by Debi Gliori
Struggling to stay afloat in this tide of information, Baci distractedly filled the teapot with milk and poured hot water into the sugar bowl.
“The long and the short of it is, after we tried everything, all that those fancy doctors could tell us was that our son needed to find an outlet for his aggression. Since he wanted to go around hurting people, blowing things up, and setting fire to stuff, they suggested he join the armed forces—”
“That worked for a while,” Jolene interjected. “He joined up, did his training as a munitions expert—”
“And then we don't know what went wrong,” Lex interrupted. “It was as if the Special Forces training made him worse, not better. Like he'd somehow gotten hooked on violence, till even being a soldier wasn't enough for him. …” Lex paused, rubbed a hand across his eyes, and continued wearily, “Last time we saw him, he'd been dishonorably discharged and was holed up with a bunch of long-haired criminals in a trailer park in Illinois…. We tracked him down, persuaded him to come home with us, then a week later he just vanished off the face of the earth, leaving Jolene and me heartbroken—”
Concerned that this unfortunate stranger was about to break down and cry, Baci intervened, “Mr. McHail, I'm not quite sure how we can help you find your son. …” She sneaked a glance at the mantelpiece clock. Where on earth was Zander? It was nearly half-past ten, for heaven's sake.
“Oh no, ma'am. Back-shee, I mean. You don't have to help us find him. We found him.” Lex leant back in his seat, causing it to creak in protest. “We found him, all right. He's been here, somewhere.”
“Here? At StregaSchloss?” Baci squeaked, aghast. “You mean there's a violent crim— Sorry, sorry, sorry, you mean your poor unwell son is somewhere lurking around our house? Our garden?”
“Afraid so, ma'am. But you weren't to know. Besides, he's gone, now—” Lex suddenly looked old, his face drawn and pale with the strain of talking about such things.
“That last time was the final straw,” Jolene interrupted, her mouth spitting out the words like bitter fruit. “Last time, he emptied Lex's checking account, helped himself to my most valuable jewelry, and headed out of town in my car. Lex and me, we spent a fortune tracing him from South America, to Angola, and then over to some godforsaken hole in Russia… We lost him for a while, till he surfaced in Yurp, where he spent nine months bumming his way around, never staying in one place longer than a couple of weeks …” She paused, as if to gather strength for what she was about to say next.
“You know, it's not the money, or the jewelry, or the fact he trashed my Cadillac. It's none of those things that really hurts. No. What really burns me up is that he told your husband here that his mom and dad were dead. He just wrote us out of his life, like we never existed.”
“Oh. My. God.” Baci sat down gingerly, as if she feared she'd shatter with too sudden a movement. “Your son is Zander ?”
“Yup,” Lex stated baldly. “Ale xander McHail was our boy.”
“Was?” Baci whispered.
“Thing is, Back-shee,” Lex continued, “when a child puts his parents through all that pain and then ends up saying you don't even exist, pretends you're dead and buried… well, far as we're concerned, he might as well be dead, too. It's…it's a tragedy. Like, uh, the feeling —you understand, you're a mother yourself, you know I loved that boy but…the feeling's gone… and we just can't…go on kidding ourselves any longer. Jolene and me, we're going to head back on home and go get ourselves an attorney to cut that young man out of our lives for good.”
In the silence, they could all hear Mrs. McLachlan and Damp, chatting as they came downstairs from the nursery.
“Watch out, dear. That's an awfully big step there. Careful now…”
The McHails stood up slowly, hiding their distress under a veneer of politeness.
“Thank you for your time, folks. Sorry you had to be involved in this… stuff.” All Lex's bluster had gone, his selfconfidence deflated like a leaky balloon.
As they turned to leave, Jolene murmured, “And don't you worry about him turning up here again. He's gone for good. We traced him to Glasgow Airport. He dumped his bike in the overnight parking lot. He ain't coming back no more.”
The Strega-Borgias followed the grieving Americans to the front door, where Damp was sitting on the step while Mrs. McLachlan helped her into a pair of shoes.
