It’s A Plunderful Life Read online

  The little boy at the wheel hollered something that was swallowed up by echoes. I smiled up at him and waved. It struck me that my own family must have once looked that happy to outsiders, and of course we had been happy. Back when Margot was little, when Brad and I would take her to petting zoos and playgrounds and children’s museums, letting her wear herself out until she passed out on Brad’s shoulder as he carried her back to the car, her cheek smooshed against him, straw in her hair.

  “I need to get back to the shop,” Vivian said suddenly. I looked over at her, wondering if the sight of a happy family reminded her of her own marriage.

  “Sure,” I said, taking her arm and walking out of the cave into the sunlight, throwing one last final wish for happiness for the family on that ship, that they could keep this moment alive forever.

  Wilder wasn’t happy. He stood in front of Mother Goose, muttering darkly under his breath.

  “Wilder?” I said, shielding my eyes against the brilliant noon sun. “Everything okay?”

  He looked up at me with a frown.

  Okay, that was a stupid question.

  “Your mom said something didn’t feel right with Mother Goose, and she was right.” He motioned for me to lie down on the sliding board, which I did. Rolling myself under the goose, I looked up at a bunch of…stuff.

  Why in the world had I taken his invitation to look for myself? What did I imagine I might be able to see? I’d never been under one of my cars, let alone a giant mechanical goose. I slid back out. “Help me out, Wilder. What am I looking at?”

  “Check out the brake lines,” he said.

  With that helpful instruction, I slid back under. Which, again…Did I know where the brake lines on a goose were?

  No. No, I did not.

  I slid out again and sat up. “Can you just tell me what’s wrong?”

  He crouched down beside me. “Brake lines were cut.”

  “Cut?” I tried to imagine what kind of person would cut the brake lines on a goose. “Are you sure?”

  He jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah. I thought it was crazy, too, but it’s too neat a cut for it to be anything but deliberate.”

  I thought about Ichabod, with his sudden and mysterious appearance, but of course he wasn’t capable of touching things, let alone doing something like cutting brake lines.

  And it wasn’t like he even knew what brake lines were.

  Wilder shifted beside me, and his scent—a little grease, a little spearmint, a little fresh-cut grass—rolled over me. This was a serious allegation, and I was deeply concerned about it. Not to mention still heartbroken over my failed marriage.

  But my stupid, traitorous stomach did a flipflop at just one whiff of Wilder O’Shea.

  What would happen if I threw myself into his arms and said, “I’m scared, Wilder. What do we do now?”

  Okay, I knew full well what would happen—I would vomit at my own stupid uselessness. Because this was my family’s park, and my house, and my dumb goose. If anyone was going to know what to do, it wasn’t Wilder.

  “Have you told my mother yet?”

  He shook his head. “I was hoping to get an idea of how this could have happened,” he said. “Did you drive Mother Goose yesterday?”

  “No. I took the golf cart since the park was closed.” And Mother Goose had been in the shed, all tucked away for the night. But who knew when someone could have cut her brake lines?

  There was movement from the corner of the house, and I caught a glimpse of Toni, her gaze hot on me. Then she disappeared into the side yard.

  I shivered. I knew it wasn’t possible that she could have done this—she’d been with me all night, and this was her home, too—but there was something so…smug about the way she’d been watching me.

  Like maybe I’d gotten what I deserved.

  “Wilder,” I said softly. “What would have happened if you hadn’t discovered this?”

  He shifted, propping his elbows on his knees and wiping a hand over his face. “Well, the goose doesn’t go very fast. It’s not like cutting the brakes would have actually hurt anyone.” He thought for a moment longer. “Unless, of course, a guest was on the trail and couldn’t get out of the way.”

  That thought weighed on me. I turned to look at Mother Goose, at her immense bulk and all the added weight of those three ducklings. It wasn’t hard to imagine what kind of damage that thing could do to a person if it hit them.

  I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

  While Wilder tracked down my mother, I went upstairs to check on Kurt and Ichabod, who were in the study together, the cat staring up at Ichabod like he had personally invented tuna fish. I expected them to be reviewing one of Kurt’s history books, but instead I discovered the two of them poring over a very battered paperback.

  Ichabod jumped back guiltily as I came in, his cheeks actually flushing as if he still had blood in his body. “Madame,” he said. “We were just…we were just…” His hands fluttered around in front of him.

  “You would make a terrible poker player,” I said, gently lifting the book a little to check the cover. It was an old pulp sci-fi book from the seventies, with a busty female Martian on the front dressed in scant clothing and leering at a terrified astronaut. “Really, Kurt? I didn’t know you were into this sort of thing.”

  Kurt smiled. “You’re very pretty,” he said. “Do you like aliens?”

  “I take it you’ve gotten caught up on everything that’s happened since you…” I meant to say died, but that seemed mean. “Since your time?”

  Ichabod shrugged. “The world is quite different,” he said. “Your father was allowing me to steep myself in some of your culture.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Bimbos on Mars is a very good representation of our lives today.”

  Kurt grinned up at me.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to this,” I said, turning to walk out. I certainly didn’t need to hear anything about said bimbos.

