by Nic Saint
So much for Gran thinking she deceived Beatrix all these years.
“A witch?” I asked, prevaricating.
“Don’t deny it,” Beatrix pleaded. “I’ve known for years. She can do things that no one else can. The way she kept those stores running, and the flowers always fresh… Flor et Bloom never floundered. Even in the face of the most devastating economic downturns her stores always managed to turn a profit. No regular person can do those things. She has powers, I just know she has. So when Valerie was starting to display signs of serious trouble, I decided there was only one person who could save her and that was Cassie.”
“I thought you wanted us to save her,” said Estrella, distraught.
“That was just an excuse,” Beatrix admitted. “I couldn’t very well tell Cassie I thought she was a witch, and when she handed me your business card…”
“You did the right thing,” Edelie interrupted her. “But why didn’t you tell us what you’d done? You could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
“I—I couldn’t. I was too ashamed.”
And afraid this would cost her clients when the truth became known. People don’t like their fortune tellers to inflict them with a ghoul and make them try to kill other people and themselves. It’s not an attractive proposition.
“So Rupert was behind all this,” said Petunia now.
Beatrix nodded, still dabbing at her eyes. “He told me it was all for the best, but when I heard about your suicide I knew I’d been played for a fool.”
“Well, we all were,” said Petunia. “And me most of all.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “Are you sure you can’t get that ghoul out of Valerie?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t even know how I managed to get it inside her in the first place. I should never have dabbled in dark magic!”
“No, you shouldn’t, Beatrix,” a voice sounded from the door. Gran had walked in and was regarding her friend and former colleague sternly.
“Oh, Cassie,” said Beatrix pleadingly. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“And you still don’t,” she said, wagging a reproachful finger. “You saddled poor Valerie up with that ghoul and now she’s stuck with it.”
“Gran, you have to help her,” I pleaded. “Nobody else can.”
She regarded us all grimly for a moment.
“Or I could give it a try,” Skip said. He was staring at his fingers. “Maybe there’s some magic in me, after all.” He waved his hands. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. How hard can it be? Anything to save that poor Valerie.”
We all cried, “Nooo!” and Skip looked properly offended.
“I’ll do it,” Gran finally said. “But you have to make things right with Sir Rupert Lohenstein. That’s the least you can do,” she told us warningly before handing Sofia to Edelie and sweeping from the room in a huff.
We heard her stomping up the stairs, and then opening Valerie’s door. The next moment, it was as if all hell broke loose. Dust wafted from the ceiling as a loud crash sounded, and the chandelier swung dangerously, as if on the verge of smashing down. Then there was a loud lament, a terrible screech as if someone was being butchered in the most horrible way, and Gran’s thunderous voice as she yelled something that sounded like Wendigolio!
There was more stomping, more screeching, and then suddenly, silence returned. Then, all of a sudden, something came fizzing through the room, like a firecracker on New Year’s Eve, making a terrible racket, and then fizzed out through the window and was gone. It was obviously the ghoul.
“I think it’s done,” said Edelie with an anxious look at the ceiling.
“See?” asked Skip placidly. “Easy peasy.”
“Where is your ghoul, actually?” Estrella asked Petunia.
“Gone,” said Beatrix softly. “They don’t like to dwell in dead bodies.”
“Well, nobody likes to dwell in dead bodies,” I said. Which probably wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to elaborate on the gruesome theme at this moment, not when we were in the company of a little baby, now sleeping comfortably in Edelie’s arms.
“So how do we go about this, people?” asked Estrella. “How do we get back at Rupert for all the terrible, terrible things he did?”
“Let’s start by getting my new songs back,” Petunia suggested.
“What about the rights to your old songs?” Estrella asked. “They must be worth a fortune.”