“Oh my. Your daughter's just like a little fairy angel…,” Jolene said, squeezing into the passenger seat of a rental car and turning aside to wipe her eyes with a tissue.
Visibly uncomfortable, Lex opened the driver's door and climbed in, opening the windows to let in some air. Baci and Luciano stood silently on the steps, unsure what to say or do. Slipping out of Mrs. McLachlan's arms with only one shoe on, Damp squeezed between her parents and waved good-bye to the strangers.
“Oh! Isn't she just darling ?” Jolene gasped. “Look—with her little wand and all…”
Mrs. McLachlan stiffened. Wand? Damp's other shoe fell from her hands and she stood up to see what was going on.
“Thanks again, folks.” Lex was pulling away now, one hand on the wheel, the other waving out of the window to Damp. “What can I say? Life goes on? Another day, another dollar…”
“'Nother day,” Damp repeated firmly as Mrs. McLachlan plucked Leonardo da Vinci's purloined paintbrush from the little girl's chubby fist.
Damp's Rain, rain, go 'way spell dissolved as the heavens opened. Forty-eight hours of magically pent-up rain turned the rose-quartz drive a deeper shade of pink, poured into Tock's empty moat, and drove the Strega-Borgias indoors.
Ring of Stone
ot even torrential rain could dampen Ffup's prenuptial enthusiasm, much to the annoyance of her fellow beasts. Lost in a lacy world of wedding plans, the dragon was unaware of anything other than her own drama, dragging every topic of conversation, no matter how unrelated, back to the Wedding of the Decade.
“With you as a role model, I doubt my daughters will have the sense to stay out of the rain,” Tarantella observed gloomily, peering out of the kitchen window at the puddles forming on the ground.
“I just hope it doesn't rain on Mummy's Big Day,” Ffup cooed to Nestor, who was clamped to his mother's breast in a state of blissed-out infant oblivion.
“Thank you for your empathy,” Tarantella snapped. “Actually, I was hoping you might offer me a lift down to the loch so that I can check that they're all safe…. ”
“Won't they just make the sweetest little flower girls?” Ffup murmured, her eyes glowing. “I can just see them all in a line, each one holding a daisy, or even a forget-me-not.”
“I'm working on it,” Knot muttered. “But you keep reminding me.”
“And heavens, I must write myself a reminder to order up some invitations. You can't imagine the amount of paperwork involved in getting a wedding under way…. ”
“No. You're right. We can't even begin to imagine how we're going to restrain ourselves from gagging you if you don't stop obsessing about it.” Sab's voice had risen to an aggrieved roar, but it didn't put so much as a dent in Ffup's armor of self-satisfaction.
“Train…,” she muttered, plucking Nestor off her breast and reaching for a pen. “The train…What d'you think, guys? Forty meters of white organza? Or should I just push the boat out and go for raw silk?”
“The only boat you'll be pushing out will be your funeral barge if you don't shut up !” Tock clamped his jaws around a leg of the kitchen table and gnawed it for comfort. This was unbearable, he decided. Ever since she'd been given that awful, vulgar ring…
“Tock, dear,” said a voice. “How many times do I have to tell you? If you feel the need to chew something, there's a pile of logs in the woodshed needing to be turned into kindling—”
“He was provoked,” Sab interrupted, rising to the crocodile's defense. “Trust me, you'd be chewing table legs too, if you had to put up with her. ”
Mrs. McLachlan didn't reply. She was staring at Ff
up's engagement ring in stunned disbelief.
Maybe it was a girl thing, Sab thought, yawning pointedly. Himself, he couldn't care less about such fripperies, but there they were, the only females in the room, apart from that lippy tarantula, both of them going off into raptures about a compressed lump of prehistoric carbon….
“What an extraordinary gem,” Mrs. McLachlan managed. “Such an unusual setting…”
“Isn't it?” Ffup squeaked. “He made it himself, the clever old thing. But look what it's done to my talon. …” She held out a paw for the nanny's scrutiny, pulling off the ring and indicating the place where her scales had turned an unappealing shade of gray beneath the iron band.
