by R K Dreaming
She did not know whether it was the thought of the Sentinel Alliance or the Eldritch Council that made the big man turn pale.
“I’ve told them everything I had to say,” he said in a querulous voice.
“We clearly don’t believe you,” said Percy, crossing her arms over her chest. “You really need to convince me.”
He glared, and slammed his palms down on the counter. “It’s true that those three, the teacher lady, and that lumpy faced boy, and that pretty succubus girl came into this shop. I gave them tarot readings. They were desperate for their silly little problems to be fixed, so I gave them a bunch of other stuff too.”
“Potions?” said Percy.
He nodded grudgingly, and added. “But they readily bought them despite my warnings that they may or may not work for them. I as much as told them the stuff wasn’t real!”
Nan glared at him. “We don’t care that you sold a Humble and underage children fake magical items, because fake magical items aren’t illegal. Only real magical items are illegal.”
“Exactly!” he said, seizing on this ray of hope.
“So you won’t mind telling us what they said to you and exactly what you sold to them,” said Percy.
He launched into a spiel. “That teacher lady was off her rocker. Very upset about her husband cheating on her and all sorts of things. She had left him. Miserable, she was. I gave her a card reading that told her she would meet the love of her life soon, but she would have to work at it a little bit otherwise it wouldn’t happen. And she readily bought the mumbo-jumbo love potion that I sold to her. She was so happy to get it, so I don’t see what the problem was. She needed a little bit of a confidence booster if you ask me. They call it the placebo effect!”
Nan looked offended at hearing Mrs Delancey spoken about this way, even though Nan had not thought very much of Mrs Delancey herself.
Before Nan could chide the man, Percy quickly interrupted.
“And what about the lumpy faced boy as you called him? He had a name, you know. Frank —“”
“Frankenstein.” The Fabulous Floriano sniggered. “Yeah, he told me. With a face like that, what did he expect? I told him success was just around the corner, if only he would open up and embrace it. You should’ve seen how excited he got, the blithering barnacle. With a face like that, success was hardly going to drop into his lap, but what was the point of telling him that? I gave him a couple of potions to put on his skin, and told him that if he was diligent enough and believed hard enough, maybe it would work for him. The fool actually believed it.”
Percy glared, offended at the man’s casual cruelty. He seemed to be glorying in his customer’s misfortunes. But she had better sense than to tell him off. If this was what all of the decades of his life had made him into, a few words from her weren’t going to change him. He probably looked at her and saw a teenage brat. She was fully aware of this fact.
“And the other one? The succubus girl, Delphine?” she demanded.
“Her,” said the Fabulous Floriano scathingly. “She was the worst of the lot. Good-looking girl, but what a miserable wreck. Imagine sinking into depression just because you’re the worst looking of the beautiful bunch. It’s pathetic. She wanted some love potion too for some poor lad she was desperately running after. And some Perk-Me-Up potion, and something to make her hair shinier, and her skin glow. It was endless with her. As if being a succubus wasn’t enough already! I will never understand beautiful people.”
His lip curled, and he shot Percy and Nan disgusted looks, as if they were both to blame for the problems of the world.
“And you’re saying every potion you gave them was a fake?” Percy asked. “Don’t lie to me. I full well know that you’re a real wizard.”
She did not know this for sure.
“So what if I am?” he sulked. “Selling fake magic isn’t a crime. Only selling real magic to Humbles is a crime. And you can’t prove that I did that.”
“Selling magic without a license to eldritch people who don’t have permits for it is also a crime,” said Nan.
He glared at her. “Didn’t I just say I haven’t been selling real magic?”
“I don’t believe you,” said Nan.
“I don’t believe you either,” said Percy. “Prove it. Let us take a look around your back room over there.”
The look on his face turned ugly. “I’ll tell you what I told the other two. You can’t come in here and look through my things without a warrant! Now get out!”