“Less than what you might think,” said Petunia ruefully. “Beatrix was right. In these days of streaming and downloading, there isn’t a lot of money in music anymore. It’s all in the merchandising and the concerts. But if we got those songs back, and somehow convinced The Blackguards to go on the road again, with a new lead singer, we could still make a lot of money. Just look at Queen and Adam Lambert. Valerie could organize the whole thing.”
“It’s still not fair that Rupert got his hands on your millions—millions that belong to Valerie and Sofia,” said Edelie, gently rocking the baby girl.
“First things first,” I said. “We have to find a way to get our hands on that vault. That’s where we’ll start. As far as the rest is concerned…” I thought about Spear. If he would continue to represent Valerie, only this time in a different capacity, he might be able to wrest the inheritance away from Rupert. But first we had to get that vault back. I was pretty sure that Rupert would simply disappear with Petunia’s new music, even if Spear managed to freeze the man’s accounts and recuperate some of the money he’d stolen.
“Can’t you curse Rupert?” Skip asked Beatrix. “It only seems fair.”
But the fortune teller displayed a feeble smile. “Oh, no. No more cursing for me. I’m done with all of that stuff.”
The door now swung open, and Valerie walked in. She still looked a little dazed, but it was obvious from the look in her eyes that the ghoul had left her body and that the real Valerie Gabby was back.
Edelie immediately handed her Sofia, and when she took her in her arms, tears rolled down her cheeks, but they were tears of happiness and relief.
“Valerie,” Petunia said hoarsely, and Valerie looked up in surprise.
When she saw the ghost of her mother, she gasped. “Mom!”
Petunia uttered a low cry. “Oh, my darling girl,” she muttered, and streaked over, enveloping both her daughter and her granddaughter in a wispy embrace.
And then we were all crying. And as I watched the tearful reunion of Petunia and Valerie, I wondered how the hell we were going to get that vault back from Rupert. But then I remembered that we were blessed with witchy fingers. And when I looked up and saw Gran watching me with a saccharine smile on her face, I knew that somehow we would be able to pull this off.
Somehow we were going to give Valerie and Sofia their inheritance back.
Chapter 29
It was a week later, and we were still trying to figure out what to do about Rupert and the vault. We might be blessed with the genes of our burglar dad and our witch mother, but that didn’t mean we were actually any good at either witchcraft or thievery. Those talents might be lurking deep within our DNA, but obviously they were so well hidden they might never be recovered.
Valerie had found a nice little place to live, and Alex had calmed down somewhat. He’d even dropped all his attempts to get custody of Sofia after meeting Valerie. It was obvious there were a lot of unresolved issues, but at least they were on speaking terms again, which was a great improvement.
What made things slightly harder than they needed to be was that Petunia had moved in with her daughter. Now that she was a ghost she was loving her new life. She could come and go as she pleased, and nobody bothered her. Whether Alex would like the presence of his dead mother-in-law remained to be seen, but so far she was leaving the guy in peace.
The only thing that remained was for us to get that vault back so that Valerie could get her hands on at least a big chunk of her inheritance. Rupert had already been busy, and ha
d contacted the record company to offer them the new music. He’d even gotten in touch with The Blackguards, trying to entice them to go on tour again, with a new lead singer this time: Corina Hooke. Corina seemed eager, but Dot and Yesenia had their reservations.
Spear had agreed to represent Valerie, though she had no idea how to pay his fee. It was hard to imagine he’d drop his usual hourly rate just for her. He had told her it would be a tough slog, as Rupert had the law on his side.
We were seated at the kitchen table for yet another attempt to meet on the issue of getting Valerie her rights back, and Petunia’s music, but we were quickly running out of ideas, as we had all the previous times.
“We could simply spirit ourselves over to Aruba and just, you know, spirit ourselves back to Safflower House with that vault,” Estrella suggested.
It was an idea she’d offered several times already, and one that Skip, too, favored. Only problem was, we had no idea how to do that. Last time we’d tried to move an object we’d ended up almost demolishing the White House. So we were understandably reluctant to try again. We just might send the entire vault to the moon or something, or drop it in the ocean or inside an active volcano, and where would that leave us then? Nowhere.
