Potions Are for Pushovers
Page 11
“A bird couldn’t have picked up a whole heart,” I protest, even though I’m not fully conversant in the intricacies of pig anatomy. How much could it weigh? Two pounds? Three? “Did it look like something had . . . eaten it out?”
She sighs. “Not necessarily eaten, but the extraction was a violent one. Far too violent for a twelve-year-old to hear about, at any rate. Which is why I’d appreciate it if you’d avoid making the connection shining so clearly in your eyes.”
As much as I wish I could control the sheen of my eyeballs, I can’t. Especially not in this situation.
A pig murdered in the wilderness, its heart eaten on site? A woman poisoned by wolfsbane a mere twenty-four hours earlier? I don’t care what your spiritual leanings are—that’s a mightily interesting connection.
“Of course I won’t tell Lenora anything she can’t handle,” I say, but it’s too late. As if drawn by the mere mention of werewolves, the girl in question bounds across the room. This time, Rachel isn’t with her. She and the woman with the impressive—and now signed—cleavage are the last two holdouts doing their best to keep Richard King entertained on the other side of the room.
“What can’t I handle?” Lenora asks. “What have you been telling Eleanor? You promised you wouldn’t get in the way.”
“I’m not getting in the way. I merely—”
Lenora turns to me with her hands clasped tightly in front of her chest. “Don’t let Oona scare you. She can’t tell me what to do.”
“Now, Lenora. You don’t mean that.”
“Yes I do. You know she’s not my real mother, right?”
I didn’t know that, not officially, but the news doesn’t come as a surprise. The strained relationship between them, the desire to ship Lenora away to boarding school, the fact that Mr. MacDougal had the final say about the apprenticeship . . . Nothing says wicked stepmother quite as clearly.
“Relationships are rarely as cut and dried as we like to believe they are,” I say. “Does she feed you?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Does she clothe you?”
“Of course, but that’s not—”
“Does she sign your permission slips?”
“Madame Eleanor, that’s not fair! She only does all those things because that was the deal when she married my dad. I was only a year old, so I didn’t get a say.”
I catch sight of Oona’s tightly drawn face and feel a pang for the other woman. She’s trying to hide it, I can tell, but Lenora’s words sting. Her job raising someone else’s preteen can’t be an easy one.
“Part of being a responsible witch is respecting the bonds of female companionship, no matter what form they take,” I inform her.
Lenora opens her mouth as if to argue before closing it again just as quickly. For a brief, triumphant moment, I think I’ve managed to get through to her, but I catch sight of Rachel coming toward us and realize she doesn’t want to discuss this in front of her idol. Nor does Oona appear to be grateful for my intervention. Her look of pain has been replaced by one of irritation.
“Guess what?” Rachel says, her violet eyes wide with excitement. Apparently, she’s picked up on none of the subtext surrounding us. “I just heard from Penny Dautry that the pig Ellie found slaughtered in the woods had its heart eaten out.”
“No way,” Lenora breathes.
“Yes way.” Rachel takes the younger girl’s hands and squeezes them. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Unfortunately for me, she is.
“Werewolf!” Lenora cries, unaware of her stepmother doing her best to glare me into a puddle. Any integrity I might have left vanishes when Lenora dances a jig right there in the middle of the vicarage. “Oh, boy. Werewolves, witches, and bloody, ripped-out hearts. This is going to be the best apprenticeship ever. Aren’t you so glad you took us on, Madame Eleanor?”
As my answer to that question is one she probably doesn’t want to hear, I merely offer a tight smile in reply. And do my best not to be left alone with Oona MacDougal for the rest of the afternoon. Some risks are too big, even for a woman as well versed with the shady side of the law as me.
* * *
“Is he tall? He always seems so tall. Please tell me he’s tall.”
“Um, okay. He’s tall. It’s as though he’s walking on stilts. I have to crane my neck to look up at him. Earlier today, it was snowing on his head since it’s being carried at a such a high elevation.”
Liam accepts this barrage of nonsense with a happy sigh. “And when he talks, does it sound like chocolate is oozing out of his mouth?”
“I’m in England, Liam. Everyone talks like that. It’s like living in a fondue pot over here.”
“Indulge me. Describe his voice.”
I tap my finger on my chin and think. As the man under discussion is currently walking in my direction, the thinking has to happen quickly. Too quickly. I’ve been waiting outside the vicarage in hopes of snagging a chance to talk with Richard King before he leaves, but my brother’s fanboy demands are going to make me miss my opportunity.
“Could you do me a favor?” I ask Richard as I pull the phone away from my ear and hold it out. “Will you say something to my brother that makes it sound like you’re ten feet tall and your saliva is made of chocolate?”
Richard cements himself in my heart by accepting this request without so much as a blink. “Good evening,” he says in a voice that does, admittedly, reek of rich indulgence. “You’re on with Rich King of the Red Couch Diaries—and looking quite dapper, if you don’t mind my saying. Is that Burberry you’re wearing?”
The tinny sound of my brother’s squeal through the phone is audible even from my distance. I can only assume that the designer question is something Richard regularly asks the celebrity guests on his show, because my brother has not now, nor will he ever, spend that kind of money on clothes. He shops at Target.
