Wow. You guys are getting lucky. This chapter has over three thousand words! Don't expect this trend to continue okay? For all I know the next chapter might only have eight words. (Although I'm positive it will end up having a lot more.)

This chapter is dedicated to MissMune, who sent me the character Mint Percomis.

Vlad paced back and forth, wondering what would happen to him if the police showed up at his door asking to see his 'fiancée'. "Why couldn't I have thought up a better plan!" he said out loud. "I had time, and there are many other ways to elude the police. Besides, they wouldn't dare arrest me if they knew how much I'd be willing to pay."

He paused, and then resumed his pacing. "I could bribe the officer, but I have no guarantee that he would keep his mouth shut. Maybe I could get away with telling the truth about everything, everything that is, except my ghost half." Vlad almost laughed. "But it would just be more material for the tabloid writers to use."

The doorbell echoed through the house and Vlad reluctantly walked over to the door. If it was the police he was in trouble, because there was no one to pose as his wife except for the maid, who had an irritating habit of disappearing whenever he was around. If it was another girl seeking to date him… well he wasn't sure if he'd be better off with the police or not.

"Hello? Anyone home?" said a definitely feminine voice. Vlad decided he would take his chances and opened the door.

Standing in front of him was a woman about half Vlad's age, maybe twenty five, who looked at him shyly. Her hair was a very light red, almost pink, and she had it in two long pigtails, which, to Vlad's disappointment, made her look even younger than she was. How was he going to prove to the cops that he wasn't a pedophile if he was supposedly getting married to someone so young?

Even though it was summer she was wearing a pair of bright red boots that went up to about the middle of her calf. Vlad wondered why he was looking at her legs at all, and focused instead on her face. She had green eyes, not the bright neon green that belonged to a ghost, but a dull more plant like green, and for a moment she had been staring at him.

She looked away when Vlad's eyes met hers. "Um… hi, I'm Mint Percomis." She held out her hand awkwardly and Vlad shook it. "Are you Vlad Masters?"

"Yes I am. It's very nice to meet you Mint." Vlad said, trying to sound as polite as he could. Mint Masters. Vlad tried not to grimace at the thought. She didn't seem to be as bad as the other women he had met, but first impressions were often deceiving. If the police came at least he would have someone to play the part of his future wife. If she was willing…

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked. "We could go out for a late lunch if you want." Vlad was surprised that this girl hadn't done something strange yet. All of the others had either appeared strange from the start, or they had very bad qualities that Vlad hated. Mint seemed normal.

"I wouldn't mind making some tea." She said, looking around. "Would you like some?" Vlad smiled and nodded again, even though tea wasn't something he enjoyed very much after Maddie had poured it all over his head.

Vlad led her to the kitchen, wondering if he would ever have a normal date. Of course, he didn't exactly remember what a normal date was like, but having a stranger come into your house and make tea for you wasn't exactly normal.

She smiled brightly as she looked around the kitchen. "This is amazing!" she said happily. Vlad looked around, realizing that his kitchen was quite large compared to most. He didn't spend a lot of time in here, so he never really noticed.

Suddenly Mint's smile looked just a bit malicious.

"Well we can't let you discover my secret recipe, now can we!" she said, and Vlad was quickly shoved out the door.

He looked at the closed door and said, "Great, just when I thought that she might actually be normal." Vlad waited for her to come out, and when she did he noticed that her face seemed to switch from evil to sweet in a second. That and she only had one cup of tea with her. "Thank you." He said, excepting the tea cup from her.

Just as he was about to take a sip she snatched it out of his hands. "What-" she cut him off with a wave of her hand and sniffed the tea.

"Strychnos, aconites, digitalis, jimsonweed…" Mint threw the teacup on the floor, making Vlad flinch in alarm. "She was going to poison you until you gave her what she wanted." She looked at Vlad as if realizing he was there. "Oh… um… sorry about the tea. It was… spoiled."

"That's fine Mint, I'm sure the maid will find a way to clean the mess up." An uncomfortable silence followed, until Mint spoke again. She seemed very eager to keep the conversation away from herself.

"Can I ask you something?" He nodded. "Why did you say on the internet that you were a millionaire? Wouldn't you want people to like you for who you are instead of your money?"

"What?" Vlad said, his eyes widening. "I've never talked to anyone on the internet before"

"But you were on that website, and you sent me an email asking me to come here." She didn't sound confused. In fact, to Vlad she sounded almost excited.

"I did no such thing!" he said. "I'm usually too busy to be on the internet at all." Curiosity filled him, and he asked, "What website was it?"