No, we had to do this the old-fashioned way: go over to Aruba by plane and rob that vault by simply breaking into Sir Rupert’s newly built villa.
The good thing was that Petunia could explain to us where the villa was located, and where the vault was likely to be. The bad part was that we had no idea how to crack a safe. We weren’t exactly professional safecrackers.
“Why don’t we just… channel our father’s skills?” Estrella suggested. She was the most optimistic one of us, but in this instance I was inclined to follow her lead. Maybe she was right. Perhaps when we were sitting in front of that safe, suddenly, magically, our fingers would flicker over the dial and know exactly what they were supposed to do. Like some kind of body memory. Our dad was a master burglar, after all, so maybe we’d gotten some of that?
“I don’t think you should do it,” someone now struck the discordant note. When we looked down the table, we saw that Skip had voiced it. He was nursing a cup and was staring down at it as if trying to read the tea leaves.
“Why not?” asked Estrella, who didn’t like to see her ideas repudiated.
“Because you’re refusing to take me along,” he said with a slight pout.
That was true enough. We didn’t want Skip tagging along on this mission. He didn’t possess our specific skill set, and could get us into all kinds of trouble. He was a baker, a profession that hadn’t prepared him for a life of crime. We didn’t want to see him languish in an Arubian prison cell.
“I think you should protect the home front, Skip,” said Edelie.
“What’s the point for me to be part of the team if I can’t go on missions?”
“The point is that somebody has to stay here and, um, do stuff,” I said.
“What stuff?” he lamented. “There’s nothing for me to do here.” He gestured at the garden. “I’m not even allowed to work in the garden.”
Skip had tried to help out Gran a few times, and it had proven a genuine disaster. Beatrix had told us that Gran magically knew how to make her flowers bloom in all seasons. Well, Skip had the opposite skill: he could destroy flowers in all seasons. The man had a black thumb, the kiss of death to plants. So now Gran had forbidden him to ever touch her plants again.
And since there wasn’t all that much for him to do—Petunia and Valerie were still our only clients—he’d resorted to baking up a storm, and even that had backfired when he’d almost burned down the kitchen. Now we knew why Skip’s family wasn’t too upset he’d left the family business: the guy couldn’t bake if his life depended on it.
“I think we should just do this,” said Estrella. “We can’t just keep postponing. Petunia is starting to wonder if she made the right decision when she hired Flummox, Inc, and I don’t blame her. As far as results are concerned, we’re definitely underdelivering.”
Estrella had read a book on marketing, which stressed that a good business underpromises and overdelivers. So far we’d done the exact opposite: we’d overpromised and underdelivered. Not a good thing.
“You know what?” said Gran as she walked into the kitchen from the garden, her arms full of roses. “I’m sick and tired of you three hanging around the house all day and doing exactly nothing. Why don’t I give you a little hand?” And then she waved her hands just so, and I thought, Uh-oh!
The next thing I knew, I felt something soft and squishy beneath my hands, and the sun burning on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I discovered that Gran had spirited us away to some sandy beach, a sea of azure stretching out in front of us, and the sun burning brightly overhead.
“Oh, God,” exclaimed Edelie. “We’re in Aruba!”
Chapter 30
Not far from where we were sitting, still trying to get our bearings, a couple of tourists were staring at us, which was hardly surprising. We weren’t exactly dressed for the occasion. Skip was still holding his cup in his hand, and Edelie, for one, was dressed completely in black, as usual: frayed black jeans, black sweater, and black combat boots. I was in my usual jeans and shirt, and only Estrella looked more appropriate in her tank top, pink skirt and loafers.
“This is so cool!” Skip exclaimed. Even though we’d told him he couldn’t come, Gran had obviously decided differently. She probably didn’t want him hanging around the house while we were gone, potentially damaging her precious garden. Or her precious kitchen.
