A Catastrophic Theft

by P. D. Workman

  Jessup pounded on the door for the second time. Reg had expected Sarah to open it immediately the first time, eager to greet them and get their help, but the second knock was met with silence.

  Reg leaned closer to the door. She thought she could hear voices, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  “Does she have company?” Reg asked. “There wasn’t a car out front.”

  “Someone could have walked over.” Jessup pressed her ear to the door. “I don’t know. I’ll try once more.”

  She hammered on it again. They waited, listening for any response from within. Finally, Reg detected footsteps, a few seconds before the door opened with a whoosh.

  Things were definitely not normal with Sarah. She always looked very professional and put together, neat and well-tailored in her Florida granny clothes. Instead, she looked disheveled, like she hadn’t been out of the house or done any laundry or self-care in weeks. It had only been a day since Reg had last seen her.

  “Sarah, are you okay?” she asked with concern.

  “Would you be okay? Of course I’m not.”

  “You look—”

  “Can we come in?” Jessup interrupted, putting her hand on the door to push it open.

  Sarah rubbed her eyes, bloodshot and baggy with no makeup on. She looked like she had just gotten out of bed or off a three-day bender.

  “Come on,” Reg said, giving the door a nudge and stepping closer to Sarah. “We want to help you. You want us to help find the emerald, don’t you?”

  “You’re here to look for the emerald?” Sarah asked, showing a little interest.

  “Yes. Why don’t you take us to… the place that you usually store it,” Reg suggested.

  “Upstairs. I’ll show you.”

  Jessup followed Reg into the house and they both trailed Sarah up the stairs and down a couple of hallways to a bedroom that Reg hadn’t been in before.

  “It was in here,” Sarah said, looking around the room with cloudy eyes. “This is where it always is when I’m not wearing it.”

  There was little in the room other than a display case in its center. A cube of glass over a black form where the emerald necklace apparently rested when not around Sarah’s neck. Reg and Jessup approached the display case with something like reverence. Reg looked down into the empty case. She reached out and touched the glass, giving it a gentle nudge that made it click and start to rise up, bending at a hidden hinge in the back. Reg watched it move through its full range of motion before it stopped. She looked for a minute at the case, then looked at Sarah.

  “There’s no security? No lock or code? Anyone could open it?”

  “Well, not just anyone,” Sarah protested. She swept a stray hair back from her face, looking at Reg in mild confusion.

  “But there was nothing to stop me.”

  “Of course not. But you were with me.”

  Reg looked around. “Is there a spell, then? A trap that catches people who come in without you?”

  “No. There are wards on the house itself, but nothing specific to this room or the case in particular.”

  “Then anyone could access it. Anyone you let into the house.”

  Sarah was probably far more careful about who she let into her house than Reg had been at first. But then, Sarah was presumably a powerful witch herself, capable of protecting herself in a way that Reg wasn’t.

  “No. Not with Frostling.”

  Reg shook her head, trying to understand the word. “Is that a spell?”

  “No.”

  Jessup looked up suddenly and Reg was about to ask her what was going on when there was a whoosh of flapping wings and a loud screech, and suddenly claws were digging into her shoulder.

  Reg shrieked and flailed her hands, getting scratched and bitten for her efforts. Sarah shouted at her to stop and tried to hold Reg’s hands still. Jessup talked in a quiet voice that Reg had to strain to hear under the noise she and the creature and Sarah were all making at once.

  “It’s okay, Reg. Calm down. You need to just relax. I’ll get it off. Just take a deep breath.”

  Reg tried to school her reaction. She took a breath and held it, closing her eyes for a few seconds and then opening them to reset her perception of the room and what was going on. It wasn’t until then that she was able to focus on the large bird, still shrieking, flapping, and digging its bony claws into Reg’s shoulder.

  “This is Frostling,” Jessup said. “Will you help me get him off, Sarah? I don’t want to startle him, but we need remove him.”

  Sarah stopped shouting and stilled her hands. “Yes, okay. Let me do it.”

