The taxi driver barely had a chance to get out before she had the back door open. She threw her bag in then she did the same with her body and slammed the door.
The driver wasted no time and drove off with a squeal of wheels.
The little girl, named Myrtle, turned to the little boy, named Lewis, and dropped his hand.
“She doesn’t look very happy,” Lewis remarked.
Myrtle wrinkled her nose. “If Miles was my boyfriend, I’d run from the castle too.”
Lewis grinned. “Only because you love Jack.” He put great emphasis on the world “love” and Myrtle punched him in the arm and looked back out the window.
“She looked sweet with Jack last night when we saw them walking to the stables,” Myrtle commented.
“Yes,” Lewis unusually concurred with his sister. Then again, he liked the look of the blonde lady, she was very pretty and she reminded him vaguely of his long since dead Mum. “Though, maybe something happened because when they came back, they were walking really quickly.”
Myrtle giggled. “I know! He was practically dragging her.”
“I wonder why they were in such a hurry?” Lewis asked and Myrtle bit her lip.
“Did you see them kissing?” Myrtle whispered.
Lewis didn’t look at his sister when he answered back in a whisper, “Yes.”
Myrtle’s voice was worried when she asked, “Do you think Miles found out Jack kissed his girlfriend?”
Lewis’s eyes moved to the window and he looked down the road, the taxi long gone.
“I hope not. He can be not very nice and I don’t think he’d like Jack kissing his girlfriend,” Lewis replied and felt his sister shiver beside him.
As he’d been doing for quite a number of years (over two hundred of them), he tried to protect his sister from anything that might distress her.
So he leaned in, bumped her with his shoulder and shouted, “Flip-flop!”
Myrtle needed no further encouragement. She shot up several inches from the floor and darted across the room, her ghostly body melting through the wall. She did a forward spin and headed down and through the stairs.
Then, when she found her hidey-hole, she shouted, “Flip!”
And some ways away, she heard her brother’s ghostly, “Flop!”
Eyes firmly shut, Myrtle floated in his direction.
Chapter Five
Jack Meets Lila and Rachel
Jack
Three months later…
Jack saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
He turned his head to see his assistant, Olive, and her short, squat body. She was wearing a heavy tweed skirt even though it was the middle of a very warm summer. One tail of her blouse had come untucked. And her short, naturally grey but dyed peach (for some reason unknown to him) hair was spiked as if she’d been running her hands through it with severe agitation.
Olive Mayfair could singlehandedly plan a successful war with multiple fronts but she wouldn’t be able to do it without displaying a great deal of tremendously disorganised, blatantly obvious stress.
She stood at the windows to the conference room where Jack was sitting in a meeting and she was gesticulating wildly, like she was guiding a plane in to land and didn’t quite know what signals to make so she was making it up as she went along.
Her eyes were wild.