HAVE YOURSELF A DEADLY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

 

a Greatest Hits Mysteries short story

 

by

 

LESLIE LANGTRY

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

"Tell us that story, Aunt Missi!" Theo Bombay wailed at me. His father, Coney Island Bombay, lunged for his son, but even with his amazing reflexes, the six-year-old danced out of the way and took up a whining position on the other side of my chair. Too bad we weren't assassins anymore. The kid had some talent at evasion.

I tried to ignore the request. It was Christmas at Santa Muerta, and this year I'd invited all of my cousins and their families to join us. The island belonged to the whole Bombay family, but my husband, Lex, and my sons, Monty and Jack, and I were the only ones who lived here year round.

Theo was the youngest and the first Bombay in four millennia to have a name that wasn't the pronoun for a location. For four thousand years the Bombays were the first name in assassination worldwide. That creates some quirky traditions, and one of ours was to saddle every child with a place name. Which was great if you were Virginia Bombay, but not so great when you're named Liverpool. Which is why Liverpool became Liv, Mississippi became Missi, and Coney Island very fortunately became Cy. Why Virginia, with her name being a real one, changed to Gin is anybody's guess. But if you ask Uncle York, he'd say she's a drinker.

"Knock it off, Theo." Coney chuckled. "You've made her tell it twice already this weekend."

"Don't care, Dad." Theo crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, looking very much like his father. "I wanna hear it again."

Gin Bombay downed a cup of eggnog and chided, "Oh, do it, Missi. I love that story."

"Because you're in it!" Her brother Dakota (who went by Dak) scowled. "I'm not in that story." His wife, Leonie, shook her head. She was tired of hearing about it.

"I don't know…" I said. "It was a long time ago. I might not remember everything."

Paris Bombay (who never felt the need to shorten his name) laughed. "You remember every single word. Go ahead. Tell it." He shot a look at Dak. "After all, I am in it."

"Maybe we should wait for everyone else," I said.

Veronica, Theo's mom, spoke up as she grabbed another ninjabread cookie, "The teenagers are all at the pool—they'll never come back. Besides, I haven't heard it yet."

I looked around the room and sighed. "Fine." I sat down, and Liv Bombay handed me a large glass of wine. Which, at that moment, made her my favorite cousin.

"Several years ago, back when the Bombays still killed bad people," I began, "five little Bombays were each given one assignment and an ultimatum to get the jobs done by the day after Christmas…

"Paris, Cy, Liv, Gin, and I had each received from the Council that special manila envelope with the Bombay Family crest in red wax sealing it shut. We each found out about the others when we got together at a sports bar in Gin, Liv, and Paris' hometown to basically complain about spending the holidays taking out Vics."

Dak interrupted with a pout. "I still don't get why I wasn't involved. It would make more sense for Gin, Liv, Paris, and I to get these assignments. We all lived in the same place!"

The rest of the Bombays ignored him. We'd all heard this complaint every time I told the story.

"As I was saying," I said, shooting Dak a look. "We were eating burgers and drinking beer and complaining that we didn't want to do it, when Cy came up with a great idea. What if we did all the hits at once? At the same place? It was a stroke of genius."

Theo puffed up proudly. He loved this part because he agreed—his dad was a genius. Cy suppressed a smile.

"Anyway, Liv came up with the idea that we do it on Santa Muerta. Her favorite book was Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. So she suggested we invite each of our victims to the island for a Christmas party and take them out, one by one."

"That was an inspired idea." Gin laughed. "I still can't believe it worked."

I waved the comment away. "Of course it worked. We're Bombays. Anyway, we decided the only way we could get our five Vics to come to Santa Muerta at Christmastime was to tell them they'd received a significant inheritance from a distant cousin. But they all had to come out on Christmas Eve in order to claim it, or they'd lose it forever. So we made up letters for each of our targets:

 

Dear Sir,

I regret to inform you that your sixth cousin twice-removed, Mr. Upton N. Owen, has died. Due to the fact that Mr. Owen had no direct descendants, he has left you a very large legacy. In order to claim the money, you will need to come to his home at Christmas Eve for the distribution of the inheritance. You need be at your local airport at the specified time on the enclosed ticket, on December 23. Per Mr. Owens's request, if you do not attend, you receive nothing.

Sincerely,

Phillip Lombard

Attorney for the Deceased

 

I'd just finished reciting the letter when a short, fat bird waddled into the room and hopped up and down next to my chair. Leaning forward, I lifted the animal onto my lap. It walked in circles before dropping on my legs with something that sounded like wooompf. She was a dense, heavy bird with a heart of gold and the brain of an imaginary tulip.

"I still can't believe you cloned Cairo Bombay's dodo egg," Paris mused. "I still think you should let the world know. That's a pretty big deal."

I shook my head. "No, I don't want her dissected or worse. Right, Eulalie?"

The dodo looked up at me and, without getting up, tried rather unsuccessfully to scratch her face with her foot before falling over onto her side. She scowled at her foot, then believing it to be suitably chastised, closed her eyes and fell asleep in that awkward position. Eulalie could fall asleep so easily, anywhere any time. Clearly that contributed to the bird's extinction. But I wasn't going to tell her that. I was pretty sure she believed there were entire herds of free-range dodos all over the world just waiting to worship and adore her. Telling her that there weren't would only depress her.

"Well, she's better looking than those cassowaries," Dak mumbled. "At least I was there for that Christmas hit."

"Stop interrupting, Uncle Dak!" Theo turned to me and begged. "You have to get back to the story!" He really was a cute kid. Theo reminded me of my twin sons, when they were still cute and not in college (where they thought they knew everything and were decidedly not cute).

SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! Eulalie lifted her head, let out a loud protest for no apparent reason, glared at the suspicious foot, then fell back asleep.

"Alright," I said. "I guess I'm not getting out of this one."

I shifted Eulalie to distribute her weight more easily and continued the story.

"So, we sent out the letters to our five targets. Annie Webb, Nora Bineppe, Juan Perez, William Bukowski, and Anderson Smith. To our surprise, each and every one of them showed up at their closest airport at the designated time. It wasn't easy getting the Bombay jet to all those places to make sure everyone was here on time. But it worked out. I have a chart for stuff like that. It's based on an Excel spreadsheet and a flight simulator and…"

I'd started to wander. Theodore fixed his eyes on me, and I realized I should just stick to the story. Six year olds have no patience whatsoever.

I'd been fixing up the original home of the island's founder, Cairo Bombay. It was on the other side of the island and pretty isolated. No one ever went there because I think most of the family had forgotten it existed. But I was retired and bored, and my husband, Lex, agreed to help me.

The house had been falling apart, literally. It was built in the 17^th Century, and time and the Equator's humidity had not been kind. Still, the outer walls were stone, and it had a good foundation. Over the course of a year, Lex and I had turned it into a gorgeous, ten bedroom house with hardwood floors, two working fireplaces (which I know is weird when you live in this part of the world), and lots of comfy furniture.

For our part, Cy, Paris, Liv, Gin, and I decided to each be additional "relatives" scrounging for the inheritance. We were going to mix and mingle and kill ourselves off too. Each one of us started working on a persona, complete with costumes. When my cousins arrived on the island, I took them through the house, to familiarize them with it. They were appropriately impressed.

Then everyone went back to the main condos, got dressed, and packed a bag. It had to look like we'd just shown up here, like the targets. We met up on the tarmac. That's when I realized that my cousins had apparently taken their costumes from some dinner theater in a remote location that had been possibly cut off from the rest of the world for a couple of decades.

"Um," Gin asked Paris, "what are you supposed to be?"

Paris looked wounded. As the more sensitive Bombay, he took things a little more personally than the others.

"I'm Giuseppe Dijorno. An Italian poet," he said with what could only be considered an insult to the Italian accent and a grand flourish of his arm.

"Dijorno?" I asked. "Like the pizza?"

Paris shrugged. "I couldn't think of anything else." He said this in the bizarre Italian accent. From head to toe, he was dressed all in black with a beret perched atop his head.

"I'm a poor man, so I really need the inheritance money. See?" Paris explained as he turned, showing off patched elbows and threadbare clothes.

"So," Cy said, scratching his beard, "you're a beatnik hobo?"

Paris frowned and shook his head. "I'm a poet! I've had critical success, but as of yet, my art has remained undiscovered by the masses." He sighed heavily. "I may have to die before I become famous."

"Yes. Clearly the world suffers without your genius." Liv rolled her eyes. "You might've gone a little overboard, my brother."

Gin pointed at her cousin. "And you are?" She eyed Liv's voluminous skirts and peasant top. She had a gold circlet around her forehead, and…did I smell patchouli?

"A Gypsy, of course." Liv sniffed. "Madame Angelina. I tell fortunes."

"You're kidding, right?" Gin said. "You two look like you're going to a costume murder mystery night at a bed and breakfast in Idaho."

I laughed out loud. Gin didn't look much better. She was dressed in tight leather pants, a fuschia tank top layered over an electric blue one and neon green stilettos. There had to be one hundred rubber bracelets on her arms, and she had a huge guitar tattoo on her right shoulder.

"Let me guess," I said. "Groupie for Mötley Crüe?"

Gin looked a little pissed off. "No. I'm Tiffany Lauper—a rock star," she said with an accent that sounded like Robert De Niro eating an octopus, and launched into some weird pose that involved her attempting to make the horns of the beast but looked more like obscene shadow puppetry.

"Tiffany Lauper?" Cy asked. "You just combined the names of two singers from the '80s?"

"Your clothes…you look like what would happen if my closet in 1987 barfed," Liv chimed in.

"What?" Gin asked, looking down at herself. "I look totally legit!"

Paris shook his head. "No. You look like you fell out of a Ratt video."

"What are you going to say when the others don't recognize you or your name?" I asked.

Gin shrugged. "I'll just say I was big in the '80s and am kind of washed up now." Did I mention that her hair was teased into a frizzy, blonde cloud? She wasn't going to get a comb through that mess anytime soon. Gin gyrated her hips in a way that would make sailors avert their eyes and shrieked, "Rock and roll!"

"Please stop that," Cy said. He was probably the most convincing. Cy moonlighted as a carney between assignments from the Bombay Council. He had a long, frizzy beard, shaved head, stained jeans, and a work shirt with a label that said: Frank. And because he really was a carney, he would be able to pull off the character without a problem.

"What about you, Missi?" Liv pointed at me, and my other cousins nodded.

"I'm just your average, middle-aged American housewife," I said. "Nancy Johnson, at your service."

"Those are your real clothes!" Paris whined. "You were supposed to have a character!"

