Nine-year-old Amy Winter's holiday plans have gone from exciting to total disaster.
How is she supposed to have any fun being packed up and sent to stay with a weird relative she can't even remember?
And Aunt Penelope is as weird as they get. With...
"We have to get rid of the child. It's the only answer." Cybil's blue tongue slivered around each word with relish.
"Yes....yes... How right you are sister." Miranda nodded so profusely it caused her glass eye to fall into her toad tea. "Before she starts her training."
"What if it's too late and she's already begun?" Hilda's words ended in a shriek at her own frightening thoughts.
"No she couldn't have... In my vision, the child was wearing her human dress." Miranda licked the glass eye and popped it back into place.
"Was it a pink dress?"
"No, dear Hilda..." Hilda sighed in relief. But Miranda cackled, "It was blue."
Hilda shuddered. "Ohhh...will the punishment never end?"
"Its just not fair. It should be one of us, not this child." Miranda stamped her foot, almost treading on the handful of toads playing hide and seek in the decaying wooden floor. "We have been training all our lives for this role. Mumsy always said it was ours for the taking. And I am sick of waiting. I say we just take it now."
"Miranda. shame on you!" Cybil shrieked at her sister. " You know that if we so much as put a step out of place, we can kiss the whole thing goodbye. Is that what you want?"
"No. I suppose you're right." Miranda reluctantly conceded.
"Of course I'm right. We do it the way Mumsy planned and not a minute earlier." Cybil started pacing the full length of the small living area, totally unaware of the toads madly hopping out of her way, "Penelope must never know her days are numbered. That she will simply cease to exist and one of us will become The Storyteller."
"Aren't you forgetting about the child?" Hilda interrupted.
"Not at all, dear sister." Cybil's croaky voice lowered to a whisper. "I have a plan."
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