Have Yourself a Deadly Little Christmas

by Leslie Langtry

  I stared at her. Weirdly enough, everyone was sitting except our cousin and Juan. He stood facing—clearly the defendant. Tiffany Lauper stood pointing at him, clearly the prosecutor. It was pretty good. Way better than the gavel thing. Well, I still had to use the gavel. He still had to die.

  The standoff was kind of cool to watch. Tiffany steady and unblinking, with Juan growing more nervous and fearful by the second.

  "Now," Tiffany said. "Now I will go splash some water on my face." And with that, she left the room.

  "She kind of went off script there," I mumbled.

  "She did set it up pretty well though," Paris said.

  We watched as our cousin left the room. She'd definitely made an impact. Annie looked worried. William started scanning the exits. Frank shrugged and folded his arms over his chest. Madame Angelina had this blissed-out look of admiration on her face. I guess she'd forgiven our cousin for going off script since she came up with that interesting summation.

  Juan, however, was visibly shaken. The swagger was completely gone now. He started to pace the room like a caged animal waiting for slaughter. He kept reaching into his pocket and fumbling with something.

  "Shit," Paris said. "Did he bring a weapon?"

  I shook my head. "No. It's something else." I had a hunch but didn't want to say until I knew for sure. It didn't take long. Finally, Juan pulled a rosary out of his pocket. His fingers began to work the beads like he was saying Hail Marys. He was terrified. And he was worried for his soul. Interesting.

  "That was weird," Annie said.

  Madame Angelina looked at her watch, "She's been in there a while. I foresee that something tragic has happened!" She pointed at Frank. "You. Whatever your name is. Come with me, and we'll check on her."

  She turned to look at the others. "Stay together and stay here." As she and Frank left the room, I could see that the others had no intention of going anywhere. But Paris and I gripped our pistols, just in case.

  They were still all there when Frank popped into the room. "She's dead."

  The others looked confused. Frank hadn't said who was dead. Then Madame Angelina appeared.

  "We will convey the shell of her former essence to her room," Madame said sounding a little like Paris' Giuseppe. Her accent wavered a little. She was getting tired. I could understand that—her performance was exhausting even to me.

  "For your own safety, don't go anywhere unless you want to come with us," she announced.

  Madame Angelina had no takers. Apparently, these assholes didn't care if one of them was dead. They eyed each other suspiciously.

  "But we were all in here," Juan said excitedly as my cousins left them. "Who could've killed her when we were all in here?" His voice squeaked on the last word.

  Annie backed up against a wall, facing the other two men. It was clear she didn't trust them any more than they did her.

  "Had to be that carney. Or the weird gypsy wannabe. We only have their word the singer's dead." William's words made sense, but he was coiled like a cobra, ready to spring if the other two rushed them.

  "But like us, they didn't know each other before they came here," Annie said.

  "It could be that butler guy." William said.

  Butler guy? Raoul would be deeply offended by that. I'd make sure to give him a nice bonus for the holidays.

  "It's the wrath of God," Juan said it so softly we almost missed it.

  "Come again?" Annie asked.

  "We are being judged and struck down. By God," Juan said. His face was a deathly white, and he'd started to perspire. Spoken like a true guilty bastard.

  To my surprise, neither Annie nor William denied this. Neither one of them insisted they were innocent. That they were good people who didn't deserve to die.

  "Hey!" Gin joined me and Paris in the secret passage. She'd changed into jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes but still had the teased hair and makeup. She looked at the memory foam floor.

  "Squishy!" she said as she bounced around. She was juicing on adrenaline. We all did during an assignment.

  "Nicely played, if not a bit overdone," I said.

  "You like that?" Gin grinned, ignoring the criticism. "Thought I'd throw in a little show. I know you weren't 100% on the Chancery thing."

  Frank and Madame Angelina came back into the room.

  "How did she die?" Annie asked quietly.

  "Injected with something," Madame Angelina said. "There was a little hole in her neck and an empty syringe on the floor. We locked her body in her room. Like the others." Whoa. The dramatic language was gone. She barely clung to the accent. Liv really was tired. Maybe we shouldn't have had her go last. Would she be able to carry it out when the time came to kill her Vic?