"Yeah!" Gin said. "You and Cy are just playing yourselves!"

I held my hands up. "Look, I spent all this time adding the gadgets we need to the house. I didn't have time to do anything more." As the inventor for the Bombay Family, I was the only one who could create and install the apparatuses we'd need to get this done. I was a little insulted that they thought I should do more.

Liv picked at her skirt, and I was almost strangled by a wave of patchouli. "I feel kind of stupid now."

"I die first anyway, guys," I protested. What I really wanted to say was you guys should look more like me.

The hum of an airplane overhead interrupted us. We watched as it came to a stop on the landing strip. The side door of the airplane opened, and the stairs dropped down. We had our first target.

"It's show time. From here on out, we only use our character names," I whispered as we walked to our first guest.

Anderson Smith gave us a look that said he found us distasteful. The way Gin as Tiffany Lauper, Paris as Giuseppe, and Liv as Madame Angelina were dressed, I kind of agreed with him.

Smith wore a tailored suit of expensive fabric that could only have been made in Savile Row and pressed by domestics whose families had been "in service" for many generations. A tall, thin man with gray hair and a pinched face, he walked toward us with purpose in his stride. He was the one we were most worried about. This guy was already very wealthy. Using money as a lure might not work. But here he was.

The Englishman held out a pale, veiny hand to me first. I shook it only to find he held it like a limp dishrag. "Anderson Smith." We introduced ourselves according to our character. I was mildly alarmed when I discovered that Giuseppe had decided to continue to use an outrageous, Italian accent.

Mr. Smith finished shaking, then wiped his hands on a red silk handkerchief that he produced from his pocket. It was insulting, but he didn't seem to care what we thought.

"So," he said in a crisp, clipped accent. "There are others here for the inheritance? I'd thought I was the only one."

Tiffany Lauper pouted through red glossy lips. "Me too!" Okay, whereas Giuseppe's accent was bad, Tiffany's was worse. Her attempt at a Brooklyn accent was so over-the-top it was orbiting Mars as we spoke. I was starting to wonder if we'd make it through the next two days without actually killing her.

"Disappointment flares in the shadows of my soul!" Giuseppe made a dramatic gesture with his right hand. Oh. My. God.

Madame Angelina spoke up in a weird, Romanian accent. "Madame Angelina did not see this coming. And I always know what is going to happen next!" To my horror, she then twirled, sending the tons of fabric from her skirts flying.

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter much to me," I said in my own voice with my own accent. "I'm happy for any money I can get."

Frank (a.k.a Cy) folded his arms across his chest and said nothing. I wondered if this was how he was going to play it. And then I realized he might be the smartest one of all of us.

The plane took off. It wasn't going far. We'd had each person flown down here to a local airport so they could all arrive at the same time. It wasn't easy. But we'd managed it. I figured that it would be a ten minute flight to Quito, where the next guest waited.

Anderson sighed in resignation to his having to slum it for the next twenty-four hours.

"Does anyone know this distant cousin of ours?" he asked.

"How can a man ever truly know anyone but himself?" Giuseppe asked. His accent was getting so heavy it was weighing down my nerves. And if he kept talking in poetry, my character was going to beat his character senseless.

"Never heard of him." I shrugged again. I was kind of worried that this shrugging thing was going to be my motif from here on out. Oh well. I was the first victim. I wouldn't have to do this very long.

Tiffany Lauper tapped a finger against her cheek. I saw a flash of black nail polish on super long fingernails. "Ya know, I wondered about that too. But then, the Laupers are a huge family. Could be anybody."

Madame Angelina posed dramatically, hands on her hips. "I tried to see into his past with my scrying ball. But the past was a veil I could not see through at this time." Scrying ball? Someone just watched Lord of the Rings. Again.

Frank kept his arms folded and simply shook his head.

Anderson looked at each and every one of us. He'd only been here a few minutes, and I'd bet he figured all this stuff out. Frank would have to snap his skinny neck right here. Oh well. We could dump him in the ocean, and none would be the wiser.

"I find it difficult to believe I could be related to any of you." He put an emphasis on you that made us feel like we'd barely evolved past a planarian with STDs. We all seemed to hold our breath.

"But he is my sixth cousin, twice removed." He made a face. "I guess every family tree has it's…" Anderson looked Frank up and down. "Black sheep."

Frank chose not to respond. He was used to judgment as a carney. If only people knew he had a PhD in philosophy from an Ivy League college. But he didn't really care what anyone thought. Anderson's slight meant nothing.

The plane approached again. We all stood there as it coasted to a stop. Once again the door opened, and the stairs were lowered. A pretty young woman stepped out and stood staring at us. She hesitated for a moment, but then decided to approach us. That had to be brave. At this point, if it were me, I'd get back on the plane.

"Hey!" she said breathlessly as she caught up. The young woman was even prettier up close. Short, glossy red hair in a bob, bright green eyes rimmed by impossibly thick eyelashes. She was wearing a white button-down blouse and navy capri pants.

"I'm Annie." She extended her hand to Anderson. Apparently, he looked a little less weird to her.

Anderson's eyebrows went up, but he took her hand and shook it. Each one of us introduced ourselves. Frank even took her hand and said, "Frank." But then, he always behaved like a gentleman.

"So!" Annie said brightly, "there are more than just me. Good! I was worried about coming to some strange island all alone." She came over and stood next to me. Apparently, she'd decided I was safe too. I smiled at her.

We chatted aimlessly on the tarmac as the plane landed a third time. Each of us insisted we didn't know Mr. Owen and we didn't know each other. Annie and Anderson seemed to relax a little.

A short, dark-haired man got off the plane and walked toward us. Juan Perez was thirty and super hot. He smiled, his teeth perfectly straight and blindingly white. He wore a black T-shirt and pair of jeans. Again, here was another person dressed normally. I shot a look at Madame Angelina, who pretended to be very interested in one of her ten rings on her right hand. That's right. Ten. On a hand with only five fingers.

"Hello." Juan's rich baritone caressed the air. "My name is Juan Perez. Are we all here for the same thing?"

We indicated that we were and once again made our introductions. There were two people left to arrive. This had seemed like a good idea, but the tropical heat on the hot tarmac was brutal. Giuseppe was starting to sweat. Why on earth did he wear all that black? I didn't want to ask, because then we'd be subjected to more of his poetic musings.

The plane landed two more times, offering up Nora Bineppe, a fashionably dressed woman about my age, and William Bukowski, a large, well-built man of forty. William and Nora regarded the rest of us for a moment. Nora decided within seconds that we weren't worth her time and attached herself to Anderson.

William, however, would be a problem. Shrewd, brown eyes watched us warily. He didn't say much for an introduction. Did I mention he was huge? At least six-foot-four, he towered over the rest of us. If I wasn't an assassin, he might've intimidated me.

"Nora Bineppe." The woman extended a perfectly manicured hand toward me. "Senior Editor. Fashion Magazine." She seemed to talk only in segments.

"Which fashion magazine?" Tiffany Lauper asked before blowing a big gum bubble and popping it noisily. Where did she get gum? I wanted gum.

Nora shook her head. When she stopped, every hair fell obediently into place. "No. Not a fashion magazine. Fashion Magazine. You understand now?" she condescended.

"Oh goody." Tiffany Lauper acted like she hadn't heard the snub. "You know, I've always wondered. Is the eyeliner supposed to be on the inner lid or outer?"

The woman looked as though she'd been vomited on. "I don't do things like that."

"Outer," Annie piped up. "You'll look like a zombie if you line the inner lid."

The car appeared just in time. Raoul smiled as he pulled up in a ten-passenger van. He did a good job of acting like he didn't know us. Raoul was the island manager. He ordered the food, supervised the staff, made sure everything was ready whenever the family came out.

"Please," he said. "Please get into the car. I will take you to the house."

 

* * *

 

Before our targets had gotten here, I'd given my cousins the tour of the house. They were wisely impressed with all the hidden doors that connected to secret passages in the walls. And every room had been fitted with a large, two-way mirror.

"You did a lot of work," Paris said. I might mention that he had not been dressed as Giuseppe then. That idiocy came later.

"Actually, Cairo already had the doors and passageways. I just had to add the mirrors." Cairo was the one ancestor I identified with most. Although not an inventor, he'd had an interesting life in the 17^th Century. Well, I guess all Bombays have had interesting lives. But he was the one who founded our private island and left me the dodo egg to clone. That was special.

Once everyone had become familiar with the house, we'd gone over the plan one more time. I was going to die first. Then my Vic, Nora, followed by Paris and his Vic, Anderson. And so on, until the only ones left were Liv and Annie. It should be fun and go according to plan. But if it didn't, we'd just mow them down with machine guns. Sometimes subtlety is overrated.

Our Vics (Short for victim—Bombays have short attention spans.) were pretty awful. The Bombay Council, currently made up of our parents, handed out the assignments. We never knew who contracted the hits. I didn't really want to know. In fact, I wasn't looking forward to the day when my cousins and I would sit on the Council.

Anderson Smith, the snooty Brit, may have looked like a typical upper class twit. But he was much more than that. An MP in the House of Commons, Anderson was a mole who sold secrets to Moscow. That's pretty bad, but last year he supplied the Russians with the names of five English MI-6 agents undercover in St. Petersburg. All five Britons were summarily executed and never seen again.

Annie Web, the pretty American, was the madam of the most expensive brothel in the U.S. Now, prostitution doesn't really seem like a good enough reason to kill someone. But it wasn't that simple. Annie was a sex trafficker. She brought in kidnapped girls from Third World countries and held them as sex slaves for her clients. Just for that, I wanted to have her die first, and in the most unpleasant manner possible. But she was actually Liv's target, and Liv wanted to save her for last, for the psychological torture of seeing everyone die around her. It was a pretty good idea, but I wondered how I was going to look her in the eye for more than a couple of hours.

Gin had Juan Perez. Gin would die after Paris' target and then take out Juan. Mr. Perez was the most prolific hitman outside of the Bombay family. A renegade who worked for the highest bidder, Juan killed his targets in the messiest ways imaginable. There's no craft to that…no skill. Anyone can walk up and shoot someone. You have to finesse it.

Anyway, Juan didn't hide or camouflage his kills like we did. He preferred an audience. And he especially liked it if the target had his family around to watch. Last month, in Bangledesh, he murdered a woman who was leading a peace initiative in that country. He just walked up to her and slit her throat, right there in the street. Right in front of her five year old son. I wish I'd gotten him. I'd like to show him what a messy death could really be. I had small explosives that fit in certain moist places and caused a very big boom. But I didn't get him. Gin did.

