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“Let’s swear a sister’s truce to not waste time on Marius,” Mabel said, holding her hand out.
“Deal,” Grenda agreed, putting her hand on top of Mabel’s.
“Deal,” Candy agreed, following Grenda’s lead.
“Deal,” all three said.
They stood there for a moment, hands all on top of each other.
“So…” Candy began, “what now?”
Grenda looked around the ballroom, her eyes landing on a door in the back that led to the rest of the mansion. She turned to the other girls, a wide grin spreading across her face. “Trespassing?”
Candy and Mabel looked at each other. Then, in harmony, “Trespassing!”
The Northwest Mansion was much larger than it had any right to be. Old portraits lined the walls, somehow managing to be creepy despite their displaying all of the Northwests’ good deeds. The lights were off, and the old style of the mansion made the girls step closer and closer together, until they were huddled close, shuffling across the ornate hallway.
“Grendaaaaaa, if we’re killed by a ghost, it’s your faaaauult!” Candy whined, latching onto Grenda’s arm.
“Yeah, I’m having regrets,” Grenda agreed.
“Don’t you worry, girls, Mabel’s got’cha covered,” Mabel grinned. She reached into the folds of her skirt and pulled out a flashlight. Grenda and Candy gasped.
“Wow, Mabel, you planned for everything!” Grenda complimented as Mabel clicked the flashlight on, shining it down the hallway.
“Comes with being a party planner!” Mabel responded.
“What’s that door?” Candy asked, pointing to the door in question.
The girls pushed the door open, finding it led to a garden shed.
“Even their sheds are fancier than ours!” Candy complained.
“This shovel is embedded with diamonds!” Grenda held up said shovel. “ Diamonds , girls!”
“Are those peacocks? ” Mabel gasped as she pushed the shed door open. The girls rushed out to explore the garden, gaping at the fancy topiary and yes, the peacocks.
Candy flopped onto a peacock and held it tight. “I am stealing you and bringing you home to impress boys and frighten enemies with. You will be a fierce warrior!”
“Hedge statues of a mermaid Pacifica?!” Grenda crossed her arms. “Well, that’s just spoiling her. There’s no way her cheekbones are that pronounced!”
“Hurry, through the garden. Watch out for the peacocks.”
The girls turned, gasping in sync as they saw who had spoken. “ Pacifica?! ”
“What?” Pacifica skidded to a stop, gaping at her unwanted party guests. “You three? What are you doing out of the ballroom, you aren’t supposed to be here!”
“Dipper, what are you doing?” Mabel stepped up to her brother, crossing her arms. “Did you get rid of the ghost?”
“Go back to the ballroom, Mabel,” Dipper dismissed, shooing her away.
“No way! ” Candy snapped. “I am adopting your abused peacocks and giving them better homes!”
“Go back to the ballroom!” Pacifica yelled. “Leave us alone!”
“Come on, come on…I got it!” Dipper grinned as he found the page he was looking for in the Journal. “A haunted painting can only be trapped in a silver mirror. Pacifica, if I know anything about your family it’s that you definitely have a silver mirror somewhere. Lead me to it.”
“I---” Pacifica blushed, growing angry. “Yes, okay, but we can’t go into the room it’s in!” She gestured to their feet, which were covered in mud from the garden. “That room has my parents' favorite carpet pattern. They'll lose it if we track mud in there.”
“Haunted painting?” Grenda stomped her feet, sending up a splash of mud. “Dang the darn carpet pattern, we need to trap that ghost!”
“But---”
“Come on, Paz!” Mabel grabbed Pacifica’s wrist, and pulled her along as the five of them ran back into the house.
“No, guys, we’ll find another way.” Pacifica tried to pull away, but Mabel’s grip was strong. “Guys---Mabel, let me go!”
Mabel let go, and Pacifica took off.
“Pacifica---G-d, she’s so difficult! ” Dipper snapped. “Mabel, you go find her, I’ll go find the silver mirror. Candy, Grenda, you guys go back to the ballroom.”
“No way!” Candy protested. “I’ll help look for the mirror.”
“Me too!” Grenda agreed. “No way we’re letting you look all alone, twigboy. This place is huge!”
“ Twig--- ” Dipper cut himself off, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Okay! Fine. Let’s go.”
Mabel put her hand out. “Let’s stop a ghost and save the Northwest Ball!”
Grenda and Candy put their hands in, Dipper as well after getting scathing looks from the girls, and the girls cheered.
“Right, let’s meet back at the ballroom once we’re done,” Dipper said. “The ghost will probably be heading there if he can’t find Pacifica, anyway.”
“All the more reason to go find her!” Mabel pumped her fists. “Let’s go girls! And Dipper!”
