Lord of the Wings

by Donna Andrews

  “Not yet.” She frowned slightly. “Frankly, I’ve been a little afraid to. I’m not sure I want to see what kind of a picture he’s painting of us. And since I’m not the world’s most tactful person, I’m not sure I want him around when I take my first look. There could be swearing involved.”

  “Want a sneak preview?” I asked. “I have pictures.”

  I held up my phone, with one of the pictures on screen.

  “I would love a sneak preview,” she said, peering at the phone. “But not on that thing. Come with me.”

  She led me back through the “staff only” door and down the hall to her small but welcoming office.

  “Sit,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I have the cable to fit this. I can copy your museum pictures to my computer and we can look at them in comfort. There we go.”

  As we waited for the copying process to finish, Ms. Ellie began clicking through the first pictures. She seemed to find the non-wax waxworks as silly as I did. But she rather liked the wartime photos.

  “Very nice,” she said. “I must see if I can get copies of these for the library. As soon as Halloween’s over we’re going to put up a Veterans’ Day display. I’ll ask Dr. Smoot.”

  “Better yet, ask Fred down at the Caerphilly Clarion.” I pointed to the small line at the bottom of one of the accompanying placards, which informed us that the photo in question was from our local weekly’s files.

  “You’re right,” she said. “And your photos of the photos will let me start planning our exhibit. Dr. Smoot doesn’t really have very much information here, does he? I need to do some research!” She said this in the same tone the boys would use to announce that they’d found a stash of candy.

  “I was hoping you’d feel inspired to research,” I said. “You heard about the murder, right? It could have something to do with the contents of the museum.” I clicked through until I found one of the pictures of Arabella’s dress, and explained about the article the chief had found in the dead man’s pocket.

  “Oh, dear.” She frowned and peered over her glasses at the bloodstained dress. “Let’s hope not. But yes, I will definitely let you know if I find anything that would suggest a motive for murder.”

  “And the chief,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “Ellie?” One of the other librarians stuck her head into the office. “Chief’s on TV.”

  Ms. Ellie reached up and turned on a tiny TV sitting on a nearby shelf. The earnest face of a young newscaster from one of the Richmond TV stations filled the miniature screen.

  “—from the mayor and the chief of police of Caerphilly,” he said. Ms. Ellie and I both frowned—he’d mispronounced the name of our town. Then the screen cut to a shot of Randall and the chief standing in front of the police station, with a dozen reporters surrounding them.

  “This morning at approximately nine thirty a.m., two local citizens found a body in the woods outside Caerphilly,” the chief said.

  “Nice that he didn’t mention the zoo,” I said.

  “The deceased has been identified as a Mr. James Green, originally from Fresno, California,” the chief went on. “Cause of death was a single gunshot to the head. We’re treating this as a homicide. We ask anyone who has information related to the case to contact the Caerphilly PD.” The number flashed on the screen, and the dozen reporters began shouting out questions.

  “Do you have any suspects?”

  “Could it have been a suicide?”

  “Will you be canceling the rest of your Halloween Festival?”

  Randall stepped forward when he heard that question and did a pretty decent job of conveying the notion that while they had no reason to believe the murder had anything to do with the festival, the town was taking every possible precaution to ensure the safety of the visitors and that visitors should feel free to enjoy themselves at the festival while taking reasonable precautions.

  The channel cut to a photo of the victim, who didn’t look any more prepossessing alive than he had when I’d seen him—although it was obviously a DMV photo, which meant we should probably make allowances. Then the face of the very earnest young newscaster reappeared.

  “Anyone with any information about this case should contact the Caerphilly Police Department,” he said—once again mispronouncing the town.

  “Care-FILLY!” Ms. Ellie and I shouted back in unison. Then the newscaster began telling us about something the House of Delegates was up to and Ms. Ellie turned off the TV.

  “Well, at least they’ve put a name to him now,” she said. “That’s progress. I’ll see what I can make of these photos. Especially Arabella’s.”

  I left her studying them and returned to the public area of the library, where Michael’s student was finishing up the story hour. And a good thing, too, because I don’t think I could have torn the boys away if she was still reading.

  Just as I was getting into the car, my phone rang.

  “Do you want to eat Baptist, Episcopalian, or Catholic for dinner?” Michael asked. “I have had it up to here with students and am in no mood to cook, and I assume if you’ve been dealing with the tourists all day you probably feel the same way. I’m dropping by the food tents on my way home.”

  “Ham, chicken, or fried fish?” I asked the boys.

  “Yes,” Josh said.

  “All of them,” Jamie agreed.

  “I heard that,” Michael said. “I’ll surprise you.”

  He ended up bringing some of each, which met with the boys’ approval. They consumed fried fish, hush puppies, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, ham, corn on the cob, Greek salad, and cupcakes with an enthusiasm that warmed my heart.

  And in such quantities that I wondered, not for the first time, how we’d manage to keep them fed by the time they turned into teenagers.

  “Don’t eat all the vegetables,” I warned. “We need to save some for Rose Noire.”