Cy was assigned William Bukowski. And after looking at the file, I could see why. Bukowski was big—six-foot-four and two hundred fifty pounds…of muscle. He'd trained as an MMA fighter, but that was just a hobby. William was a drug dealer. Actually, that was not right. It gives drug dealers a bad name. William was higher up in the food chain. He was a smuggler, and his specialty was recruiting tourists as human mules to deliver the goods into the U.S.

That may not sound too bad, but many of his victims were actually blackmailed into smuggling the drugs for him. And the only people who paid for it were his victims. In the past six months alone, three different teenage backpackers visiting Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela were busted at those respective airports. All three girls were doing time. And not in the U.S. They were suffering untold horrors in prisons in Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela. All because they were convinced Bukowski was going to kill someone in their family if they didn't go through with it.

The big problem with William was that he was a huge, scary guy. While any of us women could've taken him, the Council assigned him to Cy. Probably because Cy was also a big, scary guy who was trained in six different fighting disciplines. The Council knew he could handle Bukowski, and they wanted to make sure he was really and truly dead.

As for me, I had Nora Bineppe. Editor in Chief of Fashion Magazine—an international rag that rivaled Vogue. Nora was an asshole. But being a bully to your employees doesn't put you on the Bombay Hit List. Nora had been much more difficult to figure out. But if you looked really closely, you'd find that Nora had a sideline. The magazine alone would've made her reasonably rich. But what really filled her bank account was something far more sinister than underweight models wearing birds' nests on their heads as they strolled the catwalk.

Nora was a middle man. Or middle woman. She was a go-between for laundering money from donors into terrorist factions. It worked like this—Saudi millionaires living in the U.S. gave her the money to take to Angola, where she got it into the hands of al-Qaeda operatives there. It wasn't just the Arabs—there are many other groups she works for—this is just an example. Nora's travel as a fashion editor took her all over the world—the perfect cover for these kinds of operations. But she also had a very sophisticated network of international bank accounts that she could move money around in. It had taken Interpol decades just to unravel the trail and lead it to her. Huh. I wonder if Interpol was the Bombay client. No, I'd rather not know.

So that was our lineup of evil, nasty baddies. It would be fun to kill them all. And the psychological torture of watching each other die with no idea who was doing it would be lots of fun.

I'd made the area around the house inescapable. Quicksand, dense impenetrable jungle (filled with recordings of panthers roaring), and a boulder-strewn beach hemmed in the property. The route from the landing strip had been carefully planned so the targets wouldn't see the rest of the island with its condos, pool, and tennis courts. They would truly believe they were stranded with no means of escape. Mwah hahahahahaha ha!

 

* * *

 

We arrived at the house just as the sun was setting. Raoul pulled the van up and led us inside.

"Dinner will be in half an hour. I will bring in the luggage and escort each and every one of you to your rooms. Cocktails will be served in the library in fifteen minutes." Raoul was doing a fantastic job. I should give him a raise when this is all done. Sure, he made a king's ransom now, but he deserved it.

My cousins and I played our parts—acting surprised, and oohing and aahing over the house as we were led to our rooms. Each of the ten of us had brought one suitcase. It was only for overnight. I was the first one in the library for drinks, so I poured a glass of wine and sat and waited.

I'd decorated the whole house for the holidays. Fires roared in the fireplaces (I had to run the air conditioning since it was so hot outside, but it was worth it for the sake of appearances.), Christmas trees festooned each room, and everywhere else was strung with lights and wreaths. I just love the holidays. Why should I put things on hold just because we were killing people?

Tiffany Lauper and Frank arrived first, followed almost immediately by the rest of them. People got their own drinks and sat in the room quietly. I felt an overwhelming need to start the conversation, which was weird, because I didn't really want to talk to these monsters.

Madame Angelina beat me to it. "So this is where our relative lived? He must've died after the decorations were hung." Damn. She'd decided to keep the Gypsy accent.

Giuseppe was browsing the books. "The sorrowful lack of poetry within this library causes my heart to ache! My soul is starved for lyrical words!" He slammed the book he'd been reading with a loud bang. What had he been thinking? An Italian poet? Seriously? Bombays were great at developing cover characters. We excelled at it. But for some reason, three of my cousins had lost their minds.

"Well," Nora spoke up, her fingers toying with an expensive strand of pearls. "I find the décor to be repulsive. No class at all."

"What? I think it's beautiful!" I said a little too quickly. Calm down, Nancy. Who cares if they don't like it? They'll be dead soon.

Anderson shook his head. "Of course you would like it." He looked like he smelled something bad. "I prefer the elegant and understated look at the holidays."

Nora nodded. "Quite."

"I love it!" Madame Angelina declared passionately. "It's pretty and colorful!" She'd toned down the Gypsy look before she came down by taking off the circlet and several rings. It was slightly better. And it was nice she was defending me.

"Whatever." Tiffany Lauper took the bottle of whiskey from the bar, plopped down in a chair, and began swilling right out of the bottle. She, on the other hand, was taking her character a little too far.

Juan smiled and sat next to her. "So, Ms. Lauper," he started. "Why are you here?"

The "rock star" rolled her eyes and in a bored voice said, "What the hell else am I going to do?"

"I see," Juan said. "Did you know this man…Mr. Owen?" He looked at all of us. "Did any of you know him?"

"No," I said, and the others all voiced the same. Frank just sat in a chair and shook his head.

"Don't you think that's strange?" Annie piped up. "I mean, apparently, we're all related to him and each other. Shouldn't at least a couple of us know someone here?"

William was leaning against the wall, his muscles bulging as they were folded across his chest. "I find it hard to believe that anyone in this room is related to anyone else."

"What does it matter?" Giuseppe asked, slamming another book shut and striking a dramatic pose. "We are all brothers in the humanity of man!"

What the hell did that even mean?

"I don't give a rat's ass." Tiffany Lauper belched from her chair. "I just want the money."

Nora nodded. "I think we can all agree with…with…" She gestured to my cousin and must have decided words couldn't label the aging rock singer. "I am here to collect my legacy and leave. I'm certain I don't want to see anyone else in this room ever again."

Well that was rude. And to her family, nonetheless.

"We're only distant relations," I said, feeling the need to change the subject. "It's not that weird that we're all strangers to each other."

Anderson nodded. "I quite agree. I have first cousins in Oxford, not ten miles from my home, whom I have never met." He sniffed. "I'm only interested in seeing what this is all about."

"So you don't need the money?" Madame Angelina asked.

He shook his head. "My dear lady, I have no need for the money. But it did pique my curiosity, I must say."

"Sadly, my art requires the evil of money, for I cannot feed my muse on words alone," Giuseppe added. "Patrons of the arts are as rare as glass butterflies."

Patrons of the arts? I think my cousin forgot that this wasn't the 16^th century. Fortunately, the others ignored him. And what the hell were glass butterflies? His metaphors were going to drive me insane.

Juan laughed. "I don't need the money, Cousin." He shot a look at Anderson. "But I like money. And I believe you can never have too much of it."

"I have a severe gambling problem!" Tiffany Lauper shouted suddenly. We all stared at her. Was she just making this up as she went?

William frowned at her. "I'm with Perez there. I don't need it. But I want it. That's why I'm here."

Everyone but Frank the carney had spoken, and we all looked at him expectantly.

"Money's good," was all he said.

Raoul appeared in the doorway with a polite smile. "Dinner is served."

We gathered our cocktails and followed Raoul into the dining room. I must admit, I really outdid myself there. The long dining room table was hand-carved mahogany, and the surface gleamed beneath a candle-lit chandelier. Ten, high-backed chairs with claret, velvet upholstery surrounded it. Wreaths of evergreen boughs were draped around the hunter green walls. I'd had to have those sent in from the U. S. There are so few evergreen trees on a tropical island. Okay, there are no evergreen trees on a tropical island.

Art deco sconces diffused the light bulbs within. Along the longest wall was a huge mirror (one of the many two-sided mirrors throughout the house) in a gilt frame. The table had been set with Limoges china from the eighteenth century and silver flatware, hand carved in Mexico. The centerpiece was the fun part. On a large, bronze platter were ten little statues in a circle, facing in. Liv had wanted them to be little Native Americans, but all I could find in that number was ten little…

"Are those circus clowns?" Nora recoiled in horror.

Madame Angelina shot me a look that said, I told you so! Giuseppe shook his head sadly. Oh—like he could've done better!

Annie picked up one of the clowns and studied it. The colorful little clown grinned at her.

"Whoa." Juan sucked in air through his teeth. "Mr. Owen had disturbing taste."

Nora was roaming the room now, touching things and scowling. "This is like a room from my nightmares," she said gravely.

Hey! "I like it! It's very Christmassy," I might've said a tad defensively.

Anderson glanced at me. "I'm not quite certain I can eat in here."

Frank and William sat down at the table. Apparently, they didn't mind the room. The rest of us looked at them then joined them.

Raoul came through the doorway with a platter of prime rib and roasted garlic potatoes. My mouth began watering immediately. He set the tray on the table and returned with a salad, handmade rolls with honey butter, and green beans with applewood smoked bacon.

"You will need to serve yourselves," Raoul said. He pointed out the wine and let us know the vintages before leaving us and going back into the kitchen.

Frank picked up the first platter, and once he'd helped himself, passed it to Annie. The food went round the table, and we all ate for a few moments in silence. We were all sizing each other up. The Bombays were discreetly studying their Vics, and the guests were openly staring at everyone else.

Giuseppe lifted his wine glass. "A toast to give birth to the reckless heart of the night!"

"Rock and roll!" Tiffany Lauper said as she clinked her glass to his.

"To our futures, which I see very clearly!" Madame Angelina added.

The others, including me and Frank, ignored them. I needed to get my cousins alone and tell them to tone it the hell down.

Juan picked up the clown statue nearest to him. "I just don't get it. These don't match the rest of the house. Why are they here?" He looked as though he was worried that these might be part of the inheritance.

Anderson shrugged. "Perhaps it is a joke? A very unpleasant joke."

Nora nodded. "We could throw them into the fireplace. They would look better there."

"Inside of every man is a sad clown, begging for the elusive, sweet smile of love," Giuseppe said.

"Send in the clowns…" Tiffany Lauper began to sing.

I slammed my hand down on the table. "Just leave the damn clowns alone!" Everybody stopped and turned to gape at me.

"I mean…" I thought fast. "They don't belong to us, do they? Maybe Mr. Owen liked them."

"Then I wish Mr. Owen had died earlier," Nora said as she cringed. "Before he'd bought them."