  "Could've been a drug overdose," William said. "Could've been a junkie."

  Annie shook her head and pointed at the mantle. "It's the bee sting. Like the poem said."

  I turned to see why Gin wasn't complaining, but she was gone. Over the intercom, we heard something breaking in the background.

  "The clown," Gin said with a huge grin as she rejoined us. She started bouncing up and down like she was on a trampoline.

  "Another figurine," Annie said, looking desperately at the five of them. "Someone just now smashed it. But how? We're all in here!"

  Juan had frozen in place. His lips were moving silently, praying the rosary.

  "I'm not going in to look," William grumbled. "We all know what that was."

  "And yet all of us were in here," Annie said.

  "It's Tiffany Lauper's spirit returning from the great beyond for a reckoning!" Madame Angelina tried to look worried, but it was obvious she was too happy for the way things were going down. Her weird dialogue had returned. Weirdly enough, I was relieved.

  "So what do we do now?" Frank said in the longest sentence he'd uttered since arriving in character.

  "I'm on!" Gin giggled and ran upstairs.

  This was better than television. Watching our Vics squirm like this was fun. Normally you just killed them in their sleep or quickly some other way. We'd never gotten to play with our "food" like this before.

  "I can't remember what happens here," Paris said, never taking his eyes off the people in the room.

  I frowned. "You really should've paid more attention in the briefings."

  He shrugged. "We don't usually work together to kill multiple people. This is new."

  "I'm not going to tell you." I pointed at Frank. "Just watch this."

  Frank moved toward Juan. He didn't say anything, just focused all of his attention on him.

  "W-w-what are you doing?" Juan said, holding his hands up in front of him and backing up defensively. "Stay back!"

  Frank stopped. "Didn't mean to freak you out, man. You looked like you could use a hug." He held out his arms like he was waiting.

  A hug? Did our cousin, big, tough Coney Island Bombay, the carney, just ask Juan if he needed a hug? That was an interesting improvisation.

  "What?" Juan asked just as a giant sledgehammer fell from the overhead rafters of the ceiling and smashed in his skull.

  "Oh right." Paris had a look of recognition. "I forgot about that part."

  I squinted. "I really wanted it to look like a gavel." I'd thought about decorating it somehow. But there wasn't enough time. A sledge would have to do. Rigging it up into the ceiling was easy. I used hologrammatic camouflage with a projector so it wouldn't be seen until it swung down. Gin simply had to release it from her bedroom, above. Frank's job was to get him on the mark.

  I'd spent days testing it, using a slew of department store mannequins I'd bought on eBay. It took fifteen mannequins being smashed in the head before I'd gotten it just right. You wouldn't want to see what happened to the others.

  Annie screamed. Madame Angelina looked horrified. William jumped to his feet and backed up against the wall. Frank bent down to retrieve the sledge and examine the body.

  "Drop the hammer," William growled. "Put it down now or I'll st
rangle you with my bare hands."

  Frank stood and looked him in the eye. The hammer fell to the ground, but he was definitely challenging William. "You'll what?"

  William leaned forward with an ugly sneer. "I'll be your worst nightmare, asshole."

  "You mean the one where guinea pigs become extinct and man discovers that there is no meaning of life?" Frank asked. I rolled my eyes. Philosophy majors.

  "What? No!" William looked confused and backed down.

  "Well that's my worst nightmare, man." Frank glared at him.

  Shit. It wasn't time for Frank's "demise." It looked like he was going to kill William right here and now. Frank's death was the red herring.

  William pointed. "You're behind this! You're the one killing us all off."

  Frank folded his arms across his chest. "What makes you think that?"

  "So you don't deny it?" Annie's lip quivered.

  Frank shrugged. "I'm not saying anything." He looked around the room. "In fact, I'm going to get the hell out of here."

  Frank just walked out of the room. The others looked at each other before deciding to follow him. Out the door they went, around the right side of the house.