Richard chuckles at something Liam says. “That’s a wrap. Good night, and remember not to do anything I wouldn’t do. If there is such a thing.”
He hands the phone back to me. I mouth my thanks and prepare to resume my call with my brother, but Liam has already hung up. “Well, that was rude,” I say as I drop the phone into my bag. “I think you broke him.”
“I’ve been known to have that effect on people,” Richard replies. His easy laugh robs the words of any conceit. So does his makeup. Out here in the daylight, the line where his foundation meets his skin is even more pronounced. Liam might falter in the presence of celebrity, but as a man, Richard leaves me largely unimpressed. “Were you waiting for me?”
“Yes, actually. I wanted to apologize again for earlier. I’m not normally—”
He holds up a hand that stops me midsentence. “Please don’t. I hate apologies, both getting them and giving them. Put that one in the bank and save it for when I owe you.”
I like his approach. I also want to discuss his aunt away from the madding crowd, so I tilt my head toward the road. “Would you mind terribly if I walked you back to Mrs. Brennigan’s? I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.” Then, lest he fear I’m going to foist my brother on him again, I add, “Not about your TV show or fashion designers or anything.”
He hesitates. I’m afraid he’s going to tell me exactly where I can stick my interference, but all he does is blink and ask, “How did you know I’m staying at Mrs. Brennigan’s?”
It’s not rocket science. There are no hotels—luxury or otherwise—anywhere in the immediate vicinity, and he already admitted he hasn’t seen his brother yet, which means he’s not staying at his aunt’s. Unless he somehow scored an invitation to Castle Hartford behind my back, the only other place with vacant rooms worthy of a man of his repute is the Brennigan B&B. One of the rooms in their house was once used by a member of the royal family.
“I have my ways,” I say with a serene smile.
“Then how can I refuse?”
Mrs. Brennigan doesn’t live far from the vicarage, so I
have to make good use of the time I have. I’m prevented from asking anything, however, by Richard’s own, “Are you close, you and your brother?”
I think of Liam, who is probably on the phone right now telling all his friends about his brush with fame, and sigh. “We try to be,” I say. “But we don’t have a lot in common, so it can be difficult sometimes.”
“You don’t share his love of talk show hosts, I take it?”
“You seem very nice,” is my polite reply.
Richard laughs out loud. “That’s put me in my place, hasn’t it? And before you ask, no, my brother and I aren’t close, either. We never were, even as boys.”
“It’s just the two of you?” I ask.
“It is now,” he says, a note of bitterness in his voice. At the introduction of Lewis King into the conversation, that same creeping antagonism I saw on Nicholas’s and Annis’s faces washes over him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be burdening you with our family troubles. What did you want to ask me? Is it about Aunt Sarah’s death? I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. I don’t know who could have poisoned her, or why. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I haven’t been down to see her in over a year. I had been planning to visit sometime in early summer, but . . .”
He looks off into the distance, his forehead knit in a way that reminds me of his aunt’s heavy beetle brows.
“I understand from Annis that you and your brother used to spend your summers here,” I prod.
He nods and returns his attention to me. “Our parents were in the diplomatic service, so we spent most of the year at school and our breaks with Aunt Sarah. She hated having us, said we cut up her peace until she was ready to throw us off the cliffs, but we didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Oh,” I murmur, thrown for a temporary loop. At this point, I hardly expect to get a glowing report of Sarah Blackthorne out of anyone, but come on. The woman wouldn’t even open her heart or her home to her nephews?
He notices my reaction and laughs. “I warned you about her. I warned the police inspector, too, when he called. To be honest, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to do away with her.”
“You’ve spoken with Inspector Piper?”
“Yes. He wanted to know who the beneficiary of Aunt Sarah’s will and life insurance policy is.”
I can hardly believe my luck. My breath catches. “And?”
He laughs again. “The Tennis Foundation, I’m afraid.”
By this time, we’ve reached the Brennigan B&B. The only concession to the service industry the historic home displays is a hand-painted sign hanging above a picture window. Otherwise, the house looks exactly like what it is—a gentleman’s residence that’s been painstakingly kept up over the years. I’m not quite ready to end this conversation, so I pause at the end of the walkway.
“The Tennis Foundation?” I echo. “As in, love-thirty and lobs and all that? Did your aunt play?”
“Not a single day of her life. I doubt she ever watched a match, either.”
“Then . . .”
“She did it because she knew it was the worst possible place she could leave it. Poor Lewis. This may well be the end of the road for him.” Richard glances at the oversized gold watch on his wrist and offers me his hand, signaling dismissal. “Thank you for the company and for doing your part to send my aunt off with good grace. As you can see, it’s not going to be an easy task.”
“Maybe I can convince the community to put up some tennis courts with the money we earn,” I suggest as I give his hand a shake. “To keep to the theme.”
He grins, showcasing that strange juxtaposition of perfect falsity along his top row of teeth and ordinary humanity on the bottom. “Well, Madame Eleanor, that’s a wrap. Good night, and remember not to do anything I wouldn’t do.” He winks and heads toward the house. “If there is such a thing.”
