by J L Collins
“Why are we here again?” Ash asked.
“Something just occurred to me about Cosmo and I need to talk to him. It’s a long-shot, but it won’t hurt to ask him,” I said, not bothering to say a word as I let us inside. I didn’t know where everyone had cleared out to, but apparently the house was a ghost town on Sunday afternoons.
“Do I have to guess what you’re going on about?”
I rolled my eyes and paused to explain. “Helio spilled a drink on Cosmo, right? There are three possibilities here. He did it on purpose, potentially knowing that the drink was drugged, whether by his own hand or not. Or he didn’t do it on purpose and the drink was drugged by someone else, and he managed to avoid getting drugged,” I said, waiting for him to catch up.
He stared at me. “And the third possibility?”
“I’m just grasping at straws and neither of those things happened, because the drink Helio spilled on Cosmo wasn’t drugged. But I think it might have been. It just feels like there was too much of a connection with the drugged fairies and Helio falling to his death,” I whispered as a fairy in a beanie hovered past us, kicking around a hacky-sack.
You could practically see the gears slowing to a stop in his head. “What evidence would point to Helio’s drink being drugged, though?”
There was something oddly satisfying in having to point Ash in the right direction. “It’s what Cosmo said about going to stay the night with Moira. He mentioned that he passed out at her place and then she couldn’t get him to wake up until the next night. That’s a little weird, right? That he slept an entire day away? I mean yes, he was drinking but still.”
There went the lightbulb in his head. “You think when Helio spilled the drink on him, it was drugged and that the drug worked but just not as strong as it would have if he ingested it instead of it just soaking into his skin. And now you think he will somehow still have the same shirt, unwashed, for you to test. Sorry, for me to test.”
“You’re cute when you catch on. Like I said, it’s a long-shot.”
“That’s a very long-shot,” he muttered, gesturing for me to go ahead. “After you.”
After tracking down his room, I knocked on the door. The relief I felt when he was the one to answer was short-lived. Just past him I could see a frizzy blonde girl sitting on his bed with a frown on her face.
“Sorry to interrupt you,” I said, trying to improvise just like Goldie had. “I was here with the owl before? My friend and I are looking into what might have been an attempt to drug fairies at the rush party. We think someone might have tried to drug you, too.”
Cosmo’s slightly unfocused eyes narrowed at me. “What? Why? Why would you think someone tried to roofie me?”
“Coco, forget about that lady and come back here. I wasn’t done studying with you,” the girl on the bed crooned, peeking around to see what was going on.
Cosmo waved her off. “Hold it, Dandy. I’ll be back with you shortly. Now,” he said, holding his door open wider to reveal what I considered a pigsty, “what is this mess about someone drugging people?”
Without giving too much away, I went over a very light account of what might have happened the night of the rush party. Cosmo seemed to follow along well enough.
“You saying Rumpleroot might be behind this? Because I could see it.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes at his obvious bias. “I’m saying we’re not sure. It would be helpful to know if the drink he spilled on you was in fact drugged. It would probably explain why you passed out that night at… your room and didn’t wake up until the next night.”
“Are you trying to say he got roofied?” the girl said as she came up behind him, smacking her gum.
“Not now, Dandy! Look, why don’t you come back later? I got important stuff to discuss with this chick and I’m not in the mood to—”
But Dandy was done being patient and snatched her purse and flipped him off as she shoved past us. Cosmo blinked, but didn’t seem at all concerned.
I was pretty sure it wasn’t my imagination that Ash chuckled beside me.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” I said, doing my hardest not to make a face as Cosmo let us further into his room. “If we could just test the clothes you were wearing the night of the party, we might be able to test for the drug. Maybe. I know it was a couple of weeks ago…”
Ash cleared his throat and gestured to the random piles of clothes and other garbage lying around the room. “Do you know what you were wearing that night?”
“Uh. I mean, I think I remember. I don’t know. I’ll check, I guess.”
