“What?” I ask my younger, far more spicier sister.
Stephanie is newer to Starry Falls than I am. I showed up last spring while running from the feds and the mob—after my nitwit ex-boyfriend coerced me into stealing from the Moretti crime family, who, in turn, were stealing those exact same funds from the feds. Ironically, it was me and my voracious purchasing power who tipped off the feds to the whole crooked operation. Suffice it to say, the feds want me behind bars—much like my ex—and the Morettis want me somewhere a little more permanent with a lot less oxygen and not nearly as nice a view.
My name is Stella Santini—or at least it was, until I took on the secret identity of Bowie Binx. I’ve got long black hair, light brown eyes, stand at an average height of five-foot-five, and I can see the future. Odd, I know. That whole future thing has sort of been a quirk since birth, but I haven’t taken my strange abilities and opened up shop or anything. I treat it more or less as a whisper from the big guy upstairs—as if He’s trying to give me the heads-up on a situation or two. The only setback being, I never seem to get the facts right when interpreting those visions.
Stephanie is my doppelgänger, with the exception her hair is shorter, so is her temper, level of patience, and ability to control her libido.
“You’re forgetting to upsell my Christmas cookies!” A genuine fire beams from my sister’s eyes as she boils over at the prospect of her cookies going uneaten. “Don’t let this night end in tragedy.”
And believe me, if those cookies don’t sell, the tragedy would be real. Stephanie and I come from a long line of Italian women who pride themselves on their holiday baking alone. Steph and I worked hard all week to make sure there would be more than enough sweet Italian treats to go around. We’ve got pizzelles, Christmas cookies with anise, chocolate drizzled biscotti, mini cannolis, rainbow cookies, the all too cheerful bones of the dead, and a half dozen more that are lighting up my senses.
“Don’t worry, Lola. I’ve got you covered.” Tilly leans her way. “Cookies!” she howls out at the burgeoning crowd. “Get your oven fresh holiday cookies!”
And just like that, an entire thicket of bodies swoops this way.
“You’re a saint, Tilly!” Steph jumps up and down before knocking back a cup of comfort, straight no cocoa.
Tilly might be a saint, but she’s just as big a sinner. She’s about my age, late twenties, about five inches shorter, and has dark brown hair with chunky blonde highlights. She can give my sister a run for her hormonal money when it comes to men, and she has the result of a teen pregnancy to prove it. Her daughter, Jessie, is sixteen and hell on heels. Suffice it to say, the apple didn’t roll too far from the hot-to-trot tree.
“Stella—” Stephanie whispers, and I nudge her hard with my elbow.
“It’s Bowie,” I hiss back. “Get it straight, Lola.”
When I lived back in New Jersey, just hours prior to my imminent arrest, or homicide, my Uncle Vinnie provided me with an all new identity, gave me a beat-up Honda I now call Wanda, and told me to take a hike to the great White North. But Wanda had other plans.
Apparently, Canada was too far off her radar, and she decided to malfunction just as I rolled off the highway and landed in Starry Falls.
I haven’t left since. My new name, Bowie Binx, took some getting used to. Taking on a new identity and keeping my head below the radar isn’t the easiest way to live, but it just might be the only way to keep myself alive. Steph here isn’t wanted by anyone. She’s basically holing up in Starry Falls with me for sport.
And since Stephanie is just visiting, and has no such walking papers from Uncle Vinnie, she’s decided to christen herself Lola in the spirit of not blowing my cover.
Uncle Vinnie and I worked out a code word that I could give him to ensure everything is right as rain in my world, and that code word would be meow. So I send my sweet uncle a small cross-stitched pillow about once a month with that four-letter feline inspired word inscribed on it. And ever since Steph has been here with me, I’ve cross-stitched that word on there twice.
“Bowie,” Stephanie hisses back. “Check it out.” She points to the oversized evergreen to our left that we’re all anxious to see, lit up in all its Christmas glory. “Isn’t that your man talking to Opal and that snake, Regina?”
Opal would be Opal Mortimer, the disenfranchised socialite who owns the manor behind me. The Mortimer Manor sits crooked on a hill right here at the end of Main Street. If this was the middle of the afternoon, you could see the twin falls buried in the hillside just behind it, which gives the town its cozy moniker.
I glance back at the manor festooned with garland, cheery red bows, and colorful lights strung up around the upper and lower levels.
Ever since Thanksgiving Day, all of Starry Falls has been blessed with a blanket of white, and I’ll admit, it adds just the right holiday sparkle and shine that old haunted mansion and this old town were in need of. Rows of oversized candy canes are staked into the lawn around the periphery of the manor, and it all gives it a glorious holiday appeal. The manor itself looks as if it was brought over brick by brick from England, with its cathedral windows and spires protruding from it.
Last October, a woman by the name of Hazel Newton was killed on the grounds, and her ghost has been haunting the manor ever since. In fact, I see her glowing countenance in the attic window now, so I give her a cheery wave and she