  Jessup put her hand on Reg’s arms to keep her calm. “Just be a minute. We’ll get him off of you and out of the way. Okay?”

  “Just do it. Just get it off now.”

  Sarah coaxed the bird, talking to it in a cutesy baby voice. “Come on, now, Frostling, come to Sarah. It’s okay. Just let go.”

  The bird dug its claws in harder before finally relenting. Reg sighed as each foot was removed, so that she no longer had red-hot pokers digging into her shoulder. She rubbed it, wincing.

  “What the heck was that? It attacked me!”

  “I told you about Frostling before,” Sarah said, her tone sullen. “I told you I have an African Grey parrot.”

  “Yes, you did. You didn’t tell me it was allowed to fly around wherever it pleased and to attack people.”

  “You asked me how I protected the jewel.”

  “That didn’t mean I wanted you to sic your bird on me!”

  “I didn’t.” Sarah placed the bird on her own shoulder, stroking it and speaking to it as if Reg had attacked her pet rather than the opposite. “I just let you see what happens to people who try to interfere with the emerald.”

  “The bird attacks them.” Reg rubbed the bruises the bird had left in her shoulder.

  “He’s as good as a watchdog. Better than a cat. Believe me, I haven’t had anyone try to steal anything out of this room for a very long time.”

  “Well, yes, I can believe that,” Reg agreed.

  “You can’t just let it attack people like that, Sarah,” Jessup warned. “I know he’s just doing what he’s been trained to do, but you let Reg in here. I thought the whole point was that if you let someone in, they are safe.”

  Sarah said nothing. Reg wondered if maybe, just maybe, the bird had done exactly what it had been trained to do on some signal from Sarah. It didn’t seem like the attack was fortuitous. Sarah’s bird had attacked at just the right point in the conversation. She looked at Sarah, wondering.

  “Does the bird talk?” she asked.

  “Birds don’t talk,” Frostling answered with a croak.

  Reg stared at him. She looked at Sarah.

  Sarah gave a distant smile. “It’s a joke.”

  “You trained the bird to say that birds don’t talk?”

  Sarah shrugged. “He’s learned a lot of things. They live for a long time. And they’re very intelligent.”

  Jessup rolled her eyes at Reg. No one said anything for a few minutes. Reg looked at the open case.

  “I still don’t think this is very secure.”

  “I agree,” Jessup contributed. “We should at least dust it for prints.”

  They both looked at Reg, and she realized her mistake. It now had her prints on it, so she couldn’t prove that she hadn’t been the one to take the emerald if it had, in fact, been left in the case where it belonged. When they looked for matches to the prints on the glass, they would find hers, obliterating anything else underneath.

  Reg closed her eyes. She felt the energy of the room, contemplating the absence of the jewel. That was where it was supposed to be. That was where it had been for years, maybe even decades. Its energy imprint on the room was just as tangible as the fingerprints Reg had left on the case. She could feel it around her.

  “I’m going to look for it,” she told Sarah and Jessup.

  “Do you need anything?”
Sarah asked, brightening a little for the first time that day. “Tea or something…?”

  “Right now, I just want to feel the necklace,” Reg said. “It left an imprint in this room and I want to see if I can find it.”

  Sarah and Jessup were respectfully quiet. Reg focused, widening her attention, reaching out with her consciousness, trying to track the energy signature of the necklace. It was still somewhere in the world. Reg had seen it. She could feel its energy in the room. She had found objects she had far less of a connection with.

  She let her mind drift. She couldn’t force it. She had to just let it come to her. Did she know the person who had it? Had it been misplaced and was somewhere in Sarah’s house still? It had to be somewhere close.

  “Charlatan,” the parrot squawked.

  Reg scowled at the bird, opening her eyes to give it a hard, cold stare. The bird just looked at her with one eye in the side of his head. He blinked and stared and blinked and stared some more.

  “Why would he say something like that?” Reg demanded. “Why would you train him to say that?”

