Pure Dead Frozen (23 page)

The Deepest Fear

A
fraid to allow themselves to fall asleep, Baci and Luciano spent the whole of that terrible night awake, staring into the fire, as if the answers they sought lay with the silent tongues of flame flickering in the hearth. In its basket near the fireplace, the changeling slept soundly, its breath as mechanical as the ticking clock marking the hours on the mantelpiece. First Minty and then Ludo fell asleep in the fire's warm glow, too tired to keep vigil with the grieving Strega-Borgias. As the first gray light appeared in the sky, Baci and Luciano stood, stretched, and quietly left the room, tiptoeing downstairs to shroud themselves in coats and scarves before slipping outside into the cold dawn.

As they crossed the frosted meadow, Baci's hand sought Luciano's, and hot tears began to spill down her face. Still, they did not speak, neither of them wishing to frame the terrible words to confirm all that they had lost. Their breath hung in white clouds in front of their mouths as they picked their way down the bramble-lined path to the jetty. Everywhere lay beauty: diamonds of frost studding the carpet of autumn leaves; frozen tears of rainwater beading the bare twigs of the oaks; and all around, the air so cold and sweet that each inhalation brought a reminder that they were still very much alive.

Luciano gritted his teeth, wishing he were surrounded by a landscape that mirrored his feelings—a bleak, godforsaken desert devoid of life and hope, not this exquisite vista that in happier times they had regarded as their very own Christmas card. Thoughts of Christmas caused Luciano to nearly pass out with loss—the unutterable horror of all those empty, childless days and years stretching out ahead made him wish he were dead alongside Titus, Pandora, Damp, and Little No-Name. He turned then, turned to face his wife, wondering if to fall prey to despair was really such a terrible thing, wondering if they might find a way to escape the awful heartache together. They could simply walk out onto the frozen loch, step by step, hand in hand, hoping that way to be reunited with their beloved children.

Titus, Pandora, Damp, and Little No-Name.

Baci's hand in his tightened as the first tentative flakes of snow began to fall from the sky.

Titus, Pandora, Damp, and Little No-Name—

Luciano's feet stepped in time to the litany of their names. Now he and Baci were out on the jetty, their boots making hollow echoes across the ice imprisoning the loch shore in its frozen grasp.

Titus, Pandora, Damp, and Little No-Name—

And now they stood poised at the end of the jetty with nowhere to go but back to the unbearable pain of the days ahead or…

A flock of birds flew toward the shore, the beat of their laboring wings audible across the silent loch.

Seven white swans, Luciano thought, still alert to all the beauty of the world he was considering leaving.

Seven swans. Like the story, Baci thought, her eyes stinging with tears as she recalled winter evenings spent reading to all three children just as she knew in her heart she would never read the same stories ever again.

Seven swans fluttering down to land on the unfrozen water in the middle of the loch, their feet paddling frantically beneath them, voices raised in wonder at the miracle of their flight.

“Anyone got any ideas what swans eat? I'm
ravenous
.”

“Oh, Latch, my dearest, if only you could have seen the look on your
face
…”

“That was soooo seriously cool. I've
always
wanted wings. However, my legs are totally freezing—d'you think I'd look stupid wearing tights?”

“These ridiculous birds could undoubtedly use more legs…. How you lot ever manage with only two is quite beyond my understanding—”

“You know, Flora, I could get used to this flying business. And feathers? Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I'd enjoy having a wee feathery undercarriage….”

“Wheeee
eeee,
lookit me. Mumma, look. LOOK!”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…”

         

Titus, Pandora, Damp, and Little No-Name.

         

Luciano was running now, his voice echoing across the ice as he called his children home, reeling them ashore on the thread of their names.

As snow falls like feathers from the sky, the giant birds are surrounding him in a cloud of swirling white, their wide wings beating, beating, beating like a glad heart.

Name That Baby

L
uciano stood in front of his mirror, knotting a sky-blue silk tie and trying to ignore the fact that, behind him, Baci was teetering on the brink of a full-blown wardrobe crisis.

“I'm still so
fat,
” she howled, heaving at the zipper on her velvet skirt and turning pink with the effort. “Hate my bum. HUGE. Back end of a tractor trailer. God.
Why
aren't I back to normal? Ugh. LOOK, Luciano, who's that wibbly blob in the mirror? Please, tell me that's not meeeeee—”

And just before she dissolved into tears for the fourth time in as many minutes, Luciano wrapped her in his arms.

“Cara mia,”
he breathed into her hair, “hush. It was only one week ago that you carried our Little No-Name under your own skin—you're still a brand-new
mama,
not a supermodel, for heaven's—”

There was a warning shriek from the bedroom, and both Luciano and Baci froze.

