“And neither you nor your girls have seen her?” Detective Caplin asked, looking past the ghostly pale woman into the dark foyer of her home.  She shifted to realign his gaze with her own.  “Unfortunately not, but I can assure you if we see or hear anything, you will be the first to know.  As a mother, it’s nothing short of horrific to think of one of my own daughters going missing.  I can surely sympathize with the desperation of finding her little girl as soon as possible.  It is truly tragic,” Bree responded, a bony hand settled upon her own heart, her mournful expression battling the one of doubt on the detective’s face.  Caplin put his notepad away, looking at his assistant and straightening his back.  “Then I suppose you wouldn’t mind if we took a look around, just to be sure.  We want to be as thorough as possible and as large of a property as this is, it’d be easy to miss something, I’m sure you understand,” he suggested.

Indigo painted lips spread into a fragile smile, barely held together by Bree’s patience and decorum.  “That  sounds quite like you suspect us of something.  More importantly, this home has been in my family for generations, and I take great offense at the accusation that anything unsavory would be allowed to occur here.  I’m afraid you’ll require a warrant to snoop around these grounds, Mr. Caplin, and consequently I’ll need to contact my lawyer; I’m sure you understand,” she explained, her tone never raising above a gentle, unbothered one.  Caplin cleared his throat, accepting her caution as near admission of guilt and nodding in response.  “Then that’s what we’ll return with, Miss Lunacai.  What’s in the dark always comes to the light, and retribution swiftly follows.”  The detective and his assistant turned, prepared to leave.  Bree followed them onto the front steps.  “Mr. Caplin, before you go, I would advise you to refrain from threatening my family.  I am a very dedicated mother and while I can appreciate the urgency with which you want to find this child, I will not have you posing harm towards my own lest you find your own retribution,” she warned, an icy stare piercing through Caplin’s back, which he could feel.   “Is that a threat, Miss Lunacai?” he asked, an ominous edge on his voice.  She chuckled.  “Of course not, but if you act as a menace to my family, it’ll be history.  Good day, gentlemen,” she hissed, backing into her home and shutting the door. 

Something of a haunting chill ran down the spines of both men, Caplin’s assistant looking towards him with a tinge of fear in his eyes.  “Do we arrest her?” he asked.  The detective started heading towards the old car they arrived in, a true miracle that it still operated at all.  “For what?  Anything we throw at her at this stage she’ll avoid with a shield of affluence.  Probably has her lawyer on the way as we speak.  No, we’ll need hard evidence.  Get that warrant as soon as possible on grounds of suspicious activity heard by the neighbors at night.  With the urgency of finding a missing child, I’m sure that’ll be enough.  I’ll start talking to the community,” Caplin muttered.  His assistant looked at him, confusion painted across his inexperienced face.  “Don’t you mean the other way around: talk to the community and then… get the warrant?” he asked, his voice devoid of confidence.  Caplin walked around to the passenger’s side door, opening it.  “No,” he replied tersely, getting in the car and slamming the door shut.  There was something grating about being forced to babysit the police department’s new hire for a case as serious as this, but not nearly as grating as the smugness of Bree Lunacai’s confidence, which he made a personal mission of his to shatter.

As the car sped off down the winding path, past the grand gate that closed off the forest from Lunacai Manor, Bree turned, filling her lungs with the honey scented air of her home.  A deep exhale brought her back to a state of calm as she rang a small bell.  The sound echoed through the halls, prefacing the sound of footsteps from several directions.  Within a minute, four girls lined up in front of Bree, each one saying their due greeting.  Bree smiled, setting the bell down and folding her hands.  “Good morning, girls,” she sang, her mood lifted at the sight of them.  “We have a very special project to work on today.  You remember the back room, right?  …what we did there?” she asked.  A swift nod from her daughters prompted her to continue.  “Well, it seems we have some invasive souls that wish to stick their noses where they don’t belong.  So, to be absolutely safe, we’re going to do a bit of renovating around the house, including that room,” she explained.  Seech, an average height girl with two long, pink braids trailing down her back, lit up with excitement.  “Do we get to go into the city?” she asked, vibrating with energy.  Bree nodded.  “Yes Seech, we will go to the city, but- but we will have to be quick about it and it won’t be all fun.  We’re going to have to take up the carpets, scrub every floor, all of the walls.  I think I’ll have someone redo the tile in the bathrooms as well.  They're starting to look a bit dull… Everyone has to pitch in and quickly, am I understood?”  The girls nodded, some more earnest than others. 

