Fox-Trot-9

Written on 7/11/21. Camp NaNoWRiMo, July 2021 edition.

Villainess 2: DeeDee's Curiosity Shop

Red Pill 8: Curfews, Incognitos

Late afternoon elapsed into sunset and darkened into deepening shades of twilight, till a starry night blanketed the sky above Mariana House, accompanied with the glow of a full moon rising in the East. During that interval, Janet expected and received two packages (a small one and a large oblong one that the postman carried into her dorm) from ‘D.D.’ and signed for them. After the postman left, Janet opened the big package, revealing a full-length mirror on a mirror stand, the same one she had seen in her dream of DeeDee’s shop. Janet directed her maids to position it by the wall between the armoire closet and the vanity table. She then went to open the smaller package, but her suicide double told her not to, so Janet left it by the mirror and told her maids not to touch it. Afterwards Janet supped in her dorm, stress-eating three plates of pasta to compensate for missing lunch and for confronting Rosalie in the morning and Prince Blaise in the afternoon.

As such, after finishing her meal, Janet chatted with her maids about the usual complaints about Prince Blaise and Rosalie, though she avoided touching on her discussion with her suicide clone in the bathroom or on her dream in the infirmary. All the while, half of Janet’s clones were flitting about around the room, checking inside the armoire and beneath the four-poster bed, while the other half were stalking through the corridors and even taking quick peeks through the doors of other people’s dorms. What they were looking for or what they were doing was a complete mystery to Janet, but she kept up her charade with her maids, pretending none of her clones were there doing God knows what.

Eventually, as the 10:00 p.m. curfew approached, Janet changed into her nightgown, and Marin took her Academy uniform to the hamper in the designated servants’ room next to Janet’s, while Susan bade her goodnight and closed the double doors.

Instead of going to bed, though, Janet sat by her study desk and said, “Out with it. What’s going on?”

All of Janet’s clones then gathered around, and her suicide clone said, “Because her books were tampered with in her private library, DeeDee’s shop has been compromised, so she wants to move her things to a more secure location.”

“Does she have a place in mind?” Janet said.

“It’s Elba House,” her clone said.

“You’re kidding,” she said. “Isn’t that dorm haunted?”

Her clone nodded, saying, “That’s why she wants to move her business there.”

“Because it’s haunted?” Janet said.

Her clone nodded again.

“But if nobody goes there because it’s haunted,” Janet said, “then won’t her business suffer?”

“From the look of her shop,” her clone said, “I’d say her business caters to some interesting customers.”

“Okay,” Janet said. “Will we help her move her stuff?”

And her clone nodded again and said, “DeeDee wants us to move everything to Elba House, and by ‘us,’ she means you.”

“Wait,” Janet said, “why only me?”

Her suicide clone then passed her hand through the armrest of the dressing bench in front of her and said, “We’re ghosts, remember? You’re the only living person we can physically interact with, and you’ve also been to DeeDee’s shop in your dream. As far as she knows, you’re her best chance of pulling this off for her.”

“When is it?” she said.

“It starts tonight,” her clone said.

Then Janet’s mind flashed on her clone’s question about her maids at the Academy, and she said, “Is that why you asked if you can trust my maids?”

“You’re finally getting it,” her clone said. “Do you think they can help cover for you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they can, but I don’t want to get them into trouble if things go south.”

“All right then,” her clone said. “We’ll have to go with plan B for now. Are you up for it?”

“What’s plan B?”

“Open the small package,” her clone said, “and you’ll see.”

So Janet went over to it, crouching and tearing it open, and found a maid’s uniform, complete with an apron and a mob cap and a pair of brogue shoes, the same set that DeeDee wore, as well as a smaller parcel included in the contents. She looked up and stared at all of her doppelgängers smirking and giggling their heads off, saying, “Are you serious?”

“If you’re not up to it,” her suicide double said, “then we can always go back to plan A.”

“Let’s not do that, at least not yet,” Janet said and pulled her nightgown over her shoulders and put on the outfit, fastening the buttons and putting on the apron and tying it behind her back, then tying back her hair and fitting on the mob cap, then slipping into the brogues and checking herself in the full-length mirror. “Sue and Marin would faint if they saw me like this.”

“It looks good,” her suicide clone said, “but the guards might still recognize your face and hair. Open the parcel.”

She then picked up the parcel and opened it, finding an emerald pendant necklace and a case containing a pair of glasses.