Looking somewhat haunted, Luciano whispered, “You just
fed
him. Surely he's not due another feed for hours?”

“Are you sure that's our baby?” Baci hissed, frantically fastening buttons and dragging a brush through her hair. The warning shriek became an extended peal of outrage, and Luciano's shoulders slumped.

“No. It's the other baby,” he groaned, aware that if the star of the day, Little No-Name-about-to-be-named, was still sleeping, then it meant that someone, probably him, would have to deal with the changeling instead.

“Darling”—Baci paused in mid-brush—“we really have to name them
both
today. We can't go on calling them Little No-Name and the Other Baby.”

Luciano rolled his eyes at his reflection, then headed for the bedroom. Baby Borgia lay sleeping soundly in the ancestral cradle; wailing his head off in his basket was the changeling. Gritting his teeth, Luciano bent down and plucked the sobbing goblin out from its tangled shawl. Immediately, the wailing stopped, replaced by an ominous silence. From bitter experience, Luciano calculated that he had approximately two minutes to feed the changeling with an acceptable Baci substitute before it sank its needle teeth into the portion of Luciano's anatomy nearest to its gaping mouth. Holding it at arm's length, Luciano set off for the kitchen as fast as he dared.

Skidding round the balustrade at the bottom of the stairs leading into the great hall, Luciano nearly crashed into Pandora, who had risen up out of the shadows like a wraith.

“Waaargh.
Dad
. Jeez, you nearly flattened me.”

Despite the changeling hissing in his arms like a burning fuse, Luciano paused and stared. What on
earth
was she wearing? he wondered, gazing at his eldest daughter in dismay. Moths appeared to be hatching out of Pandora's—dress? coat? bathrobe? What
was
that thing?—as he watched. And black? Deepest funereal black, on today of all days.
And
eyeliner, dammit. He'd told her about makeup ages ago. Not just told her:
forbidden
her to wear it.

“
Pandora
. For
Pete's
—” Before he could complete this sentence, thus ensuring that she spent the rest of this special day in a mood every bit as black as her clothing, he was interrupted by the changeling, who demonstrated what happened when its fuse ran out. Clamping its teeth round his index finger, it leered up at him.

“AAAOWWWW—you little
monster
.” He'd been about to say something far, far worse, but his daughter's presence made Luciano curb his tongue even as the changeling's teeth ground against his knuckle.

“Stop it, you disgusting little
creep,
” Pandora gasped, reaching out and squeezing the changeling's nostrils shut. Unable to breathe, it let go of Luciano's finger and screamed with thwarted rage.

Luciano placed it on the floor in front of him and took several steps backward, as if afraid that the infant might explode. Pandora remained within range, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Tell me that thing isn't being named along with our baby?”

Luciano sighed. “Your mother—she has a soft heart. You know she'd feel really bad if we left it…that…the creature out.”

“Dad. That's
insane
. It's not like it's a member of the family. It's a goblin, for heaven's sake. It's like something out of a book. What're you going to call it, anyway? Rumpelstiltskin?”

At this, there was a demonic shriek from the changeling as it literally turned purple with rage. It began to batter its heels and fists on the floor with such hell-bent ferocity that the very walls of StregaSchloss seemed to tremble around it. To Luciano's dismay, a huge crack appeared, zigzagging its way across the stone floor of the great hall. It gaped wider and wider until the changeling tipped over the edge, scrabbled frantically in an attempt to pull itself back out, and then, with a ghastly howl…was gone.

Luciano blinked. Had he really just seen that? Even as he watched, the crack began to shrink, emitting a faraway clashing, grinding sound—the noise made by tectonic plates moving far below the surface of the Earth. Just before the floor became whole again, two items of infant apparel were vomited back out of the crack, both somewhat charred: one diaper, hardly used, followed by one crumpled pair of sleepers, both utterly reeking of sulfur.

“Huh?” Luciano took a deep breath. So I married a student witch, he reminded himself. I should have expected no less. He peered at his daughter, dimly aware that he'd been about to say something deeply tedious and wrinkly-orientated about her eye shadow or her moth-eaten—what
was
that thing she was wearing?—costume. Then he pulled himself together. A scant week ago, he'd been on the verge of throwing himself into the loch because he'd lost his children. Now here they were, safe, sound, hale, hearty—and what was he doing? Nagging them about something as trivial as eye makeup?

Too right.

“Pan
dora
. Wash that muck off your face before the guests arrive—”

         

Ludo's Land Rover rattled across the rose quartz drive and then blithely plowed straight on to smack into an ornamental stone urn, much to the detriment of the Land Rover's front bumper.

