by Elle Adams
“With his vampire friend,” I said. “I think he and Vincent met at the bookshop before he even adopted me.”
“Really? Oh, so that’s why they get along so well.”
“Yep. Someday I’m going to figure out how to get a straight answer out of a vampire.”
“If anyone can, I guarantee Madame Grey will.”
Madame Grey listened to our explanation with unnerving calmness. Her face betrayed nothing, but images of stormy skies filled my mind, and her wand glowed silver the whole time.
“Where are the flowers?” she asked.
“By the door to the house,” said Alissa. “The spell’s completely dead, but I can fetch them anyway, if it’s possible to track who delivered them.”
Madame Grey pinched the bridge of her nose. “The werewolves insist on a meeting to avoid bloodshed. I will send you adequate protection until I’m able to be there in person, and another witch will investigate the flowers and attempt to track down the person who sent them. Stay inside, and that includes your animals.”
It looked like Sky’s visits to the vampires’ leader would have to be temporarily put on hold. Though I doubted even a locked door could stop my cat when he was on a mission.
“I have no control over that cat,” I said. “But I’ll try to.”
“Good,” she said. “Go home now, both of you. No detours. I will send your new security there shortly.”
“I think she’s going to send Nathan in,” Alissa whispered to me, as Madame Grey’s office door closed behind us.
“She’ll have to fight the gargoyles first,” I said. “And then she’ll find out Steve dismissed you. I don’t think I want to hang around for the fallout, to be honest.”
“Me neither.” She blew out a breath. “I need a distraction. Have you practised any magic with your left hand since you figured it out?”
“Nope. Didn’t get the chance to tell Rita before she stuck me on theory work, and she hasn’t been around since then. I’m up for some practise, but Madame Grey will make our heads roll if we knock the place down.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not letting you practise without a shield on the flat until you make it through a session without dying anything purple,” she said, with a grin.
We entered the flat, where Roald lay snoozing on the sofa, next to Sky.
“There you have it,” I said. “He has his own ways in and out of the house.”
“Right…” Alissa kicked off her shoes, drew out her wand, then began setting up barriers on the room again in anticipation of my upcoming magical practise session. Hopefully this one would involve a little less paint.
My nerves, already jittery from our near-death experience, spiked. Alissa sat in the armchair, one leg crossed over the other. “Go on, Blair.”
I retrieved my wand from my handbag. My skin tingled in anticipation, the small hairs on my arms standing on end.
“Which spell should I use?” I asked Alissa.
“Levitation,” she said. “You always had trouble with that one, and I think it might be because your right hand made your aim lopsided.”
I looked around for something safe to levitate—something not breakable. Not the glass on the coffee table, but there was a rolled-up magazine next to it. I took aim, and—
The coffee table rose into the air, its contents sliding alarmingly.
“Oh, no.”
The sofa left the ground, too. Roald let out an indignant yowl, while Sky yawned and stretched, piercing me with a look as though he’d keep judging me intensely until I figured a way out of this mess.
“Blair, don’t wave your wand around while you’re thinking,” Alissa said—too late. The chair she was sitting on went airborne. Then the bookcase.
“I’m not doing that!” I yelped. “It’s like it’s out of control. The house can’t levitate… right?”
Her alarmed expression did not inspire confidence.
“Okay… spell reversal.” I waved the wand in reverse at the table, and it slammed into the floor. By some miracle, the glass rolled onto the thick carpet and didn’t smash.
The sofa wasn’t so lucky. Roald leapt for cover in Alissa’s arms as it hit the carpet hard enough to put a dent in the floorboards. I held my breath, certain we’d hear screaming from upstairs, but the wards Alissa had put on the room blocked out all sound, too.
Sky merely shook himself, hopped off the sofa, and carelessly padded over to the food bowl.
Alissa and I looked at one another. “I will never understand that cat as long as I live,” I said.
“I don’t understand your magic, Blair. I think you have an issue with moderation.”
