Rocking Out

by A. A. Albright

  For a moment, Melissa stayed silent. I knew she couldn’t stand Callum Cool, the band’s drummer, but Mack seemed to think that she might. I wondered which would win out – her loathing of Callum, or her fear of speaking to Mack.

  ‘What’s a Super VIP seat, Mack?’ asked Wolfie. ‘Can I have one?’

  Mack let out what sounded awfully close to a growl. ‘You wouldn’t want one, buddy. Trust me. It’s a seat right on the edge of the stage, pointed straight at Callum. He thinks if Melissa gets a proper look at him in action, she’ll see what she’s missing out on.’

  A look of disgust fell over Melissa’s features, and she finally found her voice. ‘What I’m missing out on? I know what I’m not missing out on. I’m not missing out on a philandering, lying, underwear-sending drummer. I mean, how many times do I have to tell him to stop sending me bras and knickers in the post? I’m not missing him now, and I won’t be sitting in his stupid seat tonight. You can tell him I’d prefer to sit with my friends. And you can tell him that if he has a problem with that, then I won’t be going at all.’

  Mack might not have had the Cool surname like Callum, but unlike Callum, he really was a cool guy. The smile that played on his lips was the barest, tiniest smile I had ever seen. But because it came from him, it was like a bright beam of sunshine. A beam that, right now, Melissa was bathing beneath. She and Mack were doing the whole looking and staring thing again, only instead of looks of fearful longing, they seemed to have reached an understanding. Now they were looking at one another with full-on lust.

  I was quite happy to stand there in my bathrobe and watch them all morning. I might have to head off and get a snack at some stage. Popcorn, considering how entertaining it was. But Max, the fiend, had to go and ruin it by clearing his throat.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll just go and get Wolfie’s things, then. Maybe you could open up your boot, Mack? I can’t see much room anywhere else in the car.’

  Mack kept his eyes on Melissa and nodded. ‘Sure. Sure. You go get the stuff.’ He pulled his keys from his pocket, pressed a button, and we all heard the boot pop open. While Max went inside to fetch Wolfie’s things, I stayed on the doorstep, watching the romance of the century unfold. I found an uneaten pretzel in the pocket of my robe, and nibbled it while I enjoyed the show.

  Melissa had begun to smile. She was opening her mouth. She was about to say something. Something good – I could tell by the look in her eyes. This could be it, the moment when one of them finally asked the other out. Well, it was either that or she was going to grab him by the collar and drag him upstairs.

  ‘I’ll just put it all in myself then, shall I?’ Max said gruffly, coming outside with one of Wolfie’s beds. It was filled with some spare collars, a couple of leads, and some of his bowls and toys. He had more than enough of all of those things at Jasper’s house (and there were plenty of toys on top of Jasper right now) but Max liked to make sure Wolfie had familiar items with him all the time. I had a theory that he wanted to make sure Wolfie wouldn’t forget about him, and that was why he sent him off with items that smelled like our house.

  Usually I’d be feeling sorry for Max right about now – and I would be, once I’d seen how the Melissa and Mack affair unfolded. With one eye still on the action, I went over to the car and lifted the boot for Max.

  ‘So then,’ said Melissa. ‘Do you … em … do you have an em …’

  Oh my stars! This morning’s conversation was the most she had ever said to him.

  Mack’s smile spread, and he reached a hand to the back of his head, making the muscles in his arms bulge. Melissa swallowed.

  Although Melissa’s sentence had been a tad on the incomplete side, I got the impression that Mack knew precisely what she was trying to say. ‘No,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I don’t have a … y’know. Don’t have anybody. Do you … do you have …’

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard a clatter. Then there was a hand, clutching onto my arm. I had the sneaking suspicion that it might be Max, and that he was possibly agitated. I cast a side-eye at him. He was, indeed, the one who had clutched onto my arm. His fingers were still firmly attached to me, and I could see his mouth opening and closing, an expression of horror on his face.

  I looked down and saw that Max wasn’t alone. Wolfie was huddled behind me, his long legs shaking like jelly. Something was happening. But whatever it was, it would have to wait. Just a few more words from Melissa or Mack McAdams, that was all it would take. And I was sure that my presence wasn’t putting them off. Not remotely. All shy people liked an audience when they were trying to ask out the object of their desire. Didn’t they?