“Bloody
hell,
” Ludo moaned, climbing out to inspect the damage. For the fortieth time that morning, he patted the inside pocket of his jacket to check that the tiny green velvet box was indeed still there. It was. However, that was only half the story. He still had to remove it from his pocket and offer it to her. Would she laugh in his face? Would she gently turn him down? Would she take offense? Tell him exactly where to stick the exquisite sapphire-and-diamond ring that had been in his family since…since…

“Mr. Grabbit, your poor
car
.”

Oh Lord. It would have to be her, wouldn't it? Before he could separate the bloody urn from the even bloodier bump—

“Can I help?” And there she was beside him, her impossibly lavender-blue eyes shining, as he, for the first time in his entire life, found himself absolutely at a loss for words.

“Champagne, sir?”

“Please, Latch. I'd love some. We've all got plenty to celebrate today, hmm?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Ludo waited until Latch had filled his glass before saying, “Any idea where we might find our host? Can't see him anywhere.”

“I'd try the game room, sir. I believe I saw him heading in that direction a while ago.”

“Splendid. And Latch?”

“Sir?”

“I'd say this family should count itself darned fortunate to have you looking after all its members. Last week. Kept your head when all around were losing theirs. Good stuff.”

“Thank you, sir. Will that be all, sir?”

“Hopefully, yes. For the time being, at least.”

“Very good, sir.”

         

Luciano's voice came from beyond the open door to the game room. As Ludo approached, he could hear it, rising and falling, at times subdued, at times almost breaking with suppressed emotion.

“You know, I never meant—We never—I only wish…But you, you tried to kill my wife—But even so, I didn't mean to—Oh, what have I done? How can I
ever
forgive myself?”

“Forgive my interrupting, Luciano. Can I come in?” And without waiting for a reply, Ludo stepped into the game room.

Luciano looked up, his hands slowly falling away from his face, revealing features made haggard by the cold winter light pouring through the window behind him. When he spoke, his voice was uncertain.

“Ludo. Yes. Of course. I was…I was just—”

“Talking to yourself. I heard. Listen to me, Luciano. No, don't turn away. Listen. My dear chap, you must stop blaming yourself for your brother's death.” Ludo strode across the room to where Luciano sat hunched in the window seat, looking utterly forlorn and knotting and unknotting his silk tie while staring desperately at anything other than Ludo.

“Blame myself?” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Well, of course I do. After all, no one else killed him. I
was
there. It was just him and me in the room at the time. I…I can't…D'you know, Ludo, I can't for the life of me remember how I actually did it? Killed him. You know? One minute we're thumping about, knocking lumps out of each other; next minute he's exsanguinating all over the table and I'm looking at my hands in horror….” He shuddered at the memory, unconsciously winding his tie round and round his hands as if to bind them and thus render them unable to do more harm. “Who else can I blame, if not myself?”

Ludo laid a hand over Luciano's trembling ones. “I buried your brother, Luciano. Well, not exactly
buried.
Latch and I gave him a traditional Mafia send-off with the help of your dragon. Apparently it's not the first time that butler of yours has disposed of criminal lowlifes in your loch, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, we fitted your brother with a very fine pair of concrete overshoes and sank him in the middle of Lochnagargoyle—”

“Yes. Thank you. I appreciate everything you've done, but—”

“I haven't finished yet. When Latch and I lifted your brother's body off the billiard table, the cause of his death became immediately apparent.”

Luciano's breath caught in his throat as Ludo carried on.

“I'm assuming you were unaware that you were playing host to a battalion of animated model soldiers?” Taking Luciano's stunned silence for a yes, Ludo continued, “Just as I'm also assuming that you hadn't realized that the same model soldiers had vowed to defend you and your family to the death, no matter what that entailed?”

Luciano's face resembled that of a condemned man who, by some unforeseen miracle, had just been accorded a stay of execution.

“Nor, on the fatal day in question, as the two of you lurched blindly toward the billiard table, were you to know that the entire battalion were in position with their spears held upright, ready to skewer your brother like a particularly unpleasant bug on a pin….” Ludo stopped and waited for Luciano to catch up.

“You're telling me I didn't do it?” Luciano whispered.

Ludo nodded. “You didn't kill your brother. However, I have to say, thank heavens someone did. Or
several
someones. One last thing, before we go downstairs and join your family: Latch and I gave the soldiers from the battalion a decent burial, with full military honors….” Ludo paused, then smiled. “So next summer, if the blooms in your wife's rose garden are particularly fine, it will undoubtedly be thanks to the Fifth Battalion of the Dragon's-Tooth Engineers.”