Mint blushed and said, "Its Cupid Stupid .com. It's a website where people post profiles so that other people can see if they want to… date them or not. I was looking for something when she- I mean, I spotted your profile. It was really short, and all that it said was that you liked the packers, you were rich… oh, and you said food names instead of swearing."

Vlad felt anger flood through him at Mint's words. "So anyone can get a hold of this information?" His voice was almost shaking with rage, and Mint looked a little scared. She nodded, confirming Vlad's suspicions and making him even angrier. "What a perfect way to get revenge on someone." he muttered under his breath.

"Mint, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Vlad said, trying his best to sound polite when what he really wanted to do was explode. "I have to… sort this mess out before it gets any worse." She smiled and stood up.

"I understand." She said. Vlad almost sighed in relief. If this had been anyone else then he might have had to deal with an insane lady who refused to leave on top of everything else. His relief vanished when he escorted Mint to the door and heard a loud knock.

"Police." Someone outside said, sounding bored. Vlad turned to Mint, who looked back curiously.

"I know this is going to sound sudden, but I'm in trouble with the police. They think I'm… well, I'll explain later, but I really need your help. I'm supposed to be engaged, but I'm not, and they will arrest me if I don't have a fiancée right now." He felt his face turning red with embarrassment. "Will you pretend to be my wife for now? I can pay you as much money as you want."

Mint looked shocked, and the person outside knocked again. She looked at the door, and then back at Vlad. "You're innocent right?" He nodded. A slow smile came across her face. "I'll do it for free then. I've always wanted to be an actress."

Vlad couldn't believe his good luck, and he opened the door. The police chief himself stood in the doorway. "It certainly took you long enough to answer the door." He said. Vlad was slightly calmer now, and thought up an excuse.

"I have a very large castle, officer." He said. "Sometimes it takes twenty minutes to get to the door. Please come in." He stepped aside and closed the door after the chief, who looked around the entranceway and whistled.

"So the rumors about you being a Packers freak are true then." Vlad frowned but said nothing. He was in enough trouble with the police already. "I owe Jeff ten bucks. You must be richer than I thought if you can afford to spend so much money on this junk." Vlad opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off. "Rick- the officer who came yesterday- told me that you have a fiancée. I'd love to meet her."

"Right." Vlad said, realizing at that moment that Mint was nowhere to be found. "Um… Mint?" he called, noticing that the chief looked like he was positive that no one was there.

"Mr. Masters, if you just come quietly now I won't charge you for resisting arrest. You and I both know that you aren't engaged at all." Vlad was ready to panic and almost confessed when Mint walked up. Her long hair was down, which made her seem a little bit older.

Vlad wanted to hit her and hug her at the same time. "This is Mint Percomis, soon to be Mint Masters." It sounded just as strange coming out of his mouth as it did in his head. She turned and glared at him, causing Vlad to blink in surprise.

"I'm not Mint." She said. The chief looked like he was going to laugh. Vlad decided that his luck had run out at last. "I'm Mentha." She turned to stare at the officer, and an evil smile filled her face. "You can call me Mrs. Masters though."

This time the chief really did laugh. "You're not a very good actor Masters, forgetting your fiancée's name. How much is he paying you Miss?"

Mentha laughed wickedly. "Nothing yet officer, but as soon as we get married I will have all the money I need. We're very deeply in love, and you interrupted us right as he was about to prove exactly how much. I assume he told you that he was slow to answer the door because this house is so big? The truth is much more risqué."

She turned to Vlad and said, "That new outfit you bought for me is perfect Vladdie. I know you think it's too revealing, but as long as it covers a tenth of my body it's legal in most of the states. You simply must come up and let me show you."

Vlad's eyes were so wide they looked like they were going to fall out. The chief looked almost exactly the same as Vlad did. "Yeah…" the officer said, sounding very embarrassed, "I'll just let you two get back to that." He left at almost a run. Vlad stared at Mentha.

"Well, Mint-"

"Mentha" she corrected.

"Mentha, thanks for pretending to be my fiancée to get rid of the police. You didn't have to be quite so… convincing though." She only smiled, sending shivers down Vlad's spine. Not the good kind either.

"It's true though." She said. "We're going to get married, and then I will have full access to your fortune. Even if you don't like me at first, I assure you that I can be very persuasive."

"Okay, look at the time; I really have to take care of something, so if you'd just leave and let me go about my business…"

"Sorry Vlad, but I'm going to get your fortune. Be careful how you treat me now, because when we are married you never know what might accidentally happen to you. Don't worry about Mint bothering you too much though. I'm working on a way to get rid of my nasty split personality problem."

