out? Where did she get that?”
“Beats me. She must have read it in some women’s magazine at Rita’s.”
Rita was Fee’s mom’s hairdresser. She liked to experiment with color, and had just managed to turn Bianca Bell’s hair a very vivid aquamarine.
“Mom says if we’re not careful we’ll catch a burnout,” Fee grinned.
“Catch a burnout. I didn’t know they were infectious.”
“She seems to think so. Says they’re all the rage these days.”
“Everybody’s burning out, huh?”
“Guess so.”
They were interrupted by a loud blaring sound from the TV and they both jumped. “Jeez!” cried Alice. “Did you sit on the remote again?”
“No, I did not!”
“Because your bum always seems to select the Cooking Channel.”
“It does not!”
“Silence!” suddenly boomed a male voice. It echoed through the room like a minor gas explosion, and with the same devastating effect on both women. “You tricked me, Felicity Bell!” the voice thundered. “And now the wrath of Allard is upon you!”
Chapter 4
Alice and Fee shared a look of confusion, and Fee thought she could detect in her friend’s eyes a definite gleam of excitement. But then Alice started rooting around for her smartphone so she could take a selfie once the man in tights showed his face.
“What do you mean, I tricked you?” Fee asked, just to stall things.
“The ring you gave me is not the Ring of Hodd! It is just a piece of junk!”
“Yes, well, it’s the only ring you’re gonna get!” said Fee with a grin.
“I warned you!” the voice rumbled, and then suddenly lights flashed and the ceiling opened, drawing surprised yelps from both Alice and Fee. “I will give you one last chance, Felicity Bell. Hand over the Ring of Hodd now or suffer the wrath of Allard’s first defender!” the voice went on as the ceiling turned into a roiling, swirling mass of purple, lights flashing and thunder rumbling dangerously. And then suddenly rain poured down, instantly drenching the two women! They cried out in surprise, and Fee quickly took her Jennifer Boiler book and shoved it under the sofa so it wouldn’t get wet.
In spite of Alice’s enthusiasm, this was taking things a little too far, she felt. “Look, buddy. Enough with the waterworks already! You’re gonna ruin this entire house! Reece? Are you up there? Can you tell him to turn it off?”
“It’s just a trick!” hissed Alice, her face displaying her glee. “It’s not real water, hon. I’ll bet it’s some kind of special water that doesn’t make you wet!”
“It’s making me pretty wet right now!” Fee hissed back, her hair now plastered to her face and her clothes to her body.
“This is the end of Allard if you do not comply,” the voice of Severin Lobb droned one, “and I for one will not stand idly by while you destroy everything my ancestors have spent eons building! The Ring of Hodd! Now!”
“He seems very fixated on this ring,” whispered Alice.
“Yeah, it’s like a real obsession with this guy.”
“He must have watched The Lord of the Rings one too many times!”
“I wish he would just show his face. I’m sure you’ll recognize him.”
“I recognize his voice!” said Alice. “It’s Reece, I’m sure of it!”
“No way!”
“I’d recognize his voice anywhere! He’s using some kind of voice altering equipment. Like autotune or something. Trust me, it’s Reece, all right.”
“What are you whispering about?!” the voice demanded. “The ring!”
Alice quickly slipped a ring from her finger and thrust it into Fee’s hand. “Here. Just give him this. I’m sure he’ll love it.”
Fee approached the TV set hesitantly, holding up the ring.
“Here,” she said meekly. “Here, oh noble one. Accept the ring I stole.”
“Why did you steal it? Why did you try to destroy the Allard realm?”
Helpfully, Alice whispered, “Tell him you just love to destroy stuff!”
“That’s right,” said Fee. “Destroying realms is just my thing. I love it!”
There was a meaningful silence from the other end, then the voice came back, “You’ll rue the day you went into an allegiance with Mortdecai.”
The ring was suddenly snapped from Fee’s fingers, and a smattering of sparks flew from her fingers as it did. She shook her head and muttered, “Amazing.” How the heck was Reece doing all of this? She quickly returned to the couch and together with Alice watched as the ceiling swirled, almost as if the hand of God himself could at any moment reach down and touch them. Or smite them, of course, if this guy discovered that this ring, too, was a dud.