“Dear, dear.” Mrs. McLachlan turned Ffup's paw over and tsk ed sympathetically while her thoughts raced off in an altogether less pleasant direction.
She didn't have much time left, she realized. Somehow she had to get that thing out of the house, away from the family, and hide it somewhere safe…. Safe? Her mind reeled. Where on earth could she hide the stone? The answer filled her lungs with ice. Nowhere on earth was safe. Nowhere in this life. Forcing herself to breathe, she looked up into Ffup's innocent golden eyes.
“Ffup, dear, I think I have some cream upstairs in my first-aid kit. I'll just go and fetch it, shall I? Tell you what, I'll see if I can find you a Band-Aid as well…. ”
“For my talon? Does that mean I can't wear my ring?” The dragon began to hyperventilate. “Ever again? Like, I'm going to break out in pustules every time I put it on?”
“Calm yourself, dear.” Mrs. McLachlan picked up the Chronostone and tried to smile. “It's not a big problem. All I have to do is put a Band-Aid inside the ring, and that way the metal won't be in direct contact with your scales. Let's give your poor talon twenty-four hours to settle down, and then we can try again, hmmmm?”
Ffup peered at her talon dubiously, wondering if it would ever return to a normal color, and if so, when. Mrs. McLachlan reached over and patted her paw gently.
“It'll be fine, dear. I'll make sure this doesn't happen again.” And forcing herself not to run, she headed upstairs with the ring clutched in one hand.
Stone of Power
o one was sure where the photographer had come from, or indeed which paper he'd claimed to work for. In fact, he'd been remarkably uncommunicative, chewing on the end of a slim cigar, which he kept relighting with a surprisingly realistic lizard lighter. Titus had wisely left him standing on the doorstep, not wishing to be responsible for filling the house with cigar smoke, and also because, as he later confessed to Pandora, the guy gave him the creeps.
“It was seriously weird, you know. Like he had some kind of force field around him. Or we did. He put one foot over the threshold, then jumped backward like he'd had an electric shock.”
“The StregaSchloss force field,” Pandora sighed. “Somehow, I don't think so.”
“Well, he stayed out there for ages ”—Titus yawned—“waiting while we all got ready. What a complete pain that was. All that fuss, just for a stupid engagement photo? The StregaBorgias and their bridal beast? Boring, boring, boring.”
“Boring and pointless,” Pandora corrected. “No groom in the photo and no engagement ring. Let's hope things improve by the time Ffup gets around to organizing wedding photos…. ”
“They could start by getting a different photographer,” Titus muttered. “One who didn't smoke …”
“…and remembered to take a bath occasionally,” Pandora added. “Talk about force fields…he didn't need one—he smelled like he'd crawled out of a swamp.”
She looked over to where Titus had opened his wardrobe and was scribbling something on a bit of paper stuck inside the door. Curious, she stood up and walked across the room to see what he was doing. “Titus? What are you up to now?”
Titus finished writing and turned around to smile at her. “I just remembered what Dad said when we'd been standing there on the doorstep for at least an hour and he suddenly caught a whiff of…that bloke.”
Pandora peered at Titus's list of phrases frequently used by parents, and burst out laughing. The last entry read, “‘Phwoarrr, Titus, was that you ?' (3, none of them me, actually).”
Not being strictly family meant that Marie Bain, Latch, and Mrs. McLachlan had been excluded from the group photograph. This was something of a blessing, since Marie Bain would have attempted to upstage the bride-to-be, Latch would have passed out with terror upon recognizing the photographer, and Mrs. McLachlan would have been unable to appear on the doorstep since, at the time, she was utterly preoccupied with holding the demon photographer at bay by means of magic. The nanny had been forced to extend her circle of enchantment somewhat to include not only Damp and Pandora, but also to encompass the entire household and the fabric of StregaSchloss in an unbreakable web of protection. She managed to hold this enchanted mesh intact until the demon's car had driven away, at which point her strength gave out and the web collapsed. Mrs. McLachlan was certain the demon would return when darkness fell, and this time she'd be too weak to prevent him taking the Chronostone. However, she vowed, that simply wasn't going to happen. Next time he came, she'd be ready. With the stone as bait, she was going to make sure the demon had no choice but to follow her into the realm of Death.