I looked at my wand hand. “You may be right.”
“Don’t use that again,” she said. “Try smaller spells. Or… wait and tell Madame Grey. That’s the sensible option.”
I pulled a face. “Come on, I’m already housebound. Plus she’ll be busy with the murders for the foreseeable future, or else stopping the werewolves and the vampires from going to war with one another.”
“Good point. But I don’t think antagonising the neighbours or the cats is a good move either. They’re incarcerated along with us.”
“Okay. Turn blue.” I pointed at the cup, which turned from see-through to sky blue. “See, that one works. I guess I need to tighten my focus a little more.”
The doorbell rang. I jumped, and the lights went out. “Ah.” I didn’t even know how I’d done that. I waved the wand again, casting the spell to summon light, and a dazzling array of rainbow lights exploded from the wand, floating up to the ceiling.
“Wow, that’s pretty,” Alissa said. The doorbell rang again. “I think it’s my grandmother, or the person who’s looking into who sent the flowers. Can you undo that spell?”
She ran to the door, while I held my wand hand still. The lights continued to blink overhead. Er… I might need to look up the counter-spell.
Alissa beckoned frantically. I left the lights and found it wasn’t Madame Grey on the doorstep after all.
“Hey,” Nathan said. “I guess I’m your security.”
I stepped into the doorway to hide the flashing lights from view. “Madame Grey managed to persuade Steve to let you go?”
“Yes, she did.” His gaze went to the lights still visible above my head. “What are you doing in there?”
“Causing chaos and destruction and annoying the cats. Er, Alissa, can you remember how to get rid of a bunch of lights?”
“That’s all?” His eyes betrayed amusement. “That doesn’t sound like a simple spell.”
“It was supposed to be. I have no idea what’s going on with my magic at the moment.”
“You and me both.” Alissa rolled her eyes. “I’ll fix it. Put that wand of yours away, otherwise we’ll be sending Nathan back to Madame Grey in pieces.”
“I’m not that destructive.” My face flushed like a furnace. “My magic is a little out of control, though.”
“Any reason?” He looked at the wand in my hand.
Oh, there was no harm in telling him. “I just found out my wand only works in my left hand. I can’t explain why. I’m right-handed. And it’s also a little volatile. The slightest movement makes things like that happen.” The lights flashed again, proving my point.
“Really?” He eyed my left hand. “Did that come up in your lessons?”
“I haven’t even had the chance to ask Rita or Madame Grey, but it explains why I’ve been so slow to grasp basic spells. I do know the theory. So Alissa and I are practising.”
“Or one of us is hiding for cover,” said Alissa, reappearing behind me. “I got rid of the lights. How did you even do that?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “It’s like there’s a disconnect between my wand and my brain.”
“You need to learn the reverse of the wands’ movements,” Alissa said. “Because it’s your left hand. I guess you got lucky with that first spell.”
“I also used a summoning one,” I said, th
inking of the hummingbird-thing at work. “Okay. I should tell Madame Grey, but now she has angry gargoyles to deal with as well as werewolves.”
“She doesn’t seem bothered by the gargoyles,” said Nathan. “She claimed sorting them out will be simple.”
“Steve is like an annoying fly who won’t go away,” said Alissa. “Not so much the werewolves. I gathered she planned to knock a few heads together.”
“It looked that way,” commented Nathan. “She also told me of her intent to escalate your police report on the attack.”
“Yeah, she planned to have someone check the flowers,” I said.
“When I met her, she said they found no conclusive results,” said Nathan. “Do either of you have any clues about who might have sent the spell?”
“I thought Bryan, but he doesn’t want to hurt Alissa,” I said. “Unless he is an accomplice, but I can’t see what he’d get out of killing his fellow werewolves.”
“He wouldn’t,” Alissa said firmly. “I know that much about him, unless he’s really gone off the rails lately. There’s nothing to gain from taking me out of the picture, other than ticking off Madame Grey.”