We spent the rest of the dinner in silence. I'd made things too tense with my outburst. I needed to focus on what we had to accomplish here and get back on track. We finished eating and stared at our plates. I knew everyone was wondering if someone was going to clear the table. I knew for a fact that no one would. But I had to act like I was just as bewildered as the others.

Nora finally pushed away from the table and stood up. "I'm going to get another drink," she said and sashayed back to the library.

"Sounds like a plan," William said. The rest of us got up and followed.

We'd just sat down when the recording came on. I tried not to smile. It was a unique, state of the art sound system I'd developed. You've heard about surround sound? Well this was better than that. You were so engulfed in sound you had no idea where the sounds came from. Maybe I should apply for a patent.

My name is Mr. Owen, and I've invited all of you here for one thing.

I looked around like everyone else for the source of the voice. But I knew where it was. They didn't.

To be judged whether you're worthy to receive your inheritance.

Madame Angelina scowled at me. She'd wanted everything to follow And Then There Were None strictly by the book. But we didn't have time for that. And I didn't want them to leave the house, which is something you'd do if you were being accused of a crime.

You must stay the night and spend Christmas together, like a real family. If you can get along until morning, you will receive your just rewards.

Lex had done the recording, and he'd done a hell of a job too. The recording ended, and everyone looked at everyone else.

"Well of course we are staying the night." Anderson waved his hand in the air as if he was bored. "That's why we're here."

Annie frowned. "What did he think we were going to do? We brought luggage for christssake."

"Hell, yeah!" Tiffany Lauper shouted. She looked disappointed. I think she wanted the recording to scare everyone. But what was the point of that? They'd be frightened enough when we all started dropping like flies. And why clue them in before we had to?

"Hey, check this out, guys." Annie was over by the fireplace, looking at a framed poem. Good. It could start now. We all listened as Annie recited the poem;

 

Ten little Clown boys went out to dine;

One choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little Clown boys sat up very late;

One overslept himself and then there were eight.

Eight little Clown boys travelling in Devon;

One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.

Seven little Clown boys chopping up sticks;

One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.

Six little Clown boys playing with a hive;

A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.

Five little Clown boys going in for law;

One got in Chancery and then there were four.

Four little Clown boys going out to sea;

A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Three little Clown boys walking in the zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Two little Clown boys playing in the sun;

One got all frizzled up and then there was one.

One little Clown boy left all alone;

He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

 

"Little Clown boys?" Nora asked. "The nightmare continues."

Madame Angelina stormed over to the poem. "Allow me to examine this. There are signs in a person's handwriting that can predict his future." She scanned the poem with what I could only describe as "extreme googly eyes." Even with all the gypsy drama she was conjuring, I could tell she was pissed off. But I couldn't find Indian figurines. I could only find clown figurines. She was going to have to deal with it.

"I've heard this poem before," Madame said, her accent thicker than it was a minute ago for some reason. "This is not right. It should be 'little Indians.'"

And there it was. My passive-aggressive, fake-gypsy cousin. But I didn't care because I was going to die soon.

"That seems racist." Juan frowned.

"And sexist. Boys? Really?" Annie said as she shook her head.

"Whatever it is, it's stupid." William shifted uneasily in his chair. That was a bad sign. He seemed to be the only suspicious one in the group.

"I'm going to get another drink," I said as I stood up and walked over to the bar in the corner of the room. I mixed myself a vodka tonic and emptied the contents of my poison ring—the only bit of costuming I allowed myself. The ring was a large cat's head and when you pressed on the little pink nose, toxin squirted out of its mouth. It was pretty tacky, but I thought it lent that middle-aged-crazy-cat-lady vibe to my persona. Once the clear liquid hit my drink, I stuck a swizzle stick in it and stirred.

Turning around so everyone could see me, I drained the glass in one swallow. Now all I had to do was wait.

"Good idea." Juan joined me at the bar and gave me a dazzling grin.

For a moment, I wondered if he suspected anything and was just playing it cool. Assassins can usually spot other assassins. Or at least they should. But Juan didn't seem to think anything was out of the ordinary. He just poured a glass of single malt scotch and gently dropped two ice cubes into it.

The room was starting to spin. That meant my little cocktail was working. "What did that poem say?" I asked slurrily as I fell to the floor and blacked out.

My cousins were supposed to crowd around me, keeping the others at bay. The chemical I'd mixed was a doozy. It faked death, slowing my breathing to such a level it could barely be detected. Barely. If someone was looking for it closely enough, they'd see I wasn't dead. I know—I should've come up with something stronger. But I wasn't ready to risk it for this bunch of asshats. Besides keeping me away from the others, my cousins only had ten minutes to get me to my room and lock my body in it. In ten minutes, I'd wake up.

When I came to, I was, in fact, lying on my bed. Once the full effects of the drug wore off, I got to my feet and double-checked the door. It was locked. They got that right. Our intention was to put each of the bodies in their own bedroom and lock the doorknob from the inside as we pulled the door shut. No one would check because I was dead. There was no reason to go into my room, and I counted on people not wanting to see my dead body.

At the bookcase, I pulled out a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The bookcase swung open, showing a small doorway. I know, how cliché to use the old bookcase-as-secret-door routine. But I'd always wanted to do that because, hey, who doesn't want to do that at least once in their lifetime?

I pulled the door shut behind me, and the motion sensitive lights came on. I was standing in one of the many passageways that ran between the walls. Lex and I'd spent a whole month soundproofing it. It was difficult coming up with the right combination of materials, but I eventually went with a mixture that used memory foam. The floors were extra squishy, and it sort of felt like walking on the moon. It made the walls very shock absorbent too, which was good, because the first time I'd walked on a memory foam floor, I'd fallen down a lot. I had toyed with removing gravity from the secret halls so we could all float around like astronauts, but Lex vetoed me on that one. I still wish I'd done it. Just the image of assassins floating around with knives makes me smile.

By walking through these passageways, I could access any room and spy on the others through the two-way mirrors I'd installed. It was the perfect plan.

The next step was for me to go back to the library. The cousins were going to round everyone up and take them there. Nora was next on the agenda. I needed to take her out in the next half hour.

Nora was the little clown (I'm sure she'd hate that) who overslept himself. In the book, they found that victim the next morning. But we only had control over these people for one night, so it was sweet dreams for that psycho.

As expected, everyone was in the library. I adjusted the sound and listened.

"She probably had a heart attack from seeing those stupid clowns," Nora was saying. She didn't seem too upset that I was dead.

"I knew it!" Madame Angelina exclaimed. "I saw something sinister in her aura!"

My aura? Just for that, I decided I was going to invent something that gave Liv the appearance of a sickly green aura for the next family reunion. That would be fun. Maybe I could make it a talking aura with a thick Romanian accent.

"I think it's sad." Annie pouted. Awww. She was sad I was dead. That's nice.

Juan, who had been the very definition of calm up until now, was pacing the floor like a nervous cat. "I think it was poison."

Ah. There it was. I was hoping one of the Vics would notice and my cousins wouldn't have to say anything.

Anderson waved him off. "What makes you think it was poison? It was probably natural causes."

"Well whatever it was," Tiffany Lauper said in her Brooklyn accent, "she's in rock and roll heaven now, jammin' with Jimi."

Jammin' with Jimi? Maybe Gin would die from her own terrible performance. I wondered for a moment if that would be possible. Oooh! I know! An aerosol virus with a sound sensitive trigger that would react to high drama in the voice. That had some interesting possibilities. I could've used something like that when I took out a Miss America contestant who dabbled as a serial killer back in the early '90s. Mental note—experiment with hair spray as a delivery system…

"We need to call the authorities," Annie said as she scanned the room. "Has anyone seen a landline phone here? My cell has no signal."

As if on cue, the others all pulled out their cells and consulted them. All except Giuseppe of course. I can only assume he was "too poor" to own one.

"I don't like it." William's eyes darted back and forth over everyone.

Hmm…we weren't supposed to take out the big guy for a while yet. But we might have to move things up if he got nervous and tried to make a break for it.

"I'm sure it was poison," Juan insisted. He was still pacing. "Someone poisoned…um…that woman."

He forgot my name? I felt a little pissed about that. The son-of-a-bitch didn't even try to learn my name. What a bastard.

I watched as Tiffany Lauper walked over to Nora, feigning drunkenness. (At least, I hoped Gin was faking it.) A few feet away, she tripped and spilled her drink down the front of Nora's very expensive silk blouse. The fashionista was soaked. Which meant she needed to go to her room.

"You imbecile!" Nora stood up and stabbed Tiffany in the chest with her index finger. "This blouse is more expensive than this entire island!"

"Whatever." The rock star rolled her eyes, walked back to the couch and sprawled on it.

"I'm going to my room to change," Nora announced as if she were telling us that Coco Chanel was going to come back from the dead to give her a haute couture zombie mani/pedi, and then she swept out of the room.

I was looking through her mirror over her dresser before she got there. Everything was ready to go.

Nora stormed into the room and shut the door. She fumed as she tore the ruined blouse off and replaced it with another one that, in all honesty, looked exactly the same. After buttoning it up, my Vic walked over to the mirror and examined her image.

Then, she picked her nose. Oh my God. This woman, who oozed wealth and class, was picking her nose in front of me. She pulled the finger out of her nose and put it into her ear. I couldn't take much more of this. I stepped over to the lever I'd installed that went into only her room and pulled it.

A lavender haze descended from the vent in the ceiling. Oh, I know, I could have made it colorless. But I wanted to be able to see it to make sure it worked. Nora saw the purple mist in the mirror and turned around. I'd scented the poison with Chanel No. 5 just to keep her from running out of the room.

She spun around, trying to determine what it was. At first, the woman smiled when she smelled the perfume. But then her mouth opened.

"Holy shit! What the fuck is happening?" she said in the twangiest Southern accent I'd ever heard. This woman wasn't cultured New England. This chick was wrong side of the tracks trash, didn't wear shoes until she was nineteen, backwoods Alabama. I kind of wished I'd thought to record that.

Then she dropped like a sack of lead. I knew Nora was dead because I made the toxin extra strong. A mutant rhino with the lung capacity of a sperm whale wouldn't have survived it. I reached over and pushed a red button that was next to the lever. There was a slight sucking sound as the poison cloud was pulled back up into that same vent. Pushing the second button sent a wave of fresh air into the room.

I pulled the nosepiece out of the hidden panel under the mirror and opened it up. There were two prongs that went up both nostrils. I jammed them into my nose and opened the secret door that went into her room.