  “I didn’t,” Sarah said. “He’s entitled to his own opinions. Sometimes birds just say things.”

  Reg shook her head. “I can’t focus with him in here. Especially with him talking.”

  “We’ll go to another room,” Sarah sighed.

  She made a motion to the bird, and it flew off her shoulder and out the bedroom door. By the time Sarah made it to the door, he was gone. There was no indication where.

  Jessup looked at Reg with an eyebrow lifted, which Reg took to indicate that she wanted to know whether Reg had seen anything or was having any success. Reg gave a little shake of her head.

  Sarah led the way to a small sitting room. “I have some chamomile tea,” she offered. “Chamomile is very calming. Maybe that would help you to perform the seek better. If you weren’t so uptight about Frostling…”

  “I’m not uptight about him. He just distracted me.”

  “He’s really a very lovely bird…”

  “I’m not a bird person. The same way you’re not a cat person. They don’t do anything for me.”

  “But you can talk to birds. You must have some kind of attraction toward them.”

  “No. I just did what I had to do that day. It was talk to the bird or cook to death. Obviously, in that kind of scenario, I was motivated to talk to the bird.”

  Sarah gave a little smile. “I’ll get you the tea,” she promised, “and then it will be easier to do the seek.”

  Reg didn’t make any objection when Sarah bustled off to go make the tea that Reg definitely did not need in order to find the emerald. She was perfectly capable of finding whatever objects she wanted to without a cup of tea.

  ⋆ Chapter Nine ⋆

  A

  re you okay?” Jessup asked. “How’s your shoulder?”

  Reg massaged it. “It will be fine. I don’t think the dumb bird broke the skin. But it sure scared the heck out of me. You might have warned me.”

  “I know the parrot, but I didn’t know she was using it to guard her jewelry, or I would have warned you. And warned her, too. You can’t just let your pet attack people for entering a room, especially when you allow them into that room to begin with.”

  Reg shook her head. “Are all witches and warlocks into birds? Sarah, Corvin, Dave Smith…”

  “Dave Smith?”

  “He’s the leader of Corvin’s coven, I guess. You don’t know him?”

  “Davyn Smithy. I know him. When did you meet him?”

  “Just… yesterday, I guess. He came by to make sure I got the order to appear at Corvin’s hearing.”

  Jessup blinked, looking puzzled. Reg realized she might have missed giving Jessup some required details. “I guess maybe I didn’t tell you that Corvin has been called up before his coven because of what he did. Because he broke his word or their rules.”

  Jessup chewed her lip. “That’s pretty serious.”

  “Yeah. Well, so is what he did to me.”

  “I agree. It’s just very rare for the coven to get involved.”

  “That fairy, Lord Bernier, he said he was going to see to it that Corvin had to answer for what he had done.”

  “Even rarer for fairies to get involved in human matters. They stepped in to protect you, I guess because Calliopia’s fairy blood marked you as being protected. But to take the further step of reporting Corvin to his coven and demanding that they deal with him… that’s really unusual.”

  Reg didn’t know how to feel about that. Happy that they were dealing with Corvin? Angry that they’d had to be forced to do it by a fairy? Grateful to the fairies for not only protecting her from the immediate danger, but also for insisting that Corvin appear before the tribunal? All of the emotions were swirling around in her head, mixed up and refusing to be ordered logically.

  “This will help,” Sarah said, returning to the room with a tea service for all of them. “You’ll calm right down, and be able to do the seek.”

  Reg didn’t argue. Maybe she didn’t need the tea to seek the emerald, but it might at least calm down the warring emotions that were making her feel shaky and vulnerable, sitting there thinking about Corvin and having to appear at his trial.

  She poured herself a cup of tea, which made Sarah look a little happier. She sipped at it. It was too hot, but she needed to drink it and move forward.

  “You’re sure you’re okay, Sarah? I’m sorry I didn’t realize how important the emerald was to you… but you’re obviously really upset about it being lost.”

