by Nic Saint
Basically the three of us are unemployed, which is why we started our business. And as we build it, I’m sure that before long we’ll be as successful as Gran. So far we haven’t had much luck, but pretty soon our name will be up there with the best security companies catering to an exclusive clientele.
It felt so great to be home again. To be able to sleep in my own bed, in my own room, and to walk into the kitchen where we spent so many happy hours as kids. We only have our grandmother, you see, who raised us after our parents were tragically killed when we were babies. I actually don’t even remember them, and neither do my two sisters.
I turned around when I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck, a clear indication someone was watching me, and when I saw the prying eyes of our neighbor Leann Peach across the street, I frowned. The woman is such a nosy parker and hasn’t liked our family for as long as I can remember.
But that didn’t matter. The house was finally ready, and we walked inside.
“So what’s next, Gran?” I asked as I surveyed the hallway.
Gran yawned. She’s a classy lady in her mid-fifties and has retained all the hallmarks of her classical beauty. “What’s next is I’m going to bed.”
“Me too,” said Estrella, also yawning. She’s a petite blonde with the most amazing cornflower blue eyes, and very different from Edelie and I, even though we’re triplets. I’m dark-haired and tall and rather thin, while Edelie is red-haired and on the full-figured side. I yawned too, now, and so did Edie.
“Yeah, I better hit the sack,” Edie said. “I’m bushed. This whole business of restoring houses is a lot more exhausting than I figured, Gran.”
“Well, I told you,” Gran said. “But as usual you wouldn’t listen. It’s much harder to restore something back to the way it was than to tear it to pieces. One reason why people prefer breaking things over creating something new.”
“Well, I’m glad we finally did it,” said Estrella, happily twirling around for a moment. “It’s good to be back, Gran.”
“What are you telling me? That you don’t like Hartford Manor?”
“Oh, I love Hartford Manor, but there’s simply no place like home.”
I agreed. Though Happy Bays, where we’d relocated to, was a great small town, and we got to spend practically the whole summer on the beach, Safflower House would always be where our hearts really lay. There were so many memories here, and when the house was destroyed I felt really sad.
“Let’s go to bed,” suggested Edelie, who looked like she was about to collapse right there on Gran’s Persian rug.
“Good idea, Edie,” agreed Gran, and they started mounting the stairs.
I checked around, not yet ready to go to bed. The house was exactly as I remembered it, except… “Where’s the chandelier, Gran?” I asked.
Halfway up the stairs, Gran turned. “What chandelier?”
“The chandelier?” I asked, pointing at the ceiling where the crystal chandelier had hung before. Now it had been replaced by a more modest specimen, and emitted a lot less sparkle than the old, more ornate, one.
“I decided to change it,” said Gran simply.
“Oh, but I liked it,” I said, disappointed.
“Oh, come on, Stien,” said Edie. “It’s just a stupid chandelier. Drop it.”
“Which is exactly what I did,” Gran intimated.
I stared at the ceiling. I don’t know why, but I didn’t like the new one. It looked like Gran had picked it up at IKEA, whereas the old one wouldn’t have looked out of place in a royal palace or something. It had added splendor to the hallway, while this one detracted from it. But then I figured Edie was right. It was just a silly chandelier, not the end of the world. So I followed her advice and dropped it, then followed the others up the stairs.
When my head finally hit the pillow, I was asleep in seconds.
It was good to be home again.
Chapter Two
“Get up, young lady.”
I stirred, reluctant to cast off the cloak of sleep.
“Now, Stien!” the voice insisted.
Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, and found myself gazing into the face of a blurred version of my grandmother.
“Gran?” I asked with a frown as I groped for my glasses.
“You overslept, honey,” she said primly as she walked around the bed and yanked open the curtains. Light flooded the room and I winced in protest. I put my glasses on my nose and blinked, Gran now outlined against the blinding light of a new day.
“What do you mean I overslept?” I groaned. “I don’t have a job. I can’t oversleep.”
“Your client is here,” she said curtly. “And she’s not a patient woman.”
Sleep was instantly wiped from my eyes as I yelped, “She’s here?!”
“Arrived just now, very eager to see you and your sisters at once.” Gran’s lips pursed disapprovingly. “I’ve never known three young women who needed so much sleep. It’s not good for you, you know?”
I crawled out of bed and placed my feet on the familiar hardwood floor, then cast a look around my room. It was just the way it had always been, and in spite of my grandmother urging me to get a move on, I smiled at the sight.
Tomes and tomes of legal books were still making the shelves of my bookcase groan, in spite of the fact that I’d dropped out of law school. Secretly I still hoped one day to finish my education and become a lawyer.
“Come on, Stien,” urged Gran. “Get a move on.”
I stumbled to the mirror and checked myself. I gasped in shock when I saw my red-rimmed eyes and pale face. “She’ll have to wait,” I muttered. “I’m not showing my face looking like this. I need a shower first.”
“No shower,” said Gram decidedly. “I honestly don’t think she hired you for your supermodel looks, Ernestine, but for your brain. And your brain looks perfectly fine from where I’m standing.”