  “Madame,” Ichabod said behind me.

  I turned back, one eyebrow raised. “Yes?”

  He took a step toward me. “These women,” he said, gesturing to the worn paperback on the desk. “From beyond this Earth. That do these…things to men.”

  I nodded.

  “Do they…” He turned his face away, unable to meet my eyes. “Do they exist? Really and truly?”

  I did my best to keep a straight face. As tempting as it was to tell this grouch that, yes, sexy women from Mars did occasionally seduce and then devour human males, that would be mean. “No, they’re entirely fictional.”

  “Oh.” His shoulders dipped. “That is quite a relief. Thank you, madame.” And he floated back to Kurt’s side.

  But I was pretty sure it wasn’t relief he felt.

  From where I was standing, it sure looked like disappointment.

  13

  I was restless that evening. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the wine, or maybe it was the knowledge that someone had deliberately cut the brakes on Mother Goose, or maybe it was the fact that we still hadn’t figured out a way to get rid of Ichabod. Whatever it was, the thought of sitting around my shared room with Toni or hanging out in Kurt’s study with a ghost and that neurotic cat made me feel claustrophobic.

  Instead, I opted to take a walk through the park. I headed down one of the easier trails, passing Snow White’s neat and tidy little cottage where she cooked and cleaned for the Seven Dwarves. The cottage was unlocked—this was a display piece, not a guest cottage—and I let myself in, standing there in the single room, with its long table laden with resin food, all beautifully shellacked and shining under the dull glow of the overhead light.

  I settled down on one of the benches, wondering idly how many people had done just this over the years. The Enchanted Forest had been open long before I’d been born, although some of the display pieces were newer.

  I ran a finger over a cheerfully red resin lobster, amused that anyone over the years would have imagined Sn
ow White boiling lobsters for her roommates. I was just lifting a tin spoon when I heard it.

  There was something outside.

  I turned off the light in the cottage, the thought of those cut brake lines looming large in my mind. I was alone in the park, something I’d done all the time growing up. The park had never seemed scary to me. It was a refuge for weary and broken-hearted souls.

  Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a safe place.

  As quietly as possible, I turned the doorknob and eased the door of the cottage open. Outside, cool air washed over my face, and the sound of crickets and frogs rang through the night. I listened hard for any sound that was out of place, but the thudding of my own heart in my ears made it impossible to hear anything besides the night creatures.

  And then a twig snapped, off to my right. Farther into the park. I peered hard into the inky blackness in that direction, hoping to see my mother or Wilder ambling up the path. But whatever—whoever—had snapped that twig wasn’t walking along at a casual pace the way someone would if they were supposed to be there.

  No, someone was creeping along the trail.

  It’s probably a lost guest, I told myself. Overnight guests usually didn’t venture far from their cottages, but we didn’t lock them in or anything. Plenty of people could be out on the trails. Just because I hadn’t seen anyone yet, and all of the nearby cottages were empty for the night, didn’t mean that it wasn’t a guest.

  I took a step away from the relative shelter of Snow White’s Cottage, trying not to make a sound. It wasn’t until I began to feel light-headed that I realized I was holding my breath. Sucking in a lungful of perfumed air, I almost peed myself when a loud rustling came from just in front of me.

  I looked around for a weapon, and came up with a power bar, still in its wrapper, that someone must have dropped on the ground.

  Okay, so it wasn’t much of a weapon. But I had magic. Maybe I could turn the power bar into a gun?

  It seemed unlikely. Also, I was pretty sure with my inept magic I wouldn’t be able to produce bullets.

  As it turned out, the power bar wasn’t needed. A small furry face peeked out from the bushes, and I let my arm droop to my side.

  It was a cat. Just one of the many feral cats that made the Enchanted Forest home.

  I sagged back against the door of Snow White’s Cottage, my pulse still racing. Just a cat.

  But as the furry creature disappeared back into the bushes, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else out there. Had the cat been able to move that far, that quickly, from where I’d heard the twig snapping to the bush just in front of me? And would a cat, who moved away so quietly that I heard nothing even as I saw brush waving from the animal slipping through, have broken a twig that loudly?

  I shook my head. It was just my imagination running away with me. Wilder’s insane suspicions had gotten to me. The park was safe. I was safe.

  “You are brave to be out here alone in the dark,” a rough voice said from somewhere to my left.

  And for the second time in just a few minutes, I almost peed myself.

  I glanced over, and again relief washed over me. “Ichabod, what are you doing out here?”

  He studied the cottage behind me, drifting over to peer through the window, bending to look at the engravings on the doorknob. “I saw you leave the house and thought it best to accompany you,” he said. “A woman on her own at night has much to fear, both for her limbs and her virtue.”

  I didn’t want to encourage this kind of sexist thinking, but honestly, I was just so glad not to be alone that the last thing I wanted to do was scare him off. So I went for more of a measured response. “In our time, women are free to move around on their own, regardless of the time of day.”

  He snorted. “You may be free to do so, but it is never wise, madame. The night hides all manner of monsters.”