I got to my feet with a groan, but not before removing my shoes and socks and curling my toes into the warm golden sand.
“This is actually pretty cool,” Estrella agreed with Skip as she shielded her eyes and looked first at the gently lapping waves of the Caribbean, where plenty of people were cavorting in the surf, and then inland, at the row of hotels that were tastefully erected and provided leisure for the tourists.
Edie pointed to the left of the cluster of hotels. “Rupert’s villa is that way,” she said. She was the one who’d busied herself studying a map of the island. I could see she was already suffering from the heat, beads of sweat appearing on her brow, and what she said next confirmed this. “If I don’t get out of this sun I’m going to melt,” she grumbled. I chuckled loudly at this.
“What’s so funny?” she asked morosely.
“This!” I exclaimed, gesturing around. “We sit around all week making plans, and Gran, with a simple flick of her fingers, solves everything.”
“We should learn from her,” said Estrella sagely. “We should learn to trust our powers instead of second-guessing ourselves all the time.”
This from a woman who made our history teacher disappear and reappear standing in the center of the Roman Colosseum, just because he told us he’d always wanted to be a Roman and live in Roman times. It had taken a lot of trouble to get him back from Italy, as Estrella had no idea how to accomplish that. Lucky for him she’d only moved him geographically and not through time.
“Well, I like it,” said Skip, who’d already skipped out of his jeans and sweater and was now walking around in his boxers, which were, coincidentally no doubt, depicting scenes from Finding Nemo.
He was grinning with delight, as he’d gotten his wish: he’d managed to join us on our latest mission. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. He could be our lookout while we broke into Rupert’s villa and robbed the vault.
“We have to make sure Rupert doesn’t see us,” said Edelie, wiping sweat from her upper lip. “If he does, he’ll know we’re not here to pay him a visit.”
“No, I don’t think he’d be happy to see us,” I agreed. Though I wanted to see him, actually. I wanted to ask him why he’d done it, even though I already knew, of course. Greed, pure and simple.
“I think we should wait until nightfall,” said Skip, and it was sound advice. Not only would we function better when it was cooler, but
breaking into people’s homes is always best accomplished when they’re asleep.
“Or we could do it now,” said Estrella, pointing a finger at a lone figure on the terrace of a nearby hotel.
We looked in the direction she indicated, and saw that the lone figure was Rupert, rocking the tourist garb with a very loud Hawaiian shirt and boxers.
I didn’t think he’d seen us, so we quickly moved along, making sure to blend in with the other beachgoers. Rather large men were sizzling like steaks on the grill, kids were building sand castles, and women were rubbing in the sunscreen by the gallon while reading the latest potboiler. Rupert, meanwhile, was sipping a cocktail, looking like a million bucks.
“He seems to be having the time of his life,” Skip intimated.
“Yes, he does,” I agreed. Just seeing the man sitting there, not a care in the world, while Petunia was now a ghost and Valerie had to scrape by and couldn’t even afford to pay Spear Boodle’s fee if he presented her with one, was galling. The whole thing irked me so much I just wanted to go over there and confront the man. And to think I found him such a great guy when we first met, and had taken such a liking to him. But then he’d fooled us all.
“Let’s do this now, you guys,” said Estrella. “It looks like he’s going to be there a while. We can be in and out before he even knows we’re here.”
It was a great idea. I didn’t want to spend more time here than necessary. The longer we were out here, the more likely it was that this whole setup would lead to disaster. In and out quickly sounded like just the ticket to me.
Edelie led us along the beach, and soon we were off the public area and entering a private stretch of beach that led us behind Rupert’s villa. And when we caught sight of the structure, I could understand why Petunia was so proud of her little nest: it wasn’t a little nest at all but a large structure with a lot of glass, overlooking the Caribbean and the beach. I could also see a private garden with palm trees providing shade, and a big pool area.