“Oh, all right,” I grumbled, and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans. “What’s the rush? I thought we scheduled Valerie’s appointment for this afternoon?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not in charge of scheduling for this Flummox, Inc.”
“We asked you to join the company, remember?” I asked, finger-combing my hair. “But you didn’t want to.”
She waved a hand. “I’m not a bodyguard, Stien. That’s just ridiculous.”
“Well, we’re not bodyguards either,” I said. “We offer security solutions.”
“Whatever that is,” she grumbled darkly.
“We keep our clients and their possessions safe. Isn’t that what being witches is all about?”
“No, it isn’t,” she snapped. “Being a witch is all about protecting your sacred heritage, not using your powers to make money.”
I shrugged. We’d had this discussion many times over the summer. “We’re doing all three. Protecting our heritage, helping people, and making money.”
Gran snorted derisively. It was obvious she was still not fully on board with our new venture, even though she’d reluctantly agreed to help us after our chosen careers had all gone down the drain.
“Let’s go,” she urged, and then we swept from the room and I was practically chased down the stairs. Stomping into the kitchen, I vowed at least to have a cup of coffee before I faced our very first client, and when I saw that my two sisters were also there, looking as bleary-eyed as me, I knew I wasn’t the only one who viewed the upcoming interview with trepidation.
“Hey, Stien,” Estrella groaned, and she looked exactly like I was feeling. Her blond hair was a mess, and her face still had sleep wrinkles. Edie looked even worse. Her red hair was plastered to her skull, and her face was even paler than usual. For this auspicious occasion she was wearing her usual attire: black combat boots, tattered black jeans and a black hoodie which only served to accentuate the unhealthy pallor of her already sallow skin.
“Why does she have to be one of those people who arrive early?” Strel complained as she took a tentative si
p of coffee. “Why not arrive on time?”
“Be glad she showed up,” said Edelie. “At least we have our first client.”
Estrella pushed herself away from the table and got up. “Let’s do this,” she said, stretching herself. She was always the more energetic one.
“Yeah, let’s do this,” muttered Edelie, dragging herself up from the chair.
We staggered from the kitchen like the cast from The Walking Dead, though zombies have the advantage that at least they don’t have any brains, so they don’t know how hideous they look. We did, and it didn’t add to our self-confidence, the lack of which we were now keenly feeling.
I wondered if Steve Jobs had felt like this when he sold his first Apple computer, or Mark Zuckerberg when he got his first Facebook friend. The problem wasn’t that we weren’t ambitious, but that we had no idea what we were doing. Sam Barkley, the NYPD detective who’d promised to teach us some of the ins and outs of the private protection business, had been so busy fighting crime that we hadn’t seen him in weeks, and there’s only so much you can learn from Googling stuff.
Valerie Gabby, Flummox, Inc’s very first client, was a fair-haired young woman, whose big eyes were now focused on us as we strode in, one after the other, like prisoners stepping in front of the firing squad. She was cradling a baby, and stroking its wispy hair absentmindedly.
She looked even more nervous than we were feeling, so my jitters soon waned as we distributed ourselves amongst the remaining chairs in Gran’s parlor, which we’d selected as our conference room for now. And then we were listening intently as Valerie launched into her tale of woe.
“I’m under attack,” were the first words out of her mouth.
“Under attack?” I asked. “Who’s attacking you?”
“You better ask me what’s attacking me! It’s a thing, not a person!”
“A thing?” asked Estrella. “What’s this thing? What does it look like?”
Valerie shook her head, her blond curls dangling listlessly around her thin-boned face. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. All I know is that it’s using me. It’s…” Her lips trembled and she bit her lower lip. “It takes possession of me, and when I come to I feel… soiled and…” She sniffed… “And I don’t remember a thing. Not a single thing. It’s as if it simply takes over.”
I shared a quick glance with Edelie and Strel. What a weird story.
“It knocks you out?” I asked.
“No… it just… I don’t know what it does, exactly. All I know is that when I wake up there’s an intense pain behind my eyes, as if something is using my head like a pincushion or something, and my ex-husband says I’ve become more and more violent. I even attacked him a couple times. I jumped on top of him and tried to murder him! Which is probably why he threw me out. He’s filed for divorce now, so…” She looked desperate, and I could see why.
She’d placed her baby on the couch next to her, and I eyed it with worry. I turned my attention back to Valerie when she suddenly closed her eyes and gripped her head and uttered such a powerful scream that we jumped up.
“Valerie!” I cried. “What’s wrong?!”
“It’s happening again!” she screamed, rocking back and forth.
I searched around the room but I didn’t see a thing. No sign of a monster trying to take possession of Valerie. But she was screaming like mad now, and had dropped to the floor, flailing as if she was being hacked to pieces. All we could do was make sure she didn’t knock over Gran’s antique coffee table.
Estrella picked up the baby, making sure it was out of Valerie’s reach.
“What should we do?!” she cried, cradling the infant.
“It’s a demon,” said Edelie. “It has to be. Nothing else could do this.”
“Or she could be sick,” I said. “She could be having a seizure.”
We stared down at the woman, tears now streaming from her eyes while she rocked back and forth, hugging her knees, her back against the sofa.