  ‘W-Wanda,’ said Wolfie.

  ‘W-Wanda,’ repeated Max.

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ I hissed. ‘I want to watch this. It’s just getting good.’

  ‘B-but,’ said Wolfie.

  ‘There’s a b-b-body,’ added Max.

  ‘There is,’ Wolfie confirmed. ‘It’s in the b-b-boot!’

  Huh. That sounded like something that someone like me ought to investigate. I sighed and pulled my eyes from Melissa and Mack, glancing towards the boot.

  As I looked down I let out a long, pained groan. There was no doubt about it – I was going to have to put the kibosh on what could have been the greatest love story of all time.

  ‘Hey Mack,’ I said. ‘Don’t suppose you want to tell me why there’s a dead girl in the boot of your car?’

  2. The Body in the Boot

  Mack’s gaze finally moved away from Melissa, and a look of dreamlike confusion fell over his face.

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘There’s a body, Mack. A girl’s body. In the boot of your car. Care to enlighten me on why it’s there before I, y’know, call in some back-up and send your behind to jail?’

  His face was a picture of puzzlement. That poor, gorgeous rock star. Either he had no idea that the girl was there, or his acting skills were on par with his singing. He strode closer to his car and looked into the boot.

  He stared down at what I was looking at – a sight that made me sick to my stomach. A blonde-haired girl was lying in the boot, some sort of wire wrapped around her neck, not quite concealing the bite-mark beneath.

  Mack’s face paled, and he swallowed. ‘Oh my stars. I know her. I mean … I knew her. She is – was – one of our superfans. They call themselves the She-Wolves. But what’s she doing in my boot?’

  I looked him up and down. I’d seen a lot of reactions to dead bodies in my short career as a Wayfarer. Some real. Some fake. I was sure of it: Mack was as shocked and disturbed as I was. He knew nothing about how this girl got there.

  As much as I wanted to trust my reaction, this was a murder investigation. I couldn’t rule Mack out on gut feelings alone. ‘You’re going to have to stick around while I get my team over here.’ I nodded towards the front door of the house. ‘Melissa and Max, can you bring him into the living room and stay with him please? I’ll be in to ask some questions in a sec, once I’ve phoned my captain and woken Jasper up.’

  I watched poor Melissa’s face as she led Mack inside. She looked like she was holding back tears, the poor thing. Well, now I felt like a total party pooper. I didn’t like being all official and scary to the guy Melissa liked, but this was my job. I put murderers behind bars – even if my best friend did want to smooch them.

  I called Finn, my boss on the Major Crimes team – he sounded really happy to have to deal with a body first thing in the morning – and then I went to wake Jasper up. I still hadn’t managed to do so when Finn appeared, with three other people in tow.

  There was Gretel, a fellow Wayfarer on the Major Crimes team, as well as Dennis, the soon-to-be-retired healer. But the third person was a guy I really didn’t expect to see.

  ‘Shane Moore?’

  The black-haired doctor gave me a wry grin. ‘Yeah, I was having breakfast with Finn when you phoned. I agreed to come along, so I can see if Dennis’s job is something I’d be interested in ta
king on.’

  I found myself grinning back at him. Shane was an unempowered witch, working as a forensic pathologist in the human world. I’d only met him once before, when the body of a murdered witch turned up in his morgue. At the time, he seemed like he was never going to take Finn up on the offer of a job. But seeing as Dennis was retiring in a couple of days’ time, and the only other applicants for his position were necromancers, I was extremely grateful to see that he was giving it a shot.

  Sure, it might be useful to have someone bring murder victims back to life so they could identity their killer. But I had yet to meet a necromancer who’d managed much more than making a corpse dance. Macabre puppet shows were not my thing – and I had a feeling the dead would agree with me.

  He gave me a little wave and moved off to the body with Dennis, while Finn gave my outfit the once-over. ‘Do you want to go and get changed while we get started questioning the boys?’