He looked like he might turn violent at any moment, and his hand had slipped into his pocket where Percy was pretty sure he kept a wand.
He did not take it out though. His eyes were fixed on Nan, whose hand had also slipped into her pocket, and who wasn’t bothering to hide the tip of her wand.
His tightly clenched jaw and shifty eyes told Percy he wasn’t very confident in his own magic. It must have been why he had become such a repulsive charlatan.
Percy needed to see those darn potion bottles. She needed to see the cloud of doom with her own eyes.
Sensing his nervousness, Percy pressed ahead. “You’ve already admitted you sold the potions to the customers who have died and been seriously hurt. You might as well hand one over.”
“I will not,” he snapped. “You have no right!”
Percy waved her wad of twenties in front of him. “I’ll pay the price you asked for them,” she said.
“Get out,” he said through gritted teeth.
Percy was beginning to get angry. She was not leaving here with nothing!
“We have reason to believe that the fake potions you sold had a toxic ingredient in. Did you know that? You’ve been buying illegal goods from the Magicwild Market and selling them to helpless people who haven’t a clue that it’s going to make them sick, haven’t you? Was it deliberate? You seem to hate your customers. Is that true? Do you hate them?”
He exploded. “They were sick to begin with anyway!” he snarled. “Sick in their minds. They deserved to die. Pathetic, every last one of them. Giving them something to end it would have been a mercy over the miserable ways they ended up going. Those pathetic cretins. Bringing trouble to my shop, when I’ve worked so hard for my reputation. Trying to ruin me! Well I didn’t do nuffink, like I told those other two. NOW WILL YOU GET OUT OF MY SHOP!”
She stared back at him furiously. His face had turned so red it was almost purple.
“Percy,” said Nan quietly. She started tugging the back of Percy’s jacket.
But Percy refused to budge. It was him. It had to be him, and yet she had no proof. She had to be sure.
She wanted him to bring his wand out. He had to attack first to give Nan an excuse to stun him. They could claim he’d attacked them first. Percy wasn’t scared. She knew Nan could knock him out in a flash. And then they could go get some of that potion.
So Percy wound him up some more.
“You’ve as good as admitted you wanted to harm those people. Well I’ve got good news for you buddy. That gives you a motive. That makes you a suspect. That—”
Suddenly she stopped speaking. She took two hasty steps back from him, and heard Nan heave a sigh of relief behind her.
But she hadn’t done it for the reason that Nan thought. It wasn’t fear of violence that had stopped her. Percy had seen exactly what she needed to see.
A little grey kitten had crawled out from beneath the shabby curtain that led to the back room. It was scrawny, and looked exactly like Lucky kitten, except for the fact that the tip of its tail was black.
And most importantly, it had a hazy black cloud surrounding it.
That cloud was exactly like the cloud of doom around Lucky kitten when Percy had found her. This really was the shop. This was the place and this was the guy! And now Percy knew it.
14. Felix Fiori
Percy marched out of the shop, trembling with elation. She hustled Nan out in front of her just in case the cowardly wizard decided to take a parting sho
t at their backs.
As soon as the door had shut behind them, she whirled towards Nan, her face alight with excitement.
“It was him!” she said, her voice squeaky with excitement.
Nan looked thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about? What was him? He might have confessed to being a hateful git, but he only told us exactly what Octavia and Felix said he would tell us. Nothing new.”
Percy grabbed Nan by the shoulders and shook her in excitement.
“He was hiding something!” she said. “Didn’t you see the kitten that came out of the back room? It looked exactly like Lucky kitten. And it had the same cloud of doom that Lucky kitten had when I first found her under Mrs Delancey’s desk!
Nan sputtered, looking at Percy in dismay as if Percy had lost her mind. “That doesn’t prove anything,” she said.
