Bagsy Beetlehorn and the Vampire Affairs (The Bagsy Chronicles 4)

To Spite Your Face

Luck had been on Tod Alden's side last summer. He'd been unable to twist people's minds with a power that had left him and refused to return; his silver charm. Had his parents set him a single chore they would have discovered the state he'd been in. Perhaps, if Tod wasn't an Alden, it wouldn't have been a problem. But in the Alden family everything was a transaction. What could you offer? What was your worth? How would you repay what you asked for?

The Alden children repaid the generosity of their parents, who birthed, housed and fed them, with chores. But these chores weren't clearing away the garden gnomes, or repelling the attic ghouls, or even banishing boggarts. They had house elves (that they technically weren't allowed) for that.

The Alden childrens' chores were something far more specific, something only an Alden child could do, because Alden children had a youthful silver tongue and the instinctive trust of adults who didn't see them as a threat. Tod had been lucky because he'd managed to survive a whole summer lacking his silver charm without his parents noticing his main value had vanished.

This summer, Tod didn't need luck on his side. His power had been restored to him, courtesy of Bagsy Beetlehorn. Now, as he sat on a small boat that descended in the large koi pond in the family's garden, he felt no worries about completing his chore. With a jerk, the boat dropped into the branch of the underlakes linked with the gated community of Liberality, where he and his family lived. His parents had spared no expense hiring history experts to craft a plethora of extensions using the precise same materials, tools and methods of the period the barn was originally constructed, converting it into a family home. Tod's parents liked to meddle with things without their meddling being noticed, Tod thought to himself as a bubble formed around him and the boat, dark water obscuring the sky above.

It wasn't just with their children that Tod's parents made transactional relationships. Everyone they interacted with was a client who would be given something in return for a favour. This was why Tod had these chores in the first place. His parents had needed a favour from someone and, in return, Tod was to meddle with some minds to cover up actions the clients wanted to go unnoticed. He wasn't bothered; his parents had given him life, and his power gave him purpose. He owed them this task, and these chores were a part of the meaning of life for him. It was all as it should be.

Sure, his friendship with Bagsy wasn't transactional, but that was an exception. Tod was under no illusion; the rest of the world didn't run that way, and he was trying his best to accept it.

The boat continued silently through the dark, ripples lapping at the stone walls of the tunnel deep below the earth's surface and water dripping down from above. Tod glanced up, seeing fish darting to a fro, and a bottom feeder blink its glistening eyes at its surroundings. They couldn't see him; the floor of the lake he was passing below only allowed those underneath to see up.

After a time, the boat rose and jolted through the ceiling into the waters of a small river. It continued to rise until the bubble surrounding him vanished as the fresh air of a forest took the water's, place. Carefully, Tod pulled the boat to its mooring, and stepped off. Dusting his grey and blue wizard's robes, and tossing his dark hair out of his eyes, he approached the hidden village tucked between the trees. Hut entrances were sunken into the trunks of trees, and vine woven walkways were strung from one oak to another above his head. It didn't take him long to find the home he was looking for.

Without knocking, he threw the door open, stepping into a small, circular hut, half-merged with an oak tree. Swaths of shrubbery swarmed the surrounding over-grown garden, and by the time he made it inside, his neat wizard's robes were scuffed up with leaves and twigs. Picking them off in annoyance, he looked around the space. It was crammed with plants, herbs and a bed that barely fit.