Chapter 9
“Fact number one: Werewolves are susceptible to silver. Especially in bullet form.”
“False. Anything that can kill a bear can also kill a werewolf. You just need something strong enough to pierce their hide. Next?”
“Um . . .” Rachel glances down at the sheet of paper in her lap, which is covered in her long, sloping handwriting and even more of her long, sloping drawings. She’s sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, surrounded by dozens of similar sheets. “Fact number two: Werewolves only appear during a full moon.”
“Also false.” Across from her, Lenora consults the leather-bound book in her lap. “They just need eighty percent of a full moon in order to transform from human to beast. But it says here that their wolf form is more powerful when the moon is all the way full.”
Rachel looks up and pushes back a lock of her dark blond hair. “Oh, that’s cool. How full is the moon right now?”
They both look to me for an answer. I’m not curled on the floor—mostly because I’m not a teenager and I have bones that protest that sort of thing—but I am overseeing things from my perch on the couch. “It’ll be full on Friday, so three days from now.”
Both of the girls perk up. “That’s definitely close enough to count,” Lenora says.
I hold back a sigh at their obvious show of enthusiasm. I’d hoped that by inviting the girls over to my house for this afternoon’s educational session, we could keep things fairly werewolf-free. In anticipation, I’d emptied a huge pot from the backyard that used to contain geraniums, painted it black, and lugged it inside to emulate a cauldron. Alas, not even my hand-crafted bottles labeled EYE OF NEWT and TOE OF FROG elicited much more than a few giggles and a reiteration that I am, apparently, hilarious.
“Hey, Ellie—can you push that cauldron a little closer?” Rachel asks now.
“Of course,” I say, suddenly seeing a way out of this project. “Why? Did you decide to try the eye of newt after all?”
“No.” A huge splash of water falls from the ceiling and lands in the middle of the paper, rendering the words into a dark impressionist piece. “But I need something to catch this drip running through the ceiling. Did you leave the tap on upstairs or something?”
I mutter a curse that includes not just the newt’s eye, but all his mobile body parts. “No. The bucket upstairs must have filled up, that’s all. It’s getting worse.”
“The roof?” she asks with a sympathetic cluck. “I’m not surprised. Thomas used to spend hours up there replacing the soggy bits.”
“Yes, well, it’s all soggy bits at this point.” I hoist myself to my feet and begin dragging the fifty-pound pot closer to where the girls are seated. “We’ll be lucky if the whole thing doesn’t collapse on us.”
Lenora doesn’t seem to find this prospect the least bit alarming. “That would be so cool.”
Rachel is less impressed. “You should have someone out to replace it. I think Grandmother knows a good thatcher.”
“I’m sure she does. The question is, does she also know someone in the market for a good kidney?”
Both of the girls look at me with expressions of pure adolescent naïveté. I realize my mistake at once. Naturally, neither one of these girls knows anything about financial hardship; the one because she’s twelve, the other because the uncle who dotes on her is a millionaire.
“I’m sure Uncle Nicholas will give you the money to fix it, Ellie,” Rachel says, proving my point to a nicety.
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you want me to ask him for you?”
“No, I don’t.”
Something of the tight reserve in my voice must carry over to the older girl, because she only gives me a queer look before allowing the subject to drop. I’m grateful enough not to have to fall into lengthy explanations as to why a young woman living in a mistress’s keep might be reluctant to accept monetary gifts from the lord of the land that I willingly turn the talk back to werewolves.
Oh, the lengths to which a desperate woman will go.
“You might as well keep going. What else do you have on that list of yours?”
I snap to attention. “Wait a minute—”
“I don’t see anything in the book about monkshood.” Lenora wrinkles her nose and peers closer at the tome, which I assume has been borrowed from the village museum on an extended lease. “Eleanor? Is that one true? Does that monk stuff repel werewolves?”
I snatch the list from Rachel and scan it. Everything appears to be written in her own hand. “Where did you get this?” I ask.
“We made it.” She blinks up at me, a furrow in her brow. “As everyone was leaving the fête meeting yesterday, we asked them what, if anything, they knew about werewolves.”
“You did what?”
“You were outside pretending not to wait for Rich King,” Rachel says, the picture of innocence. “And we thought it might help with the research. You know, to interview locals to discover what they’ve heard about werewolf legends. Or if they’ve ever seen anything that might have been one.”
By all rights, I should be outraged. Not only have these girls picked up the reins of their werewolf investigation and gone way off course with it, but they’re doing it under the guise of my leadership.
I need to put my foot down. I need to control my charges. I need to—
“What did they say?” I ask, my heart beating faster. “Has anyone seen one?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Rachel sighs. “The general said there was a pack of stray dogs that came through here about five years ago, but they mostly hung around outside the butcher shop hoping for scraps.”
“Is he the one who told you about the monkshood?” Rachel looks at Lenora, her lips pursed in thoughtfulness. “No, it wasn’t him. Or the vicar or Mrs. Cherrycove, because they only knew about the silver bullets. And your dad was the one who told us about the full moon theory, Lenora.”