An Act of Hodd

by Nic Saint

  They watched as Gardenia was reunited with her husband and son, who had been spirited to the gathering by Severin in the spirit of celebration.

  “I do think she’s going to need some professional help,” said Alice. “Just to make sure she doesn’t snap again.”

  “And I know just the right person for that,” announced Mabel, who still considered herself Gardenia’s personal guardian. “Do you remember Doctor Ethen Eland?”

  “The pet shrink?” Rick asked, who remembered the man very well.

  “He’s coming into town for a conference of the Pet Psychiatrical Society next week, and I’ve asked him to give Gardenia a moment of his time.”

  “Well, he does do humans from time to time,” said Alice, who’d had the pleasure of the man’s services in the past.

  Felicity’s eyes now drifted to the Numbers, who stood a little ways away from the Radcliffes, and as she watched she saw that Samuel Radcliffe and Randy Number had also spotted each other. For a moment she feared the worst, but instead of coming to blows it seemed the two boys, who were the only Happy Baysian kids present, flocked together, and before long they were playing together, running around and having a ball. And then she saw how Gardenia and Traci Number were chatting amiably, as did their husbands. Whatever differences had existed between the two families were soon a thing of the past.

  “Looks like you’re not going to need that shrink after all,” she told Mabel.

  “Do you really think we’re going to live forever now?” asked Chazz, who was on his third glass of champagne, his face glowing prettily.

  “I doubt it,” said Rick. “Why? You want to be president forever?”

  “At least for four years, Ricky,” said Chazz, uncharacteristically humble.

  “And then four more years after that, huh, boss?” asked Jerry.

  Chazz puffed up his chest, and said in mock modesty, “If the American people feel so inclined, I, for one, am willing to go the full two terms.”

  “Try to win this election first, Dad,” Rick advised, “before you start thinking about a second term.”

  “But I am gonna win!” Chazz cried. “The spaceman told me so!”

  They all laughed at this and Johnny, who’d been petting Spot 2, croaked happily, “Chazz is gonna make a great president. Isn’t he, Ricky?”

  Rick seemed to waver, not entirely sure how to respond, but then finally filial love decided him, and he said, clapping his dad on the back until he almost choked in his champagne, “Yeah. He’s gonna make a great POTUS.”

  “He does need a wife, though,” said Johnny. “What?” he asked when protestations rained down on him. “You can’t have a POTUS without a FLOTUS!”

  “I’m done marrying,” grumbled Chazz, though already his eyes were flitting in the direction of the royal family of Allard, clearly wondering if the queen didn’t have a sister tucked away somewhere. The president of the United States marrying a genuine Allardian royal? The press would love it!

  Felicity and Alice drifted away from the group to look out the window at the small town that lay nestled at the foot of the hill. The hamlet was a jewel of bucolic beauty tucked away in a sea of rolling green hills dotted with fertile fields, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in The Shire.

  “It almost looks like Happy Bays,” Alice said.

  “Yes, only prettier,” said Felicity.

  “Would you want to live here? I mean, I guess if we wanted to, we could travel back between the two worlds now. Use Severin’s space… thingy. Just like Gardenia and Roy.”

  Felicity gave this some thought, then finally said, “For a visit, maybe, but to live? No. I like Happy Bays, honey. I like our arrangement at the house and I like our friends. I don’t think I’d want to change it for the life of me.”

  “What about when we both get married?” Alice asked seriously. “We won’t be living together then, right?”

  She looked a little worried, Felicity thought, and she herself had given the matter quite some thought as well over the course of the past few months. “No, we won’t be living together,” she admitted. “Rick wouldn’t like it.”

  “And neither would Reece. He can’t wait to move out,” Alice said sadly.

  “You could always buy the house next door,” she suggested.

  Alice’s face cleared. “You think so?”

  “Yeah, I heard the Sörensens just bought a house near the beach.”

  Alice’s face split into a wide grin. “Wouldn’t that be something? We could be neighbors! We could even cut down the hedge and make one big yard!”

  Felicity laughed. “I don’t know if Rick or Reece will go for it, though.”

  “They better,” said Alice militantly. “At least if they want to get married.”

  They both watched as Rick and Reece stood chatting amicably. Once upon a time the two men had been awkward friends, but those days were over. They’d been through so much together that now they were getting along almost as well as Alice and Felicity themselves.

  “I think they’ll be fine with it,” she now said.

  Alice gave her arm a squeeze. “It’s gonna be great, Fee. And once we’ve got kids, it’s gonna be even greater.”

  “You’re right about that,” she said softly, envisioning the kind of life where her and Alice’s kids would play in the backyard and where they would have barbecues in the summer evenings. She knew for a fact that Chief Whitehouse was a great barbecue chef, and they could even put in a pool for both families to enjoy. And if it was true what Severin had told them, that from now on their lives would be blessed, she knew that no matter what adventures still awaited them, they would all be just fine.

  “So let’s go congratulate Virgil,” suggested Alice.

  “And Marjorie,” she added.

  “A double wedding!”

  “A double royal wedding!”

  “So when are we going to get married?” asked Alice as they ambled over to the happy couples.

