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“Are you completely miserable?” said the television.
“Oh, Gil!” said Vincent. “It’s the perfect commercial for you!”
Gilbert stuck out his tongue at him as the television continued, advertising something called Isla Yura’s Tent of Telepathy before Oz came in, flipped off the television screen, and then turned it off.
“Hey, we were watching that,” said Gilbert. “It said he’s a real live psychic!”
“He’s a real live creep, is what he is,” said Oz. “We here at the Mystery Shack have a blood feud with him, which I’m guessing is going to be popping off again now that he’s back in town…” Oz sighed. “We really don’t need that…there’s no helping it, though, I suppose. Anyway, you two stay away from him.”
“Why?” asked Vincent.
“He’s an insane, dangerous, pathetic little creep,” Oz said, “who will do anything to ruin those of us here at the Mystery Shack, which includes you two. That’s why we haven’t answered your family’s messages the past two summers—he was in town, and we didn’t want to endanger you guys. But if he’s here now…”
“What did Alice do to him?” Vincent asked in wonder.
“Oh, she didn’t do anything wrong,” Oz said. “He’s just my ex.”
The noises that came out of Gilbert and Vincent were truly wondrous to behold, and left Oz rubbing his ears, and summoned Alice, who popped her head inside.
“What’s going on?”
“Did Oz really used to date a psychic?” Gilbert asked excitedly.
“I was just telling them about the blood feud,” Oz told her. “They got…overexcited.”
“A little bloodlust is a great thing for a Monday morning!” Alice said. “Why, though?”
“His commercials are back on television,” Oz sighed, “which means he’s back in town.”
“Gross,” said Alice. “Who’s down for a little arson?”
“Arson?” said Gilbert. “Why? Why do you guys hate him that much? I mean, he only seems a little weird…”
“He’s awful,” said Alice. “End of story.”
“No, we want to hear the whole story!” said Vincent.
“Alright, alright,” said Oz. “It all started years ago, back when I’d just met Alice…”
“Isla Yura’s Tent of Telepathy?” Alice said. “What’s that?”
“A competitor, maybe?” Oz suggested, sneaking a glance at the smaller girl beside him to see what she thought. Alice’s brow was furrowed in thought, but she didn’t seem to disagree, so he continued, “Wanna check them out?”
“No way,” Alice scoffed. “The Mystery Shack is already the best.”
“I mean, yeah,” said Oz, “but it’s important to see what our competitors are up to, too, so that we stay the best, you know?”
“I’m not going,” said Alice. “I guess you can if you want, though.”
Oz was fairly certain that this meant that Alice didn’t want him to go, either, and usually he capitulated to Alice’s desires—she was so dazzling, after all, and he had no desire higher than to remain by her side and support her in everything she did—but if he got information on one of their competitors, and used it to boost the Mystery Shack, he was sure that Alice would be even happier than she would be if he chose to boycott the show with her.
“Alright,” Oz said. “I’ll see you later!”
Alice folded her arms. “You’d better come home right after!” she said.
“You know I live with my uncle, and not at the Mystery Shack, right?” Oz said.
“Hmph! Come straight to the Mystery Shack, then!”
Oz did not, actually, live with his uncle, but that was what he called Oscar Vessalius, the man whom he lived with. Oscar was a widower, whose wife and son had died some ten years before, and it had been in front of his house that Oz had, shivering and amnesiac, been found in front of. Oscar had taken Oz in and told everyone that he was his brother Xai’s son, come to stay for the holidays, and Oz just hadn’t left, spending those first few months lost in a fog of his missing memories until he first met Alice Baskerville in town when she was shopping for things to transform her home into a tourist trap, and she’d immediately declared them best friends upon meeting and told him in no uncertain terms that he would be working in the Mystery Shack for her. This was the first thing that had cut through the fog he lived in, and an act for which he was eternally grateful, and there was very little that Oz would not do for Alice.
This, however, was not something he shared with the boys; it was a secret he would take to his grave. Not even Alice, after all, knew anything about Oz’s life from before he’d been taken in by Oscar or the exact circumstances—though, to be completely fair, neither did Oz.
Isla Yura was a hack. But he was a charming hack, and seemed to have taken a liking to Oz, and Oz thought that he could use that to steal the Tent of Telepathy’s secrets and boost the Mystery Shack, so he agreed to a date and went home—went back to the Mystery Shack to tell Alice all about it.