  I pointed at Gin and Paris. "You know what to do." And I took off through the back of the house and into the jungle behind it.

  The red herring was a tricky idea. We wanted it to seem to the others that Frank might be the killer. The idea was that Frank would run into the jungle and disappear. There'd be screams, followed by a roar. The idea was that he'd been eaten. I'd wanted to use a panther that lived on the island. He was huge, and menacing looking, and I'd taught him to roar on command. Total pussycat though. He was actually a vegetarian.

  But we'd needed a bear for William's hugged by a bear death. And to kill two birds with one stone, I'd imported a real nasty black bear from the American northwest. The bear was slated for death by the parks department after going on a munchies spree that included one park ranger, two hikers, and a couple of confused and naked frat boys who'd gotten seriously lost on the way to Burning Man.

  I'd named the bear Cuddles, drugged him, and fitted him with a shock collar that would give him a painless death once he'd killed William. Serial murdering bear or not, he was helping us out, so I wanted the end to be, you know, peaceful.

  I'd just made it to the hidden bear pen about fifty feet into the jungle when I heard the shouting. Annie and Madame Angelina were calling out for him not to run into the jungle. William said nothing. I heard feet crashing toward me and waited.

  "Hey, cuz," Frank/Cy said with a grin as he stopped just short of me.

  We both swung ourselves onto the top of the cage. I hit a remote button I'd installed there. Through the loudspeakers in the trees, a horrible roar blasted, followed by the sounds of Frank screaming. Then there was silence.

  "That was fun," Cy said with a grin.

  "You know," I said. "You really scream like a little girl."

  He nodded with a wink. "Like that, did you?"

  "Shhh," I said. We had to make sure the next part happened before I released the bear. From a hidden window on the second floor, Gin was to spray a derivative of a concoction that my cousins Dak and Paris had once used on a bear zookeeper. A sort of barbecue sauce mist, one I'd since rendered undetectable by humans but certainly by bears, would coat William. I'd left a trail of it through the jungle on my way here, stopping just a few yards from the cage. It should lead Cuddles straight to the target.

  The only problem would be getting Madame Angelina and Annie out of the way. That one had me worried. But that's what Paris and Gin were for. The goal was to maneuver William to a distance of at least twenty feet away from the two women. I'd developed a sort of electronic net that would serve as a barrier between William and the ladies. The net wasn't really a net, not like you or I would think. It was a series of electric pulses that basically rendered the women invisible to the bear.

  Paris had laid a stick on the ground in the spot where Madame Angelina would drag Annie off to. Gin would activate the net. In theory, it would work perfectly, and I'd remote electrocute the bear shortly after it mauled William. Paris was set up with a silenced sniper rifle off to the side, in case something went wrong.

  "So," I asked Cy as I fiddled with the cage release. "How does it feel to be dead?" The latch came free, and Cuddles the Bear tore off into the jungle, following the scent I'd left for him.

  Cy shrugged. "Not much different."

  I smiled as I pulled a tablet from a hidden panel on top of the cage and turned it on. The screen popped up, and we saw William standing on the edge of the jungle, trying to look in. Madame Angelina was gripping Annie's arm and had pulled her a safe distance away.

  "How do we know he's really dead?" William snapped. "He could be faking it…"

  Cuddles hit him like a big, furry freight train, taking him down and crushing his throat with his huge jaws.

  Annie screamed, and Madame Angelina dragged her around the side of the house.

  "Ok, Missi," Gin's voice crackled from the tablet. "William's dead, and it's getting gross."

  "Oh. Right," I said. I heard a small sizzle sound and watched the tablet as the bear slumped forward, dead on top of William's also dead body.

  Cy and I jumped down off the top of the cage and ran through the woods. We'd have to be careful in entering the house. Even though Madame Angelina was supposed to bring Annie in through the front door, anything could happen.

  Lex and I had made a secret tunnel from the tree line that extended to the house, with a trapdoor that came up through the secret room. We reached it within seconds, and Cy and I made it back into the house without discovery. We joined Gin and Paris, who were in the passage outside of the dining room.