She took the stone from her pocket and looked at it, wishing with all her heart that it didn't exist. The fragile checks and balances that maintained the wobbly equilibrium between the powers of Light and Darkness could be swept away with this shining stone. The Chronostone represented true power in its most elemental, raw form. In itself, the stone was not magical at all; but when applied with magic… when it was used as the energy source to empower a magical spell…Mrs. McLachlan shivered. The stone conferred unlimited power on its owner. Unlimited and absolute. The kind of power necessary to stop the earth from turning. The kind of power that could raise the dead and turn back Time itself. An absolute power that corrupted absolutely everything it came into contact with. And if it fell into the hands of a thing from the Darkness, a creature of the Pit…
In Mrs. McLachlan's hands, the Chronostone glowed softly, shedding a warm light on her pale skin. Of course, she thought, I could use it to protect those I love. With it I could weave my protective mesh around Damp and use it—this unexpectedly beautiful gift—to make my spells invincible. Nothing could stand in my way, I wouldn't have to leave, I could stay here for ev—
She looked down, shocked. Blood welled out of a hole in the palm of her hand where an iron spike from the Sleeper's ring had penetrated her flesh. Flinging the Chronostone away from her, Mrs. McLachlan began to weep, aghast at how close she'd come to failing, devastated by her frailty and utterly horrified at what now lay ahead.
“Please, no…,” she whispered. “Do I have to do this? My heart's breaking at the very thought of hurting them…. ”
Silence beat down upon her, pounding in her ears, crushing her to the floor. She curled into a ball, dimly aware that this was pathetic behavior on her part, but also aware that she had no choice but to allow the tides of feeling to wash over and through her.
Some time later, she stood in the bathroom, splashing cold water around her eyes and trying to patch a smile back on her face.
“Right then, Flora,” she said to her reflection. “Ready or not, here I come.”
The reflection's bottom lip quivered for an instant, and its eyes were remarkably shiny, but the entire face now radiated absolute unstoppable determination.
The mirror did not lie.
Into the Dark
trega-Nonna lay asleep in her freezer, exhausted by the events inside the icehouse. The old lady's body was wrapped in tinfoil like a Hollywood version of a pre-millennial astronaut, and her head was pillowed on a catering-sized bag of frozen peas. Around her lay the bodies of hundreds of miniaturized clones, a deepfrozen reminder of the perils of ill-considered scientific experiment and, in their suspended state, offering StregaNonna little in the way of companionship.
In the old lady's lonely dreams, she returned to her sun-drenched childhood of hundreds of years ago. She was playing with her best friend on the sandy fringes of a dark wood, with the smell of lavender blown across the dunes on a warm breeze….
They'd dug a blackened marble out of the sand—a wondrous find—and once they'd cleaned the glass, they began to squabble over who should have it first. “Amelia,” her friend was saying, her voice urgent, her grip surprisingly strong for such a scrawny waif. “Amelia. This is important. Listen to me.”
She ignores this, because the marble is rolling away across the sand. A cloud swallows the sun and the smell of lavender intensifies. She looks up and sees her friend is now standing in the forest, her tiny body dappled with shadows.
“Amelia,” the girl says, walking backward into the dark, “keep hold of the thread…. ”
Amelia looks down at her hands. She is holding a silver thread between her fingers. It spans the ever-growing distance between her and her friend, her best friend, who is paying it out like a fishing line, a silver length at a time, spilling from her hands like spider silk.
“Amelia”—her voice is faint, far away now—“don't let go. It's up to you. I have to go back for a while.”
Alarmed at how swiftly her friend is being absorbed by the forest, she tries to follow, but her feet keep slipping in the sand. “Flora…wait for me,” she begs. “Don't go in there on your own. It's too dark.”