“Put them on,” her double said.

So Janet put on the new necklace and tucked it under her collar beneath her bodice right over her amulet necklace, then placed the glasses over her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror and was startled at her reflection. She took them off and saw her own red eyes again, while her hair reverted to their customary dirty blonde drills, but on putting the glasses back on, she saw her eyes turn green and her hair turn black and straight like DeeDee’s: the only difference was that Janet’s hair ended past her hips.

“It’s a bit much for me,” Janet said.

“I guess it takes some getting used to,” her double said. “Those glasses are enchanted, by the way, and so is that necklace she gave you. Shall we go now?”

Janet nodded and pulled open the double doors of her dorm and pulled them shut again, taking pains not to awaken her maids or anyone else in the other dorms, till the latch caught in the slip plate. With her clones leading the way and acting as lookouts, she crept through the darkness of the central hallway on the balls of her feet, picking up the skirt of her dress, so the hems won’t rustle against her footfalls. When she reached the foyer and the double doors, she heard the voice of a girl talking to the guards, saying that she was expecting to meet her big sister any minute now, so she pushed open the doors and saw DeeDee smile at her.

“That’s her, ZiZi Marionette,” DeeDee said.

Janet just played along: “Have I kept you waiting?”

And DeeDee shook her head and fluttered her doll-like eyes and said, “You’re right on time, big sis.”

“How old are you, Mademoiselle?” one of the guardsmen said, looking at Janet’s green-eyed and bespectacled face and then at DeeDee’s green-eyed and doll-like face.

“I’m eighteen,” Janet lied.

The guardsman nodded and let her accompany the DeeDee on their errand, but his fellow guardsman said, “Be mindful of the curfew and be careful, mademoiselles.”

“We will,” Janet said and smiled, and both pseudo-sisters smiled and joined hands and bowed and left.

“Good evening, mademoiselles,” they said and waved them off, while Janet’s clones followed them in girly giggles busting out of the mouths in idiot hysterics, commenting on yet another great performance from ZiZi Marionette, a.k.a., ‘big sis,’ a.k.a., Janet Fleming the Maid.

It was all Janet could do to ignore them, gritting her teeth and squeezing her hands into fists, reminding herself that even though they were acting really bratty right now, they were still her clones. Thus, as the pair made their way down the brick-paved boulevard and through the campus gates into the Student Commons Town, garnering glances from loitering adults and passing townsmen and women, the bespectacled Janet stole a glance at her companion. Now that Janet got a good look at her, she noticed DeeDee was half a head shorter than her and sported short black hair framing her doll-like face, so DeeDee seemed a year or two younger than herself.

“What is it?” DeeDee said, keeping her eyes forward.

“You fit the little sister type,” Janet said, “but why call me ZiZi? There are better names, you know.”

“It was their idea,” DeeDee said, jerking a thumb back at Janet’s clones bringing up the rear and laughing again with the beheaded clone laughing so hard that her head would have fallen to the ground, had not her fellow clone caught it in her hands and replaced it on her shoulders.

Janet looked over her shoulder, glaring at them and saying, “Oh, hardy har har!”

More laughter from her sniggering clones.

“Just bear it,” DeeDee said, “till we reach the shop.”

So Janet humphed and pouted, ignoring her merciless doubles all giggling and commenting on how precious the pair of pseudo-sister maids looked under the lamplit evening. They then passed the same boutiques and restaurants and saloons disgorging their last customers before closing for the night, most of them local loiterers or out-of-town visitors. Janet caught a sidelong glance at some of these stragglers looking their way, so her clones strayed back and kept a lookout as the pair took a different detour to their left into another narrow side street of closed delicatessens half a block from the antiquarian shops. They then entered an alleyway to the other side and doubled back along another side street of discount stores and hurried along the main boulevard, still holding each other’s hands, till they took their original detour into the same side street of antiquarian shops that were all closed, except for DeeDee’s Shop of Curiosities by the dead end wall, where Janet sighted the green flickering glow through its windows.

They entered the shop as several clones came running into the side street, where Janet’s suicide double filed through the entrance and said, “I don’t think we were followed, but we’ll keep a lookout for any unwanted visitors.”

“Good. Do that,” DeeDee said.

The suicide clone nodded and headed back out.

