One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [41]
I got back to the house at midmorning to find Pickwick already laying the table for lunch. She often picked up fads and trends from the BookWorld and just recently had caught the “reality bug” and insisted we sit for every meal, even though there was nothing to eat and we didn’t need to. She also insisted that we play parlor games together in the evenings. This would have been fine if she didn’t have to win at everything, and watching a dodo cheat badly at KerPlunk was not a happy spectacle.
I found Scarlett in the kitchen looking a little green about the gills and with an ice pack on her head.
“Problems?” I asked.
“N-n-n-none at all,” groaned Carmine. “I j-j-just think I hit the hyphens a little t-t-t-too hard last n-n-night.”
She groaned, closed her eyes and pressed the ice pack more firmly to her head.
“If you’re hyphenated while working you’ll be in serious trouble,” I said in my most scolding voice. “And as your mentor, so will I.”
“Yeah, yeah,” murmured Carmine, eyes firmly closed. “I’ll be fine. B-b-but can you p-p-p-please get the b-b-birdbrain over there to shut up?”
“I’m sorry,” said Pickwick haughtily, “but was the drunken tart addressing me?”
“Why, is there another b-b-birdbrain present?”
“Okay, okay,” I said, “calm down, you two. What’s the problem?”
“That b-birdbrain insists on staring at m-me and sighing.”
“Is this true?”
Pickwick ruffled her feathers indignantly. “She brought a goblin home, and they’re nothing but trouble. What’s more, I think she is entirely unsuitable for carrying on the important job of being Thursday. We all like a hyphen from time to time, but consorting with pointy-eared homunculi is totally out of order!”
She squawked the last bit, and Carmine rolled her eyes.
“I didn’t b-bring a g-goblin home.”
“He followed you home. It amounts to the same thing.”
“You’re j-just sour because you’re not g-g-getting any,” sneered Carmine. “And anyway, Horace is n-n-not like other g-g-goblins.”
“Hang on,” I said. “So you did bring a goblin home?”
“He g-g-got locked out of his b-b-book. What was I supposed to d-d-do?”
I threw up my arms. “Carmine!”
“D-don’t you be so j-judgmental,” she replied indignantly. “Look at yourself. F-f-five books in one s-series, and each by a different g-g-ghostwriter.”
“Your private life is your own,” I replied angrily, “but goblins can’t help themselves—or rather they can help themselves—to anything not nailed down.”
I ran upstairs to find that my bedroom had been ransacked. Anything of even the slightest value had been stolen. Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently.
“That was dumb,” I said when I’d returned. “He’s taken almost everything.”
Carmine looked at me, then at Pickwick, then burst into tears and ran from the room.
“Goblins!” said Pickwick with a snort. “They’re just trouble with a capital G. By the way,” she added, now cheerier since she’d been proved correct, “Sprockett wanted to show you something. He’s in your office.”
I walked through to my study, where Sprockett was indeed waiting for me. He wasn’t alone. He had his foot on top of a struggling goblin, and a burlap sack full of stolen possessions was lying on the carpet.
“Your property, ma’am?” he asked. I nodded, and he took the letter opener from the desk, held the goblin tightly by one ear and placed the opener to its throat. His eyebrow twitched. It was clearly a bluff. I decided to play along.
“No,” I said, “you’ll ruin the carpet. Do it outside.”
The goblin opened his eyes wide and stared at me in shocked amazement, then started to babble on about an “influential uncle” who would “do unpleasant things” if he “went missing.”
“Just kidding,” I added. “Let him go.”
“Are you sure?” asked Sprockett. “I can make it look like a shaving accident.”
“Yes, I’m sure. You,” I said, jabbing a finger at the