by Clare Kauter
He stood there staring at us, looking totally bewildered, like he had no idea what we were talking about and couldn’t fathom why there would be two people – and females, no less! – standing on his front doorstep, crying and offering condolences. Suddenly it seemed to register and the lights came on behind his eyes. “Oh, right, Ed. Yeah, so sad. Please, come in. I’d love to have someone to talk to. I’m Patty, by the way.”
Would someone who seemed this indifferent to Ed really have killed him? I wasn’t convinced. And that definitely wasn’t just the shirt stain solidarity talking. Maybe it was the other housemate who was the murderer. To be honest, though, now that I was in the house, all the secondary smoke from the weed was making me feel very calm. Like, so calm I couldn’t imagine that anyone living here could do anything violent. I’d have a hard time getting off the couch to collect a packet of chips from the kitchen.
We followed Patty through the house into the lounge room. Man, those lounges looked comfy. I snuggled into one of the armchairs and Ed sat on the ground next to me, looking a little deflated.
“Like, I know he smokes a lot, but even for him, forgetting his dead housemate within a week? Maybe he’s just blocked the trauma out of his memory. Or maybe he did it and he’s such a psychopath that he doesn’t think it’s a big deal. I think we should put him under surveillance anyway.”
I didn’t answer, but I couldn’t go without responding at all. I sighed loudly and exasperatedly. Clearly this guy just wasn’t that cut up. And really, who could blame him? Ed was an argumentative coward. And Patty just seemed so chill. What with his cool stained shirt and all.
Daisy and Patty, who’d been talking intently to each other on the couch turned to me looking shocked. I realised that to them, I’d basically just made an annoyed noise at them for talking to each other.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t deal with the waste of life. He was so young. It just makes me really angry.”
Daisy nodded sympathetically. Patty nodded like he was trying to impress Daisy by being sympathetic.
“I totally understand,” said Daisy. “It’s just so hard to deal with. Anger is one of the stages of grief and it’s totally legitimate to be feeling that way right now. I know how close you were with Ed.”
It seemed to me that Daisy had this whole undercover thing under control. I didn’t even know why I was here. Ed looked like he was feeling equally as superfluous.
“We should do something,” he said. “Maybe search the house?”
That seemed like an OK idea, so I interrupted Daisy and Patty’s conversation again. “I’m so sorry, but I think I’d like to spend some time in Ed’s room. Just to help me come to grips with everything. You know. Maybe just to see where he spent his last days… If I could just see his bed…”
I wanted to see the bed he died in? Well, that was a nice creepy reason to go searching the house. Yes, may I please see his deathbed? Sniff his dirty clothes? Rifle through the contents of his bins?
Patty looked thoroughly creeped out. Daisy, however, had my back. “I think that’s a really good idea. I think it will really help you deal with things and get some closure. You do what you have to do, honey. Take as long as you need.”
“Do you know where his room is?” Patty asked, still looking at me like maybe he didn’t understand why Ed would have ever even spoken to me. Alright, mate, if that’s how you want to play it. Screw the shirt stain sisterhood.
“Of course. I’ve been there plenty of times before.” I stood and followed Ed to his room, walking with purpose and confidence like I knew where I was going. Over the course of my life, I’d found this to be an excellent tactic whenever you’re walking around somewhere you shouldn’t be (from your standard covert bedroom search to meeting celebrities backstage at a concert). If you sneak, you’ll get caught. Walk like you know exactly where you are and that is exactly where you’re meant to be, and no one will try to stop you. Just a free little life lesson there. You’re welcome.
Ed’s bedroom was not what I expected. It was clean. Super clean. The bed was made, the desk was organised, there were no dirty clothes on the floor… Even the bookshelf looked like it had been recently straightened.
“Is it always this neat?” I whispered, not wanting Patty to overhear me apparently talking to myself.
“No,” he answered. “I think my murderer tidied it up to cover their tracks.”
“That would mean you were poisoned here instead of at the party.”
