by Cate Lawley
“Good morning Lilac, Sylvie. Am I late?”
“What he said. Are we late?” Clarence tugged on his leash, pulling toward the table and the scent of food.
I’d tried to convinced Clarence to stay home, but I’d have tried harder if I’d known Sylvie was going to be here. A glance showed her looking surprisingly composed for a woman who'd just heard a cat speak for the first time.
“Lilac and Sylvie called earlier and asked if they might come by for coffee.” Tamara indicated the pot. “Would you like a cup?”
“Ah…” The feeling of being ambushed made me edgy. Who knew what was in that coffee pot? Who knew what they’d been talking about? What did women usually talk about? Had I come up? And if so, in what context and what light? I waited for those warning bells in my head to clang with a loud warning, but they were silent.
Tamara waved a hand dismissively. “No harm, Geoff, I promise. We’re just sorting out some of the problems that have cropped up recently, and sometimes that’s best done with like minds.”
“And I’m not like-minded.”
Tamara shrugged. “You’re a man.”
Sylvie frowned. “Geoff’s not like that.”
Nodding, Lilac said, “Right. Geoff’s cool.”
Flicking my gaze between the two women, I wasn’t certain whether to be thankful they were defending and including me, or concerned that I’d somehow unknowingly let down my gender. When I saw Tamara’s amusement, I landed on my answer. “Thank you. I appreciate your support.”
Now I had to wonder what concerns Lilac and Sylvie had expressed about me before my arrival that Tamara felt the need to unite them in their acceptance of me. I was betting it had something to do with my previous employment.
Maybe my occupation as death—one of the deaths—had been better kept under my hat.
Tamara clasped her hands together. “Now, if you ladies are ready to proceed . . . ?”
“Hey! What about me?” Clarence had kept a low profile up to that point. Which was admirable, no matter the limited duration.
“You’re welcome as well, Clarence, so long as neither of the ladies objects.”
My concern was mostly for Sylvie, since she’d only just heard about Clarence, but she looked disconcertingly serene.
Tamara gestured to her right at the seat next to Lilac and placed a cup of coffee on the table for me. Clarence helped himself to the seat closest to Sylvie.
She didn’t even lift an eyebrow as he leapt into the seat and assumed a regal pose. Maybe he’d display his Sunday-best manners, if he had any.
Once I’d settled into my chair and enjoyed my first sip of Tamara’s truly exceptional coffee, I asked, “What conclusions have you reached?”
All three women turned to look at me, and Tamara said, “You’re the common denominator.”
Since Sylvie and I had come to the same conclusion the previous evening, her pronouncement shouldn’t have carried any particular weight. And yet it did.
My alarm bells weren’t ringing, but an uncomfortable feeling grabbed hold of me. “You don’t think I’m responsible? The attack on Lila, the explosion at Sylvie’s, the break-in . . . I didn’t have anything to do with them.”
“No. No, that’s not what we mean at all.” Sylvie frowned at Tamara. “Is it? I didn’t mean that.”
“Of course not.” Tamara took Sylvie’s hand, gave her fingers a quick squeeze, then let go. “I don’t think he’s responsible for any of those things. And I most certainly would never accuse Geoff of the bombing.” She paused, sipped her coffee, then said, “I did that one.”
20
Wednesday mid-morning
Somehow we’d traveled from me being at the center of the nefarious goings-on to Tamara Gilroy, friendly neighborhood witch, bombing Sylvie’s shed.
The theme music to The Twilight Zone played in my head. Seconds passed before I pinpointed an external source: Clarence. He whistled the tune as he gave Tamara the evil eye—or the cat version of it. I nudged his chair leg with my toe, and he stopped.
“Why would you bomb my house?” Sylvie asked in a small voice.
Tamara and I both said, “Your shed.”
I raised both hands. “But I had no idea it was Tamara.” It didn’t make any sense. The crime or confessing. “Why would you do such a thing?”
Clarence tapped the side of his head with a paw, which I translated as the sign for a crazy person.