Little did they know that one of those ‘unwanted visitors’ came fluttering overhead, perching itself atop the overhanging eave of a closed storefront right next door to DeeDee’s shop, keeping watch over the entry the pair of maids had entered. After several failed attempts at flying closer to DeeDee’s shop, for the bird seemed to avoid perching there, this overhanging eave was the best it could manage. From Mariana House to DeeDee’s shop, the nighthawk had caught the anomalous exchanges between the sister maids through its eyes and ears, yet Lady Jenna Childeron couldn’t make out anything else after the maids entered the shop.

“Can you get any closer?” Rosalie said.

Lady Childeron blinked out the avian vision, turning her eyes from black to light blue, then shook her head and said, “I can’t hear what they’re saying in the shop.”

Inside Rosalie’s dorm room were three students, all of them in their nightgowns. Lady Childeron was sitting at a tea table massaging away a headache after using her taming skill on a nighthawk, and Lady Felton was busy at a study desk using her magic to forge Prince Blaise’s signature onto three blank notice forms using a genuine example from a scrap sheet of paper the Prince had used to test a faulty fountain pen, and Rosalie herself was combing her long blonde hair at her vanity desk like a fairytale princess.

“What about before they entered?” Rosalie said.

Lady Childeron tried making sense of the weird exchanges between the two maids but shook her head again and said, “It’s strange. They’re talking as if other people were there, but I could only see the two maids.”

Rosalie stopped combing her hair and held onto it over her vanity desk and said, “Did you get a good look at the maid that came out of Mariana House?”

“I got the bird to fly as close as I could without alerting the guards,” Lady Childeron said, “but I didn’t see any resemblance to Janet at all.”

Lady Felton turned from her forgery work and said, “Maybe she’s using a disguise.”

“If that’s the case,” Rosalie said, “then where did she get the disguise from?”

“I don’t know,” Lady Felton said.

“Maybe her father’s helping her?” Lady Childeron said.

Rosalie paused, then said, “Maybe you’re right. When did he go to the shop again? Was it Saturday or Sunday?”

“Sunday,” Lady Childeron said.

“Then something must have happened that day,” Rosalie said, then pulled open a side drawer and took out the ring she’d stolen from Janet’s dorm and showed it to her partners-in-crime. “Do you recognize this?”

“Isn’t that the engagement ring Lady Fleming gave you?” Lady Childeron said, making Lady Felton look back at them from the study desk.

Rosalie shook her head: “Nope.”

“Then that’s the ring you stole?” Lady Felton said.

“Yep, you’re right,” Rosalie said, inspecting the item in the light of her vanity lamp in one hand while gripping her comb tight in her other hand. “I was gonna use this to get a reaction out of her in front of his Highness, but she somehow turned the tables on me with a duplicate ring! Who do you think got her that ring, huh?”

Neither Lady Childeron nor Lady Felton said anything, yet the answer to her question sucked the air from the room: if Marquess Fleming had indeed obtained a duplicate ring for Janet, then it might mean he was privy to their tricks. Then there were the two packages the postman had given to Janet at the double doors of her dorm after sunset: Lady Childeron remembered vaporizing herself out of the first-floor hallway in Mariana House and into the central boulevard behind the juniper trees, hiding herself from the guards. From there she ran under the cloak of her air affinity to Rosalie’s dorm in Guinevere House and told her about the packages, yet neither she nor Rosalie could vaporize themselves back into the dorm house afterwards. As such, neither girl could sneak into Janet’s dorm nor eavesdrop on her from outside. If these setbacks were the result of Janet’s father, then they were in big trouble. Of all the nobles in the Kingdom, Marquess Fleming was most feared and respected for his ballsy defense of the Bartleby ducal family against the Blaise royal family that ended in a duel with the Captain of the Royal Guards. If such a man knew Lady Childeron and Lady Felton were bullying his only daughter at the Academy, God knows how much damage he could inflict on the reputations of their fathers, Count Childeron and Count Felton.

“I don’t wanna risk it,” Lady Childeron said.

“Maybe we should lay low for a while,” Lady Felton added. “We could always get back at her next week.”

“No,” Rosalie said.

Then Lady Childeron said, “But what if—”

“I said, NO!” Rosalie said, flinging her comb against her vanity desk, where it ricocheted off the desktop and the wall and landed on the floor in two pieces.