  I looked down at my bathrobe, pyjamas, and fluffy purple slippers. ‘I guess I’d better,’ I said. ‘Mack should be in the living room, and Jasper’s still asleep under the dog toys in the car. I’ll be back down in a minute.’

  Finn reached out and pulled half a pretzel from my hair. ‘Y’know what? Why don’t we give it five?’

  ≈

  Dizzy was awake when I went back upstairs. His little face was pressed up against my bedroom window, and he was looking down at Mack’s car.

  ‘I have a bad feeling about this, Wanda,’ he said while I went to turn on the shower. ‘A really bad feeling. I don’t think that the handsome singer killed that girl. Or the sleazy bass player.’

  I peered around the bathroom door. ‘Why not?’

  The bat shrugged. ‘It’s just a feeling.’

  I pulled off my nightclothes and stepped into the shower, shivering even though the water was perfectly warm. My familiar’s feelings weren’t something I would easily discount. When he saw a colony of bats flying overhead on the night a young female vampire was murdered, he was sure it was the Dark Team. And he was right. Dizzy might spend most of his time snoozing and munching on mangoes, but he had good instincts. Instincts I was inclined to agree with.

  Mack wasn’t a murderer. If he was, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring the body right to a Wayfarer’s doorstep. And as for Jasper – AKA the sleazy bass player? He was a womanizing, cheating, lying, lazy son of a werewolf. When one of his ex-girlfriends had gone on a murder-spree, he had holed up in a hotel to keep himself safe, instead of coming forward to give us vital information. But being a jerk didn’t make him a murderer. Did it?

  I reached for the shampoo and massaged it into my hair, finding yet another piece of pretzel in the process. Dizzy’s uneasiness was invading me. I was afraid that this case was going to be far from straightforward.

  ≈

  When I got back downstairs, Finn and Gretel were in the living room questioning Jasper and Mack. Finn stepped out into the hallway and pulled me aside.

  ‘Mack thinks it’s a microphone cable wrapped around her neck. I’m inclined to agree, seeing as we found a microphone tucked underneath her. Both he and Jasper say they have no idea how she wound up in the boot. They said that the girl goes to all their gigs, and usually tries to hang around backstage afterwards, but that they never let her into their after-parties.’ He cocked a brow. ‘What do you think? You know these guys fairly well. Do you believe their story?’

  I glanced in at them. Mack was holding his head in his hands, looking troubled, while Jasper seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open.

  ‘I really don’t know them all that well. I’ve been to a couple of their parties, dropping Wolfie off or picking him up when Max couldn’t be there,’ I said. ‘I never saw that girl there though, I’m sure of that. I did see what I guess you’d call groupies, but none of them looked that young.’ I looked into the kitchen. Max was sitting at the open back door with Wolfie, while Melissa was at the table, drinking a coffee and eating a huge slice of cake. Yip – this was one of those times when a healthy smoothie just wasn’t going to hit the spot. ‘Maybe we should ask Max, though,’ I continued. ‘I mean, whenever I went along they were always expecting me. So maybe they were on their best behaviour. They might let their guard down around another guy.’

  Finn nodded. ‘I’ll go ask Max. You go in and help Gretel out.’

  Wishing I had a slice of Melissa’s cake to boost me, I walked into the room.

  ‘Still no recollection of her name?’ Gretel was asking as I entered.

  Jasper shook his head. ‘Thought it might come to me after a coffee, but no such luck.’ I could see an empty cup in front of him. Mack’s drink was untouched. ‘Like I said, I just called her Cutie.’

  I took a seat in the armchair across from the couch. ‘When you saw the body, you told me she was one of your superfans,’ I said to Mack. ‘And you mentioned that they call themselves the She-Wolves. But I don’t think she was a werewolf, was she?’

  Mack shook his head and opened his mouth, but didn’t seem capable of words.

  Jasper sat forward and spoke. ‘The She-Wolves aren’t werewolves, no. They’re this bunch of witches who keep trying to get us to turn them into werewolves. I mean, we oblige some of them. But not that little blonde cutie or her friends. Mack won’t even let her back to our after-parties. Says she’s strictly off limits. It’s a shame.’ Jasper sighed. ‘If she had been a wolf, maybe she would have been better able to fight off whoever did that to her.’

