Chapter Text
“Barbara!” Lydia called out, skipping up to the ghostly woman as she relaxed in the living room and watched one of her boring nature documentaries.
Barbara paused the video and slowly turned. “You sound way too happy to see me.”
“What? I can’t be excited to spend time with my favorite person?” Lydia literally batted her eyes.
“Uh-huh. What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you want, then?”
“A puppy?” Lydia said.
“A puppy,” Barbara repeated. “Why aren’t you asking Charles?”
“I did. And he said that if you said okay, then he would say okay.”
Barbara sighed, massaging her temples. “He really needs to stop outsourcing his parenting decisions. Did he do this with your mom?”
“All the time,” Lydia said. “So is that a ‘yes’ on the puppy? Because we sort of found one, and…”
Barbara suddenly understood exactly where this was going. “What’s wrong with it?”
“She’s perfectly healthy. If anything, she’s extra-healthy.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“She might have three heads?”
“Oh my God.”
“No, she’s really sweet. Beej?”
Beetlejuice floated in, cradling a seven-week-old Cerberus. One tiny snout snuggled into the crook of his arm, a pair of teeth nipped at a loose thread on his sleeve, and a final fluffy head leaned up to lick at his neck. The puppy’s midnight black fur seemed to absorb the light in the room, and Barbara felt a sudden sense of impending doom.
She shook off the familiar sensation and focused on the issue at hand. “Is that thing even safe to have around?”
“She has a name. Well, technically she has three names” — a third arm slid out from under Beetlejuice’s coat to point at each puppy — “I’m calling this one Blue Ivy, this one Apple, and this one Kal-El.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we are not calling her that.”
Barbara said in her best Mom Voice, “Well, I hope not because I still haven’t said yes.”
Lydia pouted, turning puppy dog eyes toward her. Then, she snatched up the tiny cerberus so that three more sets of puppy dog eyes were staring at her. “Can we please keep her? I know I’ve always said I was more of a cat person, but I’m starting to think that’s because I never had a hellhound of my own before.”
Barbara gave Lydia one last stern look and then folded like a house of cards. “Fine.”
“Oh, this is gonna be so much fun!” Beetlejuice cried out.
“But only if we check the Handbook for the Recently Deceased and talk to Miss Argentina about it to make sure everything is above board,” Barbara said, finally giving in to the urge to scratch the puppy’s ears. “I do not want one of us getting dragged to the Underworld just because we decided to adopt an exotic pet.”
Lydia raced forward to hug her. “Thank you, Ghost Mom!”