“I’m not crazy, cat. I was trying to protect Sylvie.” Tamara turned to a dumbfounded Sylvie and said, “You have the most beautiful aura.” Then she squinted. “Usually. Either way, you certainly didn’t deserve our kind of trouble. You still don’t, even if your aura is a little muddled now.”
“Muddled?” Sylvie’s cheeks were stained a bright pink. “My aura is not muddled. I’m pissed off. That’s righteous anger you see clouding my aura.”
Lilac didn’t comment, but her eyes were huge as she watched the unfolding scene.
Tamara said, “Our world is a difficult place. I know it’s hard to believe, but I truly was trying to protect you.”
“You can talk about ‘our’ world all you like, but I don’t blow up my neighbors’ sheds,” I said. “I moved here because it was a quiet neighborhood.” No need to mention my multistage, months-long plan for quietly reintegrating with humanity. That plan was up in smoke, in part due to Tamara and her neighborhood bombing shenanigans.
“Well, I’m not talking specifically about you, Geoff, more the supernatural crowd in general. It’s a bad bunch to run afoul of. I figured whatever they’d been looking for in her shed wouldn’t be a problem anymore if I blew up the building a little bit.” A look of consternation crossed Tamara’s face. “I’m much better with magic. The result was a little bigger than I’d planned.”
A startled laugh escaped Lilac. Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “I’m so sorry. It’s just all so ridiculous. Who in the world blows up something ‘a little bit’ to help someone?”
Sylvie’s eyes narrowed. “No one, that’s who. Nice, normal, sane people call the police. Or just let their neighbors know there’s a problem.”
“Ah, and there’s the flaw,” Tamara said. “I’m not normal, not in the way you mean. I’m not human. No one who has magic is fully human—or what you’d most likely label normal. And I was trying to keep you away from a particularly unsavory element within the not-entirely human crowd.”
Tamara’s argument took a curiously circuitous path to a less-than-logical conclusion—in my mind. In her own, it seemed to make perfect sense. And I still wasn’t getting any particular read off her that made me believe she was dangerous.
Perhaps I was giving my intuition too much weight, but it had held me in good stead as a soul collector.
“Who was searching her shed and for what?” I asked. “And why did blowing it up seem like the best answer when you could have, as Sylvie mentioned, just warned her? Or retrieved whatever it was this undesirable element wanted from her shed.”
Sylvie shot me a censorious look. “You believe her?”
“I want to hear her story,” I countered.
“Quite sensible.” Of course Tamara would say that, especially if Clarence was right and she was as nutty as a fruitcake. “As for the explosion, that was my attempt at discretion.”
I set my coffee cup down. “Tamara, as much as I’d like to believe you have a pure heart in this matter—”
“Oh, I never said my heart was pure. Much as I admire Sylvie, I also don’t want the wrong element on our little street. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful little spot. Have you met Hector yet?”
My left eye started to twitch. I pressed my thumb to the corner and tried to remember why exactly I’d retired. The difficulties of collecting recently departed souls weren’t nearly as complex as human life or supernatural life among humans. Maybe they’d take me back.
But I couldn’t go back, and that left going forward. “Please explain, Tamara, how blowing something up is discreet.”
“Arson and man-made explosions are discreet when you’re talking about magic.” She winked at me. Turning to Sylvie with a more serious expression, she said, “Your ex-husband was involved in dubious business dealings with that auto shop he ran. I thought they’d blame him and his connections, since some of his business records were stored in your shed. I am sorry to have worried you, but I thought this would keep any real harm away from you.”
“Wow.” Clarence stood up with his front paws on the kitchen table. I snapped my fingers at him, but he ignored me, focusing all his attention on Tamara. “Just wow. There’s a twisted logic there, but just wow.”
Sylvie wasn’t looking convinced. Curious, but not convinced. “How would you even know someone had been in my shed?”
“I have a . . . let’s call it a magical eye on the street. Like a neighborhood watch.”
Clarence snorted. “Sounds like spying on your neighbors.”