“Let’s go!”
“There it is!” Candy pointed to a room colored all in silver---and to a silver mirror sitting on a gilded table.
“Yes, thank you, Candy!” Dipper rushed forward, wincing as the mud on his shoes squelched unpleasantly against the fancy carpet. “Okay, now we need to find that ghost. To the ballroom!”
“Wait!” Grenda interrupted. “Wait if the ghost went after Mabel? And Pacifica too, I guess.”
“Uh…” Dipper stopped, torn between saving the people in the ballroom and going after Mabel. “I…oh! There’s another silver mirror right there!”
He ran across the room and held up said second silver mirror. “You two go to the ballroom, and I’ll go after Mabel,” he said, handing Candy the second mirror.
Grenda and Candy nodded, steeling themselves.
“Right, see you, girls.”
“Good luck!”
“Right, uh---yeah, good luck. Heh.”
“Pacifica?” Mabel called, swinging her flashlight across the hallway. “Paz? I’ve got emergency candy if you’re interested, and not loser candy, either!”
No answer.
“Do you have any allergies? That’s okay if you do, but you might not be able to eat the candy I have. You’ll probably be able to eat what we have back at the Mystery Shack!”
Still no answer. The hallway was long, dark, and silent.
“Paaaaz, c’mon, you’ve gotta like candy!”
“Mabel, go away .”
“Oh, there you are!” Mabel lifted the tarp to the secret room, whistling appreciatively. “I gotta say, this kinda redemes your house for me. Every mansion has gotta have a secret room!”
She found Pacifica sitting beside a painting, but the other girl stood up when she saw Mabel. “Go away! ”
“Only if you come with me!” Mabel winked, shooting Pacifica a pair of finger guns.
“Ugh! I don’t even know where we are, where this room is, I just---” Pacifica suddenly turned around, facing away from Mabel. “I just…I just ran.
“You can’t just ask me to make my parents mad. They would’ve killed me; they’ll still kill me.”
Mabel frowned, her cheer draining out of her. “Pacifica…you shouldn’t be afraid of your parents.”
Pacifica whirled around and advanced on Mabel. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP, YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! You---” She suddenly stopped, ducking her head. “You don’t know anything. So shut up.”
Mabel took a hesitant step forward, turning her flashlight off. “Pacifica…”
“ Your fate is sealed! ”
The two girls gasped, Pacifica whirling around to see the shape of a man reaching out through the tarp above her to grab her. They both screamed, grabbing onto each other, and---
“Got him!”
Mabel blinked, turning around in surprise to her brother’s voice. “Dipper?” she asked. “Where did the ghost go? What did you do?”
Dipper held up a silver mirror, showing the girls the ghost trapped inside.
“ No. No, free me! ”
“After I found a silver mirror, I retraced Mabel’s steps and found this room,” Dipper explained, a smug air around him. “After that it was a simple matter of finding the ghost. Easy as pie.”
“You went in the room with my parent’s favorite carpet pattern?!” Pacifica gasped. “Dipper, my parents are going to kill me!”
“C’mon, it can’t cost them much for a cleaning job,” Dipper shrugged, walking back towards the main house. “Besides, it wasn’t you who tracked mud, it was me. I’ll just take the blame, no problem. I did get rid of their ghost problem, after all.”
“I---”
“Pacifica, if your parents try to kill you, I’ll super glue them together,” Mabel promised, gesturing to the glue gun still stuck to her dress. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
Dipper gave Mabel a strange look, but Pacifica looked at her like she had hung the sun, moon, and stars in the sky. Then she got a hold of herself, harrumphing and crossing her arms as she stalked away. “Yeah, whatever. Thanks, dorks.”
“You’re welcome,” Dipper snarked back.
“Well, Pacifica, you really found the right man for the job,” Mr. Northwest complimented. Pacifica forced a smile that looked more like a grimace, but Mr. Northwest wasn’t actually paying attention to her, so it went unnoticed.
“We can’t thank you enough,” Mrs. Northwest said, gesturing to the butler to shake Dipper’s hand. After a few shakes, she said, “That’s enough.”
“Hey, just holdin’ up my end of the deal,” Dipper shrugged, then turned to leave.
“You’re leaving?” Pacifica asked. “Good. You made a mess of the place looking for that silver mirror.”
“Yeah, I’d love to stay and help clean, but I’ve got a category ten ghost to dispose of, so,” Dipper shrugged again. He had been doing that a lot, and with an unnecessary amount of smug.
Pacifica and her parents looked at each other. Pacifica shrugged nervously, then hurried off to enjoy the party before her parents could interrogate her.
“Hey, Pacifica!”
