Second-Hand Princess

  ~~~

  She sat in the banquet hall, looking around. Gloomy. Dirty. Generally depressing. At least her room was nice and airy, after she had dusted again. She liked it, but the rest of the castle was positively ghoulish. Dark wood had its places -- but certainly not in castles with high windows that only permitted a full dose of sunlight in between 12:17 and 12:20 p.m.

  And there certainly seemed to be a lot of ghosts. Most of the house staff were ghosts. And the night guards were ghosts, which only made sense, since ghosts hated sunlight. But the night guards had a habit of popping up when she least expected them.

  She hated ghosts.

  She wondered if the rest of the family were ever going to appear. It was certainly very rude for them to be late. She bowed her head, then felt a kiss on the back of her neck and just about jumped out of her seat. "Spider!" she yelled.

  "Sorry," Aarach said. "Didn't mean to frighten you." He looked pensive. "Marguerite would have kissed back."

  She looked at him coldly for a minute. Marguerite? Who was Marguerite? She decided to let it go... Marguerite obviously was in Aarach's past. "But... darling, I barely know you." She looked around. "I was just looking at the...fireplace. Someone put a brick in the wrong way."

  "Gee," he said. "You certainly know a lot about architecture." He looked at her, admiring.

  She blushed. She knew what she was doing, and she couldn't stop it. When she was nervous, she nitpicked. This castle was making her extremely nervous.

  He looked for the offending brick and couldn't find it. He shrugged. A transparent cat jumped on the table and he started petting it. The cat arched its back in pleasure.

  She shivered and almost gagged. "Darling, how can you...?"

  He stared at her dimly. John, an ancient butler and one of the few live people she had seen in the house, stepped to the doors and slowly opened them. "The King and Queen," he proclaimed reedily.

  A ghostly couple came through the door. Aarach grinned goofily. "Mom! Dad!" he yelled.

  His bride-to-be slumped to the floor.

  "Oh, dear," the late queen said. "Aarach, didn't you tell her?"

  Aarach hung his head. "I forgot."