“Unless… I was the target,” I said. “I’ve spoken to several of the suspects, right? Well, the vampires, anyway.”
“Tell me who you’ve spoken to,” Nathan said. “I’ll make a list.”
“Lord Anderson, Peter, Bryan… and all the vampires who were trying to get into Lord Goddard’s house will have seen me helping Madame Grey. Oh, and Vincent, but he doesn’t want me dead. But all of those people have more or less said they aren’t the killer.”
“The killer might indeed have accomplices,” Nathan said. “I’ll be outside your house until I do my rounds of the forest. Madame Grey thinks I should check your mail during the day. Nothing odd has happened at night, has it?”
No. Aside from glitter and pixie dust.
“No,” I said. “Nothing at all. Nobody has made any threats or anything. I’ve felt as safe as ever walking around town.”
“Or maybe you were targeted without knowing it,” he said, not fooled for an instant. “I understand that you feel you have an obligation to help, but now the situation has escalated, it’s simply too dangerous to carry on as before.”
My heart sank. “But—I can’t just wait here for the killer to show up. Two people are already dead. Three, if the elf is connected as well. This isn’t just about me. And if the killer is someone I’ve already spoken to, I have to figure out who it is.”
“Then you’ll go nowhere alone,” he said. “Madame Grey’s orders, not mine.”
Alissa didn’t look too happy, either. “Bryan will clam up if he comes under questioning,” she said. “I’m going to give him a text and ask to speak to him in person. Nobody else has ever left me flowers. He tried to do the same in the hospital.”
The hospital. Wait a moment.
“Back in a second,” I said to Nathan, and closed the door to our flat. “Poisoned… flowers. Alissa, do you have that reference book?”
“Which one?”
I ran back into the flat—thankfully, the disco lights had gone—and scanned the piles of witch textbooks on the shelf. I still had the book I’d used to look up the leaves of the plant used to poison Mr Bayer, months ago. And the victims had died by poisoning. Hemlock… definitely wasn’t bright purple flowers, but they were distinctive enough to send alarm bells ringing in my head.
I paused on the correct entry in the book. The bright purple flowers in the picture matched the ones we’d found outside.
The flowers were known to be poisonous to fairies. I’d been the target, not Alissa.
11
I let the book fall onto the table, dread coursing through me. The person who’d left the flowers knew I was a fairy. Who? Was it the same person who’d killed the vampire and the werewolf, or was someone else responsible?
Too many people might know the truth now. Any vampire could have read it from my mind in the time I’d been helping Madame Grey try to disable the wards around Lord Goddard’s house. Lord Anderson had implied he knew, but he might not have done. Maybe he was just warning me off generally, not because he thought I’d be a particular target. On the other hand, he’d certainly seemed to have a specific interest in me. And bite marks connected the two deaths. He’d even been a suspect in the first murder.
I jumped when the doorbell rang again. “Nathan?”
Alissa’s jaw clenched as she looked at her phone. “Bryan. I told him to call me, not come here.” She composed herself, then walked to the door. I followed closely behind.
Bryan stood on the doorstep, his head drooped. Nathan had stepped aside, but clearly had no intention of moving to give him space to talk to Alissa.
“Come to explain yourself?” she asked.
“I didn’t do it,” he rasped. He looked downcast, his eyes shadowed. “I swear, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, least of all you.”
Alissa blew out a breath. “I won’t lie, it looks bad for you. You’re the only person who’s made a habit of leaving flowers out here for the world to see.”
He shook his head, backing away from her glare. “I just came here to explain. I didn’t—I’m not with the killer. Whoever it is.”
“Tell that to Madame Grey,” said Alissa.
He blanched. “She knows the werewolves have no argument with the witches.”
“No, just the vampires,” I said. And the fairies? But he was one of the few people who hadn’t read that particular piece of information from my head. So how could he have known? Or had it been a coincidence? The spell had been intended to knock someone out, not kill. The poison wasn’t as obvious and common as hemlock, unless he’d known the flowers were deadly to fairies.