Percy bounced up and down. “It means everything. Now that I’ve seen the cloud of doom here, it means the Fabulously Faux Floriano has something to hide. He admitted the potions were fake, so why did he get really angry when we insisted on seeing them for ourselves? Why did he refuse to sell them to me even for a wad of cash? Any decent con merchant would’ve happily sold his fakes and gone laughing to the bank. But Floriano in there is hiding something, and he’s desperate for us not to find out. Do know what this means?”
Nan closed her eyes as if she was praying to the heavens above for guidance. She nodded. “It means that you won’t stop until you’ve snuck in there in the middle of the night and landed in a whole heap of new trouble.”
“Something like that,” said Percy thoughtfully, beginning to pace. “But a sneaky guy like him might have all sorts of protections up in there. And I don’t really wanna go through that. He’ll probably catch me at it, then I’ll be done for breaking and entering. It’s the last thing I need.”
“At least you’ve got enough sense to see that,” said Nan with a sigh of relief.
“It means I have to think of some other way in,” said Percy.
Nan groaned. “You can leave me out of it. This wild goose chase of yours is never going to end.”
“Because it’s got gold at the end of it!” said Percy with a grin.
“I think you mean a leprechaun’s rainbow.”
“Now that’s what I call a wild goose chase.”
Nan stamped her foot. “I wish you would listen to me for once. First you have to go sneaking around Mrs Delancey’s house, and now you want to go sneaking around the magic shop. Percy, you are already in huge trouble. Can’t you see you’re making it worse? It’s like you want to as well, like you’re excited about it.” Nan’s voice had risen with distress.
“Don’t get upset!” said Percy.
“I’m not getting upset. I’m just trying to say that if you do get done for this attempted murder, your mum is not going to be able to sweep in and save you! No one will! They’ll take you away!”
“You think I’m acting out?” said Percy hotly. “You think this is a cry for attention?”
“I don’t know,” wailed Nan.
Percy’s anger died down a little. The implication she was being silly was offensive, but Nan was genuinely upset. Her eyes were shining as if two fat tears might pop out at any moment.
So Percy took a deep breath to calm herself down.
“I don’t need her to save me,” she said. “I can do it myself. Don’t you want me to? Someone has already murdered two people and tried to murder a third, and that person is walking around out there, free to do it again. And it could be him.” She pointed back in the direction of the magic shop.
Nan bit her lip and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. She looked miserable.
“You goaded him,” she whispered. “If he’d used his wand… Who knows what he could have done to us?”
“But you had your wand too,” Percy said defensively.
“And I’m still learning how to use it!”
“Okay, I won’t do it again. I just thought you could handle it.”
“You have no idea what I can and can’t handle.”
“I already said I wouldn’t do it again!”
“At least that’s something,” Nan grumbled.
“He’s as good as said that he hates his customers,” Percy persisted. “He wants them to die. So it’s got to be one of two things that happened. One, he put that toxic stuff in the potions on purpose to kill them—”
“If you mean to magically kill them, my mum already found that Mrs D’s potion wasn’t real magic,” protested Nan. “The potion wasn’t what killed her!”
“Which brings me onto the second thing. What if he didn’t mean to put anything toxic into the potions, and what if…” Percy gesticulated wildly. “What if he realized too late it might harm them and he was worried that they’d get him into trouble? And then he thought killing the people he sold them to was the only way to hush it up?”
“It’s just a wild theory.”
“What if it’s not? Think how many more customers he has in our school. Vulnerable students that he can manipulate, because they’re so desperate for some magic!”
“They could get it from other places. In legitimate ways…”
“They can’t. You’re a witch so you don’t know how it feels. Humbles can never get magic legitimately. Never ever. And you think eldritch kids are going to get council permits? The council would laugh in their faces! Kid’s would do anything for magic. You heard him. The only thing he cares about is money. If he thought someone wanted to ruin his business, then he might have done it.”
Nan had stared at Percy throughout this whole speech. Now she sighed. “We both need a night to think about this,” she said tiredly. “I promised mum not to be late for dinner, so I’d better go.”
