Chapter 33 Princess Fluffernutter
PRINCESS FLUFFERNUTTER
Ellie cried for forty minutes straight.
They weren’t delicate, dignified tears either. We’re talking full-body, snot-streaming, mascara-destroying sobs that had Bo hiding behind a door and Samuel developing an urgent need to check something in his study.
“I can’t believe you’re actually moving out!
” My best friend clutched a sodden tissue and surveyed the Hawthorne mansion’s interior like she’d never seen it before.
“This place is so beautiful, Abby. You—you deserve this.” Her breath hitched.
Her face crumpled, her mouth opening on a loud wail that made me wince and the chandelier shake.
Bernard observed the proceedings with the stoic expression of a butler who had witnessed worse displays of affection.
“You’ve been here at least a dozen times,” I reminded my best friend once the echoes died down.
“I know, but this is different.” She sniffed and hugged me with the bone-breaking strength of a newborn vampire. “You’re going to live here now.”
I wheezed and tried to extract myself from her damp embrace.
Virgil hovered in the doorway with the last of my boxes, looking torn between sympathy and self-preservation.
The vampire had been ferrying things from his car for the last hour while Ellie supervised, which in practice meant she’d inspected every box, reminisced over every item, and wept over a pair of socks.
To my surprise, Mrs. Chen had accompanied the couple. The witch was currently dispensing advice to Nora about her herb garden.
Victoria watched from the first floor landing, her tight face broadcasting that she did not sign up for this. Pearl sat beside her, tail curled around her paws, her sapphire eyes tracking events with the air of a nature documentary narrator observing a baffling mating ritual.
“Is she always like this?” the cat asked.
“Only when she’s happy,” I said with a sigh. “Or sad. Or surprised. Or watching commercials about dogs.”
Pearl blinked. “How alarming.”
Bo reappeared from behind the door. “Is it safe?”
Ellie’s lower lip wobbled as she looked mistily at my dog. “Oh, Bo! You’re going to have such a big garden to play in.”
Bo reversed behind the door.
“Right,” I said, clapping my hands briskly. “That’s the last of it. Thank you, Virgil. You can put that one in the bedroom.”
“Which bedroom?” Virgil asked.
“Second floor, third door on the left,” Victoria directed.
Virgil hesitated. “Isn’t that Samuel’s bedroom?”
“It is.”
Virgil’s shoulders drooped. He made for the stairs with the dejected look of a man headed for the gallows.
“Wait.” Ellie’s red-rimmed eyes locked on the box in the vampire’s hands.
It was taped shut and I’d deliberately placed it at the bottom of the stack.
My best friend’s gaze shifted accusingly to me. “Abby. Tell me you didn’t.”
I avoided her eyes.
Ellie strode over to her boyfriend and ripped the tape off.
She sucked in air and removed the object inside the box like exhibit A at a murder trial.
“The lava lamp,” Ellie said stiffly. “I tried to throw this away three times.”
“And I rescued it three times,” I confessed with zero remorse.
Bo popped out from behind the door, tail going ninety. “It made the trip?!”
“It made the trip,” I confirmed.
“Yes!” My dog bounced and did a lap of the hall. “Best day ever!”
“It doesn’t even work properly,” Ellie protested. “The wax just sits there in a blob!”
“It’s a slow starter. Besides, it has sentimental value.”
Victoria was studying the lava lamp like it might lower her property value. “Is that a... decorative piece?”
“It’s a lava lamp,” I said in a tone that would brook no argument. “It’s going in the bedroom.”
“I see.” Victoria’s voice indicated she did not, in fact, see.
“It provides ambient illumination,” Bo said loyally.
“It provides nothing,” Ellie argued. “The wax hasn’t moved since 2019.”
I tucked the lamp under my arm with a scowl and that was the end of that.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of unpacking, rearranging, and intermittent Ellie breakdowns.
Samuel reappeared once the crying had subsided to a manageable level and helped me organize the closet.
Bernard produced sandwiches and tea. Mrs. Chen asked Nora how she made her towels smell so fresh.
By late afternoon, I’d fully settled in. The bedroom Samuel and I now shared smelled like his cedar cologne and my vanilla shampoo, which shouldn’t have worked but somehow did. The lava lamp sat on the nightstand. The wax had not moved.
Bo was asleep on a dog bed the size of a small country that Victoria had sourced from somewhere. He’d looked obscenely content when it had arrived and had made it his duty to point out to Pearl that his bed was bigger than hers.
“Happy?” Samuel asked, pulling me against his chest as we stood in the doorway.
I leaned into him and smiled. “Yeah. I am.”
His wolf pressed warmly against mine through the bond.
The Maple Street clinic reopened two days later. It was the last one of the Lincoln sisters’ health care centers to resume business.
Didi texted me a photograph of the queue stretching around the block. Brownies, dwarves, fae, and assorted supernatural residents were lined up outside the familiar blue awning, many of them carrying baked goods and flowers for the Lincoln sisters.
Amberford was finally settling back into something resembling normal.
The Forgetting spells Esmeralda had cast across town had begun to fade.
Daria had assigned the Ashgrove coven to monitor the Thornwick property while the ley lines recovered.
Oscar had been put in charge of filing the official report on the Lincoln sisters’ kidnapping, a task he’d accepted with the enthusiasm of someone who’d been handed a root canal.
Which left the matter of the black cat’s fate.
Victoria, Samuel, Pearl, Bo, and I pulled up to Barney’s mansion on a crisp Saturday afternoon a week after the emergency Alliance meeting. The brass door knocker had new googly eyes on it. Nobody commented on them.