  Oh, how I loved Jasper. Witches fell over themselves for his attention, though I had no idea why. He was longhaired and skinny, and had more girls than I had apple tarts. He was so used to witches being lovesick around him that he had forgotten the truth of the matter: a witch was more than a match for a werewolf. Unless the girl in the boot was unempowered, I wasn’t sure why she wouldn’t have been able to fight off her attacker.

  ‘It was you, specifically, who said this young woman was off limits?’ I turned my attention to Mack again.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, still staying quiet.

  ‘Mack,’ I pressed. ‘I need you to answer me, okay? If you care at all about that poor young girl, then tell me – why did you tell your fellow band members she was off limits?’

  ‘Because,’ he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. ‘She was only a kid. Our parties were no place for her. She should have been at home, doing schoolwork or knitting kittens or whatever it is young witches do. Not chasing around the country after us.’

  I thought back to myself as a teenage girl. I didn’t spend much time in the magical world back then, because I was unempowered. I did have some crushes on rock singers, but I’d never been obsessed enough to follow them around the country. Even if I’d wanted to, I would have had to work triple shifts at Bargain Bites just to afford to go to one concert.

  ‘How much do your tickets go for?’ I asked.

  Mack shrugged. ‘About two golden rounds for a standard seat. It can go up to as much as five for the better ones.’

  I gasped. That was between one hundred to two hundred and fifty euro. Forget triple shifts at Bargain Bites. I would have had to work around the clock.

  ‘Yeah, but we sometimes send free tickets to the She-Wolves,’ Jasper added. ‘Looks good to have a bunch of crazy young girls in the front row, y’know. And it’s not like they don’t work hard for the tickets.’

  ‘Oh?’ Gretel arched a dark eyebrow.

  Mack glared at Jasper. ‘He means they actually work. Nothing sleazy about it. The She-Wolves have a fan website. It’s even more popular than our official one. If a certain amount of people click from theirs to ours to buy concert tickets, we give them free tickets and other goodies – T-shirts, posters, that sort of thing. They’re helping to hype our popularity. It’s only fair they get something in return.’

  He seemed so reasonable. I really did believe him, deep down. But recent experience had taught me that those who seemed most reasonable were often the ones capab
le of the worst. ‘When’s the last time you opened the boot of your car, Mack?’

  He shrugged. ‘It was at least a few days ago, I’d say. When I went food shopping.’

  I’m not sure why, but the idea of a werewolf rock star shopping for food was extremely strange to me. I ignored the urge to ask him which supermarket he frequented – I doubted it was Bargain Bites – and asked him something more pertinent to the investigation instead. ‘And does anyone else have access to your vehicle?’

  ‘No one else would want to drive Mack’s old banger,’ said Jasper with a snigger. ‘I keep telling him to get something newer, but he won’t.’

  ‘Anyone else at all?’ I ignored Jasper and focused on Mack. ‘Do you have a driver? Or maybe a valet at a restaurant or hotel could have driven it?’

  Again, Jasper cut in before Mack could reply. ‘Restaurant or hotel? You’re kidding, right? Mack hardly ever comes out with us. He’s always too busy writing songs in that creepy cabin in the woods.’

  Mack rolled his eyes. ‘Someone has to write the songs, and I don’t see you getting your finger out any day soon. And we don’t all need to live in an enormous McMansion, either. But yeah, it’s true. I don’t really go out a lot when we’re not gigging. I can’t remember the last time I ate at a restaurant. And the last time one of our roadies parked for me was when I had my hands full trying to sober this one up before we played …’ He paused. ‘Oh yeah, I did give my car to someone. It was just before we played last night’s gig. I had to carry Jasper in, so one of the roadies parked my car for me. When I got out my car was waiting for me. But I saw the roadie a few times over the night, so I doubt he’d have time to do anything … murdery.’

  ‘How long were you away from your car?’

  Mack looked thoughtful. ‘The gig ran about three hours. We did a lot of encores. It was in Swanks – they have a concert venue on the roof. There was a party in the bar afterwards, but I only hung around for about half an hour, then I drove home.’