Villainess 4: Janet’s Haunted Escapade

Red Pill 18: Maids, Ghosts

While Janet and DeeDee were seated at the conference table, Janet’s beheaded clone said she should have been there to see the Prince squirm when Margrave Sydney and Marquess Fleming and Father Robinson and Baron Palmer and Viscountess Durham and Count Cosgrove and King Blaise went to work on him, especially Marquess Fleming. In fact, the clone observed that Marquess Fleming used the amulet that Janet had given him to grill the Prince so hard, she thought he would shit himself, especially when the Queen appeared and slapped the Prince’s face and chewed him out. To all of this, Janet smiled and said that he had it coming to him and imagined her father circling the Judgment Circle in the antechamber and glaring at the Prince like a falcon circling over an eaglet in its nest, while King and Queen Blaise had their son kowtowing in the Circle at the point of their swords over his neck.

Then Baron Underwood returned from sending the Prince’s spies back to the Royals House, saying he had also visited Ridley and Kevin in their dorms and told them to prepare for the contract signing tonight, so Janet said she’d let Mindy and the Drevis sisters know about it, too. With that decided, DeeDee ended the first session of the Ghost Hunting Club, having three of Janet’s clones go back to the Royals House to keep watch on the Prince, then dismissed Janet and Baron Underwood before she headed back down the hallway to the half-turn stairs leading to Celeste Graves’ office to talk with her again.

After that, Janet and Baron Underwood got up and exited Elba House as sunset was about to eclipse the horizon and plunge the sky into twilight, while the rest of her clones accompanied them. During their walk, Janet asked Baron Underwood if he’d told DeeDee about the automatic writing in her class notebook, and Baron Underwood said he already had and added that DeeDee was going to talk to the landlady of Elba House about it. When Janet asked him what DeeDee said about it, the baron said that DeeDee suspected someone had placed a sleeper spell on him that activated whenever he started teaching. When she asked what DeeDee thought about it, he said that she told him it was still up in the air and needed further investigation.

Janet was quiet after that until her arrival at Mariana House after hearing a boom inside and saw the guards missing from their post at the double-door entrance and heard a voice asking everyone to stand back. Inside were several students standing in clusters in the central hallway and talking amongst themselves, and when Janet and Baron Underwood passed by, they stared in their wake. Janet ignored them, making her way past on-lookers as another boom resounded through the hallway, and found her friends with their portmanteaus and their school bags and their maids and Janet’s own maids standing with the crowd and looking at God knows what.

When Janet made her way through the crowd, she saw the winded guards lunging forwards and kicking at the double doors with another splintering boom resounding through the hallway. They then backed up for another go at it, but Baron Underwood went over to them, saying, “What’s going on, gentlemen?”

“Oh,” one of the guards said, still huffing and puffing, “we’re just trying to get these blasted doors open.”

The baron went over and tried the handles, yet they wouldn’t click open, so he said, “Why won’t they open?”

“We don’t know,” the other guard said, still bowled over with his hands on his knees, “but I think those doors have been enchanted. Whose dorm is that, anyway?”

“It’s mine,” Janet said. “What’s going on?”

“You tell us, my lady,” the first guard said. “We can’t seem to get past the doors.”

“Did you use a spell?” the other said.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, stalking over to the double doors and turning the handles, and the door clicked open and swung aside, revealing the same dorm Janet had left in a rush that morning, plus Janet’s clones waving at her by her bed. “See? There’s nothing wrong with the doors.”

“That’s crazy,” Marin said.

“How did you do that?” Susan added.

Janet looked back at her friends’ pale-faced maids, two black-haired maids that seemed like sisters or cousins and one silver-haired maid, and said, “What do you mean?” Yet her friends stayed silent and traded glances with each other, while the guards just stood there, eyes wide and mouths agape, before they snapped out of it and were now asking the other on-lookers to go back into their dorms, since the issue was resolved. “What happened here?”

“Marin and I tried opening the doors to tidy up your room,” Susan said, “but we couldn’t open them.”

“And when we arrived,” Mindy Kessler added, “we offered to help your maids out, but the door stayed shut even with our maids pitching in.”

“So we asked the guards to help us,” Saraya added, “but they couldn’t open them either.”

“But you just did,” Jean added. “Why is that?”

For a few moments, Janet was at a loss for what to say, till Marin came in and said, “We received a mirror yesterday from someone named ‘D.D.’”

“Was that mirror enchanted?” Susan added.