“Stay away from me!” she whimpered. “Don’t… I can’t…”
At that moment, Gran suddenly charged in, her face fearful. “What’s going on here?!” she cried, and when she saw Valerie sitting on the floor, she said, “Oh, dear,” and clasped a hand to her face. “Oh, my dear.”
“Gran, what’s going on?” Estrella asked.
“Do you think we should call a doctor?” I asked.
“I think she’s being attacked by a demon or something,” said Edelie.
We stared at our grandmother, hoping she knew what was going on.
“Dear me,” she repeated, still staring at Valerie as if in shock. Then she shook her head and said, “This isn’t good,” and quickly rushed out!
“Gran!” I cried. “Where are you going?”
But she left the room in such a hurry she was already out of earshot. We stared at one another, at a complete loss now, then looked at Valerie, who was now pressing her fingers to her temples, as if suffering from a giant headache.
“We have to do something,” Estrella said, quite unnecessarily.
And that’s when I saw it. Valerie had opened her eyes, but instead of the nice white with pale blue pupils they’d been before they were blood-red, with tiny black pinpricks for pupils! And as I watched, her upper lip lifted into a snarl, and next thing I knew she was launching herself at me, screeching like a banshee!
I went down hard, my head hitting the floor, and as I struggled to get her off of me, and Estrella and Edelie tried to pull her off, Gran came charging in again, only this time she was carrying a silver dagger I’d never seen before.
And then, before my surprised eyes, she buried the dagger into Valerie’s skull, all the way to the heft! Valerie twitched violently, as one would when being skewered by a dagger, her eyes rolling up into her head, and then she dropped dead. As if this wasn’t enough, Gran quickly straddled her, and started muttering something unintelligible under her breath. Then, finally, she took a firm grip on the dagger, and yanked it from the poor woman’s head with a quick pull, as if she did this kind of thing all the time.
To my surprise no blood spurted out of the wound but instead it immediately closed up, as if by magic. And Valerie, instead of being dead as I’d supposed she was, emitted a soft cry, opened her eyes and stared at Gran.
“What the hell just happened?!” I cried, more than a little freaked out.
But Gran simply ignored me and addressed Valerie instead. “You were under the influence,” she told the woman seriously, helping her to her feet.
“Under the influence of what?” asked Valerie, still staring at Gran.
“Of the ghoul who’s adamant to stake his claim,” she said.
“A, a… ghoul?” asked Valerie incredulously.
Gran nodded. “You’re in very grave danger, dear,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you don’t get rid of this ghoul you may not survive.”
Valerie sniffed, then buried her face in her hands. “This is all so terrible.” Then she cast a hopeful look at Gran. “Can you help me… save my life?”
Gran nodded seriously. “Of course, dear. But first we have to figure out who sicced this ghoul on you. Because whoever it is, they want you dead.”
And as Gran explained the finer points of ghouldom, I exchanged an exasperated look with my sisters. It was obvious that we weren’t going to be much use to the very first client of Flummox, Inc. The person who was going to save Valerie’s life was Gran, and she wasn’t even part of the company!
Chapter Three
“Shellfish.”
“What’s that?”
“Shellfish.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t like it,” Rupert said with typical aristocratic petulance.
Sir Rupert Lohenstein was enjoying a sumptuous breakfast on the balcony of his client’s Fifth Avenue pad, idly gazing out across Central Park. The view from up here was truly spectacular. His own apartment was a few stories below, but he spent most of his time up he
re, as Petunia Hudson wasn’t merely his client but also one of his oldest and dearest friends.
Petunia sighed audibly. “Okay, I’ll play along. Why don’t you like shellfish, Rupie?”
He shrugged. “I just feel sorry for the poor animals. The notion that they have to suffer so much just so we can derive a little pleasure from devouring them seems basically unfair. I guess in that sense I’m a devout vegetarian.”
“You’re not a devout vegetarian,” she countered. “I’ve seen you eat your hamburgers. You love the stuff! What you are is a hypocrite, Rupie.”
Well, that was true, of course, but then as a banker hypocrisy was in his blood. A large man with voracious tastes, he picked up a piece of toast liberally smeared with caviar and tipped it into his mouth, then took a sip of tea. “You’re probably right. It’s just that I don’t like my food to suffer.”
“The cows that went into your hamburger probably suffered a great deal,” she said with a bored expression on her face.
Petunia might be fifty-five, but she still had the same pep and vigor she had when her career was in its heyday, back in the eighties. Her greatest hit was ‘I’m a rock star,’ in 1979, and a string of hits had followed, before she’d faded away in the nineties and more or less fizzled in the noughties. Still, she was a global star, and whenever she staged a tour with her iconic band The Blackguards, millions of fans still came out in droves and filled stadiums.
Rupert was her financial manager, and had been from close to the start of her phenomenal career. The unlikely duo had met at a party thrown by a mutual friend, when her financial affairs had been a mess and she was on the verge of bankruptcy. He’d saved her career, her sanity, and her bank balance.
“I don’t think you need to worry about your food suffering too much, Rupert,” she said with that hoarse voice of hers that had made her such a household name the world over. “I’m pretty sure animals have no souls.”