  Cy looked down at his feet once we hit the memory foam. "Squishy," he said. Unlike the rest of us, his balance on the stuff was perfect. He moved like he'd been born on the moon.

  Inside the dining room, Madame Angelina and Annie were staring at two more smashed Clown statues—courtesy of Gin Bombay. Neither one was moving or speaking. If I didn't know better, I'd think that my cousin really was terrified.

  "We're down to the end." Paris whistled. "What's next?"

  I stared at him. "How come you don't know this stuff??? We went over it like a dozen times!"

  Paris shrugged. "I was buried in my persona. I wanted to get Giuseppe just right."

  Gin rolled her eyes. "Well I don't know about right, but you really were buried in a load of something."

  I touched the frizzy cloud that was Gin's rocker hair. It crunched in my fingers. "You should talk."

  "Seriously," Paris asked again. "What's next?"

  "Liv gets frizzled," Cy said. "Kind of like Gin's hair."

  "That's what the poem says," I said. But in the book, the character gets shot. Liv really wanted to get shot. But I couldn't figure out how to do that if Annie didn't bring a gun."

  We'd opted for electrocution instead. Since that seemed the most like frizzled. I had sent a charge to the metal doorknob in the library, rigged to go on with the flip of a switch. And Madame Angelina was wearing a disruptor I'd designed in her shoes. The effect would make her shake like she was being electrocuted, without her actually being electrocuted. I even had given her earrings that would emit the smell of burnt flesh and hair when activated by the current.

  "Madame Angelina needs a drink," my cousin said as she walked out of the dining room. We watched as Annie hung back for a moment. She picked up one of the two, remaining figurines and held it in her hand for a moment. Annie looked at the doorway and then brought her other hand up and snapped the figurine in two. Very gently, she set it down on the table.

  "Why did she do that?" Gin asked.

  "You and Paris stay with her," I said. Was Annie going to kill the gypsy in an attempt to save herself? Probably. The woman was a cruel, dangerous psychopath. We couldn't rule anything out.

  "Cy and I will head to the library. Meet us there," I said.
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  I guess it wasn't too much of a surprise. We'd even anticipated that we wouldn't be able to control Annie when it was just down to the remaining two. But breaking the figurine herself was new. I hadn't seen that coming.

  In the hidden corridor outside the library, Cy and I watched Madame Angelina. She poured herself a drink and turned to face the empty doorway. And while she didn't seem concerned that Annie hadn't followed her in there, I knew she was on full alert.

  Gin came running down the hallway. "She's got a knife in the back waistband of her pants." She pulled a pistol out of the back of her own waistband and stood near the secret entrance, ready to go in if it came down to that.

  Paris joined us. "Just the one knife. But she'll use it."

  "So," Cy asked, "Do you think that she suspects Madame Angelina as the killer? Like in the book?"

  "You've read the book?" Paris frowned.

  Cy looked at him. "Of course. Didn't you?"

  Paris looked sheepish. "I was burying myself in my character," he mumbled for the one hundredth time.

  "Let's face it," I said, not taking my eyes off the doorway, "we knew this could go off script at any time. We'll just have to be ready to shoot Annie if things don't go according to plan."

  My cousins nodded. Just then, Annie made her way into the room. She kept her back to the wall as she walked to the opposite end.

  "So. It was you all along?" Annie said calmly. "I should've seen that coming."

  Madame Angelina frowned, setting down her drink. "It wasn't me. I didn't do it."

  Annie nodded and took a step closer, bringing both hands behind her back casually. From where we were, we could see her hand close around the knife handle.

  "Does she have any knife throwing skills?" I whispered.

  "Liv's the only one who had full access to her file," Gin answered.

  Paris took up a position by the secret door, gun drawn. Cy aimed his gun at Annie through the two way mirror. Liv was covered.

  "You can drop the act with me," Annie said. "I know."

  Madame Angelina's eyes narrowed. "You know? What do you know?"

  "The poem…the statues…they're all from the book. I've read the book." Annie said with a triumphant looking grin.