Pure Dead Trouble Read online

  “It's a salamander…,” the nanny whispered, her breath misting the shiny scales across the creature's breast.

  Its eyes remained squeezed shut, the lids so transparent it was possible to see the swiveling eyeballs beneath. It was very small indeed; a newborn, Mrs. McLachlan estimated. Tarantella emerged from the cuff of Mrs. McLachlan's blouse and regarded the little beast with revolted fascination.

  “Ugh,” she decided. “Um…d'you want to talk about this? Like, when there's probably a mad axman with several pressing literacy issues rampaging nearby, why are we wasting time gazing at a half-cremated lizard? Once more, with feeling: Please—can—we—go—now?”

  One of the creature's eyelids scrolled upward, revealing an eye the exact color of a tropical lagoon. The eye widened as its owner tried to make sense of the tarantula and the woman bending over it, and then, as if overtaken by melancholy, the eye flooded and a single tear rolled out and vanished in the ashes.

  “Leaking, too…,” Tarantella groaned. “Oh, joy.”

  The ashes stirred as the creature struggled to its feet, its stubby tail flapping determinedly as it tottered out of the fireplace and hopped straight into Mrs. McLachlan's outstretched hands.

  “D'you thmoke?” it inquired wearily. “Only if some cretin sets my legs on fire,” Tarantella snapped. “Honestly. What sort of a question is that ? Only idiots smoke…. ”

  “And demonthhh,” the salamander said firmly, both eyes wide with remembered terrors. “Demonthhh thmoke all the time. And I thould know.”

  “Have I missed something here?” Tarantella demanded peevishly. “Some vital bit of information? Like who am I speaking to? And why, pray tell, does a bonsai lizard speak with such authority on the subject of demons? In short, squirt, what are you, and why are you here?”

  The salamander seemed to shrink slightly. “My name wath Orynx,” it whispered.

  There was a pause, during which both Tarantella and Mrs. McLachlan tactfully ignored the hiccupy sobs coming from the sad little salamander. Pulling itself together with an effort, it continued, “But my latht owner jutht called me ‘Lighter,' ath in, ‘Where'th that blathted lighter gone now?' or, ‘Anyone theen my thigarth and lighter?' or even, ‘Tell me where the Chronothtone ith, or I'll thet fire to you with thith here lighter.' ”

  Mrs. McLachlan flinched. “Orynx,” she said softly, “who was your owner threatening to set fire to?”

  Orynx blinked. “The horth. The weird horth with a man'th body.”

  Oblivious to the nanny's gasp at what she assumed was Alpha's fate, the salamander added happily, “The one that got away.”

  The Witness in the Thorns

  rs. McLachlan was absent from the breakfast table the following morning, and thus Titus found himself alone in the kitchen. Seizing this as an ideal opportunity to devour the heavily rationed sugar-coated breakfast cereals and avoid the healthier cardboard-and-bran alternatives, Titus was applying himself to a fifth helping of Honey Nut Miserablios when first Pandora, then Luciano arrived in search of sustenance. Looking up from his brimming bowl, Titus gaped at his sister. What on earth was that thing she was wearing? And her mouth … she looked as if someone had punched her—her lips were all bruised. About to demand an explanation, Titus was beaten to it by his father.

  “Pandora?” Luciano had turned his back on his daughter and was wrestling with a particularly ancient espresso-maker, trying to force its rusty top to part company with its equally distressed base.

  “Dad?” Pandora smiled, walking past Titus and causing him to instantly lose his appetite as a cloud of perfume so intense he could almost chew it enveloped him, his breakfast, and everything within a three-meter radius of where his sister stood.

  “Where did you get that lipstick?” Luciano demanded through clenched teeth.

  “What lipstick?” Pandora's eyes widened in feigned innocence.

  “This lipstick,” Tarantella muttered from her perch on the cupboard. The tarantula waved a half empty tube of “Blood Lust” as evidence. “My lipstick, you thieving heathen.”

  Caught between her father and her beloved tarantula, Pandora blushed, unable to meet Luciano's gaze as he turned to stare at her.