Barney answered the door in his usual pristine attire. There were four parallel scratches on his left forearm.
Pearl swished her tail. “Those look fresh.”
“They are,” the vampire said sullenly. “Before anyone says anything, I want it on record that what you’re about to see and hear was not my idea.”
We exchanged puzzled glances.
“Noted,” Samuel said. “How’s your new ward?”
Barney’s jaw tightened in a way that conveyed several paragraphs of suffering. “She’s peachy.”
He stepped aside and let us in.
Harold materialized in the hallway, the butler’s composure firmly intact despite a small bandage on one finger.
“Welcome back,” he greeted us. “Shall I fetch the tea service?”
“Please,” Victoria said. She glanced at the claw marks on Barney’s arm. “And maybe a first aid kit for your master.”
Harold’s smile didn’t waver. “Already prepared, ma’am.”
We followed Barney down the familiar hallway lined with oil paintings. A framed portrait that I didn’t remember seeing before hung near the drawing room. It was a photograph of a black cat wearing a pink bow, set inside an ornate gilded frame.
I slowed. “Wait. Is that—”
“Don’t,” Barney said darkly.
We entered the drawing room and stopped dead in our tracks.
Melvina sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the fireplace. Her battleaxe leaned against the mantelpiece, within arm’s reach. The dwarf’s braided beard quivered with delight as she cooed to something on her lap.
Pearl snickered. Samuel’s shoulders trembled beside me.
The most feared dark witch in Amberford, architect of the Black Chalice Rite, kidnapper of the Lincoln sisters, and all-around terrible person, was currently wearing a pink knitted sweater with the word “PRINCESS” embroidered across the back in rhinestones.
Tiny bows adorned each ear. A bedazzled collar glittered around her neck.
Someone had glued googly eyes to the tag.
The cat’s golden gaze burned with a hatred so pure it was almost admirable.
Melvina beamed when she spotted us. “You’re just in time. I finished her new outfit this morning.”
Bo’s tail wagged so hard his entire back end swung.
“She looks amazing!” the Husky proclaimed.
“She looks homicidal,” I said flatly.
The cat fixed us with a glare that promised retribution.
My dog’s tail stopped wagging.
“I changed my mind,” he said, slinking behind me.
“She’s tried to escape fourteen times,” Barney informed us tiredly as he dropped into his favorite armchair. “Harold has reinforced the windows. Twice.”
“The bathroom window was my oversight,” Harold admitted from the doorway. He was holding a tray of dog and cat friendly cookies and biscuits. “She’s remarkably flexible.”
Bo’s eyes focused on the baked goods like a heat-seeking missile. He licked his chops noisily.
Victoria studied the cat from a safe distance. “She seems to be adjusting to her new home.”
On cue, the cat twisted in Melvina’s grip and attempted to sink her teeth into the dwarf’s forearm. Melvina didn’t flinch. Mostly because a dwarf’s skin was as tough as nails. She adjusted her hold and scratched behind the feline’s ears.
“Aw, someone’s grumpy.” The dwarf held the cat up to face level and spoke to it in a voice reserved for infants and small animals. “Is Princess Fluffernutter having a bad day? Is she? Is she having a grumpy-wumpy day?”
Samuel choked on air.
“Princess Fluffernutter?” I asked Barney.
The vampire looked like he wanted to crawl into a coffin and stay there for a century.
“Why Princess Fluffernutter?” Victoria asked in a voice laced with morbid fascination.
“Because she’s fluffy and she likes peanut butter,” Melvina replied promptly.
Samuel wheezed. I stepped on his foot.
“She doesn’t like peanut butter,” Barney said flatly. “She threw it at my head.”
“That’s how cats show affection,” Melvina insisted.
The black cat made a sound that should not have been physically possible from a feline throat. It was half yowl, half scream, and entirely Esmeralda.
Pearl hopped onto the coffee table to get a better look. “That outfit really suits her.” The white cat smirked. “She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”
The carrier of dark magic, corrosive properties, and minor vampiric abilities hissed from inside her pink sweater.
“Please, sit,” Harold said. “I’ll bring the tea.”
We sat.
“I think your ward is settling in nicely,” Samuel told Barney in a solemn tone.
I could hear his wolf laughing across our bond.
“I want a raise,” Barney said coldly.
“You’re a volunteer,” Victoria pointed out delicately.
“Then I want to start getting paid,” the vampire ground out.
Melvina bounced the cat gently in her lap. “Wait till you all see the outfit I’m making for next week. It has wings.”
Barney’s eyes flashed crimson. “I am not buying wings to put on that cat.”
Melvina’s face fell. “But it’s fairy wings.”
“No.”
“Tiny ones.” She traced their shapes with her fingers.
“No.”
Melvina’s beard trembled. Barney held firm for approximately four seconds before his shoulders sagged in defeat.
“That vampire is doomed,” Bo hissed from beneath my chair.
“He was doomed the minute Finnic opened his mouth at that meeting,” I murmured back.
We stayed for tea and headless cookies. Bo was allowed two and inhaled them in the blink of an eye before eyeing mine with undisguised greed.
The cat tried to escape twice, once through the kitchen window and once by making a break for it when Harold opened the front door to accept a delivery.
Barney caught her both times, the vampire wearing the weary look of someone who’d already done this a dozen times today.
I caught a last glimpse through a bay window as we pulled away from the mansion. Melvina was holding the cat up to the glass and waving one of its paws at us.
The cat’s other paw was trying to gouge out the dwarf’s eye.
Bo pressed his nose to the car window and wagged his tail. “I love visiting Barney’s house.”
Abby and Bo’s adventures continue in DOARF #4. Coming soon!