Lady Childeron and Lady Felton clammed up, for Rosalie was at her most dangerous when she was pissed. The look on her face was nothing short of demonic, a pair of glaring eyes the color of blue fire, a scowl like that of a gargoyle’s, and a temper as sharp as a guillotine’s blade. Lady Childeron found it odd that someone so angelic in front of the Prince and her admirers could also be so scary in front of her closest friends. Four weeks into the school year, Lady Childeron and Lady Felton had ditched Janet after Rosalie told them and his Highness that Janet had been dating Lady Felton’s fiancé behind her back. His Highness and Lady Felton were both livid, and Lady Childeron was sorry for her friend and his Highness but still wanted proof before changing sides. So Rosalie led them into the Student Commons Town to the Sweet Dream dessert shop where they saw Janet commiserating with Lord Woodberry, stress-eating ice cream and (seemingly) putting the moves on him. That’s when Lady Childeron and Lady Felton sided with Rosalie, and that’s when Rosalie took Janet’s place as his Highness’s next fiancée to make Lady Felton feel better, but that’s also when the Prince’s friendship with Lord Woodberry crumbled, making Lord Woodberry suspect that Lady Felton had something to do with it. After that, she and Lady Felton found out Rosalie was doing it with the Prince, making a spiteful Lady Felton grin and even congratulate her for it, but afterward Lady Childeron noticed Lady Felton spending the hours in her dorm crying herself to sleep. Even when Lady Childeron admired Rosalie for her efforts, was all this cloak-and-dagger backstabbing really worth it?

She wasn’t sure about Lady Felton, but Lady Childeron was having second thoughts, till Rosalie glared at her, saying, “What’s on your mind, Jenna?”

Lady Childeron averted her eyes and said, “I wasn’t thinking of anything.”

“You’re right, you weren’t,” Rosalie said, then glared at Lady Felton: “What about you, Vessy?”

“We’ll do it your way, Rosy,” Lady Felton said.

“Good,” Rosalie said, smiling. “Are you finished with those?”

Lady Felton nodded from the study desk, saying, “I’m just waiting for the ink to dry.”

“Good,” Rosalie said, smiling a slasher’s smile that sent a chill down Lady Childeron’s back. “You two give those notices to Lady Kessler and her friends tomorrow. That’ll get their panties in a wad for a while.”

“Do you think it will work?” Lady Felton said.

“It will,” Rosalie said, putting the ring back in the drawer and pushing it closed before getting up from her vanity desk. “His Highness has already created an opening for me, so we may as well put it to good use.”

“And if they try something?” Lady Childeron said.

“Then put them back in their place,” Rosalie said. “I don’t care how you do it. Just make sure that you scare them enough, so they’ll stop snooping in my business. But make sure to get yourselves out of there as fast as you can.”

Lady Childeron and Lady Felton nodded their heads.

So Rosalie got up from her vanity table and said, “I’m going out. Make sure to lock up after me.”

Lady Childeron traded a glance with Lady Felton, and she knew what was on her friend’s mind: since Lady Fleming had humiliated Rosalie in front of the Prince and her sympathizers in Classroom 1-3C this morning, she’ll be bonking with the Prince good and hard tonight.

“Sure,” Lady Felton said.

“Enjoy yourself,” Lady Childeron added.

“Will do. Tootles,” Rosalie said, then vaporized herself out of the room in a gust of wind for another tryst with the Prince. In the wake of her departure, Lady Childeron wondered if Rosalie’s complaints about him were true: Was Prince Blaise really having a hard time keeping up with her? Or was Rosalie just a nymphomaniac? Or was it both?

Back in the shop, Janet noticed one of the bookshelves missing from the back wall and the suit of armor holding its claymore missing from its corner of the shop when DeeDee caught her glance with a beckoning hand, so she came over and said, “What is it?”

“Take off your glasses,” she said.

Janet took them off, changing her eyes to her original red hue and her hair back to dirty blonde drills, and hung it over the collar of her apron and said, “Is there something wrong?”

“You tell me,” DeeDee said, looking into her eyes. “Your clones told me you fainted at school. Is that true?”

Janet nodded and said, “When I woke up in the infirmary, I’d missed all of my classes and my lunch period.”

“Any dizziness or nausea or vomiting?”

“Dizziness, yeah,” Janet said.

“Accompanied with blurry vision and sweating?”

“Yeah,” she said.

DeeDee went silent for a moment, then said, “I noticed you fainting in my shop in your dream, but I refrained from telling your clones so as not to alarm them. After I had them finish reading out their profiles in that book,” and she pointed out one of the tomes lying on the display case beneath the big lantern lighting the shop, “I pointed out that you weren’t with us and asked your clones what they did to you. They said they had you spy on your classmates by performing astral projection through a hypnotic counting technique, and I scolded them. Do you remember what happened just before you fainted?”