  “And your eyes,” he moaned. “Dear God. What have you done ? They're purple, for heaven's sake…. ”

  Pandora's smile faltered. Blast, she thought. I'd hoped you wouldn't notice. With a toss of her head that released a fresh wave of perfume across the kitchen, Pandora sat down opposite Titus and, grabbing a bowl, helped herself to some virtuous muesli, then glared across the table at her gaping sibling.

  “Don't you start,” she warned, adjusting her off-the- shoulder T-shirt, which was threatening to expose her surreptitiously enhanced chest.

  She's wearing a bra, Titus thought, aghast. But whatever for ? This thought died unspoken as Luciano launched into orbit.

  “Go! Now! Wash that muck off your face before anyone else catches sight of you looking like that!” he yelled, twisting the coffeepot so viciously that it yielded, its top parting company with the base, old coffee grounds spilling down his shirt and onto the floor.

  “Looking like what ?” Pandora said indistinctly through a mouthful of muesli, adding, “What is your problem, Dad?”

  Titus gasped. Had Pandora lost the will to live? Everyone at StregaSchloss knew that when Luciano began to smolder it was vital not to inflame him still further…. Rolling his eyes, Titus concentrated on his breakfast.

  “YOU'RE ONLY TEN YEARS OLD!” Luciano howled. “Eleven next week, actually—” Pandora began. “You're a child, not a grown-up. Children don't wear lipstick and paint their eyes. Not my children, anyway. Go on. Now. Do As You Are Told. And cover yourself up. This is Scotland, for heaven's sake, not some beach in Brazil.”

  “—so, since it's my birthday next week,” Pandora continued serenely, “I'd like to have my ears pierced and then you can all buy me earrings as my present.”

  There was a shriek and a crash followed by stunned silence as the two halves of the coffeepot discovered the joys of being airborne. Zander, who had been trying unsuccessfully to use his cell phone in the privacy of the kitchen garden, ducked just in time to avoid becoming the unintended victim of one of Luciano's rages. The pot sailed on past, beheaded several stately foxgloves, and finally plunged into the steaming heart of the compost pile.

  “I take it that now would not be a good time to ask if there's any chance of a cup of coffee?” Zander edged round the kitchen door and peered nervously at his employer and the children, all of whom were too embarrassed to reply. Luciano excused himself and squeezed past Zander to retrieve the coffeepot from outside.

  “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” Zander continued, “only, I'm a bit lost. I wonder, could one of you possibly give me a quick tour of the house? You see, I don't know where anything is. I've already found a crocodile asleep in the upstairs bathroom; I came down here to make some toast and nearly had my head bitten off by a very irritable Frenchwoman; there's a confused old lady dozing on the floor of the wine cellar; and to top it all off, I went for an early morning swim down by the jetty and, d'you know, I could have sworn I saw the Loch Ne—”

  “Let me show you around,” Pandora interrupted, leaping to her feet and propelling another tide of perfume around the kitchen. Titus coughed pointedly.

  “Have you met the rats?” she inquired; then, unable to resist, she added, “I mean, apart from that one across the table, choking as it stuffs its face, or the big grumpy one outside digging through the compost heap…. ”

  Zander, catching on at last, burst out laughing. “Good lord—for a minute there I thought you were serious. Rats? Yeurrrrrgh. Horrible creatures…”

  Whoops, Titus thought, wrong answer. You just blew it, pal. Pandora loves her rats. Holding his breath, he waited for his sister to erupt, turn the hapless Zander into a heap of smoldering ashes, and storm out of the kitchen—

  “Aren't they foul?” Pandora agreed, ignoring Titus's dumbfou
nded expression. “I've never understood why some people keep them as pets…. Titus, do stop making that dreadful face. Excuse my alien brother, Zander; he's just having a little difficulty adjusting to life here on planet Earth.”

  “What a total hypocrite,” Titus muttered to himself, stomping along the rutted track leading from StregaSchloss to Auchenlochtermuchty. Turning around, he looked back to where the house sat outlined against the brightness of Lochnagargoyle, its honey-colored stone glowing in the sunshine, the loch a perfect cobalt blue. From this distance he could just about make out the tiny figures of Pandora and Zander, the smaller one waving its arms, the larger one less animated but walking so close to his sister that at times it was hard to tell them apart.

  Waving his arms theatrically and adopting a falsetto squeak, Titus launched into a parody of the conversation he imagined was taking place between the distant figures.

