The Face

footsteps came not from the hall but through the butler’s pantry, where the china, crystal, and fine silverware were stored.
        Grabbing his shirt and undershirt, Fric dropped to the floor and crawled as fast as a skittering skink, away from the butler’s pantry and around the corner of the nearest of three granite-topped center islands.
        Atop this particular island were four deep-well French fryers, a griddle large enough to prepare two dozen pancakes side by side, and an acre of work surface. Cowering here, discovered by a grinning Mr. Hachette, Fric could be skinned, gutted, French fried, and eaten while the few people currently in the house snoozed on undisturbed, blissfully unaware that an extraterrestrial gourmet was whipping up a grisly breakfast for itself.
        When he dared peek around the corner of the island, he saw not Mr. Hachette but Mrs. McBee.
        He was doomed.
        Mrs. McBee had dressed for her early-morning drive to Santa Barbara. She crossed the kitchen to her office, entered, and left the door standing open behind her.
        She would smell Fric. Smell him, hear him, sense him somehow. She would discover the water beaded in the sink, would open the trash compactor and see the damp paper towels, and would instantly know what he’d done and where he now hid.
        Nothing escaped the notice of Mrs. McBee or foiled her powers of deduction.
        She would not gut him and French fry him, of course, because she was a good person and entirely human. Instead she would insist upon knowing why he was stripped to the waist in the kitchen, freshly washed, and looking as guilty as a stupid cat with canary crumbs on its lips.
        Because she was Ghost Dad’s employee, Fric could have made the [338] argument that technically she worked for him, too, and that he didn’t have to answer her questions. If he resorted to that argument, he would be in deep meide, as Mr. Hachette would say with glee. Mrs. McBee knew that she served in loco parentis, and while she was not quite power mad with that authority, she took it seriously.
        Whether Fric concocted a false explanation or tried to get away with telling only part of the truth, Mrs. McBee would see through his deception as clearly as he himself could see through a window, and she would intuitively know everything that he’d been up to at least since he’d awakened in the armchair. Twenty seconds later, with one of his ears pinched firmly between the thumb and forefinger of Mrs. McBee’s right hand, he would find himself standing before the potted palm in the library, sweating like a lowlife scumbag as he tried to explain why he had attempted to assassinate the plant with a double volley of urine.
        Minutes thereafter, she would have succeeded in getting him to spill the entire story from Moloch to mirror man to the phone call from Hell. Then there would be no going back.
        Even Mrs. McBee, with her scary ability to see through any lie or evasion, would not recognize the truth in this case. His story was too outrageous to be believed. He would sound like a bigger lunatic than any of the uncountable entertainment-industry lunatics who, on visiting Palazzo Rospo, had astonished Mrs. McBee with their lunacy during the past six years.
        He didn’t want Mrs. McBee to be disappointed in him or to think that he was mentally deranged. Her opinion of Fric mattered to him.
        Besides, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if he tried to convince anyone that he was in communication with a mirror-traveling guardian angel, he’d be hand-carried into a group-therapy session. The group would be six psychiatrists and he would be the only patient.
        Ghost Dad was almost as big on shrinks as he was on spiritual advisers.
        [339] Now Mrs. McBee stepped out of her office, closed the door, and paused to look around the kitchen.
        Fric ducked back behind the fryer-and-griddle island. He held his breath. He wished that he could as easily close down his pores and prevent them from spewing out his scent.
        The main kitchen was not quite a maze to rival the labyrinth of memorabilia in the attic, though it boasted not only six large Sub-Zero refrigerators but also two upright freezers, more ovens of more types than you would find in a bakery, three widely separated cooking areas with a total of twenty high-intensity gas burners, a planning station, a baking station, a