Janet took a deep breath and remembered the sluggish moments in the hallway, saying, “It’s hard to explain, but it felt like my body was moving on its own.”

“Where were you going?” DeeDee said.

“To the staircase landing and the rail,” she said, closing her eyes and seeing it replay in her mind, “where one of my doubles leaped to her death.”

DeeDee then took up a tome from the stack of tomes from the display case and flipped through its pages, till she stopped on one page and skimmed its contents.

“What is it?” Janet said.

DeeDee looked up at her and said, “Did you have any thoughts of suicide at the time?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I was puzzled over it when I got back to my dorm, but I never had those thoughts.”

“I see,” DeeDee said and closed the book. “There are many kinds of hauntings, Janet, two of which are most common: the intelligent haunting that interacts with the living, and the residual haunting that doesn’t. Your clones are intelligent hauntings, but what you experienced just before you fainted was a residual haunting from one of your clones.”

“The one that jumped off the rail?”

DeeDee nodded and said, “You were under the influence of her last living moments, because you were subjected to the same emotional environment as she was before she died. The imprint of her emotions at the time of her death was so strong that it clouded your thoughts and overrode your bodily movements and almost made you reenact her suicide. Thank your lucky stars you fainted before that happened.”

“Oh my God,” Janet said, lighting on her suicide double’s reaction when she made her promise to never do the same thing she did. She had to talk to her, if only to relieve herself of guilt, and added, “How did she take it?”

“She took it hard,” DeeDee said, “as she should. Out of all of your clones, I scolded her the most.”

“No wonder she’s been so proactive,” she said, “but I’m sure she had no ill intentions.”

“Of course, she didn’t,” DeeDee said, “but she is still a ghost, and so are the rest of your clones. Ghosts are just one of many types of hauntings, and hauntings are inherently dangerous to those susceptible to emotional influences, especially to ones holding onto grudges.”

At her words, Janet grimaced and then bit down on her lower lip, knowing full well the truth of her observation.

“Do you suppress your emotions, Janet?”

“Yeah, but it sucks!”

“Then don’t suppress them anymore,” she said.

“That’s easy for you to say!” Janet said. “I’ve had to do that for ten years, only to get jilted by a two-timing bastard because of a two-faced bitch! I can’t keep dealing with those two anymore! I’m fucking SICK OF IT!”

DeeDee stared into Janet’s eyes, saying, “There’s nothing wrong with being angry, okay? They just teach you to check that anger, because anger leads to action, and actions lead to results. But if you want results, you’ve got to control it, because I can’t help you otherwise.”

Janet avoided her gaze and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go off on you like that.”

“Don’t apologize,” DeeDee said. “What you’ve said was the truth, no matter what others say or think.”

For the first time in a while, Janet smiled and said, “Thank you. You’ve no idea how much that means to me.”

“Then you’re all good?”

Janet nodded.

“Then put your glasses back on,” she said. “There’s a lot to move here, so we’ll start with the shelves,” and she pointed out the mirror in the corner between two bookshelves. “Do you see that mirror over there?”

“Yeah,” Janet said after putting them on, changing her eyes and hair again.

“That’s connected to a pair of mirrors,” DeeDee said. “One I had delivered to your dorm, and the other I’ve carried into Elba House myself. I’ve already moved a bookshelf and its contents there with the help of Sir Abram this evening, but his hands were a bit clunky for the job.”

“Sir Abram?” she said.

So DeeDee pointed to the empty corner where Janet had seen a suit of armor holding a claymore in her daydream and said, “He’s a suit of armor, but don’t tell him I said that. He’s a bit sensitive.”

Then she remembered her double’s words back at Mariana House and said, “Is that why you asked for me?”

DeeDee nodded and said, “And I was hoping you’d find more helping hands, but that’s okay. Since there’s only two of us here, we’ll just spread out the workload into the next day, till everything has been moved. As such, treat this time as an introductory night class, for it will help you build up your spiritual awareness. Got it?”

Janet nodded and helped DeeDee empty out a bookshelf by the back wall full of elixir bottles and flasks, taking care to avoid dropping them as she carried them in her apron and arranged them on the display case beside the stack of tomes.

To Be Continued