“No, cat, I do not spy. It’s not as if I have a Snow White mirror that shows me the goings-on of the neighborhood. If I did, I’d know who broke into Sylvie’s shed. This is more like a detection grid.”
“His name is Clarence,” Lilac said with a frown. “Your detection grid beeped like my home security system, except magically, so you knew zone five—or whatever you call Sophie’s house—had a magical visitor. Is that about right?”
“Not exactly. If we’re going to use a security system comparison, it’s like I’ve got the windows and the doors wired, but no motion sensors. If someone uses magic to breach a building, I know. If any magic anywhere in the neighborhood set off alarms, then we’d be in a pickle.” Tamara gave me a pointed look. “Geoff’s house, for one, is teeming with activity.”
“My house?” I asked, surprised. Then again, why not my house? Clarence, for one. And the various ghostly visitors. And the little bit of whatever magic I had that allowed me to act as unwilling medium. “Ah, never mind. I do see your point.”
Lilac twisted her green hair up in a knot with a look of intense concentration. “So, if I understand this correctly, someone broke into Sylvie’s shed using magic. Is that right?”
“Exactly right,” Tamara said. “Because Sylvie follows good common sense and locks her shed, my alarm was tripped when they used magic to fiddle with the lock. I checked it out, but I couldn’t find anything magical inside or anywhere else on the premises. I suspected they were done, but then they broke in again. That’s when I decided it was only a matter of time before Sylvie interrupted one of their attempts. I’m sorry I was right about that, dear. But that’s why I decided I needed to take preventative action.”
“Someone broke into my shed twice? And that’s only what you know about.” Sylvie looked dismayed by the thought. “I might as well get rid of my fence and leave the stupid shed open—assuming I even replace it. There’s practically been a parade through my backyard.”
Lilac leaned forward with a concerned look. “Once this is over, we can cleanse your yard and even your house, if you like.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” Sylvie touched Lilac’s hand. “I might take you up on that.”
“Why come clean now?” Much as I liked to believe the best in people, people—supernatural or not—were a self-interested lot. And while my trouble meter might not be flashing warning signals, something was up.
Tamara turned her attention to Lilac. “The attack on Lilac.”
I looked at the marks on Lilac’s neck. She raised her hand self-consciously, covering the bruises. The marks had darkened to a dusky purple overnight.
“But if you’re responsible for the shed and not the other incidents, then . . .” Lilac’s forehead creased. “I don’t understand. What does Geoff have to do with the two crimes?”
“I suspect the answer to that question is timing.” Tamara lifted the coffeepot. “More coffee, anyone?” When no one replied, she refilled her own cup.
Sylvie pulled a leather-bound book out of her purse, along with a pen. A fountain pen. I hadn’t seen one in a long time. She flipped the book open, rifling past pages with notes and sketches until she came to a blank page. “When was the first break-in?”
Now here was a woman I understood. Sylvie, unlike Lilac when I’d introduced Clarence the possessed cat, had calmed immediately when presented with a task.
“Two weeks ago, yesterday,” Tamara said. “And the second was a week after that.”
Sylvie tapped the end of her pen against the paper. “They like Tuesdays?”
“Apparently,” Tamara said.
Sylvie sighed. “Which was why you blew up the shed on Monday.” With a mixture of confusion and disappointment on her face, she asked Tamara, “Couldn’t you have come to me and explained everything? Maybe we could have found what they were looking for, and . . .”
“And given it to them?” Tamara asked. “Destroyed it? Which bombing the shed was supposed to accomplish without involving you.”
“Or discussed it so that I could decide,” Sylvie said acerbically. “Whatever this item is, it’s apparently my property. Okay, back to the time line. Tamara bombs the shed, at which point I’ve already met Geoff—"
“Then I meet Lilac,” I said.
Sylvie tipped the end of her pen at me. “You meet Lilac.”
“And Lilac is attacked,” Lilac said with a quirk to her lips. “So maybe there’s speculation by the baddies that this item they can’t find is now being handed off.”
