Villainess 2: DeeDee’s Curiosity Shop

Red Pill 9: Nights, Introductions

On that first night, after Janet helped DeeDee empty out two other bookshelves, one full of amulets and crosses and pendants and other curios and another full of sculptures and figurines and busts, she and DeeDee placed them in their separate groups atop two other display cases. Then Janet helped DeeDee tip the empty bookshelves over onto their sides and carry them through the mirror into the dark interior of one of Elba House’s dorms, where Janet found a group of her silent clones lighting their way with their lamps. After helping DeeDee carry the last bookshelf into the room, she helped her move them towards the back wall that faced the double-door entrance and the low bookshelf of leather-bound tomes and grimoires on the opposite wall.

Janet then looked over at the double-door entrance and found a suit of armor standing sentinel there and holding its claymore with its gauntlets over the pommel of the handle and the point of its blade standing on end.

Then the suit of armor turned its helmet and opened its visor with a salute, making Janet jump at the pair of glowing green eyes, and said, “Ah, Sorry for startling you, my Lady. I’m Sir Abram of the Gate, former knight of the Old Guard of the Kaden Kingdom and now a lowly guard for Miss Marionette.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Abram of the Gate,” she said and curtseyed. “I’m Lady Janet Fleming, daughter of Marquess Arnold Fleming.”

“Ah, the Flemings,” he said. “I’ve had the honor to serve with your ancestor, Captain Jude Fleming, when I was a young lad. Just call me Abram, by the way.”

Janet was about to ask something about her esteemed ancestor when DeeDee said, “I’d hate to interrupt your little heart-to-heart chat, Abram, but Janet and I have more work to do at the shop.”

“All right, Miss Marionette. I’ll leave you both to it,” Sir Abram said and nodded at Janet before shutting his visor and resuming his guard duty at the double doors.

So Janet followed DeeDee through the mirror reflection back into the shop and said, “Who was that guy?”

“He was an honorable knight born from a line of evil knights,” DeeDee said as she went to a display case and gathered the elixirs in her apron. “Thus, he was feared and hated throughout his life, but he proved his worth in the end. That’s all you need to know for now.”

“What about my ancestor, Sir Jude Fleming?” Janet said. “Do you know anything about him?”

“Only that he was an honorable knight,” she said. “He was the first to see past Abram’s ignoble lineage and accept him as his brother in arms. Come now, don’t dawdle.”

Janet got to work taking up the rest of the elixirs in her apron and followed DeeDee through the mirror into the dorm in Elba House, where she helped her set up the elixirs on a bookshelf along the back wall.

All the while, as Janet occupied her body, she also occupied her mind with thoughts of learning swordsmanship, which led to thoughts of using her clones to spy on Rosalie on her way to her own dorm in Guinevere House, which then led to thoughts of a vengeful Janet in full regalia galloping behind on horseback and beheading her enemy with one slash of her sword. Then she went on thinking of Prince Blaise and having him strung up against a wall with his pants pulled down to his knees in an isolated dungeon, where she’d order Sir Abram to raise his claymore high above the Prince’s most precious body part as the the bastard was begging for mercy and saying that he was wrong about Rosalie and that he would do anything Janet wanted if she would just stop this madness. But in the sadistic theater of her mind, Janet had no mercy for the two-timer and ordered Sir Abram to swing his claymore, while she gloated like a she-devil at the Prince’s screams . . .

Janet smiled as she followed DeeDee through the mirror into the shop and helped her gather the group of crosses and amulets and pendants and other small curios in her apron, till she recognized a duplicate of the emerald pendant necklace that she had received from DeeDee’s parcel delivery.

“That pendant you gave me,” Janet said, pointing to the object on the glass display case. “Why did you give it to me?”

“It’s an amulet,” DeeDee said in Janet’s mind, “that allows me to communicate with you via telepathy. It’s good for clandestine conversations, but please don’t abuse that privilege. I need my sleep, too, you know.”

“I promise I won’t,” she said, putting her hand over her bosom and feeling both amulets there, “but how do you use it?”

“Just use your thoughts to speak,” DeeDee said, “and they’ll be relayed to me and vice versa. But be aware,” she added, “that amulets cannot filter your intentions or desires. So please keep them appropriate when communicating to me!”

Janet threw away her thoughts of killing her rival and maiming her unfaithful Highness, blushing in embarrassment and saying, “I’m not that kind of girl, I swear!”

“Just be more mindful next time,” DeeDee said, using her actual voice. “Come now, don’t dawdle.”