  “… and here's the meadow, Zander, where I pick the flowers for my hair…. ”

  Titus's voice dropped an octave in imitation of Zander: “Eurghhhh. Flowers. Can't stand them. Surely you don't like flowers, do you, Pandora?”

  “Gosh, no. Only kidding, Zander dwahling…. I'd never have them anywhere near me. The only good flower's a dead flower—that's my opinion. Let's go stamp on some flowerbeds, shall we?”

  The sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted Titus's attempts at satire. Stepping onto the shoulder of the road and avoiding the embrace of a particularly vicious bramble branch, he realized too late that the ground under his feet consisted of only a thin veneer of turf between him and a vast underground rabbit warren of unguessable dimensions, its tunnels probably stretching between where he'd been standing and the center of the earth. As the ground collapsed beneath his feet, he fell backward into the bramble thicket with a dismayed howl.

  Thorns punctured Titus's exposed arms and legs, snagged his T-shirt, and pinned him in place like a museum specimen. So concerned was he with extricating himself from the clutch of the brambles that he briefly forgot what had caused him to hurl himself into the bushes in the first place. A blast from a horn reminded him. Rumbling down the track toward him was a huge articulated truck. Stones sprayed from under its tires as it slowed, brakes hissing as they brought the vehicle to a halt in front of where Titus stood coughing in the dust by the roadside.

  The driver's window slid open and a man leant out, shouting to make himself audible above the din coming from the rear of the truck. Titus frowned, cupping his hands around his ears as he walked closer to the truck's cab.

  “Sorry?” he yelled. “I can't hear you, you'll have to shout louder.”

  The driver tried again, but it was no use. The cacophony of squeaks coming from the tarpaulin-covered rear of the vehicle was now deafening. As Titus stepped still closer, his nostrils were assaulted by such an overpowering reek of stale urine that he could hardly breathe. Above him, the cab door opened and the driver grabbed a map from the dashboard before jumping down onto the track.

  “Can't stop them making that racket,” he yelled, adding, “Not since the refrigeration unit broke down. Sorry about the smell…. ”

  Titus smiled uncertainly. Sweat was running down the driver's face, and he fanned himself with his map before unfolding it for Titus's inspection.

  “I'm looking for a place called SapienTech. Supposed to be somewhere outside Auchenlochtermuchty. You got any ideas, pal?”

  “You need to turn around!” Titus yelled. “You're going the wrong way. Turn around, hang a right at the main road, and keep going till you reach the village. …” His voice trailed off as he spotted something moving in the deep shade beneath the truck. A small white shape scuttled into the grass on the side of the narrow road, followed by another…and another.

  The driver was oblivious to Titus's distracted state. “Turn around?” he roared. “Are you kidding? How am I supposed to turn my truck around without ending up in the ditch?”

  More white shapes were flooding out from under the chassis, some bolting for freedom, others lying where they'd fallen, ignored by their fellow escapees. Muttering balefully, the driver climbed back into his cab, affording Titus a view of the logo printed on the back of his sweat-stained overalls. Titus automatically logged it into his memory, along with SapienTech, whatever that might be. The truck shuddered, a beeping sound emerged from its rear, and, ignoring Titus's advice, the driver began to reverse along the road, back the way he had come. Titus watched until the truck disappeared behind a row of oaks, the rumble of its engine fading into silence as it headed for Auchenlochtermuchty.

  Then, and only then, did he bend down to examine the little bodies lying where they had fallen in the dust. Rodents had never really been his thing; Pandora's love affair with rodentkind had provided enough pink-eyed squeaky things to last Titus an entire lifetime, but the sight of all those dead white mice filled Titus with a strange mix of pity and horror. Why white mice? And why so many? The rear of the truck must have held thousands of the poor creatures. What did SapienTech do that required the delivery of a truckload of white mice? Looking around for a suitable implement, Titus sighed deeply. Why, he wondered, when I don't even like mice, do I feel so obliged to do the decent thing? Gently lifting the corpses into the shoulder of the road, Titus wearily began to dig a mass grave with his bare hands.

  A Spell of Good Weather

  ignora Strega-Borgia dragged a mildewed picnic hamper through the kitchen door and hauled it onto the table, narrowly missing overturning Luciano's coffee cup as she did so.