  Perhaps it was my imagination, but being warned off the vegetables did seem to increase their consumption, if only slightly. And Michael had brought such quantities that it wasn’t as if Rose Noire was in any danger of going hungry.

  Though I was a little worried when she came in. She had offered to watch the boys while Michael and I went out on patrol, but she looked so beat that I wasn’t sure she’d be up to it.

  “Are you going to be okay here tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’ll be fine,” she said. “In fact, it will do me good to spend some time with pure, innocent, loving children.”

  “I thought you were babysitting Josh and Jamie,” I said. “Who are these paragons you’re watching instead?”

  “They’re mischievous, but not evil,” she said. “Sorry to be so down. I had some customers today who really disturbed me. They were asking for things like black candles and Jimson weed and—well, things I don’t sell because there just aren’t that many good uses for them. Good as in positive, life-affirming.”

  “Good as in the opposite of evil,” I said. “I understand.”

  “They’re probably not actually evil,” she said. “They’re probably just going through a phase. Acting out. Rebelling. But still—I don’t want them to hurt themselves or anyone else. So after I closed up the booth, I stayed on for another hour just infusing all my herbs with as much positive energy as I could. I feel completely drained. But—the boys will help me recharge!”

  She beamed over at them. I hoped she wasn’t taking too close a look at them, lest she change her mind about recharging with them. Josh had stuck a straw in each nostril and was snorting and pretending to be a monster. Jamie was biting into a cupcake, methodically adding a layer of chocolate frosting on top of the barbecue sauce that already covered most of the lower half of his face.

  “That’s great,” I said aloud. “And remember, Michael’s mother is coming sometime tomorrow to help over the weekend.”

  Actually, what she’d said was that she wanted to come up to see the boys in their Halloween costumes and spend some time with
them. But I was pretty sure when she saw how chaotic our lives were at the moment she’d pitch in. And in fact, as long as she pitched in, I didn’t even care if she decided to reorganize the contents of our kitchen cabinets again.

  Armed with the knowledge that Rose Noire was actually eager to spend time with Josh and Jamie, Michael and I finished our dinner and even managed to get the boys reasonably clean and stuffed into pajamas. By the time we donned our costumes—the general and the swordswoman again—and took off, Rose Noire had them playing Parcheesi and eating popcorn.

  I took one last look at this comforting domestic scene before we headed out into the Night Side.

  Chapter 14

  Night was falling by the time we took off for town. The ride was peaceful at first, but as we drew closer to town we began to see spillover from the festival. One farmer had turned his field into a parking lot and was having his son shuttle people to and from the town square in a small cattle truck. Another farmer had rented a dozen porta-potties and posted a sign offering his fields for “no-frills camping.” There were probably other such entrepreneurs along the other roads leading into town.

  We parked the car at the college parking lot and set out to patrol on foot for a while. Down at the town square the craftspeople had mostly shut up their booths. The food tents were closing up as well. Only the ice cream and soft drink vendors were still there. Here in town, the action was winding down.

  Make that the official action. There were still quite a few people there, and they weren’t all lining up for the refreshments or the porta-potties. Throughout the square masked musicians with guitars, drums, harps, flutes, portable keyboards, and who knows how many other instruments were playing, singly or in groups. More costumed revelers were listening, or dancing to the music—dancing in a variety of styles that were as varied as the music, which ranged from Bach minuets to rap.

  And groups of people were talking, debating, flirting, and arguing. Was this merely a lively social scene or were some of the live action role players—LARPers—Rob had told me about, playing out dramatic scenarios of some kind on the streets of Caerphilly?

  After we’d been patrolling for a while, I decided that the mixed groups were probably just socializing. The zombie Nixon flirting with the vampire French maid … the Frankenstein’s monster arguing with the Freddy Krueger over whether to stay at the square or board one of the shuttles … the Pillsbury Doughboy taking a selfie with the two scantily clad lady vampires.

  But the groups of people in Goth-themed clothing who all wore ribbon rosettes somewhere on their costumes—I’d bet anything they were part of a game. Especially since they tended to clump together in small groups of people with the same color rosette and prowl around together until they ran into a group with a different-colored rosette and acted out some kind of incomprehensible scenario.

  “Is there a reason we’re following the Goth vamps?” Michael asked at one point.

  “They seem to be playing a game,” I said.

  “Yeah. But not necessarily the game we’re worried about.”

  He was probably right. The Goth vamps, as he called them, seemed to be mainly a social group. We’d been drifting in the wake of one group of seven with purple ribbons for an hour or more, and so far none of them had done anything suspicious. They hadn’t brandished fake body parts, nibbled insects, or menaced any of the many pumpkins they’d passed, and they were certainly far enough from the zoo and any of the graveyards. Of course, if one of their members were participating in the scavenger hunt they could have already finished their tasks for the day. Maybe they were just killing time, waiting for the next list.

  Or maybe they were too caught up in their own game to be bothered with the scavenger hunt.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t understand what they’re doing, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with our scavenger hunt. And we’re not really following them, just drifting in the same direction.”

  “Let’s drift in another direction, then,” he said. “I think that purple crew is starting to notice us. We don’t want to make the tourists too nervous.”