Janet turned around and saw the very mirror standing between the armoire closet and the vanity table, wondering how she was going to explain that without revealing DeeDee’s presence within earshot of lingering by-standers, and said in her mind, “DeeDee, what can I say?”

“Figure it out,” DeeDee said.

“Gee, you’re no help for once,” she said.

“I’m talking with Lady Graves at the moment,” DeeDee said. “Can you excuse us for a bit?”

“Fine,” Janet said, then looked back at the mirror in her room before turning back to face her friends as the guards finished dispersing the crowd. “Guards, it’s all right now. You can go back to your post.”

One of the guards approached Janet and said, “Are you sure, my lady? If you’re the only one who can open those doors,” and he pointed to the pesky doors that he and his fellow guardsman failed to kick open, “then I’m afraid we’ll have to report it to Lord Cosgrove.”

“It’s fine,” Janet said, thinking back to Marquess Fleming’s tirade against Prince Blaise at the Palace and wishing she could have been there to see the Prince squirm. “It’s an added security measure from my father, anyway.”

“You mean Marquess Fleming?” the guard said.

“Yes,” she lied. “It’s his suggestion.”

Both guards traded glances.

“All right,” the guard said and nodded. “Have a nice evening, my lady. We will still have to inform Lord Cosgrove about it after our shifts, so just be aware of that.”

“Don’t worry,” Janet said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

With that, the other guard nodded as well, and both guards said their evening salutations to Janet’s friends before walking back to the double-door entrance and shutting the doors behind them, where Janet heard muffled talking.

Janet’s friends (Mindy Kessler, Jean Drevis, Saraya Drevis, their maids, Janet’s own maids, and Baron Simeon Underwood) just stood there staring at her in silence.

“What is it?” Janet said.

“No way,” Mindy Kessler said, staring at Janet as if she had witnessed her doing something naughty. “You did not just bluff them like that.”

Janet smiled and put her finger to her lips, saying, “Keep that between us, okay?”

“Oh my God, you’re awesome!” Mindy said.

Janet laughed and stepped past the threshold, while her friends and their maids picked up their luggage and headed inside with her, followed by Janet’s maids. There in the dorm room were sixteen of her clones crowding around her bed, so Janet said out loud, “Were you the ones who opened the doors?”

“Nope,” her suicide clone said. “That was you. And good job pulling the wool over their eyes like that.”

“Janet,” Marin said, “who are you talking to?”

“Is there something you’re not telling us?” Susan added.

Janet grimaced and cursed in her mind, then looked at her two maids and her friends’ maids, then looked at her friends and her club advisor Baron Underwood in turn. Faced with the inevitable, Janet closed the doors and said, “Mindy, Jean, Sara, did you inform your maids about my clones?”

“Yeah, we did,” Mindy said.

“What ‘clones’ are you talking about?” Susan said, looking around the room without seeing anything out-of-the-ordinary. “I don’t see anyone else except us here.”

“Unless,” Marin added, “there’s something you’re not telling us, is there?”

Janet’s clones looked at Susan and Marin, and Janet’s suicide double said, “It’s okay, Janet.”

“Are you sure?” she said in her mind.

“It’s better sooner than later,” her double said.

“I see them,” Mindy’s maid said, a silver-haired girl with piercing green eyes, who pointed at the bed where Janet’s clones clustered around it. “They’re right there.”

“They’re here?” Susan said.

“Yeah,” Jean’s bespectacled black-haired maid said, who sported a pair of braided pigtails like her mistress, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and pointing at the bed. “They’re right there.”

Susan and Marin looked, unseeing, in that direction.

“You can’t see them?” Saraya’s black-haired maid said, who sported a pair of long twin-tails.

Both Susan and Marin shook their heads.

“And neither can I,” Baron Underwood said, “but I’ve seen enough this afternoon to know that they exist.”

“Okay, Sue, Marin,” Janet said, stalking towards the mirror between the armoire closet and the vanity and waving her maids over and stepping aside for them to see, “look in that mirror for a bit. Just . . . try not to freak out, okay?”

Susan and Marin did as requested, peering into the reflection, where Janet’s clones approached them from behind, smiling and waving their hands at them.

“Do you see them now?” Janet said.

Susan and Marin did not say anything at that moment, only gawking at what they saw reflected behind them with open mouths and sweating temples and pale faces. As such, Susan and Marin looked back with sightless eyes upon the clones before them, then looked back at the reflection through the mirror again, both still remaining silent.

“Sue, Marin,” Janet said, “are you okay?”

But her maids, faced with the moment growing ever heavier upon them, could only do one thing.

They fainted.

To Be Continued