Wicked as They Come

“I understand that there might be something here,” I said, knowing that he knew what I meant. “And I get that you don’t like taking orders. But maybe you should stop calling me ‘love’ all the time?”

“It’s a colloquialism,” he said. “Love, bird, pet, poppet, sweeting, although that one really only works for pirates. Terms of endearment, but nothing sneaky-like.”

“If you say so,” I said, and he raised his eyebrows in feigned innocence as he reached for the handle of the lime-green door. Before he could touch it, it crashed open, banging against the wood.

“Whozat?” screeched a grating female voice from within. “I can hear you out there!”

“It’s me, Mrs. Cleavers,” he called. “And I’ve brought a guest.”

“Oh, sir, I’m so sorry. I thought it was maybe C and Q trying to sneak a peek again. The twins are randier than a pack of bludbunnies on a full moon. I found them last week up to their chins in petticoats, doing something I won’t mention in front of this … er … lady.”

As I entered the dimness within, she came into focus. A small woman wrapped in a violet shawl, with a beaky nose and a ridiculous hat. She reminded me of a baby vulture. She sniffed the air as she blinked at me.

“Ooh, smell her! She smells like—”

“I know what she smells like,” he snapped.

“And she needs clothes, sir.”

“I know that, too.”

“So the spell worked, then?”

“If you value your job and your neck, shut your trap,” he growled, and she snorted.

“Hello,” I said, timid, and stuck out my hand.

She shrank back, fidgeting with her black, scale-covered hands like bird’s claws, muttering, “My gloves, my gloves. Where’d I lay them down?”

I politely averted my eyes. The wagon was crowded with cloth and spangles and lace and ribbons, racks upon racks of clothes and dress dummies in all sizes stuck full of pins and thread. The costumes were stunning and detailed in a way that had fallen out of style in my world. Everything looked deeply uncomfortable.

When Criminy touched my back, I startled and felt blood rush to my cheeks at the light pressure of his hand. I turned to find Mrs. Cleavers staring at me again, a gloved hand held out hopefully. I shook it, and we smiled. Then she erupted into a flurry of activity, buzzing around in trunks and closets.

“Let’s see, let’s see. What do we need? Petticoats, that’s for sure. Corset. Dress and shawl, oh, yes. Look here, dear. What color are your eyes?”

She pulled a chain out from under her jacket and used the attached brass opera glasses to look at my eyes from several feet away.

“Hmm,” she muttered. “Murky blue. That won’t do at all.”

I felt the sudden need to apologize for my eyes, but she was upside down in another chest, her tiny feet fluttering off the ground in knee-high lace-up boots.

She hooted in what I had to assume was triumph and emerged holding a puddle of deep burgundy fabric.

“That’s perfect,” Criminy said.

“Step outside, sir, if you please,” she chirped. “A lady’s got to be respectable.”

He obediently went out the door, whistling as it shut behind him.

She focused on me. Her eyes narrowed, and the jovial subservience flashed into all business. “Off with the coat, then,” she snapped. “I haven’t got all day.”

Shyly, I started unbuttoning the coat at the neck, and when my throat was exposed, she gasped. I turned away from her as I undid the buttons and shrugged off the coat, holding it back for her. She draped something over my arm.

“That’s your drawers,” she said, her voice croaky. “Go fast, now. That’s simply too much skin. Saint Crispin, girl! They’ll smell you for miles.”

Looking down at the frothy black skirts, I was puzzled. If they could make robots, what was so hard about making underwear? I stepped into the petticoats and pulled them up to my waist, tying the drawstring at what seemed like a comfortable tightness.

I held out my hand, and a black satin corset appeared.

“Um,” I said. “I’ve never worn one of these before. Sorry.”

I had never told anyone, but I had actually bought one once, on a whim at the mall. It was purple satin with black lace, and it had just caught my eye. When I shyly showed it to Jeff, he demanded that I take it back because it looked, and I quote, “Outlandish.”

Well, guess, what, Jeff? I’m in Vampireland, putting on a corset, so screw you.

She slapped it around me and laced it with lightning-fast fingers, very careful not to touch my skin, even with her gloves.

“Hold on to that post,” she said.