Pacifica winced. “Go away, Mabel. I have appearances to maintain.”
“Appearances, shmearances.” Mabel blew a raspberry. “You’ve got chocolate and cheese fountains! Don’t tell me you’re not allowed to enjoy them!”
“Cheese, chocolate, cheese, chocolate…” Candy murmured, switching her fondue stick between the respective fountains.
Grenda hurried over and shook Candy by the shoulders, splattering cheese and chocolate everywhere. “Snap out of it, Chiu! Don’t lose yourself to this!”
“I want to stop, but I can’t…”
“NO! CANDY!”
Pacifica cringed. “Ugh. They’re embarrassing themselves.”
“Oh, they’re just having fun,” Mabel chuckled, waving her hand. “Hey, is that an ice statue of yourself as a mermaid? We saw hedge statues of that in the garden, y’know, but I think it looks even better in ice.”
Pacifica blinked, taken aback. “Really?”
Mabel grinned her signature one hundred watt smile. “Yeah, girl! It’s the way the ice sparkles, y’know, captures the light…” She held up her hands in a picture frame pose, squinting and sticking her tongue out.
“Yeah, t-the sculpture did a good job,” Pacifica stuttered. “Really---really captured my essence.”
“He sure did, girlfriend!”
Pacifica’s face flushed tomato red. Mabel continued complimenting the decorations, completely oblivious.
“Northwests!”
The front doors slammed open, revealing an angry and self-righteous Dipper storming inside. Everyone turned around, but the guests turned back to their polite conversation once they saw who it was. Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and Pacifica, however, all looked at each other, confused.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” Dipper growled, prowling up to Mr. and Mrs. Northwest.
Mabel rushed over, followed by Candy and Grenda, Pacifica hesitantly trailing behind. “Dipper, you came back!” Mabel grinned.
Dipper whirled around, noticing Pacifica. “You lied to me. All of you did! All you had to do was let the townsfolk into the party, and you could've broken the curse. But you made me do your dirty work instead!”
“Look at who you're talking to, boy,” Mr. Northwest said condescendingly. “I'm hosting a party for the most powerful people in the world. You think they'd come here if they had to rub elbows with your kind?”
“Your kind?” Dipper asked. He turned back to Pacifica, who looked smaller than ever. “I was right about you all along. You're just as bad as your parents. Another link in the world's worst chain.”
“ Dipper! ” Mabel gasped. Candy put her hands over her mouth, and Grenda shook her head disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry. They made me,” Pacifica explained. She seemed to shrink into herself. “I should’ve told you, but…”
“Enjoy the party,” Mr. Northwest smirked. “It's the last time you and your kind will ever come.”
The chimp offered Dipper a tray of fancy food, snapping Mr. Northwest out of his smug passive aggressive persona. “No, no! Those aren’t for him.”
Dipper growled, and then stormed back outside. Mabel, Candy, and Grenda watched him go, with various levels of disapproval on their faces, before turning to the Northwests to glare at them.
“C’mon, girls,” Mabel said, turning her nose up. “Let’s get away from this part of the ballroom. There’s a bad smell.”
Candy and Grenda gasped, laughing at the Northwests’ appalled expressions.
Mabel turned to Pacifica, already saying, “Pacifica, I am so sorry you parents---” She cut herself off when she realized that Pacifica had disappeared.
“Dang,” Mabel frowned. “She must’ve run off again. You stay here, girls, enjoy the party. I’ll go look for her.”
“You bring her back, girl,” Candy said. Grenda nodded.
“I’ll be right back!” And then Mabel ran back off to the rest of the mansion. She had a hunch where Pacifica had gone.
When Mabel was gone, both girls turned to Marius and his gorgeous hair.
“I…suppose tag teaming wouldn’t be bad,” Candy suggested.
“Yeah! Let’s go!” Grenda agreed. “She did say to enjoy the party!”
“Yeah, we’re just enjoying the party!” Candy ran over and tapped Marius on the shoulder. “I love the tiny hats you wear on your shoulders. If you were a boat, do you know what kind you'd be? A dreamboat. That's what kind.”
Marius laughed nervously. “Heh, thank you, miss…ah, excuse me.”
Candy frowned. Grenda came over and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Candy poked Grenda. “Tag. You’re in.”
“Alright! Wish me luck!”
“Luck!”
“Hey, Marius,” Grenda said. Marius turned around, looking a bit wary when he noticed Candy standing a little ways away from Grenda.
“Yes, miss?” he asked.
Grenda held her finger out. “You’ve got something on your shirt! ”
And when Marius looked down, she smacked him up the nose. She walked confidently away, leaving him reeling and amazed.
“How was that, Candy?” Grenda asked.