Yup. She was dead. And since this little clown overslept herself, and in order not to incur any more of Madame Angelina's wrath, I lifted her up and arranged her on the bed. Her eyes were open, staring glassily at the ceiling. This bitch wasn't going to launder dirty money anymore. For a moment, I toyed with drawing a clown face on her in cheap, dollar store makeup, but I really didn't have the time. I slipped back into the passage and waited.

Any minute now, Giuseppe would lead everyone up the stairs and into Nora's room to see what was taking her so long. Of course, my cousins didn't need to obscure the dead woman from the others because she was, in fact, actually dead.

Any minute now, he'd walk through that door.

Any minute now.

Nothing happened.

Where were they? I needed them to be here. So I could slip down to the dining room and smash two of the little clowns. And they all had to be here too. No one was supposed to know I was still alive and busy orchestrating deaths with amazing and astounding creative efficiency. They all had to go to Nora's room, and they had to realize that everyone was in that room so they'd have no idea who broke the clowns.

The door flew open, and I sighed with relief. Frank led the way. Huh. Giuseppe was supposed to do that. But here was Cy, walking over to the dead woman's bed and taking her pulse. I wondered what had happened. Seriously, this assignment was hanging by a thread as it was. Now, Cy's earlier idea of just locking everyone in the house and blowing it up had some merit to it. I could still make that happen. I'd been experimenting with a new explosive with the consistency of water that would run through a plumbing system, activating when the cold and hot water were turned on together. The only problem was that it was slightly (meaning totally) corrosive to metal.

Everyone was there in dead Nora's room. Anderson looked bored, Annie was concerned, Juan was worried, and William was nervous. I counted to make sure there was no one missing and then ran down to the dining room.

I slid through the hidden door, and, within seconds, I'd smashed two of the figurines and left the way I'd come.

I waited. From the two-way mirror, I had a good view of the staircase and hallway. Sure enough, there were the others, coming down the stairs. I couldn't hear very well, but I could tell they were upset. Yay!

"Did you hear something?" Tiffany Lauper said on cue. She craned her neck toward the dining room. "It came from in there!" She started running with everyone hot on her heels and stopped in front of the table. The others flowed around her, and as they saw the two broken clowns representing me and Nora, there was visible fear in the eyes of the four remaining targets.

Excellent.

We had to move quickly now. Unlike the book, we weren't trapped on an island in a storm. We were on an island that had condos and an airstrip on the other side. If any one of the remaining four made a run for it we would literally have to hunt them down.

Giuseppe gasped dramatically. "It is ze poetic justice, no?"

Well yes, it was to the five of us Bombays. But it wouldn't look that way to the four Vics. Why did he say that?

Madame Angelina began moaning and wailing and dancing with her eyes closed. That was interesting.

"I foresee…" She was standing in one place and swaying back and forth now. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and looked at Giuseppe. "You! You are next!"

Giuseppe's eyes grew wide with overly-acted horror. "No! No! It cannot be!"

Frank came over to the sideboard under my mirror and poured a glass of water. He rolled his eyes at me. I clapped my hands over my mouth so I wouldn't giggle. Even though the passageways were soundproofed, and I'd done the work myself, I wasn't taking any chances.

"Death is not my overlord!" Giuseppe was shouting. "I will not sleep the final sleep of the dead!" He ran out of the room and out the door. The others stood staring at each other for a moment before following him out into the night.

I moved to the secret room off the kitchen and checked the monitors. I had to admit—this was starting to be fun. I had no idea we could do something like this. Maybe we could do this more often with our targets. Get Mom involved. She'd like that.

Directly behind the house was a nice stretch of quicksand. The real thing. I didn't even have to invent it—which kind of disappointed me when Lex had found it a few weeks ago.

The others had just come around the corner of the house when they stopped cold. Giuseppe's black beret was lying in the middle of the sand.

"How was that?" Paris said behind me. He'd run around to the kitchen and joined me in the secret room. He looked down at the floor. "Squishy!" he said.

"Good," I said, reaching out to grab his arm before he fell over. "But you were ridiculous."

"Hey!" Paris stopped bouncing and pouted. "I was using original material!"

"Don't quit your day job," I said as I handed him the hatchet. "And speaking of your day job…"

"I have to smash the figurine first," he said as he glanced at the monitors. Frank was on his knees, testing the sand. He got up and shook his head, his lips moving. I didn't hear what he said, but I figured he was telling them it was quicksand.

Paris vanished and then reappeared with a huge smile on his face. "That was fun!"

I nodded. "I know. You're up."

He frowned at the hatchet. "I'm not sure we really thought this through. I mean, what would an aristocratic Brit be doing with a hatchet?"

"It doesn't matter as long as you have it buried in some soft part of his body and make him dead." I turned back to the monitors, frowning.

Time was flying by. One of our Vics was now thoughtfully dead, but we had four more to go.

Paris looked at me. "You're worried about Gin and Cy's Vics, Juan and William."

I nodded. "Normally, I wouldn't be, but we probably should've taken them out first. Neither of them would just let us walk up and kill them."

"Why did we do it in this order?" my cousin asked.

I shrugged. "I had to go first because I engineered the house. If you guys went first and had problems with the technology, I couldn't help you. And you should've probably died the minute you opened your mouth."

Paris frowned. Probably because of the insult, but also because he knew I was right about William and Juan. Still, Nora was the easiest one to kill. Anderson and Annie wouldn't be too hard. Neither of them had fighting experience. But Juan and William were fighters. Killers trained to survive.

A noise from the screens caught my attention. "They're moving back into the house."

The group had reconvened in the dining room. They stared at the third, smashed clown. This was actually a good psychological experiment. Too bad we couldn't involve anyone outside the family to analyze that.

"I put the note in Anderson's pocket when we checked on Nora," Paris whispered. "He should find it soon."

The group sat down at the table, which was weird because we hadn't cleared it. One by one, they started to wordlessly pick at the food.

"Where's that guy?" Annie asked. "The one who brought us here and made dinner?"

William shook his head. "Haven't seen him."

Anderson picked up a roll and buttered it. Apparently, the deaths of three people hadn't unsettled him much. "He must have gone. He didn't clear the table. You just can't get good help these days."

Madame Angelina stood up. "I will do it." She started to gather plates, and I wasn't surprised to see only Tiffany Lauper and Annie helping her. The three women went into the kitchen, leaving the three men behind.

Frank sipped his wine but said nothing. It was good thinking on his part to stay and watch Juan and William.

"I'll take the kitchen," I whispered to Paris. "You stay here and watch them. If Anderson sees the note and leaves, you need to follow him and do your bit."

Paris nodded and stayed put while I moved down the hall to the secret room off the kitchen. Putting a mirror in there hadn't been easy. I couldn't think of any reason whatsoever to have a mirror in a kitchen. Well, one that seemed normal, that is. So, Lex and I had built this room and filled it with monitors that viewed the grounds outside of the house and the kitchen.

I didn't like it because I wanted to be closer to the action, but there wasn't anything I could do. I did have a secret door into the room, but I'd have to be careful. I didn't want anyone freaking out seeing a dead woman step out of the refrigerator.

The three women were putting the food away and washing the dishes. So far, so good.

"Where do you think our host went?" Annie asked.

"You mean our cousin, Owen? He's dead," Tiffany Lauper answered as she washed dishes.

Annie shook her head. "No. Not him. The other guy. The Latino."

Madame Angelina closed the door to the fridge. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I cannot foresee what has happened to him."

"Maybe he had a boat and took off?" Tiffany Lauper asked. I had to admit—Gin was handling the ad libs well.

"Maybe…" Annie frowned and got lost in her own thoughts.

"Aren't you weirded out by all these deaths?" Tiffany Lauper asked her, a little too hopefully.

"Not really," the redhead said. "Nancy could've had a heart attack. Nora an aneurism. Giuseppe ran out and fell into quicksand. It's possible. People have a hard time at the holidays."

The other two women stared at her. I did too. We all thought these people would freak out, at least after the second death. Maybe she was in shock. Or maybe she was a soulless idiot.

Madame Angelina shook her head. "I do not think these were accidents. Something from the great beyond tells me it was…" She held her breath for a very dramatic pause. "Murder!"

There should've been a sound track that went, "Dun, dun, DUN!" after her performance.

"You think these three people were murdered?" Tiffany Lauper gasped loudly.

The Gypsy who wasn't really a Gypsy shrugged. "It cannot be coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence."

They were trying to freak Annie out. It wasn't working.

Annie put the last dish away as Paris came running into the secret room.

"He read the note! I'm meeting him outside!" He seemed giddy as he ran down the hallway holding his hatchet.

We'd worked out a plan where Anderson would find a note in his pocket that said:

Meet me outside, by the place where Giuseppe died. I know what is going on and how we can make this work to our advantage—ending up with everybody's shares of the inheritance.

The idea behind this note was that Anderson wouldn't give a damn if it said the writer knew who was behind the murders. But he would be intrigued at the idea of making bank off of this. And sure enough, it worked.

I checked out the monitor by the quicksand. Anderson was stepping down off the porch and turning left. He looked both ways before continuing to the spot where the beret still sat in the middle of the sand.

Something on the ground caught his attention. Paris had dropped a one hundred dollar bill there just before he took up his position. Anderson grinned as he picked up the bill. He stood and shoved it into his pocket.

Paris threw the hatchet from his hiding place. I had no doubt it would hit it's mark. Bombays trained with all kinds of weapons since our kindergarten years. And Paris had the best throwing form of any of us.

I watched as the hatchet spun in the air end over end, and flew right past its target into the trees. What? Dammit! I ran out of the room and stepped outside, joining Paris in moments.

"You missed!" I whispered.

"Just give me another one," Paris griped. "The wind took it."

I glared at him. "You haven't been practicing."

"I've been busy developing my character and writing poems!" he whined.

Anderson had no idea a hatchet had sailed past him. But he was getting anxious. Pretty soon he'd give up and go inside.

I looked around. I didn't really think to have a "backup hatchet." I spotted a screwdriver I'd left next to the steps a couple of days ago and handed it to him.

"It's a screwdriver," Paris said.

I shoved him. "Yes, it is. Now go and stick it in his head." I turned and went back into the house and the secret room.

I watched the monitors as Paris ran off toward his Vic who now turned toward him. Anderson's mouth opened in surprise and he brought up his hand to point. Before he could do anything more, Paris reached behind his target and rammed the screw driver into the back of the Brit's skull. He dropped to the ground. Paris then dove into the jungle and returned seconds later with the hatchet, and after pulling out the screw driver, drove the small axe home in its place.

He double checked his Vic to make sure he was dead before joining me back in the secret room.

"Decent save," I said as I picked foliage out of his hair.