Janet nodded and followed her back through the mirror into the room at Elba house, where she helped DeeDee arrange the trinkets and curios on a second bookshelf by the back wall. She then followed DeeDee through the mirror again, keeping her thoughts clear of anything heinous or scandalous or otherwise unbecoming of a lady, and helped carry the group of figurines in her apron, while DeeDee handled a life-sized bust of some bald and bearded personage unknown to Janet. Both girls passed back through the mirror into Elba House and arranged the items on a third bookshelf by the back wall, till the bust yawned and started blinking its eyes.

“I haven’t been moved in decades,” the bust said, making Janet turn and stare at the talking bust. “What’s the occasion, Miss Marionette? And who is this young lass here?”

“She’s a recent acquaintance of mine,” DeeDee said, then to Janet: “Introduce yourself.”

So Janet curtseyed and said, “I’m Lady Janet Fleming. Pleased to meet you.”

“Ah, an aspiring gentlewoman, eh?” the bust said.

“No,” Janet said. “I’m incognito.”

“Ah, I see, I see,” he said. “I’m Christopher Malory, famed merchant and part-time mapmaker and explorer.”

“And full-time madman,” said Sir Abram from the double doors, his helmet turned in their direction. “Try not to fall into his imaginative rabbit holes, my Lady. He’s a bit on the crazy side when it comes to pseudo-cartography.”

“Only because you’ve never seen the vast stretches of this wonderful world with your fickle eyes, my boy,” the bust of Christopher said, then turned to Janet: “Don’t mind him, my Lady. He’s just a cranky suit of armor.”

The ‘suit of armor’ turned around on the threshold of the entrance with his weapon gripped in his gauntlets, saying, “Oh, we’ll see who’s the ‘crank’ after I drive my claymore up your—”

“Now, now, calm down, boys,” DeeDee said. “Not in front of our guest here.” Then to Janet: “Go get the others, while I talk it over with these two.”

But Janet had not finished arranging the rest of the figurines and said, “I’m not finished with this yet.”

“It’s fine,” DeeDee said. “I’ll do it after I talk to these two. Now get going.”

“O-okay, sure,” Janet said and headed back through the mirror into the shop, where she found four other busts of bearded men still snoring in their sleep on their pedestals and three toga-clad female statuettes stretching their limbs and arching their backs on their pedestals, all of them atop the display case. And for a few moments, Janet just stared at the snoring busts and the three statuettes yawning and asking each other what time it was, till the trio spotted her and covered themselves with their forearms.

“Who are you?” said the first.

“How did you get in here?” said the second.

“Where’s Miss Marionette gone off to?” said the third.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Janet said, raising her hands in a placating gesture. “I’m harmless, I promise.”

Yet the first said, “You say that now—”

“—but you’ll snatch us away,” the second said.

“And then you’ll do weird things to us!” the third added.

Which made Janet deadpan at their words, wondering how they’d even reached that conclusion, but she shook her head of those thoughts and said, “Look, it’s not like that. Miss Marionette just invited me here to help her move the items in her shop, but it’s just going to be for a few nights, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” the first statuette said, “especially if you plan on stealing us.”

“I’m not planning on stealing you, okay?” she said. “I’ll just move you and the rest to another location.”

“Isn’t that the same thing as stealing us?” the second statuette said, her arms akimbo.

“It’s not that at all, geez!” Janet said.

Yet the third statuette added, “You expect us to believe a thief who snuck in after hours?” And she pointed out all the missing bookshelves and added, “We can see all the bookshelves and all the inventory missing, you liar!”

“Fine, I’ll move you later, geez!” Janet said and went over to the four sleeping busts right next to the trio of statuettes.

Yet just before she laid her hands on the busts, the statuettes all started yelling and calling out for help, launching the four snorers into dreamy fits and starts on their pedestals, all of them complaining in their sleep about being too loud when they were trying to catch some shut-eye. Fed up with the inconvenience of three meddlesome statuettes, who kept yelling for the four sleepers to wake up their stupid noggins, Janet took off her mob cap and let her curly locks flow down her shoulders and stalked over to the trio—

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“You can’t do that!”

“Someone, HELP!”

—and shoved her cap over their heads as they all struggled in its folds, feeling their wriggling bodies and flailing limbs beneath the cloth and listening to their muffled cries for help, till they each stopped moving after a time.

“There! Now be quiet, you three,” Janet said and proceeded to the still-snoring busts and poked them with her finger, then again, and then again, till they woke up.

And the first bust said, “What in blazes is going on here?”

Then the second bust: “What’s all the poking about?”

And then the third bust: “Who’s been poking me?”

Yet out of the four busts, the last one looked up at Janet and said, “Where did you come from?”

“I’m just a helper here,” Janet said.