She started walking in the direction of the tube station. When Percy didn’t follow, she said, “Are you coming or not?”
“I’m going to walk for a bit,” said Percy. “I need to think.”
“Tell me you’re not going to go back there tonight?”
“No way in hell. He’s probably in there booby trapping the place. Do I look mental?”
Nan grinned. “A little bit,” she threw over her shoulder as she walked away.
Percy laughed. Despite Nan’s doubts, Percy was full of a wild excitement. The thrill of the chase. She was on the right track and she knew it.
She patted lucky kitten in her pocket and the kitten purred approvingly, as if she agreed.
Percy headed in the direction of Oxford Street, a very busy Humble shopping street. It led all the way west towards home.
London’s giant sycamore trees had begun to shed their leaves at this time of year and she skipped along, crunching them underfoot as she went.
And yet as Percy walked, her balloon of certainty wilted. She couldn’t help remembering the doubt in Nan’s eyes. Nan was going to pick lots of holes in Percy’s theories tomorrow.
Did Percy only believe Floriano was the one because she was so desperate for it to be true? Because without Floriano, Percy went straight back to the top of the council’s suspect list.
Nan had been right that everything Percy had was just a hunch. It all revolved around that other kitten and the cloud of doom.
Percy groaned, her steps slowing down and becoming heavy. What if she was wrong?
She felt a little bit mad actually. Why couldn’t Nan have let her have this one evening of certainty?
And now that she thought about it, the idea of Floriano sneaking into Humble High to kill someone did seem far fetched. Although… He was a wizard. He could have done it somehow.
And yet Humble High was an eldritch school. The staff knew about the existence of magic. They would have taken steps to protect their students from it. Surely a wizard couldn’t just waltz in?
Percy’s feet began to drag. The kitten sensed her changing mood, and clambered out of Percy’s pocket. It crawled up to her shoulder, where it purred against her ear rather soothingly.
“What
do you reckon, Lucky kitten?” said Percy. “Do you think he used students to do his dirty work for him?”
But the idea that school students had been running around murdering people just because they wanted to get their hands on magic also seemed far-fetched
Lucky kitten did not seem to care much for this idea. She meowed quietly several times, and then bit Percy’s earlobe a little harder than was comfortable.
Percy was about to tell her off, when suddenly ahead of her she spotted Felix Fiori.
He was walking along the street, his head down as he stared fixedly at his phone screen. He was rapidly scrolling with his thumb, and reading something with such interest that when he absentmindedly crossed the road, a cab nearly ran him over. It probably would have if it wasn’t for Felix’s incredibly fast reflexes.
The cab zoomed off, still hooting its horn angrily.
Felix went back to reading his phone screen.
“Hey Felix,” called Percy.
He looked round, and actually smiled when he saw her. He seemed much more normal now that Octavia was not looking like a vampire at his side.
Percy sniggered. Looking like a vampire? The girl was a vampire.
“What are you laughing at?” he said.
She shook her head. “Nothing.” She ran across the road to join him. “You on your way home?”
He hesitated. “Er, something like that.” He was eyeing up the kitten on her shoulder as if she was a mad cat lady.
Percy tickled the kitten under her chin, and crooned, “Babykins loves taking walks with mummy, don’t you my precious?” to enhance this perception.
To her great amusement, Felix looked mildly alarmed.
“Chill,” she said. “I am not in love with my cat.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said, cracking a rare grin. “I thought it might be your familiar.”
“I’m not a witch,” she reminded him.
“Sorry,” he said, looking like he hadn’t meant to cause offence.
She shrugged. “Do you live near here?” she said looking around with interest.
Traffic was streaming by on the busy Central London road. Shops and restaurants lined the ground floor level of the street, but above them each building had several floors that could well have been apartments where people lived. Their cozy insides were shielded from view by curtains. Percy thought it must be nice to live here where all of the shops were, but very noisy too.