Legally Red

by A. A. Albright

  Sure I could, I thought. But I’d always had a bit of a problem with increasing my size afterwards. Once, I’d wound up with one arm longer than the other until Wanda fixed it for me. But right now she was curled up asleep on the couch with the guy she didn’t know she loved, and there was no way I was interrupting that.

  One of the kids on Candace’s Nemo list might be useful around now but, unfortunately, I was going to have to go it alone. ‘I’ll use some scattering spells to spread the bushes a bit wider,’ I said resignedly. ‘It’s the only way I can think of.’

  ‘You could call the Wayfarers,’ Princess suggested.

  ‘I will if we find something. But if we don’t, and Miles hears about it …’ I walked towards the bushes. ‘… well, I’ll be demoted from testing coffee machines to grinding the beans with my feet. Come on. Let’s go see what’s in the middle of all this mess.’

  As I pushed away the fur-covered bramble branch that had just scratched me, it became clear that I needed a better plan. Or more suitable clothing. I hadn’t changed out of my black dress before I left, and now my legs and arms were full of thorns, needles and scrapes.

  But the fact that so many of the bushes did have fur on them told me that we were at least headed in the right direction, so I persevered.

  ‘Wolfie thinks we’re still a bit away,’ said Princess.

  The dog paused and looked at me. ‘You’re very slow,’ he said. ‘And your skin is getting all red and rashy.’

  Princess chewed her paw, looking thoughtful. ‘How about me and Wolfie move ahead a bit quicker? Wolfie’ll bark when we get there, and then you can use our witch-familiar connection to sense where I am. That way you’ll have something to travel towards when you click your fingers.’

  Now why couldn’t I have thought of that about half an hour ago? ‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘You two go ahead and I’ll stay here scratching at my nettle stings and bramble scratches while I wait.’

  ‘Or you could just magic yourself some cream from the bathroom at home,’ the cat called over her shoulder as she disappeared from my view.

  Yip, she really was the brains of this operation. A few minutes later, I was spreading some nice cooling lotion on my cuts and scrapes when I heard Wolfie bark. I tuned into Princess, then clicked my fingers and travelled to where they were.

  ≈

  I arrived in a small clearing, surrounded on three sides by growth. Yup, I said three sides. Very recently, someone had hacked an enormous trail through to the clearing. And because I was having the worst luck lately, they hadn’t done it from the end through which we entered. I really should have used one of my Ádh Stones.

  ‘I wish I knew the path had been cleared from the other side before I scratched myself to bits,’ I complained, looking around. I was right to think it had been cleared recently, because the cut marks were fresh and there was a strong smell of sap. Before that path was made, this whole clearing would have been completely hidden from the rest of the park – making it the perfect place for a romantic rendezvous.

  Wolfie’s nose was going wild, and I could see why. There were two beer bottles, and even some cigarette and cigar butts.

  I walked towards the rubbish. ‘So someone was drinking Rabid Wolf beer and having a smoke. Doesn’t sound possible for a wolf at full moon. It must have been whoever cut the path.’

  Wolfie nodded. ‘Two men came, but before that one of them was here alone, and it smells like he was angry and jealous. I met Decon before. I think it was him. And I met Goldie loads and loads of times, so I know that he wasn’t the one drinking the beer. He was over there.’ He nodded to a mossy spot a little further away. ‘With a woman. The other two drank the beer on a different night. Decon and some other man. A werewolf, but he was a man when he was here.’ He prodded one of the bottles of Rabid Wolf with his nose. ‘This one has Jinx in it, the other one doesn’t. Decon drank the one with the Jinx.’

  If there was Jinx in the bottle, then we were looking at the murder scene. The other werewolf confused me, though. It made sense for Decon to follow Nails’s trail during full moon. It sounded like he considered her his property even more than he did the ground beneath his padded feet. But why had he come back again after full moon – and why had he taken this mystery werewolf with him?