The four busts then started looking for their fellow bust, the fifth of their number that was no longer with them.

So the first bust said, “Wait a minute.”

Then the second bust: “Where did Mr. Malory go?”

Then the third bust: “I could’ve sworn he was here.”

And then fourth bust: “Miss, do you know where he went?”

Now that all four busts were staring up at her, Janet raised her hands up in a placating gesture, trying to remain calm, and said, “Don’t worry. He’s in another location, and I’m going to move you all there in a jiffy.”

“Move us where?” all four busts said.

Yet before Janet spoke, the three statuettes had regained consciousness and had removed the mob cap from their heads, so that the first statuette said, “Don’t believe her!”

“She’s a thief!” said the second.

“Don’t let her take you!” said the third.

Janet was beside herself at this point, on the edge of throwing an object at the three meddlesome statuettes on the display case, had there been any object near at hand that wasn’t one of the four busts. As all such objects were behind the glass display cases, she just went to the mirror muttering to herself and saying, “I can’t believe I’m being told off by a bunch of stupid objects.”

“We’re not ‘stupid objects,’ missy!” one statuette said.

Then the second statuette had a go, saying, “We’ll have you know we’re all enchanted in this shop.”

“And that means,” added the third statuette, “that we’ll make sure you’ll be . . . Hey, get back here, I say!”

But Janet passed through the reflection into the dorm at Elba House, saying to herself, “I can’t believe it’s come to this. First it’s that vixen, then it’s the Prince, and then it’s my friends, and now it’s these things? Really?”

“What’s the matter, Lady Fleming?” DeeDee said as she finished up arranging the figurines on the lower shelves of the third bookshelf on the back wall.

“It’s those damn statuettes!” she said.

“Let me guess,” DeeDee said. “April and May and June are giving you a hard time, aren’t they?”

“Those are their names?”

DeeDee nodded, then stalked back towards the mirror and said, “I swear, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. Let’s go back and straighten things out with them.”

And Janet followed DeeDee back through the mirror and into the shop, where the three meddlesome statuettes were now waving their hands and saying that Janet was a thief who tried to suffocate them earlier. Yet one look at the demonic flash of DeeDee’s green glowing eyes shut them up faster than a heart attack, and the various objects rattled in their display cases when she said, “April, May, June, please don’t harass Lady Fleming, or else!”

So all three statuettes bowed to her, saying in unison, “We’re deeply sorry, Miss Marionette.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” she said. “Apologize to Lady Fleming here. I invited her to help me move my shop.”

That’s when all three statuettes looked up at Janet with shock etched onto their faces, then bowed once again and said in unison, “We’re really sorry, Lady Fleming. Just please don’t have us destroyed!”

“I’m not that cruel, you know,” Janet said.

DeeDee put her fingers to the bridge of her nose, then leveled a glare directed at the three troublemakers and said, “Even though I told you earlier to keep an eye on things, you three are too paranoid,” which made the trio of female statuettes flinch on their pedestals and look away from their owner. “Well, at least you four are now awake,” she added, indicating the four bearded busts, “which should make things a little easier on Lady Fleming here.”

“Ah, that’s good,” one bust said.

“Not like April and May and June,” another bust added.

And the three statuettes crossed their arms over their breasts and stuck their tongues out at them.

“I know,” DeeDee said, then to the three statuettes: “I’ll have a chat with you later.” And when the trio lowered their heads and bowed their shoulders, DeeDee dug through a side pocket of her apron and pulled out a pocket watch and said, “Oh my, it’s almost three in the morning already. We’ll be finishing up in a bit, Lady Fleming. Just carry the busts, and I’ll carry the statuettes.”

And with that, Janet carried one of the busts, while DeeDee carried all three statuettes in her apron, and both girls walked back through the mirror into the dorm in Elba House and placed them on the third bookshelf.

“Ah, there you are, Mr. Malory,” the bust said. “We were wondering where you were.”

“Oh, you know me,” he said and nodded at the suit of armor. “I was just chatting with old ‘cranky bones’ over there.”

Sir Abram turned his head around, his eyes flashing green through the visor of his helmet, but said nothing and just resumed his guarding duties at the threshold.

“Now, now,” DeeDee said. “Don’t start.”

“I won’t, I promise,” he said.

Afterwards Janet and DeeDee headed back through the mirror into the shop once more and came back carrying two more busts and placing them on a shelf beside their comrades, and DeeDee headed back through the mirror and returned with the last bust and placed it on the shelf next to his comrades. All the while, there grew a hubbub of voices in the dorm of Elba House as the busts and statuettes began to loosen up in their new environment and talk about the place, which also made Sir Abram at the threshold rather talkative and share his own thoughts on the place.