“Believe me,” he said, “I wish we didn’t have an argument with them, either. They’ve lost someone, too. I think there’s one killer, and it’s a rogue.”
“A rogue what, exactly?” Nathan asked.
Bryan frowned. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m watching out for any potential enemies,” he said. “Including the killer and their accomplices. If I were you, I’d be very careful what you say.”
Bryan doesn’t know my ability. None of his words had registered as lies, either.
Bryan took a step away from the door. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come. Just thought I’d give an explanation. Er, I don’t think that vampire did it either.”
Alissa’s eyes narrowed. “Why come to see me in the hospital, then? Was that for the same reason?”
He shook his head. “No, I… I don’t have a chance with you, do I?”
“You seriously only just figured that out? I think you should leave.”
“I agree,” said Nathan, taking a deliberate step in Bryan’s direction.
Bryan gave Alissa one last pleading look, then sloped away.
Alissa groaned. “No lies, right, Blair?”
“None,” I said in a low voice. “Except for lying by omission, maybe. But I don’t think he did it.”
Nathan turned to me. “Do you have a theory?”
Yeah, but it sounds paranoid. I wouldn’t have known the flowers were poisonous to fairies if I hadn’t had access to that book. It didn’t seem common knowledge. Right? Vampires knew fairies, if Lord Goddard was any indication, but I really didn’t want to have that conversation with Nathan now.
“Lord Anderson,” I said. “The first vampire we spoke to. Given the bite marks on the latest victim, I think it’s probably safe to say it’s a vampire. He was a suspect in Lord Goddard’s murder—not to mention he seemed to be interested in me. That’s the connecting factor.”
Nathan’s brow pinched. “Perhaps.”
There was also the fact that I’d blocked his mind control. But that was after the murder, and he clearly hadn’t been prepared for me to do that. Maybe that’s why he’d tried to attack me, but he’d had the chance to incapacitate Nathan and take me down at any point when we’d been nea
r his house. Nathan was armed and experienced, but you couldn’t outdo a vampire for speed. The town’s security rules depended on the vampires playing by their own rulebook. When that went out the window… who knew what would happen?
“I don’t know about confronting him on his own territory this time,” I admitted. “I almost want to go through Vincent again, because the only person who can really bring down a vampire is another vampire. I don’t know. The facts fit. But he didn’t lie.”
“He won’t hurt you,” Nathan said. “Not if we meet him on neutral territory. I can get a warrant from Madame Grey to speak to him again. He’s still technically on the police’s suspect list, and the attempt against the two of you makes him more suspicious by default. Unless you have any other theories?”
“The wizard,” I said. “Peter. I know he said he’d leave the wards down, but the house re-sealed itself again. I saw when I was on the way to the vampires’ place to speak to Vincent.”
“You went back to the vampires again?” asked Nathan.
“I thought Vincent might be able to help Keith. Instead, I found my cat.”
“Madame Grey specifically asked me to warn you not to wander outside alone, certainly not to the vampires’ territory or the forest,” he said. “If you want to meet with the suspects again, I’d be happy to go with you, but I’d advise you against going anywhere unaccompanied as long as this killer is on the loose. I’m sorry if that sounds patronising, but—”
“Vampires are dangerous. Got it.” I didn’t want to argue with him, so I said, “I do think we ought to talk to the suspects again, and see if there’s anything we missed. Any idea why Peter decided to lock his house up again?
“I would guess that it’s because he left town,” Nathan said. “According to the police, anyway. The gargoyles said he packed up and left in the middle of the night.”
“Seriously?” I said. “Well, I don’t think he was involved. It was just bad luck that the vampire put that curse on his house so nobody but him can get in. On the other hand, he’s also our only means of getting into the house if Lord Goddard left any clues behind that we missed the first time around. Did nobody see where he went?”