I immediately spun around, nervous as he started kicking things around on the floor. I could just make out his movements from the corner of my eye. Who knew what he’d unveil? I sure as heck wasn’t about to be witness to it.
With a grunt, Cosmo grabbed something green and black and lifted to his nose to smell it, before tossing it to Ash.
I glanced over my shoulder at him and saw his usual calm demeanor crack just enough to reveal a surprised disgust, before his expression smoothed back over.
“That’s it. I think,” Cosmo said, letting out an equally disgusting burp. You’d think college guys would mature fast enough to meet the standards of their female counterparts, but it was my experience that that wasn’t usually the case. And Cosmo was proof of that.
I casually turned around, pretending I was adjusting my bag, and did a quick sweep of the room. Cosmo was definitely a slob, but there were things you could tell he cared enough about to keep them somewhat organized. A few top-notch pool cues stood upright in a polished rack that hung on the wall. Trophies for competitive swimming collected dust on a shelf. Many hair products sat out in a line from shortest to tallest on his dresser… I paused, looking closely at them. There was some kind of large, goopy jar without a label, barely tucked out of the way behind the rest of them.
I nudged Ash, carefully nodding my chin in the direction of it when someone pointedly cleared their throat behind us.
The doorway of Cosmo’s room was suddenly full of Chief Putnam.
Neither of us had the chance to say anything before he pushed his short and round self past us. “Cosmo Greyclover. I see we’ve interrupted you entertaining some friends.” His gaze landed on me and Ash for a moment, his watery eyes narrowing.
“Sorry, chief, I was just on my way to class…” Cosmo said, evading Chief Putnam.
But the chief let out a humorless chuckle and shook his head. His arm shot out to block Cosmo from passing. “Sorry, son, but we’ve already looked into your schedule. You’re as free as a bird right now. Or, well, you were.”
He held up an official-looking document close to his face. “This is our warrant to search your property, signed on behalf of the Special Council. You need to stay put. And get these two out of here,” Chief Putnam said out of the corner of his mouth, his thick mustache twitching.
Two vampire police officers made to escort us out, but I threw up my arms. “We’re going, we’re going!” I had no problem with vampires, but I wasn’t keen on people putting their hands on me.
Ash placed his hand on my arm and took us right outside the camper in a flash, wincing as he saw my face. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”
I pursed my lips. “Mmhm. You grabbed the shirt, right?”
He held up the reeking t-shirt. “Got it.”
At least one good thing came out of the visit.
“I’ll work on it tonight and I’ll let you know what I find tomorrow morning,” he said, casting a sidewards glance at me.
I nodded and placed my now freezing hand on the outside of the camper. “You know where to find me.”
15
If It Helps
With a whole slew of notes stuck to my desk the second I walked into the Gazette, I was busy the entire morning. I hardly even had the chance to look up from my screen as I followed up on potential stories that had come in over the weekend.
Word got out that Cosmo had been arr
ested, so Drusilla had come in early, even beating Henny. She'd left me notes all about what she’d heard—that the jar of the very same adhesive found on Helio’s wings had been found in Cosmo’s room, and that some very vivid texts between Moira and Cosmo were found on his phone. It gave the police both the evidence and the motive they needed to make the arrest.
Neither of these things surprised me. And I had witnessed the jar myself.
By the time Goldie swooped inside the newsroom, I couldn’t see my desk through the pile of discarded post-its and legal pads filled with follow-up notes.
“Please tell me you heard from Ash,” I said, suddenly remembering that yes, there was something else I was working on outside of chasing down advertisers for spots in the paper.
She gave me a yes with a short, clipped hoot and looked around. Satisfied that I was the only one in the room, she leaned in. “And guess what? You were right on the money—we got lucky and not only was that the shirt that Cosmo must have been wearing that night, but the sleeping compounds tested positive. Before you even ask,” she said, holding her wing up as I opened my mouth, “we know it was the same shirt because I happened to run into Moira while I was out yesterday delivering messages.”
