Page 81 of Your Coffin or Mine
I open the door and the sound of shrill shrieking meets my ears.
“Is that Whitley?” Aubrey shouts in question.
“No. I believe that was Doyle.” I would know that girlie shriek anywhere.
She laughs, the sound twinkling and light, before it fades away.
My body is a blur of movement to the untrained eye as I run through the castle to the floor below, where all the ruckus seems to be happening.I come upon the great hall.
“For the last time, there will benounicorn cupcakes,” Doyle says.
“Cupcake unicorn, you idiot!” the chef replies, and Doyle’s already red face blazes brighter.
“Okay, but cupcake unicorns are necessary,” George deadpans, his hands on his hips. “Not that anyone is paying attention to me anyway.”
George is standing on top of a large sarcophagus lying flat on its back. I haven’t seen it in decades, but I’m pretty sure Doyle stashed it here for safekeeping at one point or another.
“How did you get up there?” I ask him, noticing scattered glass across the marble floor.
Doyle and the chef are still arguing, oblivious to anything else, it seems.
He shrugs and gestures to the two imbeciles. “They’ve been at it for almost an hour now.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry about the glass. I thought maybe some vodka would calm everyone down but they’re being ‘responsible,’” he says, making air quotes. “Not that it worked anyway.”
He sways drunkenly, hiccupping. I spot the empty bottle of vodka by his side, given to my father by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire back in the 1300s. Anger I haven’t experienced in ages has my claws wanting to extend, only for me to groan when I remember I’m in the presence of humans. I also like this particular one, surprisingly.
I wave the drunken fool toward me. “George, why don’t you get some rest and I’ll take it from here?”
“Oh, not on your life. I’m waiting for the moving men.” He hiccups again, inducing more swaying motions.
“The what?”
“Doyle mentioned a crew of movers, big boys I would say, by the look of that couch. I can’t wait to watch them move it. I just wanted to come down and meet one... or three... for dinner.” He sighs unhappily. “Course, they haven’t made it in yet. Have you heard anything?”
“Movers?”This entire farce is folding like a house of cards on its head.
“Well, duh, big red truck. Honey, how else do you suppose all of this will get set up in a day? It’s going to take the whole”—he breaks off, yawning—“night,” he finishes, and I smile.
“Come, let’s get you down from there and tucked into bed.”
I hold my hand out to him, and he takes hold of it light as a feather and presses a hand to his chest like a blushing matron of old. He clears his throat. “Chivalry isn’t dead, be still my heart.”
Once I help him get two feet back on the ground, he happily sways to the door, twirling like a ballerina every once in a while.I do like George.“Do you need help to your room?”
“Nope. Got it.” He waves over his head.
I turn to the couple arguing near the back balcony doors, which are covered in ghastly black-and-white curtains. Doyle looks like he’s ready to commit murder, and if circumstances were different, I might actually be enjoying this. But no, instead of undressing Aubrey with my teeth, I’m dealing with whatever the hell it is Doyle is doing.
But it does look like he’s been busy.
My favorite part of the great hall, the massive fifteenth-century fireplace that takes up an entire wall, is transformed into a spider’s nest. There is even a tunnel web at the bottom with what looks to be a spider nestled inside.
“How clever. I wonder how they did that.”
Of course, the question goes unanswered. Doyle and Whitley are so caught up in their own melodrama they have yet to notice my presence.