  “Soon,” promised Felicity.

  “Let’s make that very soon!”

  THE END

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  Excerpt from Between a Ghost and a Spooky Place

  Chapter One

  “I didn’t think you’d show up,” the gruff voice announced.

  Harry looked up from her perusal of the latest James Patterson. She quickly closed the book and shoved it into her backpack, then rose from her perch on the low wall of the underpass. She shrugged as she approached the hulking figure. “I’m always true to my word,” she told the man, doing her best not to look or sound intimidated.

  He really was a giant of a man, though she’d been told he wasn’t as dangerous as he looked. He could have fooled her, though. He had no neck to speak of, his arms alone were probably as thick as her waist, and she could have fitted several times in the long black overcoat he was wearing, she herself being rather on the petite side.

  She pushed her blond tresses from her brow and fixed her golden eyes on the stranger, rubbing her hands to keep warm. She’d removed her gloves and knitted cap and now thought perhaps she shouldn’t have. The cold drizzle that had started overnight had turned into a real downpour, and even though they were protected from the brunt of the autumn weather by the underpass, the wet cold still crept in Harry’s clothes and chilled her to the bone.

  “Let’s do this,” the man grumbled. “I haven’t got all day.”

  The watery sun that had tried to pierce the dark deck of clouds that afternoon had finally given up its struggle, giving free rein to the driving rain. But then this was London, a city that for some reason had collectively decided the sun had no business here, except on those very rare occasions.

  She quickly unzipped the main compartment of her backpack and took out the package, then handed it to the client. Through the clear plastic protective cover it was easy to make
out its contents, but the burly man insisted on taking the book out nonetheless.

  “You’re going to get it all smudged,” Harry murmured, though she knew this was none of her business. Once the transaction was made, the book belonged to the client, to do with as they pleased, whether she liked it or not.

  “Looking good,” the man muttered, flipping through the pages of the voluminous tome. “How do I know it’s the real deal?”

  “You have Sir Buckley’s word,” she said with a light shrug.

  The client scrutinized her carefully, shoving the book back into its plastic covering. Then he nodded once. “Good enough for me,” he announced. He handed her a small black briefcase. “One million. As agreed,” he told her.

  She balanced the briefcase on her knee and clicked it open. Two thousand 500 pound notes should be there and as far as she could determine they were all present and accounted for. But then again, she didn’t think the client was going to cheat her. And even if he did, Buckley would handle it.

  So she clasped the briefcase under her arm and looked up at the man, a little trepidatious. Buckley had always told her to conclude the meeting the moment the transfer was done, and only rarely did a client linger. This one still stood staring at her, however, as if their business wasn’t concluded yet. They were the only two people there, as the underpass was quite deserted.

  This was Buckley’s favorite place to make a transfer, as this particular spot wasn’t covered by any of London’s half a million cameras. Which also meant that if a client decided to get any funny ideas, Harry had no recourse. It wasn’t as if she had a black belt in jujitsu or some other martial arts discipline. She’d recently watched a video on the Daily Mail website on how to protect yourself against an attack, but hadn’t the foggiest notion how to execute those nifty self-defense moves in real life.

  The man gave her an unexpected grin, displaying two gold teeth. It was something you didn’t see that often these days, and she found herself staring at the shiny snappers before she could stop herself. Along with his bald dome, it gave him the aspect of an old-fashioned James Bond bad guy. But then his smile suddenly disappeared, and he gave her a curt nod. “I guess that concludes our business,” he grunted.

  “Yeah, I guess it does,” she returned.

  He abruptly flipped his hoodie over his head, then turned and walked away. Soon he was swallowed up by the shadows stretching long tendrils of darkness beneath the overpass. Moments later she heard a motorcycle kicking into gear, and then its roar as it raced away into the falling dusk.

  She heaved a sigh of relief. These exchanges were going to be the death of her one day, she thought as she hurried out of the underpass, to where she’d fastened her bicycle to a streetlight. Fortunately, it was still where she’d left it. She tried to fit the entire suitcase into her backpack but failed, so she tipped its precious contents into her trusty Jack Wolfskin rucksack and dumped the suitcase in a nearby trashcan. And as she adjusted the straps, she noted a little giddily she’d never worn a million pounds on her back before. Then she pressed her pink knitted cap to her head, used her gloves to wipe that fabled London precipitation from her saddle, mounted the bike and was off.

  Five minutes later she was pedaling down Newport Street, anxious to get back to the store. She’d only feel at ease once the money was safely transferred to Sir Geoffrey Buckley’s cash register. And as she waited for the traffic light to turn green, she idly wondered what she would do with so much money. She could quit her job, buy herself a great house and take that trip around the world she’d been dreaming of for ages. The lights changed, and traffic was off and so was she, stomping down on her silly daydreams. The money wasn’t hers and never would be. She was, after all, only a lowly wage slave in Sir Buckley’s employ. Why there was a Sir in front of his name, she didn’t know, even after working for the man for close to a year now.