My eyes went wide as I listened to Goldie’s run-in with Helio’s younger sister.
“She even showed me a picture she’d taken that night on her phone when he came over. It was blurry but I could see his shirt and when I went to the library, I saw it was that exact same shirt. So we know it was the shirt from that night.”
It seemed likely to me that Cosmo had it right when he tossed it to me, but Ash had a point about Cosmo also being drunk that night. On top of being pretty dense.
I gestured for her to hurry up before anyone came back into the room. Quicksilver was out on assignment with Drusilla working on what I thought to be a rather ridiculous assignment, but one she insisted the residents of Charming Springs would like to read about.
“Tell me about Moira before Drusilla and Quicksilver get back. They have the riveting honor of interviewing Stan and Stacey Kellerman at the Kellerman nursery about the effects of the winter freeze. Not the effects on their vegetation and plants or anything else important like that, but on their pet ducks who live in the nursery. Apparently, the ducks are refusing their heated blankets and the Kellermans are concerned that the ducks are depressed.”
“Hey, we avian creatures have feelings too, you know.” She folded her large wings and regarded me with narrowed gold eyes.
“Yes, I realize that. But you don’t see me writing an article about your feelings on the taste differences between rabbit and lemming, do you?”
She shrugged. “Point taken. Getting to Moira, as you wish.”
Outside of being a grieving sister and harried college freshman who wasn’t allowed to live in the dorms, Moira sounded pretty average. Goldie had asked her about the last time she'd seen her brother, and she had told her not since the day before the party. He’d seemed normal enough to her, and Goldie reported that Moira too, had a bad feeling that someone did this to Helio and that he had not committed suicide as people were speculating.
“She was fiercely protective over him. When I asked her if she thought he might have somehow accidentally fallen off the clock-tower, she scoffed at the idea and asked me why someone would put glue on their own wings if they’re going to jump off something high. Honestly Indie, she made sense. And then I asked her about Cosmo and she was a lot more private about that situation. They’re not exactly dating. I believe her words were ‘we’re just having fun.’” Goldie pretended to hack up an owl pellet until I had no choice but to tell her to knock it off.
“She showed me the picture of him and told me she knows it always made Helio mad when she went to hang out with Cosmo. If you ask me, she sounded pretty regretful about the whole thing.”
Sifting through the papers, I flipped to a fresh page on one of the legal pads and grabbed my pencil. “Well, we can check Moira off. Your closing thoughts on her? Did she seem like she was avoiding talking about any of it?”
Goldie shook her head. “She was pretty straight-forward.”
I wrote down what she’d told me in a bulleted list and re-read it once more. “Okay. And Amortencia? Did she have anything she wanted to tell me?” Honestly, I’d been hoping that she did, even though meeting in the middle of the night instead of sleeping sounded not at all like my version of fun.
“Nope. She took your letter and read it. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Ugh. Not the answer I was hoping for. Guess I’ll have to wait on that.” All I could do was hope that if Amortencia had something to share, she’d do it. No news on her end was hopefully good news.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s already one o’clock? How the heck did I miss lunch time?” My stomach rumbled as if to prove my point. “Do you want to have some lunch with me?”
She shook her head but had the decency to look regretful. “I can’t. Duty calls. But I might come by for dinner if you feel like leaving out some raw chicken thighs for me.”
“We’re eating at six. Don’t be late.”
Goldie laughed and took off with a wink, leaving me alone with the mountain of notes and a fuzzy headache coming on.
Later, I laid in bed after filling up on roast chicken and a new tofu type of food matter. After a couple of months of experimenting with foods that would help residents grow hardy enough to face the cold, fairies were now selling what they called Snofu by the bucketful.
Even on a full stomach, I found it was near impossible to relax enough to fall asleep.
With Cosmo arrested for Helio’s death, Fatima was off the hook. I could focus solely on the sleeping sickness on behalf of Amortencia, as she asked.