"I thought about leaving some of my poems strewn about the body," Paris responded.

"You're not serious."

He looked wounded. "Why not? It could be that red herring thing!"

"Please don't add to the plan. We have three Vics left, and I need to make sure they die here." There was no point in celebrating. The assignments weren't finished yet. For all I knew, Juan could be some expert at making a raft out of ceramic clown figurines and William could have a jet pack hidden in his luggage. These guys weren't supposed to see the sun come up. There wasn't any point in getting cocky.

"They're back in the library," I said. "Go smash Anderson's clown." I bounced down the hall to watch from the two-way mirror.

The six remaining people were sitting in the room, looking nervously about. Only Frank was confident enough to make himself a drink. He knew he wasn't going to die. The others, Gin and Liv included, avoided the wet bar.

Annie was now looking nervous. That made me relax a little.

"We should go find that English guy," she was saying. "He's been gone too long to just be in the bathroom."

I started giggling. I once killed a Vic in his own bathroom. I electrified the toilet water. It was awesome. The only problem was that it left unsightly scorch marks on the body. I never did fix that.

Juan nodded but didn't volunteer. William was busy studying the faces of the other guests. It was going great. I kind of wanted to high-five Paris.

"Gin's next," Paris said.

I shook my head. "They have to find Anderson first."

Annie stood up. "I'm going to start looking for him. Who's going with me?"

Madame Angelina and Tiffany Lauper were the only ones who joined her. Wasn't that just the way? Women doing the hard stuff. The scary stuff. I liked Annie. Too bad she was evil and we had to kill her.

Juan got to his feet. "I can't let the women go alone. I'll go too." I rolled my eyes. Pretty chivalrous for a man who once killed two elderly nuns without a second thought. He looked meaningfully at William and Frank. Frank was waiting. If William didn't go, he wouldn't. Even though he knew Paris and I were watching, we couldn't let anyone deviate from the plan.

"Dammit," William swore as he stood up. "Fine."

Frank got up without comment, and the group moved into the hallway. They'd decided to search together. The paranoia was starting to set in that someone was picking them off one-by-one. Paris and I followed them as they started upstairs and checked Anderson's rooms and the bathroom. I held my breath for a moment, worrying they'd want to check the rooms with the bodies, but they went back downstairs.

It took fifteen minutes for them to discover that Anderson wasn't in the house. They'd need to go outside. Tiffany Lauper ran into the kitchen and brought back flashlights, and they made their way outside. Paris and I ran to the secret room off the kitchen to check the monitors.

"Oh my God!" Madame Angelina shrieked. She ran over to the dead man and everyone crowded around.

"Someone hit him in the back of the head!" Annie gasped. "Someone's trying to kill us off, one at a time!"

I relaxed. There it was. Now they knew they were being picked off. The fun could begin.

Paris joined me in the walls outside the dining room as the rest of the group filed in. Annie ran to the table and frowned.

"The fourth clown is smashed!" she said. She was starting to sound a little unhinged. And while that's what we'd wanted, it was too soon for her to go totally nuts. We'd been saving her for last.

Annie whirled on the others. "One of you is killing us off! You want our share of the money!"

Um, okay. Not the original reason, but let's go with that.

William snorted. "Why look at me? I'm not doing it! I don't care how much money I get."

"You didn't want to go outside…because you knew Anderson was dead out there…" Madame Angelina had now appointed herself as some sort of Hercule Poirot, although she looked like some hippy throwback to Miss Marple's stoner days at Woodstock.

He shook his head. "No, I didn't. And I'll kill anyone who says I did." He ground his fist into the flat of his other hand menacingly.

"Someone really is mysteriously killing us off!" Tiffany Lauper repeated what Annie'd said. She'd sort of slipped out of the drunk rock star mode and was trying to whip up more hysteria. That was fine, because she was next.

Tiffany was supposed to go into the bathroom, where she'd pull a hypodermic from the inside of the back of the toilet and inject herself. I'd whipped up a serum that would do what it did to me, slow her heartbeat tremendously. Frank and Madame Angelina would discover the body with the hypodermic needle next to it and spirit it off to her room. Easy, right?

Except that it didn't. My cousin, the aging rock slut, forgot. Instead of excusing herself, she started getting all worked up.

"The murderer is in this very room!" she howled. "It could be any one of you!" Her eyes grew wide, and she started to tremble a little. She was good. Really good. But we didn't need her to get into hysterics. We needed her to go off herself in the bathroom with a toilet syringe, like a good little assassin.

The others in the room just stared at her. The Vics because they realized she was right. My remaining cousins because they knew she'd just gone off script.

Madame Angelina walked up to Tiffany Lauper and slapped her hard across the face. Paris' jaw dropped, and I clapped both hands over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

"You need to pull yourself together!" the gypsy shouted. "Why don't you go splash some cold water on your face?"

Uh-oh. Liv had forgotten to use her accent. I held my breath and looked at the others, who bizarrely didn't seem to notice. Okay—I wouldn't panic yet. At least she'd given Tiffany Lauper the excuse to leave the room.

"But I can't! Not alone!" The rock star was hysterical now and had seemingly lost her mind. "None of us should go anywhere alone! We need to stay together in order to survive the night!"

Whoa. There was a U-turn. These people weren't supposed to survive the night. And she was supposed to follow the plan.

"I think she's actually drunk," Paris whispered, unable to take his eyes off of her performance.

"Well that's not good," I replied. "She's got to take out Juan right after."

I was nervous about Juan's demise. In the old poem, his little Clown Boy ends up in chancery. That loosely means in court. In the book, they got by with killing a judge. But the five of us had had a lot of trouble trying to think something up for Juan. And even then, we didn't come up with anything great. In fact, all I had come up with was the idea of beaning him with a gavel.

But in order for that to happen, my cousin, Tiffany Lauper, had to die first. But no. There she was, doing whatever the hell it was she was doing.

"The poem…" Annie said. She ran to the mantle and read it. "We've all been dying according to this poem."

I'd kind of wanted them to notice that a little later, so they wouldn't figure out their deaths in advance. Although the remaining murders were a little hard to figure out, like red herring, and hugged by a bear. At least there'd be a little mystery in those cases.

"Who's next?" Juan asked. He was terrified. "What's the next death?"

Annie didn't answer him. She set the poem back on the mantle. "We aren't here for any sort of inheritance."

William looked up sharply. "What do you mean? That's why I'm here."

Tiffany Lauper scowled. "No. We're not."

What the hell was she doing? I rolled my eyes and knelt down to a hidden trapdoor. One little tug and I pulled out four pistols, giving two to Paris. He seemed to understand that things were going south, and we'd probably need to go in there and gun the rest of them down. Liv probably wouldn't talk to us for weeks if that happened, but sometimes you have to do what you need to in order to get the job done.

"I think," Tiffany Lauper said, licking her lips, "that we're not related at all. That we're here for another reason entirely."

Madame Angelina froze. I knew she was toying with going over and slapping her rock star cousin again to see if that would jog her memory or at least shut her up. Frank was actually smiling. Maybe he'd wanted it to end in a brawl anyway? There were still six people in there. Three Bombays and three bastards who deserved to die. The odds were good.

"What would that reason be?" Juan asked. There was no shark smile now. He was starting to freak out. That didn't surprise me. True, he'd been a trained assassin, but he did everything fast, easy, and out in the open. And he'd always had the upper hand. He was in charge. But here, he wasn't.

Tiffany Lauper raised her arm and pointed at him. It was pretty cool. Like I thought the Grim Reaper looked to people. If the Grim Reaper looked like horribly unsuccessful 1980's Madonna impersonator.

"Because we're bad people. Because you're a bad man," she said, looking him right in the eye.

"Oh wow," Paris said. "She's giving him his trial in court."

I stared at her. Weirdly enough, everyone was sitting except our cousin and Juan. He stood facing—clearly the defendant. Tiffany Lauper stood pointing at him, clearly the prosecutor. It was pretty good. Way better than the gavel thing. Well, I still had to use the gavel. He still had to die.

The standoff was kind of cool to watch. Tiffany steady and unblinking, with Juan growing more nervous and fearful by the second.

"Now," Tiffany said. "Now I will go splash some water on my face." And with that, she left the room.

"She kind of went off script there," I mumbled.

"She did set it up pretty well though," Paris said.

We watched as our cousin left the room. She'd definitely made an impact. Annie looked worried. William started scanning the exits. Frank shrugged and folded his arms over his chest. Madame Angelina had this blissed-out look of admiration on her face. I guess she'd forgiven our cousin for going off script since she came up with that interesting summation.

Juan, however, was visibly shaken. The swagger was completely gone now. He started to pace the room like a caged animal waiting for slaughter. He kept reaching into his pocket and fumbling with something.

"Shit," Paris said. "Did he bring a weapon?"

I shook my head. "No. It's something else." I had a hunch but didn't want to say until I knew for sure. It didn't take long. Finally, Juan pulled a rosary out of his pocket. His fingers began to work the beads like he was saying Hail Marys. He was terrified. And he was worried for his soul. Interesting.

"That was weird," Annie said.

Madame Angelina looked at her watch, "She's been in there a while. I foresee that something tragic has happened!" She pointed at Frank. "You. Whatever your name is. Come with me, and we'll check on her."

She turned to look at the others. "Stay together and stay here." As she and Frank left the room, I could see that the others had no intention of going anywhere. But Paris and I gripped our pistols, just in case.

They were still all there when Frank popped into the room. "She's dead."

The others looked confused. Frank hadn't said who was dead. Then Madame Angelina appeared.

"We will convey the shell of her former essence to her room," Madame said sounding a little like Paris' Giuseppe. Her accent wavered a little. She was getting tired. I could understand that—her performance was exhausting even to me.

"For your own safety, don't go anywhere unless you want to come with us," she announced.

Madame Angelina had no takers. Apparently, these assholes didn't care if one of them was dead. They eyed each other suspiciously.

"But we were all in here," Juan said excitedly as my cousins left them. "Who could've killed her when we were all in here?" His voice squeaked on the last word.

Annie backed up against a wall, facing the other two men. It was clear she didn't trust them any more than they did her.

"Had to be that carney. Or the weird gypsy wannabe. We only have their word the singer's dead." William's words made sense, but he was coiled like a cobra, ready to spring if the other two rushed them.

"But like us, they didn't know each other before they came here," Annie said.

"It could be that butler guy." William said.

Butler guy? Raoul would be deeply offended by that. I'd make sure to give him a nice bonus for the holidays.

"It's the wrath of God," Juan said it so softly we almost missed it.

"Come again?" Annie asked.