“Uh…” Candy stammered. “Oh, look, Mr. Northwest’s saying something!”
“What?”
“Thank you all for coming,” Mr. Northwest announced, and everyone went quiet to listen to him. “I think we can all say this party was a rousing success.”
“I guess you could say it was a slam dunk, Preston,” the basketball player called out.
“Yes, yes, I guess, sure,” Mr. Northwest shrugged. He held up a wine glass. “A toast... to our family name.”
The wine glass shattered.
All of the guests gasped in fear as the wine glass pyramid shattered and the lights flickered. Candy and Grenda grabbed onto each other.
“ Generations locked away, ” a deep, ghostly, angry voice rang out. “ My revenge shall have its day! ”
“Hey, there you are!” Mabel greeted. She turned her flashlight on Pacifica, who was sitting against a painting covered with a tarp. “We’re all missing you out there, girl!”
“Wanna know why this room was locked up?” Pacifica asked.
Mabel blinked. Pacifica just twisted around and pulled the tarp off of the paintings behind her.
Mabel turned her flashlight on the paintings, and gasped at what she saw.
“This is what I found in here,” Pacifica continued. “A painted record of every horrible thing that my family's ever done. Lying, cheating, and then, there's me . I lied to Dipper just because I'm too scared to talk back to my stupid parents. Dipper was right about me. I am just another link in the world's worst chain.”
She took off her diamond earrings and threw them across the room.
Mabel felt horrible, awful panic fill her gut. “No, no, Pacifica!” She hurried to sit beside the other girl, sitting on her knees and putting her hands to her heart. “Dipper shouldn’t have ever said that. He was just being an impulsive butthead again. He didn’t mean it, he wasn’t thinking!”
“Blood doesn’t lie, Mabel!” Pacifica sobbed.
“You don’t have to be like you’re parents!” Mabel countered. “Go kick mud in their stupid faces! G-d, girl, they don’t deserve you! Just because you’ve made mistakes before doesn’t mean you can’t get better, you’re still young! You still have time to be better!”
Pacifica stared at her, eyes wide and shining. Then, she lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Mabel’s waste.
“Oh, girl,” Mabel said quietly, hugging her back. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
“Th-th-thank you,” Pacifica cried.
“You’re welcome, Pacifica.”
And then deep, dark laughter rang through the mansion.
Mabel and Pacifica both looked up with a gasp. “The---was that---” Pacifica stammered.
“The ghost,” Mabel realized. She surged up, pulling Pacifica with her. “C’mon, c’mon! You gotta go save everyone!”
“ Me? ” Pacifica gaped.
“Yes, you! ” Mabel nodded, pulling her along and forcing her to run with her back to the ballroom. “Dipper said that the Northwests just have to let the townspeople into the party and the curse would be broken! You’re a Northwest, aren’t you?”
“I---” Pacifica yanked her wrist away from Mabel’s grip. “I---I am. And I’m going to save everybody!”
Mabel grinned. “Yes, girl! Let’s go!”
“ A forest of death, a lesson learned. And now the Northwest Mansion will burn! ”
“Hey, ugly! Over here!” The ghost turned in surprise, spotting Pacifica by the lever to open the gate to the townspeople. “You want me to let in the townsfolk? ‘Cause I’ll do it. Just change everyone back.”
“ You wish to prove yourself? ” the ghost asked. “ Pull that lever and open the grand gate to the town. Fulfill your ancestors' promise. ”
A section of floor opened up, as it was actually a hidden trapdoor. Mr. and Mrs. Northwest, along with their butler, poked their heads out.
“Pacifica Elise Northwest, stop this instant,” Mr. Northwest commanded. “We can't let the town see us like this! We have a reputation to uphold. Now come into the panic room. There's enough mini sandwiches and oxygen to last you, me, and a butler for a week. We'll eat the butler ,” he added in a whisper.
Pacifica just turned away, putting her hand on the lever.
“You dare disobey us?” Mr. Northwest gasped. He took out a dainty golden bell and began to ring it. When Pacifica didn’t respond, he snapped, “Dingly, dingly! Is this bell broken?”
“Our family name is broken,” Pacifica declared, and pulled the lever down with such force it was a miracle it didn’t break, “ and I’m gonna fix it! ”
Pacifica surveyed the chaos, feeling happier than she ever had before. Her parents were scrambling around, trying to stop the townspeople from destroying everything with little success. She felt a burst of pride for Grenda when she saw Marius von Fundshauser writing his phone number on her face. She tutted disapprovingly when Dipper tried to ask out the girls his age without success.
“Hey, girl!”
And this time, Pacifica wasn’t disappointed when she saw Mabel heading towards her.