It sat oddly in my stomach, that idea. It made sense, I guess. Cosmo definitely had a problem with Helio—he had made that perfectly clear. With Cosmo hooking up with Helio’s younger sister, I could see why Helio would have an issue with him, too.
But then on the other hand, I could see how Helio might be implicated in drugging the fairy students. He spilled that drink on Cosmo, most likely on purpose. He had a lot of connections so the sleeping drug might not have been something he necessarily made himself… but what would’ve been the purpose?
Trying to connect the dots between the sleeping illness and his death felt like catching water in a sieve. I could see how these two things could happen separately, but not at the same time. The adhesive on his wings was what really tripped me up. Neither his grandmother nor his sister thought he would’ve done something like that himself.
Staring up at the ceiling of the camper, I folded my arms behind my head and listened to a solitary wolf howl somewhere in the woods not far from the Gazette. Even with the lights off and the place quiet, everything felt loud in my head.
Something felt too convenient about this.
If there was one thing I’d learned, it was to pay attention to the things that felt like they tested your instinct.
And I was wrestling with mine now.
How do you carefully pick the right time to approach the topic of someone’s best friend dying with them? If you’re like me, you don’t.
Quicksilver was in and out of the newsroom for the most part, keeping busy by helping us pick the right photos out of hundreds of shots for the newer columns. He went back and forth from Drusilla’s desk to his own little corner, noticeably hovering around her more than before. It seemed like someone might have finally picked up on Drusilla’s signals.
But none of that helped me.
I waited until Drusilla headed into the break room to pull Quicksilver aside. “I loved that shot you got of the hot spring’s bubbling surface. Seriously good stuff.”
“Oh. Thanks, Indie.” He shuffled from one foot to the next, his smile hanging. “Did you need something, or…?”
I sighed. “Yeah, actually I do. I wanted to see if I could talk to you for a few minutes about Helio.” I debated
whether to give him the option of passing on it.
It was like watching all the air go out of him, the way he slumped. “Okay.”
“Okay. We can go sit over at my desk.”
His footfalls were heavy as he followed me. The guilt started to well up inside of me when I took a seat. This poor kid.
“I won’t take too much of your time. I know how painful it is to talk about him. Listen, I’ll be honest with you. You and I both know something weird happened, and it doesn’t take someone as smart as you to figure that out. I’m just trying to put together what happened that night and I realized I didn’t ask if you were there at the party. You weren’t, were you?”
To my utter surprise, Quicksilver nodded. “Yeah, Helio basically nagged me to come with him. I’m not part of Lunar Kappa Delta, so I wasn’t automatically invited, and parties aren’t my scene. But it was rush and he wanted me to add more bodies to it to make it look better, I guess. So I told him I’d come.”
“All right, so you were there. Did you notice anything off about Helio? I’m sure you knew him well enough to tell.”
Quicksilver fiddled with one of the pens, rolling it back and forth. “He was intoxicated, but that’s not out of the ordinary for him at one of their frat parties.”
“Okay. Were you around him much?”
“He was all over the place doing his rush hosting duties for a while. By the time I caught back up with him, he was already slurring. He went over to the game room to play pool with a couple of the freshman wanting into LKD.” He sighed. “That’s how the whole altercation with Cosmo Greyclover came about.”
Ah. As Nan would say, now we’re cooking with peanut oil.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me how that went down?”
Quicksilver winced but continued anyway. “Might as well, if it helps. Cosmo was talking to a girl that looked a lot like Moira—you know, Helio’s sister. But it wasn’t her, and Helio noticed when Cosmo and the girl came into the game room to watch the pool game. It was crowded in there and I told Helio I was going to go ahead and leave. I had a metaphysic magic identification test to study for that week. Which thankfully, the professor put off… anyway. He told me he’d see me in class and I started to walk out of the room. I didn’t exactly see Helio spill the drink on Cosmo when he walked past, but it’s safe to say he did it on purpose. Cosmo didn’t like that and took the pool stick Helio was using and broke it in half.”