  They’d come back as humans, too. It was possible for werewolves and weredogs to turn outside of the moon if they were emotional enough, or if they simply put their minds to it – but it wasn’t wise. That fact alone told me that Decon and this other man had cool – and possibly calculating – heads when they came. They probably came as humans so Decon could show this guy what Nails and Goldie had been up to, so they could plan what to do about it. I guess it was kind of poetic justice – Decon probably came here to plan a murder, but wound up being murdered himself.

  I patted Wolfie on his huge head. ‘You’ve been a great help, sweetie. I can’t believe how much you can sniff out with that nose of yours. You deserve a biscuit when we get home.’

  He gave me a slobbery grin. ‘Can you magic me one now? A boney-shaped one. And a star-shaped one. And one of those ones that looks like a little house. I like the little houses.’

  He was cute as a big hairy button, and he really did deserve what he was asking for, but I couldn’t give it to him just now. ‘I think this is a murder scene, Wolfie, so it’s probably not a good idea to stay here any longer than we already have – but you can have all the biscuits you want when we get home.’

  His grin widened, and some of his drool landed on my arm. ‘Can we go home now, Melissa? Can we?’

  ‘In a few minutes,’ I promised him, pulling out my phone. ‘Before we do, I’m going to call the Wayfarers.’

  13. A Flexible Approach

  It had pained me to disturb Wanda and Max, but I had no choice. Right now, Wanda was at the scene with Finn and the rest of the team from Major Crimes, while Max had gone out too – probably to report what he knew to Rover. Wolfie had gone with Max (after an enormous bowl of treats, naturally), and Princess and Dizzy were fast asleep at home.

  As for me? Well, I knew that I should let Miles in on what I found. But his dratted hand of interruption would just have to wait a while longer, because there was something I was determined to do before he fired me.

  I got the latest coordinates for Witchfield from Wanda, and magicked myself there. When I arrived, Walt was on guard duty again, so I gave him my biggest eyes and asked, ‘I don’t suppose you could let me in to see Goldie, could you?’

  While I talked to him, he was neatly pressing flowers between the pages of a book and labelling them with a careful hand.

  ‘No can do, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it’s almost September, can you? Don’t you love the late summer flowers?’

  ‘I do, Walt. I really do love those late summer flowers. But I love speaking to my client even more.’

  ‘Melissa, you’re not on the list,’ he said, softly closing his book. ‘No one is. Goldie’s asked not to talk to anyone until his plea hearing tomorrow. And even if I were going to let in the nice young lady who’s doing her best to make her green eyes look as big and round as possible, I don’t think it’d go well. It’s five a.m. Melissa. And you’ve got leaves in your hair. Oh, and a nice late bramble flower. Wow, they’ve usually all berried long before now.’

  I pulled the flower from my hair. ‘For you to press inside your book,’ I said, smiling sweetly. ‘And I know Goldie thinks he doesn’t want to see anyone, but that’s just because he doesn’t know what I have to tell him. Please, Walt – this really is important.’

  He sighed wearily, but then gave me a smile. It was a bit of a dubious smile, but I’d take anything right now. ‘Fine. I’ll have to supervise, though. He’s doing some yoga in his cell at the moment.’

  ≈

  While Walt kept a careful watch on things, I approached Goldie’s cell to find him in a very precarious headstand. He looked like he was about to topple at any minute, so I gently readju
sted him and gave him some tips.

  He glanced at me. ‘It feels a lot better this way,’ he said, his voice slightly strained due to the fact he was upside down. ‘And I’m very grateful for your helping me improve my pose, Witchy-Sue. But I’m not grateful for the fact that you’re interrupting my practice in the first place. I’ve told you already – I’m guilty. End of discussion.’

  I shrugged off my shoes and started some sun salutations alongside him. ‘Fine. But I’m missing my own yoga class so I could come here, so I’m just going to work out next to you. I’ll keep talking while I do, maybe even give you some more yoga tips – I took a teacher training class this summer – so you can either listen or go do your yoga in the gym with the others.’

  He grunted. ‘They only lift weights in there. They slag me off for doing yoga.’ He looked at me. ‘How are you doing that jumping back thingy?’

  I slowed down, showing him what I was doing. ‘Ooh,’ he said. ‘That feels good. Gives the whole thing a bit more flow.’