She was furious, and the two of them shouted each other down about Oz’s shitty life choices until he stormed back to Uncle Oscar’s house and resolved not to tell Alice anything more about his dating life until he’d successfully stolen all of Isla Yura’s trade secrets—and then she’d be sorry.
Oz was the sorry one, though, after the date, when Isla Yura did not give away any trade secrets but instead professed to have fallen in love with Oz. As annoying as Isla Yura was, Oz was flattered by this—he could not remember anyone ever telling him they loved him before, though for some reason he associated the feeling of being loved with ravens—and so agreed to it, though he silently resolved to break things off if he didn’t get any information by the end of the date.
But Isla Yura confessed his love once more, in front of several people, and Oz didn’t think he could refuse, and…maybe next time he’d get some trade secrets out of him?
This was, at any rate, what he told Alice when she confronted him at the Mystery Shack the next day, and she scoffed at him.
“It’s literally so easy to just say no,” she said. “So easy. So just say it!”
“I don’t…want to disappoint anyone,” Oz said. “I’m the only one uncomfortable with this, so it’s better to just…I don’t know, grin and bear it, right? Plus, I can get some trade secrets for the Mystery Shack that way.”
“We don’t need his trade secrets! We don’t need anything other than us, Oz,” Alice snapped.
“We need money to keep the lights on, and the Mystery Shack isn’t exactly raking in the big bucks,” Oz argued. “Look, I…it’s not like I’m going to keep dating him after tonight. Okay? It’ll all be over tomorrow.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” grumbled Alice.
But it was not all over tomorrow, as Alice found out when she entered the giftshop to find Oz with his head directly on the cash register, berating himself.
“What is it?” she asked. “Everything can go back to normal today, right?”
“Why can’t I just say ‘no’?” Oz moaned.
“Oz!”
Oz did not lift his head from the cash register.
“Ugh.” Alice leaned over and rested her chin on his head. “You want me to dump him for you?”
“I can’t ask that of you, Alice. You’ve done so much for me already…”
She really had. She’d given him a purpose, joy in life, happiness. He owed her everything and wanted to give her the world. Oscar had helped him to survive, but Alice had taught him to live.
“You aren’t asking. I’m offering, because I think it’d be fun. I want to piss him off and make him cry. Okay?”
Darling Alice.
“Yeah, okay,” Oz said. “Good luck, he’s a creep.”
“I’ll kick him in the teeth,” Alice promised, and then trotted out of the gift shop. Oz sighed to himself, watching her go. He really thought he ought to take care of his own issues, and reject Isla Yura himself, but he couldn’t even say a simple “no” to him…how pathetic.
Alice came back not thirty minutes later, though, her knuckles bruised and with a grin on her face.
“It’s done~!” she sang out. “I mean, he swore a blood feud against the Mystery Shack for stealing you away from him, but I also robbed his safe, so we’ve got us a nice little nest egg, and I snatched this nasty looking pendant. Wonder what it does?”
Oz grinned at her. “Who knows? Maybe we should sell it on eBay.”
“Yeah! We could be rich!”
The first of the vandalizations happened that night: a rock was thrown through the Mystery Shack’s window with a warning note attached to it. Over the next month, the incidents increased in severity—though of course Alice and Oz retaliated, slashing open the Tent of Telepathy, ruining shows, and reporting Isla Yura to the IRS since, as Alice was an expert in tax fraud, they could usually notice when he was evading taxes.
“...This all happened years and years ago,” said Oz. “I was a kid at the time, and Isla Yura’s my uncle’s age, so you can guess why Alice and I hate him so much. We’ve been mutually trying to destroy each other since then…though a lot of the times, Isla Yura’s schemes seem distinctly paranormal in origin. We don’t know why…I’m guessing it has to do with those ‘trade secrets’ I failed to steal, but hopefully when we burn down the Tent of Telepathy tonight, that’ll take care of it.”
Gilbert and Vincent looked at each other.
“So…” Alice said. “You in?”
They were in.
That night, the Tent of Telepathy went up in flames, though Isla Yura was not inside. He was instead in his house, reading through a handwritten, leather-bound journal with the number two embossed in the front.
He glanced out the window at the four figures moving away from his tent and smirked.
“Don’t worry, Oz Vessalius,” he said, his fingers trailing down the cover of the notebook. “Soon, the Mystery Shack will be destroyed…and you will be mine, and mine alone.”