When everyone had settled in, DeeDee introduced Janet to the rest of the enchanted objects, starting with the four other bearded busts. Besides Christopher Malory, there was John Day and Daniel Van Weever and Martin Keystone and Thomas o’Reilly, all four of whom had been explorers and adventurers in their day, just like Christopher Malory. Then DeeDee introduced her to the three meddlesome statuettes, April and May and June, all three of whom were nymphs that DeeDee had sealed in their current statuette forms over a century ago.

Janet was about to ask something about that when DeeDee asked her to come back into the shop with her, so Janet waved good night to her new friends and followed DeeDee through the mirror again. While there, Janet was informed that she’ll have to wait a full day for DeeDee’s magic to reach the mirror in her dorm at Mariana House, because the living auras of the other occupants there were interfering with its exact location. That meant that DeeDee would have to wait for the occupants to leave their dorms for their classes in order for her magic to fully coalesce within Janet’s mirror. But when that happened, that also meant that Janet won’t have to go through the trouble of going out incognito through the Student Commons Town and attracting unwanted attention.

Thus informed, Janet helped DeeDee clean up around the premises before leaving the shop at around 3:30 a.m. with her clones, who had kept watch for stragglers all night. But on their way back, Janet heard the sound of footsteps running down the empty boulevard, so she turned around and saw DeeDee closing the distance behind them.

“What’s wrong?” Janet said. “Are we being followed?”

“No, it’s not that,” DeeDee said. “You just forgot your cap, is all,” and she handed it over.

“Shoot, I forgot about it,” Janet said, then rearranged her hair and fitted the cap over her head, then put her fingers to the frame of her glasses to make sure she had them.

“It’s there, don’t worry,” DeeDee said.

“Thank you,” Janet said.

“Don’t mention it,” she said and waved her off.

With that, Janet followed her clones and traded some small talk with them about her prospects for the rest of the school week, let alone the rest of the semester, till she passed the campus gates and came within sight of Mariana House. She jogged the rest of the way down the boulevard and then walked down the entrance path towards Mariana House, where she greeted the guardsmen still on their graveyard shifts. With her clones going ahead and keeping a lookout along the central hallway to her dorm, Janet entered and picked up the skirts of her dress and crept on the balls of her feet to her dorm, listening for her maids’ quiet breathing in the adjoining room, then opened her door and nudged it shut behind her, till the latch caught in the slip plate.

Janet slipped off her mob cap and apron and maid uniform, then bent over and scooped up her nightgown and slipped it on, then crouched and shoved her disguise underneath her four-poster bed. She then headed to her vanity table and turned on a table lamp and took off her enchanted glasses, changing her eyes back to red and her hair back to her drills, and placed them inside one of the drawers and turned on her vanity lamp and saw three pre-rolled towels and shower cap that Susan had put there. After such a long day, Janet’s drills were starting to lose their shape, so she grabbed the towels and wrapped her hair around them. Then her clones helped her roll them into three snail-like hair rollers, and her suicide clone helped her fit the shower cap over the whole thing.

“Thank you, everyone,” Janet said.

Her clones smiled at her in the reflection of the vanity mirror, and her suicide clone said, “It’s the one thing in this world we know we can fix. It’s the least we can do.”

Janet smiled and said, “I appreciate it.”

After that, Janet turned off the lamp and headed straight to bed and climbed into the sheets and yawned.

After getting herself tucked in, she looked up at her clones and said, “DeeDee said she scolded you all.”

“Yeah, especially me,” her suicide double said, “but I think it’s for the best. I’m really sorry about yesterday. I never thought something like that would happen to you. I guess we’ll have to be more careful from now on.”

Janet smiled and said, “It’s fine,” then yawned again.

“Good night, Janet,” her clone said.

“Good night,” she said and yawned again, then turned onto her side and closed her eyes.

And in the darkness, as lethargic sleep overtook her senses, Janet dreamed about DeeDee explaining the current situation to the five bearded busts and the three troublesome statuettes, saying that her current shop had been compromised. That’s why, DeeDee said, she invited Janet over to help her move her inventory into the dorm of the abandoned Elba House. Then she invited Janet’s own clones into the dorm and informed them of the anomalies she’s found in the five tampered profile books in her possession.

Meanwhile, as DeeDee talked to Janet’s clones inside, Janet also saw her silent clones patrolling the abandoned hallways outside of Sir Abram’s post at the dorm’s entrance, all of them acting as his sentinels with lamps in their hands and their eyes searching through a darkness haunted with the rumors of the living and the dead.

End of Villainess 2