“I will be back!” the voice announced ominously. “And if once again you have tricked me…”
He didn’t complete the sentence but the threat was pretty much implied in the dot-dot-dot at the end. They would rue the day they’d played fast and loose with the guy, that much was obvious from these last words.
Then Alice cried out, “Give my regards to Allard, buddy!”
But the voice apparently thought he’d said what he’d come to say and said no more, and slowly the rain lessened to a trickle, and then the clouds dispersed and the ceiling returned to normal, apart from a few big wet spots.
Alice walked over to the TV and checked behind it. “Pretty neat, huh?” she asked, enthusiasm making her voice skip into a higher register.
“I don’t know how he does it,” said Fee, shaking her head. Though she definitely wished he hadn’t ruined things by turning on the sprinklers.
“I just wished he’d taken me flying, like he did with you!”
“Yeah, he left that part out this time. Maybe he’d reached his budget.”
“Oh, man,” said Alice with a happy sigh. “You were right. That was amazing!”
“I just hope you’re right about this being Reece. Or else we’ve just signed the death warrant of our realm. What ring did I just give him, by the way?”
Alice grinned. “One of my Hello Kitty rings. And I’ve got plenty more.”
Chapter 5
The next morning saw Alice and Fee busy at work as another day announced itself with its customary sunny splendor. Summer in Happy Bays was always a fun affair, and especially after the early morning traffic congestion had waned, all the workers working and the students studying and streets free for the shoppers to shop and the street sweepers to sweep.
On Gardenia Radcliffe all this business was completely lost. First her husband had lost his car keys and had to take the train to work, then her son Samuel had decided to stay home today. Officially because he was feeling a little under the weather, but more likely because he was being bullied at his new school. And on top of that her boss had called to tell she didn’t have to come in today, or any other day, for that matter, for she was being let go.
Apparently he’d found himself a secretary more willing to succumb to his fatal charm, whereas Gardenia had always played extremely hard to get.
She now stood waiting in line at the butcher’s shop, staring straight ahead of her. All of this had happened in the space of one hour that morning, and she was still feeling dazed and more or less shell-shocked. So when finally it was her turn, she couldn’t even remember what she’d come there to buy.
She was a diffident woman, and to the casual observer looked very plain indeed; her face was pl
ain, her hair was plain, her body was plain, even her voice was plain. To all intents and purposes she was as plain as could be.
Jackie Bouchard, the butcher’s wife, who was more Mae West than Plain Jane, rolled her expressive eyes, but her husband Bud was more forgiving. He was even kind enough to tell her to take her time to gather her thoughts, and made the useful suggestion in future to bring a shopping list. “Makes things so much easier for everyone,” he said with a friendly smile. And of course she agreed, except that in her situation shopping lists weren’t going to make her evil boss go away, or the nasty bully pounding her son, or the mechanic who kept screwing up their car while asking top dollar to fix it.
Finally she stepped from the store, half a pound of chopped liver clutched under her arm, even though she didn’t even like chopped liver and neither did her husband Roy or her son. She started walking, still staring straight ahead, her mind a blank, when she tripped on a piece of badly constructed pavement and hit her knee hard, scraping it in the process.
At the last elections Mayor MacDonald had promised his constituents that he was going to have the downtown area repaved, but as often happened with politicians, once reelected he’d suffered a memory lapse and the paving stones in certain streets still jutted out at odd angles, surprising pedestrians and forcing them to be vigilant and lift their feet high. In the interest of the community’s mental and physical acuity there were certain advantages to this sad state of affairs, but for Gardenia, still dazed and confused after the triple bombshell of that morning, it was the last straw.
She was picking herself and her groceries from the ground when a helpful hand reached down and pulled her back to her feet, and when she looked up she saw that the hand belonged to Mabel Stokely, the mayor’s secretary.
“You have to watch your step around here,” said Mabel kindly. She was an eternally chipper woman, though there was a hint of steel lurking behind those kind eyes. Mabel wasn’t a woman to be trifled with, and it was obvious she wouldn’t be caught tripping over some silly stone. Her Nana Mouskouri glasses flashed as she gave Gardenia a closely scrutinizing look. For some reason that Gardenia didn’t understand, the woman’s hair had a deeply pink tinge, and combined with its fluffy aspect it resembled cotton candy.