"We are being judged and struck down. By God," Juan said. His face was a deathly white, and he'd started to perspire. Spoken like a true guilty bastard.

To my surprise, neither Annie nor William denied this. Neither one of them insisted they were innocent. That they were good people who didn't deserve to die.

"Hey!" Gin joined me and Paris in the secret passage. She'd changed into jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes but still had the teased hair and makeup. She looked at the memory foam floor.

"Squishy!" she said as she bounced around. She was juicing on adrenaline. We all did during an assignment.

"Nicely played, if not a bit overdone," I said.

"You like that?" Gin grinned, ignoring the criticism. "Thought I'd throw in a little show. I know you weren't 100% on the Chancery thing."

Frank and Madame Angelina came back into the room.

"How did she die?" Annie asked quietly.

"Injected with something," Madame Angelina said. "There was a little hole in her neck and an empty syringe on the floor. We locked her body in her room. Like the others." Whoa. The dramatic language was gone. She barely clung to the accent. Liv really was tired. Maybe we shouldn't have had her go last. Would she be able to carry it out when the time came to kill her Vic?

"Could've been a drug overdose," William said. "Could've been a junkie."

Annie shook her head and pointed at the mantle. "It's the bee sting. Like the poem said."

I turned to see why Gin wasn't complaining, but she was gone. Over the intercom, we heard something breaking in the background.

"The clown," Gin said with a huge grin as she rejoined us. She started bouncing up and down like she was on a trampoline.

"Another figurine," Annie said, looking desperately at the five of them. "Someone just now smashed it. But how? We're all in here!"

Juan had frozen in place. His lips were moving silently, praying the rosary.

"I'm not going in to look," William grumbled. "We all know what that was."

"And yet all of us were in here," Annie said.

"It's Tiffany Lauper's spirit returning from the great beyond for a reckoning!" Madame Angelina tried to look worried, but it was obvious she was too happy for the way things were going down. Her weird dialogue had returned. Weirdly enough, I was relieved.

"So what do we do now?" Frank said in the longest sentence he'd uttered since arriving in character.

"I'm on!" Gin giggled and ran upstairs.

This was better than television. Watching our Vics squirm like this was fun. Normally you just killed them in their sleep or quickly some other way. We'd never gotten to play with our "food" like this before.

"I can't remember what happens here," Paris said, never taking his eyes off the people in the room.

I frowned. "You really should've paid more attention in the briefings."

He shrugged. "We don't usually work together to kill multiple people. This is new."

"I'm not going to tell you." I pointed at Frank. "Just watch this."

Frank moved toward Juan. He didn't say anything, just focused all of his attention on him.

"W-w-what are you doing?" Juan said, holding his hands up in front of him and backing up defensively. "Stay back!"

Frank stopped. "Didn't mean to freak you out, man. You looked like you could use a hug." He held out his arms like he was waiting.

A hug? Did our cousin, big, tough Coney Island Bombay, the carney, just ask Juan if he needed a hug? That was an interesting improvisation.

"What?" Juan asked just as a giant sledgehammer fell from the overhead rafters of the ceiling and smashed in his skull.

"Oh right." Paris had a look of recognition. "I forgot about that part."

I squinted. "I really wanted it to look like a gavel." I'd thought about decorating it somehow. But there wasn't enough time. A sledge would have to do. Rigging it up into the ceiling was easy. I used hologrammatic camouflage with a projector so it wouldn't be seen until it swung down. Gin simply had to release it from her bedroom, above. Frank's job was to get him on the mark.

I'd spent days testing it, using a slew of department store mannequins I'd bought on eBay. It took fifteen mannequins being smashed in the head before I'd gotten it just right. You wouldn't want to see what happened to the others.

Annie screamed. Madame Angelina looked horrified. William jumped to his feet and backed up against the wall. Frank bent down to retrieve the sledge and examine the body.

"Drop the hammer," William growled. "Put it down now or I'll strangle you with my bare hands."

Frank stood and looked him in the eye. The hammer fell to the ground, but he was definitely challenging William. "You'll what?"

William leaned forward with an ugly sneer. "I'll be your worst nightmare, asshole."

"You mean the one where guinea pigs become extinct and man discovers that there is no meaning of life?" Frank asked. I rolled my eyes. Philosophy majors.

"What? No!" William looked confused and backed down.

"Well that's my worst nightmare, man." Frank glared at him.

Shit. It wasn't time for Frank's "demise." It looked like he was going to kill William right here and now. Frank's death was the red herring.

William pointed. "You're behind this! You're the one killing us all off."

Frank folded his arms across his chest. "What makes you think that?"

"So you don't deny it?" Annie's lip quivered.

Frank shrugged. "I'm not saying anything." He looked around the room. "In fact, I'm going to get the hell out of here."

Frank just walked out of the room. The others looked at each other before deciding to follow him. Out the door they went, around the right side of the house.

I pointed at Gin and Paris. "You know what to do." And I took off through the back of the house and into the jungle behind it.

The red herring was a tricky idea. We wanted it to seem to the others that Frank might be the killer. The idea was that Frank would run into the jungle and disappear. There'd be screams, followed by a roar. The idea was that he'd been eaten. I'd wanted to use a panther that lived on the island. He was huge, and menacing looking, and I'd taught him to roar on command. Total pussycat though. He was actually a vegetarian.

But we'd needed a bear for William's hugged by a bear death. And to kill two birds with one stone, I'd imported a real nasty black bear from the American northwest. The bear was slated for death by the parks department after going on a munchies spree that included one park ranger, two hikers, and a couple of confused and naked frat boys who'd gotten seriously lost on the way to Burning Man.

I'd named the bear Cuddles, drugged him, and fitted him with a shock collar that would give him a painless death once he'd killed William. Serial murdering bear or not, he was helping us out, so I wanted the end to be, you know, peaceful.

I'd just made it to the hidden bear pen about fifty feet into the jungle when I heard the shouting. Annie and Madame Angelina were calling out for him not to run into the jungle. William said nothing. I heard feet crashing toward me and waited.

"Hey, cuz," Frank/Cy said with a grin as he stopped just short of me.

We both swung ourselves onto the top of the cage. I hit a remote button I'd installed there. Through the loudspeakers in the trees, a horrible roar blasted, followed by the sounds of Frank screaming. Then there was silence.

"That was fun," Cy said with a grin.

"You know," I said. "You really scream like a little girl."

He nodded with a wink. "Like that, did you?"

"Shhh," I said. We had to make sure the next part happened before I released the bear. From a hidden window on the second floor, Gin was to spray a derivative of a concoction that my cousins Dak and Paris had once used on a bear zookeeper. A sort of barbecue sauce mist, one I'd since rendered undetectable by humans but certainly by bears, would coat William. I'd left a trail of it through the jungle on my way here, stopping just a few yards from the cage. It should lead Cuddles straight to the target.

The only problem would be getting Madame Angelina and Annie out of the way. That one had me worried. But that's what Paris and Gin were for. The goal was to maneuver William to a distance of at least twenty feet away from the two women. I'd developed a sort of electronic net that would serve as a barrier between William and the ladies. The net wasn't really a net, not like you or I would think. It was a series of electric pulses that basically rendered the women invisible to the bear.

Paris had laid a stick on the ground in the spot where Madame Angelina would drag Annie off to. Gin would activate the net. In theory, it would work perfectly, and I'd remote electrocute the bear shortly after it mauled William. Paris was set up with a silenced sniper rifle off to the side, in case something went wrong.

"So," I asked Cy as I fiddled with the cage release. "How does it feel to be dead?" The latch came free, and Cuddles the Bear tore off into the jungle, following the scent I'd left for him.

Cy shrugged. "Not much different."

I smiled as I pulled a tablet from a hidden panel on top of the cage and turned it on. The screen popped up, and we saw William standing on the edge of the jungle, trying to look in. Madame Angelina was gripping Annie's arm and had pulled her a safe distance away.

"How do we know he's really dead?" William snapped. "He could be faking it…"

Cuddles hit him like a big, furry freight train, taking him down and crushing his throat with his huge jaws.

Annie screamed, and Madame Angelina dragged her around the side of the house.
"Ok, Missi," Gin's voice crackled from the tablet. "William's dead, and it's getting gross."

"Oh. Right," I said. I heard a small sizzle sound and watched the tablet as the bear slumped forward, dead on top of William's also dead body.

Cy and I jumped down off the top of the cage and ran through the woods. We'd have to be careful in entering the house. Even though Madame Angelina was supposed to bring Annie in through the front door, anything could happen.

Lex and I had made a secret tunnel from the tree line that extended to the house, with a trapdoor that came up through the secret room. We reached it within seconds, and Cy and I made it back into the house without discovery. We joined Gin and Paris, who were in the passage outside of the dining room.

Cy looked down at his feet once we hit the memory foam. "Squishy," he said. Unlike the rest of us, his balance on the stuff was perfect. He moved like he'd been born on the moon.

Inside the dining room, Madame Angelina and Annie were staring at two more smashed Clown statues—courtesy of Gin Bombay. Neither one was moving or speaking. If I didn't know better, I'd think that my cousin really was terrified.

"We're down to the end." Paris whistled. "What's next?"

I stared at him. "How come you don't know this stuff??? We went over it like a dozen times!"

Paris shrugged. "I was buried in my persona. I wanted to get Giuseppe just right."

Gin rolled her eyes. "Well I don't know about right, but you really were buried in a load of something."

I touched the frizzy cloud that was Gin's rocker hair. It crunched in my fingers. "You should talk."

"Seriously," Paris asked again. "What's next?"

"Liv gets frizzled," Cy said. "Kind of like Gin's hair."

"That's what the poem says," I said. But in the book, the character gets shot. Liv really wanted to get shot. But I couldn't figure out how to do that if Annie didn't bring a gun."

We'd opted for electrocution instead. Since that seemed the most like frizzled. I had sent a charge to the metal doorknob in the library, rigged to go on with the flip of a switch. And Madame Angelina was wearing a disruptor I'd designed in her shoes. The effect would make her shake like she was being electrocuted, without her actually being electrocuted. I even had given her earrings that would emit the smell of burnt flesh and hair when activated by the current.

"Madame Angelina needs a drink," my cousin said as she walked out of the dining room. We watched as Annie hung back for a moment. She picked up one of the two, remaining figurines and held it in her hand for a moment. Annie looked at the doorway and then brought her other hand up and snapped the figurine in two. Very gently, she set it down on the table.

"Why did she do that?" Gin asked.

"You and Paris stay with her," I said. Was Annie going to kill the gypsy in an attempt to save herself? Probably. The woman was a cruel, dangerous psychopath. We couldn't rule anything out.