  “Stolen.”

  “Whatever happened to it. I can see that it’s really upset you. I’m sorry that it happened.”

  Sarah nodded and poured herself a tea as well. Reg thought that Sarah probably needed it more than she did. Jessup eyed the tea service, but didn’t pour herself a cup. That gave Reg a moment of pause. Did Jessup think that Sarah had put something in the tea that she shouldn’t? Or something that Jessup shouldn’t be consuming on the job? It was just chamomile, wasn’t it?

  The smell was familiar, and although Reg didn’t have the super smelling sense that Erin did, she thought herself competent enough to know that there wasn’t anything else mixed in with the chamomile. She took a few more sips, waiting for it to calm her nerves.

  They just sat visiting and sipping the tea for some time, but Reg noticed that Sarah’s glances toward her were getting more frequent and anxious. Her heart having finally slowed to a regular speed, Reg put her cup down.

  “Okay. I’m sure it will be just fine. I’m going to find the emerald. At least a clue, even if I can’t tell exactly where it is. And then you’ll be able to find it, and everything will go back to normal.”

  Sarah nodded encouragingly. Jessup didn’t say anything, she just sat there observing and waiting.

  Reg took a few long, deep breaths. She could do it. Her whole life, she’d been able to find things that no one else could. Some of her foster families had found this a useful trait to have. Others had refused to believe that Reg had any particular talent and assumed that it was only luck when she found something, or an admission of guilt in stealing it in the first place.

  Reg visualized the necklace. She remembered how it had glowed when Sarah wore it, looking so warm and alive. And the way that Sarah herself had looked. It was important to her. More than just an item with great monetary value. It was an heirloom.

  Reg closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. She needed to know where the emerald was. She needed to find it for her friend. Sarah was her friend, not just her landlord.

  “Come on,” she whispered.

  But no matter what effort she put into it, she didn’t get any feeling back about the location of the emerald necklace. Like with the knife, she simply couldn’t feel it anywhere. She put her hands over her face, covering her eyes. She didn’t want them to see that she couldn’t find it. She didn’t want to see the look in Sarah’s eyes.

  “Reg.” Je
ssup’s voice was soft. She got up from her chair and approached Reg, putting her hand on Reg’s shoulder.

  “I can’t do it,” Reg said, her words muffled by her hands. She felt exhausted and close to tears. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re just struggling,” Sarah said. “Maybe you’re trying too hard.”

  “I should be able to feel it. I should be able to tell you something about where it is, even if I can’t find it absolutely. That’s the way it works!”

  “Everybody has problems sometimes. It’s not your fault.”

  “Are they gone? Have I lost my powers? This doesn’t make sense!” Reg pushed the fury over her helplessness away from her violently. The door to the room slammed shut, making them all jump.

  “Oh!” Sarah laughed. “I must have left the window open.” Reg could hear her going over to the window, but she didn’t hear the window slide shut. She lifted her face out of her hands and looked at Sarah, who was staring at the closed window. “Well, there must be a cross-breeze from somewhere else. Did I leave the back door open?”

  “I closed the back door,” Jessup said.

  Both women looked at Reg.

  “Why are you looking at me? I didn’t leave anything open.”

  “You slammed the door,” Jessup said.

  “I did not.”

  “Just a little bit of psychic overload,” Sarah said, again laughing, but sounding more anxious. “You’re upset. That’s all.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If I’ve lost my powers, how could I move anything? It’s hard enough to do when I’m really focused on it.”

  “You haven’t lost your powers,” Sarah assured her. “You’re just having trouble with seeking right now.”

  “It could be psychological,” Jessup suggested. “You couldn’t find the knife, so you’re psyching yourself out about not being able to find the necklace either. You’re blocking yourself.”

  “I’m not. I’m perfectly calm.”

  Sarah shook her head, smiling. “You’re just having a bad day. Everyone has a bad day now and then.” Sarah looked down at herself. “I have to admit that I’m not having the best day today myself.”