I thought back to my initial attempts to use the internet: so much information, so many bad sources, so much false data. “Or maybe this is more about knowledge. Let’s say I’d fessed up to Sylvie right away that I was a retired soul collector, if she had a supernatural question, she might ask me.”
“And we already know that if you have a question about the supernatural,” Lilac said with an amused look, “you head to the phone book, which, in this case, led you to me.”
We all looked to Sylvie. She dropped her pen and spread her hands out. “What? I have no clue what it is that these people want.”
Lilac snapped her fingers. “I forgot to mention, in all the hubbub—you know, getting strangled, thinking I’d killed a man, not a construct of a man, and then meeting a real witch.” She took a breath. “The stone. Remember, Geoff, I told you—the burned construct guy asked me about a stone.”
“Hm,” Sylvie said. Then her eyes widened and a dismayed look crossed her face. “Oh. Oh my.” She looked at us with a guilty expression. “I think I know what stone.”
21
“There.” Sylvie pointed to a rock in her garden. “I can’t believe it’s still here.” She looked at me, Lilac, and Tamara. Tamara had won a short reprieve, but I doubted Sylvie would so easily forget or forgive the incident. Tamara had shown an appalling lack of judgment—by human standards, in any event.
I’d detoured by my house to drop off Clarence. He’d been relatively quiet during the meeting, and when I’d commented, he’d complained that hunger was making him lightheaded and a single piece of bacon didn’t go very far.
Completely absurd—the lightheaded part, not the bacon part. One could never get enough bacon. Then again, he had agreed to munch on kitty kibble till I could get home and cook up something more appetizing. Clarence normally had very strong and decidedly negative feelings about kitty kibble, so I knew he was ravenous.
The ladies had been kind enough to wait the three or four minutes it had taken for me to run across the street and unlock the front door for Clarence.
And now we were all staring at a rock.
A decorative rock in a garden.
“It’s beautiful?” Lilac said tentatively.
And it was. It was an unusual combination of green and red. I could pick it up with one hand, but it wouldn’t fit in my palm.
“Dragon blood jasper, Australian in origin.” Tamara looked at Sylvie. “Are your people from Australia?”
A tiny wrinkle appeared between Sylvie’s eyes. “I can’t be sure. My mother’s family is fr
om Italy. My grandmother’s from the UK, but she would never say who Dad’s father was. It was a huge family scandal at the time.”
“Really?” Lilac wrinkled her nose. “I mean, I get it’s different now, what with sperm donors and adoption and all the options available—but people have always had affairs.”
“Certainly. They just didn’t get caught, not without society frowning mightily,” Sylvie said. “Or so my mother used to say when she wasn’t feeling charitable toward my grandmother.”
“Hm.” Lilac shrugged. “My mom was a hippie and a single mom. Different worlds, I guess.”
Tamara patted Lilac on the shoulder. “Different times.”
We all turned our attention back to the rock.
“You’re sure this is the stone?” Lilac asked. “It looks pretty innocuous.”
“So does your gargoyle,” I reminded her.
Tamara looked at me curiously, so I briefly explained: “Lilac knocked out the construct with an iron gargoyle her father gave her.”
“Ah. Keep that close until we’ve sorted this all out,” Tamara said, echoing my sentiments from the night before. When Lilac agreed—and even produced the little guy from the depths of her monstrous purse to prove she already was—Tamara returned her attention to the rock. “Now, about this stone—Sylvie, do you know where it comes from?”
“My grandmother left me some things. A few boxes, some furniture. It was right after I moved into this house. There wasn’t a place for everything, and it was also a difficult time. I’d finally changed my name back after the divorce because I’d foolishly kept Bobby’s name.” A hint of bitterness crept into her voice, the first sign I’d seen of any real animosity between her and her ex. “I’d also waited so long to buy my own house, so that was quite emotional for me, though in a different way. And then to have my grandmother pass . . . It was all so much in such a short time. The furniture was a reminder I didn’t need.”
Something about that story wormed its way into my brain and set tiny alarm bells ringing—but which part?