  I drew in a breath to give him a piece of my mind, company be damned, but he had stopped paying attention to me. Instead, he had turned and was surveying the trail as far as he could see in both directions. He floated over to stand beneath a dogwood tree, tilting his head back. In the darkness, he seemed to glow, and his face lit up as he looked at the blushing white flowers. “So beautiful,” he said.

  “It is.”

  By unspoken agreement, we began to head back to the house, me walking and Ichabod drifting an inch or two above the trail. We made terrible time as Ichabod had to stop regularly to investigate a patch of flowers, or a particularly interesting tree. At one point, standing beside a thorny rosebush, he sighed. “This place is so full of life,” he said, looking off along the trail to where it curved away from us, disappearing into the darkness. “I remember this.”

  I moved closer, unsure whether I’d heard him correctly. He remembered this? This place, or this feeling? “What do you mean?”

  “It’s always been like this here, even before these…” He waved his hand at the Three Bears Cottage, which loomed just ahead of us. “These little dwellings.”

  I chewed on my lip. “Ichabod,” I said. “Have you been here before?”

  He didn’t answer me, just kept looking around him. When he turned to face me, there was a sadness in his eyes that almost swallowed me whole. I started to ask him to elaborate, but the pain I saw there stopped me.

  He said nothing else, just began drifting back toward the house. I followed along, keeping a small distance between us as I considered what I knew about Captain Ichabod Frowd. Sure, we’d learned about him in school, and I’d read one of those short kids’ books about his life, but he wasn’t an important enough historical figure to keep learning about as I got older. As far as I knew, he had never lived in Gallows Bay—his ties to the community were limited to the fact that he’d brought Christopher Durus here after his capture. It was here that Durus had been executed, his body cut down from the gallows afterward, covered in tar, and then hung in a cage in the harbor to warn others of the fate that awaited those who would menace ships at sea.

  But Ichabod…What had happened to him? I had a vague idea that he had died shortly after his capture of Durus, but the details escaped me.

  Really, who could blame me? Weren’t pirates far more interesting than those who had brought them to justice?

  We made it back to the house, and Ichabod slipped upstairs to Kurt’s study. I’m not sure what he did while we were sleeping, but he seemed most comfortable around Kurt’s books, and that dumb cat.

  I wondered how much he remembered about his life. He didn’t seem eager to talk about his past, although every so often he let his guard slip, as it had a few minutes before.

  I sighed. Three days in, and we were no closer to figuring out how to help Ichabod transition to the other side.

  14

  I was not a huge fan of washing dishes.

  That feels like one of those things people don’t need to actually say—is there anyone who actually enjoys washing dishes? I’m sure there are, in which case I would like to extend an open offer to be roommates. (Full disclosure: I’m not sure what I bring to the table in this arrangement, but if it’s true that you actually like dishes, then I can promise to leave them all for you to do.)

  Now, if it were your turn to do the breakfast dishes and you had recently learned that you were capable of magic, what would you do? I can’t be the only person to think this is kind of the perfect way to handle chores. I mean, what’s the use of being able to do magic if you can’t use it to make your life easier?

  Besides, I needed to practice with my magic, right? You practice other skills as much as possible, so it just made sense to me that I would use magic to wash the dishes the next morning.

  Standing in front of the sink, I rolled up my sleeves. Not for any real reason, just because it made me feel like I was working harder. I studied the sinkful of dishes, the spatulas, the pans covered in cooked pancake batter and egg residue.

  Boy, was I excited that I wasn’t going to have to scrub all of that.<
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  The problem was, I wasn’t sure what to do next. The only time I’d used magic, I’d done it subconsciously. My mother had explained that magic worked best when it was driven by strong emotions.

  Okay, fine. I mean, I really hated doing the dishes. I tried to focus on how much I did not want to do those dishes. I held my hands out, first with my palms up, then changed my mind and extended my fingers as if I were the Emperor in Star Wars and was about to Force-lightning those dirty dishes.

  Nothing.

  I tried pointing various fingers. I fist-bumped the sink. After looking around and making sure I was really and truly alone, I tried jazz hands. I even flipped the dishes off.

  Still nothing.

  I frowned at the sink, my hands flexing in front of me. I tried to remember what my mother had done when she changed the sour cherry candy into a ball of flame. She’d done…nothing. And yet magic had happened.

  I closed my eyes and really focused on imagining the sink. I pictured the overflowing pile of dirty dishes, and then I imagined that they were all miraculously clean. I pictured water flowing over them, the dishes sparkling in my hands…

  A sharp crack, and my eyes flew open, my stomach clenching as an acrid smell hit me. “No,” I moaned, grabbing the edge of the sink as my knees went weak. “No, no, no.”

  Because the dishes were not clean. In fact, they were no longer even dishes. Instead, the sink was full of a charred black mass that smelled like mop water and burned tires. And if I had any doubt that I had royally screwed up, the mass was melting, turning into a thick black sludge that threatened to clog the drain.

  Oh, this was not good.

  “How long does it take you to—oh, wow.”

  I spun to find Toni standing in the doorway, her face caught in the precise moment when horror turns to malicious glee. “What’s going on?” she asked, looking for all the world like she knew exactly what was going on.