  We had been walking down the street along one side of the town square. The chief had closed it and the other three streets that enclosed the square to vehicular traffic at sundown, turning the area into a giant pedestrian mall. When we reached the far end of the street, the vampire posse turned right, obviously intending to continue circling the mall.

  “Let’s keep on straight,” I said. “And catch a shuttle out to the Haunted House.”

  As we continued our course, I noticed that several of the purple-ribboned vampires were turning back to check on us. On impulse, I smiled and waved to them. They all looked offended and embarrassed and hurried out of sight.

  “I meant that as a friendly gesture,” I said with a sigh.

  “Perhaps you destroyed their illusion that their cloaks of invisibility are working,” Michael suggested.

  Out at the Haunted House, things were hopping. Several members of my Goblin Patrol were keeping order in the long line of people waiting for their turn to go inside. The Ferris wheel, the merry-go-round, the tilt-a-whirl, and all the other midway rides were in dizzying motion, their orange lights twinkling. The barkers were calling customers to the games of skill and chance. We watched a ghost, a mummy, and a life-sized Barbie doll tossing Ping-Pong balls into fish bowls. Vampires firing toy guns at bats that fluttered by on sticks and strings. Batman tossing baseballs at targets, attempting to win a prize for a demure geisha. Cleopatra and Charlie Chaplin pitching darts at pumpkin-shaped targets.

  I was relieved to see that zombies were able to enjoy cotton candy, and that vampires were not repelled by garlic-laden Italian sausages.

  The hours wore on, and only once did we encounter anything that seemed related to the scavenger hunt, when a woman dressed as Pocahontas found a rubber finger in her buttered popcorn. I consoled her with a sheaf of the bright orange tickets visitors used to pay for rides and games, all the while glancing around to see if anyone was paying particular attention. But if anyone was, Michael and I couldn’t tell.

  The Fun Fair closed at midnight, and by 1:00 A.M. the area around the Haunted House was more or less empty. A few dozen costumed revelers were still there, standing in small groups or sitting in twos or threes against the fence. But then the last shuttle arrived—a horse-drawn shuttle, with two powerful Percherons pulling a hay wagon. The stragglers all boarded it, and we watched as it slowly rattled toward town.

  Michael and I did a last check around the perimeter of the Haunted House, making sure the gates were closed and that no one was hiding in the shrubbery. Inside the house, the lights were all off, except for one on the top floor.

  As we were getting into our car, another car slowed and stopped by ours. I watched it warily until the passenger-side front window rolled down to reveal Caroline Willner. A man I recognized as one of Grandfather’s longtime volunteer helpers was driving, and Grandfather appeared to be dozing in the backseat.

  “All’s quiet at the zoo,” she said. “And in addition to our Brigade members, we’ve got several of Rob’s technicians staying on to mind the cameras.”

  “Was it a quiet day?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “We caught several people trying to cut through the mesh between the bats and the humans in the Bat Cave,” she said. “Not sure what they thought they’d do once they got out into the guano piles. And we had to shoo a bunch of people away from the wolves and the tigers at closing time. But no more fake body parts. And if anyone managed to break in after we closed, they did a darn fine job of eluding us. Everything’s going great so far, and everything seems secure. Time we hit the hay. I’m half dead, and I think your Grandfather’s asleep in the backseat.”

  “Am not,” Grandfather muttered.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  “Time for us to head home, I think,” Michael said. “And leave the patrolling to … others.”

/>   “You were about to say ‘younger people,’ weren’t you?” I asked.

  “Less encumbered people,” he said. “People who don’t have to get up with the dawn to get two small boys ready for school. Some of them younger. Not all.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “With any luck, the worst is over for tonight. Tomorrow night’s going to be worse.”

  And I didn’t have to mention that Saturday, Halloween itself, would be the worst of all. How had we ever let Randall talk us into this?

  As Michael navigated his way through town, I called Charlie Gardner, my second-in-command, to let him know I was turning over the helm to him.

  “Good idea,” he said. “You need the rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Call me if anything dire happens,” I said.

  “If it’s dire enough to be worth waking you for, sure,” he said.

  Michael and I were both quiet for most of the way home, but it was the comfortable silence of two people who don’t have to talk to be in sync. We were almost in sight of the house when he finally spoke.

  “I’ve got my graduate directing seminar all morning,” he said. “And a blasted departmental meeting in the afternoon.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “The Night Side’s when I really want your company.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  We crept quietly into the house. Most of the lights were out, which meant that Rose Noire had probably fallen into bed as soon as the boys had settled.

  Josh and Jamie were both sleeping peacefully. Jamie appeared to have been making yet another costume, this one involving quite a lot of orange and black construction paper that now lay in shreds all over his room. Josh had been drawing pumpkins again, and had posted the fiercest one on the outside of his door.

  Michael fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow—an ability I envied. I lay awake for a while, thinking over my day.

  I was just falling asleep when I heard the front door open and close again. Furtive steps ascended the stairs. Probably Rob, coming home late and trying not to wake anyone.

  I got out of bed and made my way quietly to the bedroom door. Just then I heard a loud thud.