There was a conveniently placed post nearby, so I wrapped my arms around it, thinking about Scarlett O’Hara. The first yank on the lacing was still shocking, and the tugging didn’t stop until I felt as if my lungs were going to explode. Little bars dug into my stomach and pressed against my chest.

“Is this really necessary?” I asked breathlessly.

She blew air out of her nose like a bored horse and lifted her shawl to show a tiny hourglass waist.

“I don’t know where you’re from,” she said, “But in this world, sweetheart, a lady’s worth nothing but the size of her waist.”

“I hope the food isn’t very good, then,” I said, and she cackled.

Next came the dress, which had ties and embroidery over every inch. I fumbled around with it but couldn’t figure out where my head went. It seemed to have three sleeves. Mrs. Cleavers sighed heavily before snatching it back and holding it out to me with the smallest sleeve—which was actually the neck—open. I ducked through it and pulled it down. It was heavy and thick, and I felt as if I were putting on a twenty-pound wetsuit. The sleeves went all the way to my knuckles and hooked over my thumbs. Along the wrists, another set of laces waited for my costumer’s merciless tugging.

She laced and pulled all of the ties. The dress was snug against every inch of my skin until it met my hips, where it flared out and in like a mermaid’s tail. A waterfall of ruffles cascaded off my bum. She dragged me to a full-length mirror and tilted it to show my full figure.

I had been transformed into a curvy Victorian bombshell. Or Gothic bombshell, maybe, because even for a garment that covered every inch of skin, there was something decidedly dark and sexy about the thing.

I smiled and ran my hands down my perfectly curved waist.

“Don’t get on your high horse yet, child,” she chided me, reading my mind. “You’ve still got hair and makeup to do. And boots. Boots first.”

She threw back the top of another chest, and the smell of leather drifted out. I slipped on the pair of gray stockings she handed me, and she started flinging boots to the floor at my feet, urging me to try on pair after pair until I found the ones that fit like a glove. They were calf-high and black with a kicky little heel. Once the boots were laced all the way up and cruelly tightened by my personal costume buzzard, I checked the mirror again and smiled.

Firm hands forced me into a chair. My dark, wavy hair was loose and rumpled, and she began dragging a silver brush through the tangles without mercy. I grunted in pain. She laughed.

A tiny dish of metal pins appeared and were twisted open in her mouth and jabbed into my skull. Against its natural inclination, my wild hair was molded into a proper sort of updo. She nearly singed my nose with a pair of brass tongs as she created little curls with the leftover feathery bits of hair around my face and ears that normally made my life hell.

As the pièce de résistance, she produced a long, metal fork with a bunch of black feathers and doodads attached and stabbed it into the glossy pile of hair. I turned my head to admire the effect and saw a polished rabbit skull nestled among peacock feathers and ribbons.

“You look like you’ve never seen a fascinator,” she said.

“What’s a fascinator?” I asked.

“Fascinator? I hardly know ’er!” she cried, then laughed until she was wheezing.

I didn’t want to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. She’d probably been waiting ten years to use that joke on an idiot like me.

“You Strangers slay me, lass,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“So am I done now?” I asked.

“Little bit of paint first,” she muttered as she jabbed my tender eyeballs with a sharpened pencil that she moistened with her tongue.

“I don’t generally wear much makeup,” I said.

“You’ll learn.”

She lined my eyes and smudged black all around them, then produced a glass jar of white powder.

“That’s not lead, is it?” I asked, remembering some choice stories from my high school history class about the ridiculous things women used to do for beauty.

“Lead? Certainly not,” she said. “It’s chalk and belladonna.”

I lurched backward as the brush approached my face.

“Belladonna is poison, too,” I said. “I don’t want it.”

“You’ll have it,” she said, stepping toward me menacingly.

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I refuse.”

“I’ll tell the master,” she warned.

“Fine. Tell him I don’t want to die. See what he says.”

Her lower lip started trembling, and then she burst out laughing again. These bizarre people and their laughter were starting to get to me. I’d only met two carnivalleros so far, and they had both cackled maniacally within moments of meeting me. Jeff would have hated it, but I was starting to crave it.

Her tiny boots clicked over to the door, and she stuck her head out and hollered, “Master Stain, the lady don’t want powder. Says it’s poison, and she don’t want to die.” I could hear his elegant guffaws carrying through the crack in the door.

“If she doesn’t want powder, then don’t use powder!” he shouted.