  ‘It does,’ I agreed. ‘So … I went to see Nails yesterday.’

  ‘I have no idea who that is.’

  ‘Yes you do. Nails is many things – the murder victim’s widow, your former lover, a woman who can knock back a pint of Wolfbite in under a second – but she is not, in my opinion, a murderer. So if you’re pleading guilty because you think she did it, then you seriously need to reassess the matter.’

  He paused, his face draining. ‘She … I …’

  ‘She had every reason to want to kill her husband. For even more reasons than you know. Did you know, for instance, that the whole reason she married him was because he threatened to kill you otherwise?’

  Goldie blinked, but worked his way into an admirable back bend all the same.

  ‘Speaking gets a little harder the more the moon takes hold, doesn’t it? So all you knew when you met each other last full moon was that you still felt the same. And that was enough for you, wasn’t it? You loved her, so the second you heard about the murder you thought it was her. You handed yourself in to protect her from jail.’

  ‘I love her even now,’ he said. ‘And I’ll keep on lying, if that’s what it takes. Because it must have been her. I went back to our meeting spot the next day, just … I dunno … to think about her. To remember. But when I got there, I smelled Decon all over the place. I think he followed us that night and saw us together. I think he came down hard on Nails because of it, and she killed him. She had to, because if she didn’t, he would have killed her. That’s the sort of man he was.’

  ‘Probably,’ I conceded. ‘He might have even been planning to kill her – and you – for all we know. But Nails really didn’t kill her husband. She thought you did it. For her. So you need to plead innocent tomorrow, Goldie. Take back your false confession. Because whoever did kill Decon is still out there. And the Wayfarers won’t be able to hunt him down if they think they’ve already got the killer in jail, now will they?’

  He flopped to the ground, looking thoughtful. ‘No. I don’t suppose they will.’

  ≈

  Pleased as I was that I’d gotten somewhere with Goldie, it seemed like it might be time to fill Miles in on what was happening. He was supposed to be Goldie’s lawyer, after all.

  I stopped at home to shower, change, and eat an enormous breakfast, and then I headed to Miles’s office at the Wyrd Court. He wasn’t there, and he wasn’t answering his phone either. But he had written out a list of everything he’d told me to do the night before, just in case I forgot. He’d even written ‘Do these tasks and nothing else’ at the bottom of the list. How nice of him to remind me that he was the master of my misery.

  As the morning wore on I grew anxious because he still hadn’t been in touch. If he’d heard what was happening with the murder case from someone else, he sure hadn’t called to tell me about it. I tried phoning him a few more times, but to no avail.

  Maybe he’d decided to forget who I was as well. But not everyone was pretending I didn’t exist. I was just done with collecting Miles’s outfit from Suits Without Sorcery when Wanda called.

  ‘Thanks for the heads-up on the scene,’ she said. ‘We’ve just finished over there now. Wow, it seems like it’s definitely true about Goldie and Nails. He was only confessing because he thought she did it. So romantic. It almost turned out as tragic as Romeo and Juliet, mind you.’

  I scratched my head. Wanda had spent a long time living in the human world, and she was often making references I didn’t understand. ‘I have no idea who that is. Anyway, what did you find?’

  ‘Well, firstly I found that you, Wolfie and Princess are very good at not contaminating murder scenes, so thanks for that. Secondly, we’ve matched Decon Phelan to one of the cigarette butts and one of the bottles of beer. Wolfie was spot on about which bottle had the Jinx mixed in, too.’

  Clever dog. ‘And what about the other bottle and the cigar butts?’

  ‘We’re testing them against Goldie and Nails right now.’

  ‘But neither of them did it,’ I argued. ‘And Wolfie said they weren’t the ones drinking and smoking. Decon brought another man back with him again, after he spied on Goldie and Nails there at full moon. That’s why they hacked that trail through the bushes. Because when he came back with this mysterious friend of his, they couldn’t get through in their human form. That thicket is really thick.’