“Wonderful.  Take these catalogs and pick out some new floor rugs for your rooms.  Seech, Rouge, you pick up the new rugs as well as the hardwood flooring, something along the same colour as we have now.  Chrissi, I want you to go to the apothecary and pick up a package from Mr. Cartwright.  Tell him it’s the herbs I requested, he’ll know what you’re talking about.  Iimii, go to the store and pick up ingredients for the unicorn cakes.  We’ll be making a few.  I want everyone participating in cleaning.  This place should be spotless before we go,” she instructed. 

Everyone dispersed to different parts of the manor, beginning their tasks.  Rouge hummed to herself softly, clouds of violet gradient hair waving around her cherubic face as she rolled up the old floor rugs from each bedroom, office, and lounge that she passed.  Each one was stacked neatly against the wall, the teenager dragging them into place one by one.  The process was slow and it was stifled even further by the constant back and forth of Iimii, muttering to herself as she pulled up the floorboards.  Rouge never saw her touch a single one, but the stack of uprooted wood seemed larger every time she returned to the hall, so she didn’t bother questioning her methods.  No one ever did.

Chrissi had taken to scrubbing the walls, her brush moving across the lavender planes in no particular order, hitting a different angle with each extension.  She wiped the splashes of soapy water off of her mask, not because it didn’t have a place with the rest of the dirt on the eye shield, but specifically because it blurred the last clear spot, clouding her line of vision.  The cannisters of her mask made a soft popping sound with each exhale, almost on time with the music blaring through her headphones.  “Have you seen Seech?” Rouge asked, just now finishing with the rug collection.  After a moment of being ignored, it occurred to her that Chrissi couldn’t hear her.  She didn’t want to scare the girl, Rouge fidgeting behind her and hesitating to tap her on the shoulder, unsure of how she’d react.  “Chrissi?  Chrissi!” she called as loudly as she could.  Iimii heard the commotion from the upstairs, prompting her to walk down the steps and see what was going on.  Upon seeing the pathetic display before her, she smacked Chrissi on the shoulder on her way towards the refrigerator.  Chrissi jumped, yelping in shock and whipping around, Rouge getting struck with a face full of deep wine coloured hair.  “What the fuck, Rouge?!” she yelled, pausing her music.  Rouge shook her head, about to explain before Iimii interjected, “For someone with so much combat experience, you sure don’t pay attention.”  Chrissi finally noticed Iimii was even there, crossing her arms.  “I’m in this godforsaken fucking mansion, I don’t need to pay attention.  I can do whatever I want.  No one gets in or out without Bree knowing anyway.  If I can’t let down my guard here, where the fuck can I do it?!” she retorted.  Iimii scoffed, pouring herself a glass of lemonade.  “Nowhere.  Welcome to real life.”  An enraged Chrissi started storming towards her, Rouge following and making a brief attempt to deescalate the situation before an annoyed clearing of the throat sounded from the doorway of the kitchen.  If the clock on the wall hadn’t continued to tick, one would think time had frozen.  “I’d like to believe I’ve taught you better than to fight each other,” Bree stated tersely, looking at the lot of them.  “Aside from the fact that we don’t have the time for dramatics right now, there are plenty of people outside of these walls that would love to harm you.  This is not how we handles conflicts amongst ourselves; it’s beneath us.”

Rouge stepped away from the other girls, shame on her face despite her not having intended to fight at all.  “I was just looking for Seech, ma’am, and it just, it wasn’t their fault, I should’ve-“ she stammered before being cut off by a voice that was startlingly close.  The cabinet door above the oven opened, Seech sliding out with ease and waving to Rouge.  “I’m right here.  Ready to go!” she chirped.  Bree raised an eyebrow, leaning against an ornate, white cane.  “Normally I would be fine with you all walking to the city, but we don’t have time today. I’ll drop you off at the outskirts and pick you up in the same spot.  Let us depart.”  She turned around, walking towards and out of the front door with her daughters in tow.  The sunlight hit her long, snowy hair that reached down her back and ended in a set of tight curls, locks that shimmered like diamonds against her thick, fur trimmed coat.  It was a wonder how a bright summer day like this wouldn’t make a coat like that send her into a heat stroke immediately, but Bree wore it every day without fail and none of the girls were bold enough to question it.  Satin-gloved hands gripped the steering wheel of the household car as the girls filed in, Seech, Rouge, and Chrissi in the back seat and Iimii in the front passenger’s seat beside Bree.  The car hummed to a start and the gates of the property opened, shutting behind them once they passed the barrier. 

 to be continued...