"Cy and I will head to the library. Meet us there," I said.

I guess it wasn't too much of a surprise. We'd even anticipated that we wouldn't be able to control Annie when it was just down to the remaining two. But breaking the figurine herself was new. I hadn't seen that coming.

In the hidden corridor outside the library, Cy and I watched Madame Angelina. She poured herself a drink and turned to face the empty doorway. And while she didn't seem concerned that Annie hadn't followed her in there, I knew she was on full alert.

Gin came running down the hallway. "She's got a knife in the back waistband of her pants." She pulled a pistol out of the back of her own waistband and stood near the secret entrance, ready to go in if it came down to that.

Paris joined us. "Just the one knife. But she'll use it."

"So," Cy asked, "Do you think that she suspects Madame Angelina as the killer? Like in the book?"

"You've read the book?" Paris frowned.

Cy looked at him. "Of course. Didn't you?"

Paris looked sheepish. "I was burying myself in my character," he mumbled for the one hundredth time.

"Let's face it," I said, not taking my eyes off the doorway, "we knew this could go off script at any time. We'll just have to be ready to shoot Annie if things don't go according to plan."

My cousins nodded. Just then, Annie made her way into the room. She kept her back to the wall as she walked to the opposite end.

"So. It was you all along?" Annie said calmly. "I should've seen that coming."

Madame Angelina frowned, setting down her drink. "It wasn't me. I didn't do it."

Annie nodded and took a step closer, bringing both hands behind her back casually. From where we were, we could see her hand close around the knife handle.

"Does she have any knife throwing skills?" I whispered.

"Liv's the only one who had full access to her file," Gin answered.

Paris took up a position by the secret door, gun drawn. Cy aimed his gun at Annie through the two way mirror. Liv was covered.

"You can drop the act with me," Annie said. "I know."

Madame Angelina's eyes narrowed. "You know? What do you know?"

"The poem…the statues…they're all from the book. I've read the book." Annie said with a triumphant looking grin.

"You read what book?" Angelina frowned, but I thought I could see some excitement in her eyes. Sigh. Christie fans.

"And Then There Were None," Annie said. "I must say, this was a pretty good tribute. Except for one thing."

"And what was that?" Madame Angelina's face changed. Her clueless, crunchy gypsy became assassin-hardened Liv Bombay.

"Vera in the book never figured it out. But I have. And I have no intention of frizzling or whatever you had in mind for that. And I'm certainly not going to hang myself either."

Liv nodded. "Okay." The accent was gone, replaced with a cold, steely tone.

Annie looked startled. "Okay?"

Liv shrugged as she pulled off the headpiece, the rings, and bracelets and threw them on the floor. "Okay. So what happens now?"

My cousins tensed up. It didn't matter what Liv was doing. We were ready for anything.

Annie pulled the knife from behind her and held it out. "Now, you get me out of here. Off this island. Back to civilization."

Liv folded her arms over her chest. "Or what?"

Annie frowned and looked down at the knife in her hand. "Or else I stab you."

Liv sighed and pulled her hair back, tying it into a loose bun. "Fine."

"Fine?" Annie squeaked.

"Yes. Fine. Stab me." Liv said.

Annie cocked her head to one side. Clearly she thought she was menacing enough to get my cousin to concede to her demands.

"I'll do it…" Annie stammered. "I will."

Liv nodded. "Come at me like it's Christmas, bitch." She brought her hands up and motioned her on.

Annie looked around. "Okay." Her eyes ranged the room, wondering if she could make it out the door. "Don't push me. You don't have to die. You can just get me out of here."

Liv smiled like a teacher to a naughty little kid. "That's not how it works, Annie. You are never leaving here alive."

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying this. Assassination is so business-like these days. But this was like some weird Lifetime Holiday Drama of the Week—if those things involved killing people with quicksand and bears.

"I'm going in," Paris said, his hand on the door handle.

"No. You're not," I said.

"That's my sister in there!" he protested.

Gin shook her head. "No, that's a trained Bombay assassin in there. She knows what she's doing."

Cy said nothing but kept his gun trained on the mirror. He wasn't even trembling. That man had serious focus.

"Alright," Annie said at last. "Before I kill you, I just want to know who set us up."

She wasn't really in a position to make demands.

Liv shrugged. "I don't know."

Annie's eyes almost bugged out of her skull. "You don't know? How do you not know?"

"I don't. That's just how it works," Liv answered. I had to hand it to her. My cousin was calm and collected. She looked like she was getting ready to sit in front of the fire with a glass of eggnog and her knitting.

Annie waved her knife at the door. "And the others? Who were they?"

"All stupid, evil, nasty people," Liv said. "Like you."

"I am not going to die here!" Annie's voice was hysterical. "You won't kill me!"

"Oh, yes," Liv said quietly. "I'm going to kill you. You're a horrible monster, and you deserve to die for the things you've done."

"It's Christmas Eve! You can't kill me on Christmas!"

Liv cocked her head to one side. "I think that killing you will be my favorite present ever. The world will be a better place without you in it. That's what Christmas is about, isn't it?"

Annie lost it. "It's just business! It's nothing personal!"

"Oh, it's personal alright." Liv narrowed her eyes.

Annie's jaw dropped. "Did I take someone belonging to you?"

Liv shook her head. "Not that I know of."

"Then why kill me?" Tears began flowing down Annie's cheeks.

"I wonder how many little girls asked the same thing of you," Liv said.

"I didn't kill them!"

"You might as well have," Liv said. "Time's up. Are you going to stab me or what?"

Annie lunged at Liv, sweeping the knife in front of her. Liv stepped sideways and grabbed Annie's wrist, twisting hard in a direction that a wrist shouldn't have gone in. There was a decided snap.

The knife fell to the floor and skittered away. Liv bent down, putting her knee across Annie's throat.

"They'll come looking for me!" she gurgled, her face reddening. "Someone will come looking for me!"

Liv leaned down, increasing the pressure on the woman's throat. "I'll tell you what you've told countless girls over the years. No one is coming for you. No one is looking for you. And no one will miss you." She pressed down a little harder. "And the only difference between me telling you that, and you telling them that, is that my words are true."

Annie's eyes went wide just before her trachea made a sick crunching noise. Liv kept up the pressure until she was sure the woman was dead.

She got to her feet just as Paris came through the hidden door and threw his arms around her.

"You were worried about me?" Liv asked through the crush of his hug.

Paris nodded. "I was for a moment there."

"She had the whole thing under control," I said.

Gin put a hand on Liv's shoulder. "Are you mad that it didn't go according to plan?"

Liv shook her head. "Not really. She was strangled in the end. I just didn't get to die."

"This was fun," Gin said.

"I agree," Paris said.

"Let's never do this again." Cy said.

"Why?" I asked.

Cy looked at each and every one of us. "I know you're all very good at what you do. But I was worried sick about each and every one of you. And I don't want to go through that again."

We stared at him. Cy was worried? He never once let on. Clearly he was the best actor of all of us.

We dragged the five bodies and the bear to the quicksand. One by one, we dumped them in, watching as they slowly sank beneath the surface.

Raoul picked us up in the van and drove us to the condos. We were all exhausted and barely said goodnight.

The next morning all of our families arrived, and we got together in the main dining room for a big breakfast. Gin's husband Diego and daughter Romi, Liv's husband Todd and their kids Woody and Alta. Cy and Paris were still single then, but I was already with Lex, and my twin sons, Monty and Jack, were with me.

In the end, it's all about family at the holidays. And when you're a Bombay, Christmas sometimes comes with a few dead bodies.

 

* * *

 

"That was AWESOME!" Theo jumped in the air, pumping his fist.

"It's not a bad story…" Dak said grudgingly. His wife, Leonie, kissed him, and he smiled.

Eulalie the Dodo woke up and stretched her tiny wings, before hopping down off my lap.

Veronica, Leonie, and the other spouses left to put the kids to bed, leaving Gin, Paris, Dak, Cy, Liv and myself sitting in front of the fire.

"You know," Gin said as she stared into the flames, "I always thought it weird that no one ever tried looking for those five bastards."

Paris shrugged. "I don't think the world missed them much."

Liv walked over to Eulalie and sat down beside her on the rug. She rubbed the back of the bird's head, and the dodo made a trilling noise, her eyeballs rolling back into her head. "It's too bad we are retired. That we don't kill the scum of the Earth anymore."

Dak nodded. "I miss that. Like you said in the story, I always felt like we were making the world a better place."

"I miss it," I admitted. "Retirement is dull."

Everyone stopped and stared at me.

"Tell me you don't think so," I demanded. "Tell me you don't miss the excitement, the planning, the execution, all that."

One by one, each one of them nodded.

"Yeah," Gin spoke up. "But I don't miss the Council."

"Or all those rules," Liv added.

"Being told what to do," Paris said. "And when."

We were all quiet, musing on the nostalgic satisfaction that comes from knowing you took some of the worst people on Earth out of circulation. In the kitchen I could hear Leonie and Veronica singing Christmas carols and the clank of dishes being washed.

"So," Cy said thoughtfully. "We all miss killing bad guys to make the world a better place." He leaned forward, a sly smile crossing his face. "Alright. What are we going to do about it?"

 

 

* * * * *

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Leslie Langtry is the USA Today bestselling author of the Greatest Hits Mysteries series, Sex, Lies, & Family Vacations, The Hanging Tree Tales as Max Deimos, the Merry Wrath Mysteries, and several books she hasn't finished yet, because she's very lazy.

 

Leslie loves puppies and cake (but she will not share her cake with puppies) and thinks praying mantids make everything better. She lives with her family and assorted animals in the Midwest, where she is currently working on her next book and trying to learn to play the ukulele.

 

To learn more about Leslie, visit her online at: http://www.leslielangtry.com

 

BOOKS BY LESLIE LANGTRY

 

Merry Wrath Mysteries

Merit Badge Murder

Mint Cookie Murder

Scout Camp Murder (short story in the Killer Beach Reads collection)

Marshmallow S'More Murder

 

Greatest Hits Mysteries:

'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy

Guns Will Keep Us Together

Stand By Your Hitman

I Shot You Babe

Paradise By The Rifle Sights

Snuff the Magic Dragon

My Heroes Have Always Been Hitmen

Four Killing Birds (a holiday short story)

Have Yourself a Deadly Little Christmas (a holiday short story)

 

Other Works:

Sex, Lies, & Family Vacations

 

Hanging Tree Tales YA Horror novels:

Hell House

Tyler's Fate

Witch Hill

The Teacher