  “Darling, look what I've found,” she said, blowing a cloud of dust off her discovery. “It was tucked away in a corner of the map room. It's the old picnic basket from the hotair balloon. What a find. Just think, it must be hundreds of years old…. ”

  Luciano looked up from his newspaper and winced. “It's an antique, Baci. It's probably riddled with antique bacteria, or perhaps they're fossilized by now.”

  Ignoring Luciano's health warning, Baci undid the leather buckles securing the hamper lid and muttered to herself as she began to pack a picnic for consumption down on the shore of Lochnagargoyle.

  “Proper linen napkins, I think. And real wineglasses, since you object to drinking out of plastic cups, don't you, darling?”

  Luciano concentrated on the newspaper, studiously avoiding being roped into Baci's plans for lunch. Undaunted by her husband's lack of reply, Baci opened the fridge door and continued determinedly, “Cold roast chicken, hummus, lettuce, tomatoes; I'll make a potato salad, the children can pick some strawberries—maybe Mrs. McLachlan could be persuaded to make a cake…. ”

  Luciano stood up and crossed the kitchen to turn on the lights above the table. “Maybe soup would be more appropriate,” he muttered, returning to his paper.

  “Soup?” Baci staggered from the fridge to the table, her arms laden with picnic ingredients. “Oh, for heaven's sake …”

  Outside, the blue skies had turned dark gray. Moreover, a howling gale was whipping around the kitchen garden, tossing the bay tree back and forth as if trying to remove all its leaves by force. Somewhere deep in StregaSchloss, a door slammed.

  “And don't forget to pack the thermal underwear,” Luciano added as raindrops peppered the windows. “Plus the umbrellas, raincoats, and woolly hats…”

  “Count me out,” Tarantella said from her teapot on the cupboard. “I don't do rain, as a rule.”

  “Right,” Baci said through clenched teeth. “This time, it's personal. Something has to be done about this weather. I refuse to spend the remaining weeks of summer up to my eyes in mud and puddles, trying to squeeze in picnics between downpours.” Dropping the lid of the hamper, she strode out of the kitchen and along the corridor, grabbing a golf umbrella from the hall stand before slamming out through the front door.

  “Let me carry that.” Tock vaulted out of the moat and gallantly waddled to his mistress's assistance, seizing the handle between his teeth and unfurling the umbrella with one expert thrust.

/>   Peering out at the rain from the ground-floor window of the laundry room, Damp had been watching Mrs. McLachlan pull crumpled sheets out of a basket prior to flattening them with her hot, hot, burrrny—a procedure which Damp found to be singularly lacking in entertainment value. Turning to the window and pressing her nose to the streaming glass, Damp was mystified to see her mother crossing the meadow, followed at a distance by Tock, who appeared to be gnawing an umbrella which had turned itself inside out.

  “Mama all wet,” the little girl observed, watching as Signora Strega-Borgia waved a Disposawand around her head, her mouth opening and shutting, but her words lost in the steady babble of the falling rain.

  “Poor Mama.” Damp's breath misted the windowpane as a sudden gust of wind snatched the umbrella from Tock's jaws and bowled it across the meadow toward the loch, where it disappeared from sight.

  “Damp get 'nother one,” the little girl informed Mrs. McLachlan as she slid down from the window seat and headed off to her mother's rescue.

  Absorbed in her thoughts of the previous night's events in the ruined library, Mrs. McLachlan failed to notice as Damp left the room. The nanny stood utterly still, oblivious to everything around her as she considered the fate of Alpha, the centaur librarian, now missing but just possibly still alive. Some months previously, Mrs. McLachlan had accidentally stumbled upon the Chronostone at StregaSchloss, and putting two and two together, had arrived at a reasonably accurate three and eleven-twelfths. She didn't know exactly how the stone had arrived in their midst, or even why, but when a demonically inclined houseguest of Baci's had made it exceedingly plain that she would destroy the Strega-Borgias to get her hands on the Chronostone, Mrs. McLachlan had been forced to intervene. Only seeking to protect those she loved at StregaSchloss, her main concern had been to remove the stone from the house to a place of greater safety. Lodging the Chronostone in the library for safekeeping had seemed like a good idea…at the time.