At that moment her face went blank, and then she quickly pulled her hair up into two pigtails again. Concern filled her eyes, and she looked sideways at Vlad. "You've met Mentha."

Vlad felt very angry. Daniel had been behind this the whole time, and it seemed like he was determined to pair Vlad up with the most insane women he could find. Mint thought Vlad was angry with her, and began to cry. Vlad groaned and said, "Don't cry. I'm not mad at you."

"Mentha forced me to come here so that she could get your fortune." She said between sobs. "As soon as you marry her she'll kill you."

"I'm not going to marry her!" Vlad said. "I know she's evil, and all she's after is my money. Besides," he added, "I'm in love with someone else." Vlad decided that if Daniel was listening, he might get the message that his plan to stop Vlad from loving Maddie was not working.

"You don't understand." She said softly. "We've been married ten times already, and she's killed off every single husband, either through poison or by bow and arrow." Mint shrugged. "Sometimes poison arrows. She'll find a way to get you to marry her, either through blackmail or by poisoning you and giving you the antidote only after the vows have been said."

"Can't you leave? You're in control now, so just leave." She shook her head sadly.

"Mentha is too strong. She'll take control as soon as I try to step out the door." Vlad sighed. Everything was piling up, and he really wasn't sure how much of this he could take.

Mint went blank again, and in a moment she had pulled the hair bands out of her hair. "I really have to teach her not to interrupt me while I'm talking to our future husbands." Mentha said with a grin. "So Vlad, I'm assuming you won't just marry me quietly now? Oh well, it was fun to try honesty for a moment." She pulled something out of her purse, and Vlad's eyes widened when he realized that it was a collapsible bow. "But now it's time for the really fun part."

"Can't we solve this some other way?" Vlad said, backing up as she assembled the bow. "I'm really not in the mood for this."

She was still smiling. "I do like you Vlad. You act like you're immortal, like nothing can hurt you. But unfortunately I can't let you off easy. You're practice for when I take down Bill Gates." She strung the bow and began pulling out arrows too. Vlad briefly wondered how deep her purse was.

Vlad found himself backed up against a wall. Mentha placed the arrow onto the bow and pulled the string back. "So Darling, where would you like to go on our honeymoon? Perhaps some remote jungle in Africa, where you meet your demise through a poison known only to Africans? Or maybe we could attend an archery tournament where you end up being mistaken for the target?"

"I'm not going to marry you." Vlad said. "And you can't kill me now, because then you wouldn't get any of my money." She released the arrow with a twang and it landed half an inch away from the side of Vlad's head.

"Till death do we part Vladdie." Mentha said. "You don't have to be in perfect health to marry me; you just have to have a pulse. There are hundreds of ministers who will gladly listen to us exchange vows, even if I have to say yours for you."

"You should be in an asylum." Vlad said, having absolutely no clue what to do. Mentha laughed.

"Many have tried to arrest Dr. Mint and Miss Mentha, but no one has come close. I always am in control when someone comes around, and I can prove to them that I am not insane. Investigators who mint manages to get through to have had the nasty habit of disappearing."

Vlad instantly thought of a plan, but wasn't sure he was willing to go through with it. If no one believed Mentha to be crazy, maybe he could make her show her true colors. He would have to change into his ghost form though, and she was staring right at him.

"So Vlad, how would you like me to kill you once we're married? There are many other ways besides arrows and poison you know, and I've been dying to try impaling." She smiled at her own joke, and Vlad decided that Vlad's ghost half on top of her other craziness wouldn't be too noticeable.

He turned into his ghost half and watched as Mentha's eyes widened. "Y-y-you're a g-g-"

Vlad sighed and said, "Boo." She ran out screaming. That's what Vlad disliked about Amity Park. Ghosts were common there, and seeing one appear would cause people to scream, but they wouldn't worry too much since Daniel was always around to save them.

Then he remembered that Daniel had been watching everything, and rage filled him. He swirled his cape around him and vanished into thin air.

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Danny, Sam, and Skulker were panicking. They hadn't expected someone to come right out and tell Vlad everything. Luckily they had had plenty of time to figure out a plan thanks to Mentha and the police, but most of that was wasted by Sam yelling at Danny.

"I told you that Vlad would find out!" she said. "But no, let's ignore Sam and continue on with our revenge scheme, let's get Vlad really angry, and not even worry about the consequences." Danny opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a light knocking sound on the Specter Speeder's window.

The three of them turned and froze. Vlad Plasmius was floating outside, and to put it very, very, very, lightly, he was furious.

Yay! The first cliffhanger I ever had in this story!