  ‘I know. I saw the state of your arms and legs. But super-thick thickets aside, we have to test Goldie and Nails so we can eliminate them. We are searching our database for any other DNA match, but it’s not looking good.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘This person was never going to be easy to find, Melissa. You know what the Lupin Lane pack are like. They’re all dodgy as anything. We don’t even know how many members there are. It’s going to be a nightmare to try and go through them all. If it even was one of them. It could have been a member of a rival pack.’

  ‘I doubt it. Decon wouldn’t have been drinking with a rival, would he? I think it had to be someone he knew really well. Someone he trusted enough to bring him to where Nails and Goldie had their little, ahem, tryst. Maybe someone he was forming a revenge plot with. Someone close, like a brother or a right hand man. Maybe the beta of the pack.’

  There was a beat of silence. ‘Hey, Melissa,’ she said eventually. ‘You know Finn’s going to need to fill my position when I go off to college in a few weeks? Did you ever think about it? Y’know – getting back into the old crime-solving caper.’

  I sighed. ‘Wanda, that’s all I think about these days. But for now I’ve got to go. I’ve got an awful lot of completely unimportant things to do before Candace’s emancipation hearing.’

  14. Mother Dearest

  One of those important things was eating my second breakfast of the day. And then eating some more. And then a little bit more, seeing as my stomach was still growling.

  As I stared at myself in the mirror of the Hungry Hippy’s toilets (after two plates of tofu scramble and three blueberry muffins) I lifted up my shirt and looked at my belly. It wasn’t just flat. It was concaved. My hip bones were jutting out, too.

  How was this possible when I was eating around the clock? I redid my facial glamours (because once again I was looking like death warmed up) and decided that it was time to go and get those vitamins.

  I headed to Aherne’s Apothecary. The apothecary was in Healer’s Hollow, one of the many streets in the Warren Lane enclave (because Warren Lane wasn’t so much of a lane as it was a warren of lanes). As I looked through the shelf labelled Elixirs, I realised I hadn’t got a clue what I was looking for. Most of the potions, pills and powers had specific applications, although there was one called Ye General Health and Healing Tonic that I thought might do the trick.

  I didn’t want to ask the owners, partly because my coven had sent their daughter to prison for murder last Halloween (the magical world was a small one – and apparently a bloodthirsty one, too) but also because
I was afraid they’d be sensible and tell me I needed to go and see a healer.

  So I left Aherne’s and went to a human-run pharmacy on Grafton Street instead, where I bought myself a tub of multivitamins and hoped for the best. If you’re wondering why I was being such an idiot about this, well, I’m with you. I didn’t know why I was avoiding seeing a healer when it was clearly becoming necessary. I’d never been afraid of going to see our family healer for check-ups before. She even had lollipops. But something about my hunger felt personal – private even. It felt like something I didn’t want anyone to discover.

  ≈

  It was noon when I arrived at Candace’s house in Riddler’s Cove. It was a large house on the posh side of town. But even if I didn’t have the address, I would have known it by the sound of screeching from within.

  The front door was ajar, and I pushed it open to find Candace and her mother in the full flow of a vicious row.

  ‘You’re a coward!’ Candace screamed, tears rushing down her face. ‘A coward, Mother dearest.’

  ‘It’s called survival instinct!’ her mother screeched back. She was over by a safe in the wall, packing as many coins as she could into her handbag. There was a large suitcase a few feet away.

  ‘Mrs Plimpton,’ I said, moving towards her. ‘What are you doing? Because it looks to me like you might be planning on doing a runner.’

  She glared at me. ‘Why if it isn’t Melissa Wayfair. I’ve had enough of you and your do-gooder coven. First, Wanda puts the best employer I ever had into Witchfield and gets her murdered, and now you’re trying to turn my daughter against me so she can send me to the same place.’

  Candace shot her mother a look that was half disgusted, half disappointed. ‘Getting emancipated from you and Dad was no one’s idea but mine. The Wayfairs had nothing to do with it. And your old boss got sent down because she was a criminal. Just like you are, for helping her cook her books all those years. Not to mention helping her keep Aengus Wayfair secretly locked away.’