  Buckley Antiques, the store where she spent her days when her employer wasn’t sending her to dark and creepy places to exchange packages with obscure and dangerous-looking clients, was a smallish shop tucked away in the more dingy part of Notting Hill. It carried rare antiques and other items for the connoisseur, its owner and proprietor, the eponymous Sir Geoffrey, priding himself in his capacity to obtain items for his clients that no other antiquarian could find. There was a whiff of the illegal and the criminal attached to both the man and the shop, and oftentimes Harry wondered where he obtained these rare and exclusive items if not by illicit means.

  She’d never asked, and Buckley had never told her, of course. She merely did as she was told, and delivered million pound books to men with no necks without asking pesky questions. Such as: why would anyone buy a book for such an incredible price? And why not transfer the items at the store? She didn’t ask because she was afraid she wouldn’t particularly like the answer.

  She couldn’t help wonder, though, where the priceless tome would end up, for No-Neck, like Harry herself, was probably only the messenger.

  But even though Harry knew that her employer was something of a high-end fence, her conscience was no match for her need of a regular paycheck.

  With her history degree she didn’t stand much of a chance to find a decent-paying job in London, or anywhere else in the United Kingdom for that matter, and she knew she should be grateful to have found a job at all that was a cut above being a waitress, cleaning lady or nanny. The job might not be completely on the up and up, but it was better than being on welfare.

  Besides, for her discretion Buckley paid her a nice little stipend around the holidays, so there was that as well.

  She attached her bike to the lantern in front of the store, and entered the shop, her trusty backpack burning with the money. As she stepped inside, the doorbell jangled merrily. As usual, the store was dimly lit, Buckley’s way of adding atmosphere. She picked her way past the antique cupboards and Louis XIV armoires and tried to ignore the quite horrendous oil paintings adorning the walls. When she reached the counter, fully expecting to find Buckley pottering about, she was surprised to see him absent from the scene.

  No sound could be heard, either, except for the ticking of a dozen antique Swiss cuckoo clocks Buckley had obtained from a Swiss traveling cuckoo clock salesman. A real bargain, he’d called them, though Harry failed to understand who’d ever want to pay good money for such monstrosities.

  “Buckley?” she called out. “Buckley, I’m back!”

  Usually the prospect of money brought out her employer like the genie from the bottle, but no frizzy-haired elderly gentleman popped up now.

  Harry shrugged, and started transferring the money from her backpack to the cash register, which had a deep and convenient space beneath the money drawer. Here it would be quite safe until Buckley put it in the ancient but very sturdy vault he kept in his office.

  She wondered briefly if she shouldn’t close up the shop, as she wasn’t even supposed to be working today. Buckley had called her in to deal with this urgent delivery, and she’d grudgingly complied. He didn’t like to deal with his ‘special clients’ himself, reserving that particular privilege for her.

  And it was as she stood wondering what to do when she became aware of a soft groaning sound coming from deeper into the shop. It seemed to come from the back. With a slight swing in her step, relieved to be rid of the huge pile of money, she decided to take a look. She didn’t like to lock the door without Buckley’s say-so. He had this thing about wanting the store to be open at all hours, even if that meant she had to take her lunch break in between serving customers. But she didn’t like to leave it unattended either.

  She would just have a look around and as soon as she’d found her employer—probably messing about somewhere in his office—she’d go home. After riding around in the rain for the past half hour she was wet, tired and numb, and a hot shower and some dry clothes looked pretty good right now.

  Besides, she needed to put in some shopping and wanted to get it done before rush hour, hoping to salvage what li
ttle she could from her day off.

  “Buckley?” she called out as she moved deeper into the store. Behind the showroom were two smaller rooms. One was Buckley’s office, where he liked to meet with clients and suppliers, and the other was the small kitchen reserved for personnel—which meant her. It wasn’t much. Just a table, some chairs, a sink, gas stove and fridge. Next to the kitchen a staircase led upstairs, to the apartment Buckley rented out for a stipend. In exchange, the man, who was rarely in during the day, kept an eye on the store after six.

  “Buckley?” she tried again. She noticed that the door to his office was ajar, so she pushed it open. And that’s when she saw her employer. He was stretched out on the floor, his limbs arranged in an awkward pose, blood pooling around his head. She clasped a hand to her face, her throat closed on a silent scream, and looked down at the lifeless body. It was obvious she was too late. His eyes were open and staring into space, his face pale as a sheet.

  “Oh, Buckley, Buckley,” she finally whispered hoarsely, automatically taking her phone from her pocket with quaking hand and dialing 999.

  Minutes later, the store was abuzz with police and medics, as she sat nursing a cup of tea in the kitchen, stunned and fighting waves of nausea.

  She looked up when she became aware of being watched, and she saw a man looking down at her from the entrance to the kitchen. He was tall and broad and easily filled the doorframe, both in width and height. She noted to her surprise that he was gazing at her with a scowl on his handsome face. Perfectly coiffed dark hair, steely gray eyes, chiseled features and an anvil jaw lent him classic good looks, and for a moment she thought none other than David Gandy himself had wandered into the store, mistaking it for the scene of his latest swimwear shoot. But then the man cleared his throat.

  “Inspector Watley. Can I ask you a few questions, Miss McCabre?”

  She nodded, wiping a tear from her eye. “Yes, of course, Inspector.”