“Exactly. I told you it was my housemates. We need to keep an eye on them. Surveillance, follow them everywhere. You saw Patty. He doesn’t care that I’m dead at all.”
Join the club, Patty.
I closed my eyes and reached out into the room, searching for energy surges. There was nothing from the bedside table or bed. The wardrobe and desk were dead. The bookshelf, however… I opened my eyes and walked over to it.
“What are you doing?” asked Ed, sounding oddly panicked.
“Looking for energy irregularities,” I explained. “Any clues the murderer might have left behind. I’m getting some weird readings from your books, although it might just be something that you’ve attached a lot of sentimental value to.”
I ran my fingers along the spine of each individual book. Some contemporary novels, a few mysteries, a couple of autobiographies from people I’d never heard of. A lot of classics with the spines still unbroken, meaning he was the kind of person who bought classics so his collection looked more impressive, but then never read them. To be fair, though, who isn’t that type of person?
“I think that’s what it would be – the sentimental value thing. I doubt there are any clues up there.” He was sounding a little desperate, but I ignored him. Anna Karenina – had anyone ever actually read that? “Really, I know what you’re getting readings from and it’s –”
The Encyclopaedia of Australian Bird Life? Really? I started to pull it off the shelf.
“Please don’t open it!” Ed squealed. “It’s got nothing to do with my death. Just put it back.”
“What is it?” I asked, turning the book over in my hands. Although I couldn’t see it, I could feel that there was magic seeping out of the book, snaking over my fingers. “I’ve never felt energy like this. Whatever this is, it must have great power. Why can’t I open it?”
“It’s just… it’s… private.”
My jaw dropped open in disgust as I realised what he was saying.
“This is your porn collection?!” He just stood there looking embarrassed. “Who keeps physical copies of porn? Haven’t you heard of the internet?” I shoved the book back onto the shelf. “You disgusting little cretin. The amount of magic coming out of that – you must place a huge amount of value on it. I have learned so much more about you today than I ever wanted to know.”
“Well I told you not to look at it and you just kept going. That’s hardly my fault.”
“Sorry, I forgot that you were a total freak with a freaky little physical porn magazine collection that you paid money for like it’s the seventies and then hid inside your porn-disguising Bird Encyclopaedia.”
“Well I forgot that you were such a –”
“Shh,” I said, cutting him off. “Someone just knocked on the front door.” We walked over to the window and looked out. There was a police car parked in the driveway below. I started to panic and without thinking said, “They’ve come for me.”
“What?” said Ed.
“Nothing, don’t worry,” I said, realising that I hadn’t broken into the house, and I was, in fact, here with police, so I probably wasn’t about to be arrested. “I just freak out when I see police.”
“Why?”
Ah, if only he knew.
“Unpaid parking tickets.”
“You don’t drive.”
“I know. Rough, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Let’s go and see what’s happening downstairs. Maybe they’ve decided you were murdered afte
r all.”
Ed and I got back to the lounge room at the same time as Patty returned from answering the front door with two uniformed policemen. One of the officers noticed Daisy sitting on the chair.
“Detective, I didn’t realise you’d already been called in,” he said. Well, I guess our cover was blown.
“Detective?” Patty said, looking very confused and sad. More so than normal, that is. He must have thought Daisy was genuinely interested in him, the poor, deluded fool.
“I’m here about a number of magic crimes and a week-old murder. I have a feeling you’re here for something different.”
“Yes,” said Officer 1.
“There was a murder last night. A young man by the name of Jonathan Hilt. He lived here,” added Officer 2.
“Shit,” said Patty, looking a little sick, although I couldn’t decide if it was because he thought he was about to get caught for two murders or he thought he was about to be killed. “What happened?”
“I’m afraid that’s all we can say for the moment. Are there any next of kin we should contact?”
Patty gave the police Jon’s details and told them that he hadn’t seen Jon since yesterday morning. Apparently he hadn’t come home the night before and Patty didn’t know where he’d gone. Great. How useful.
Daisy, Ed and I followed the police out, seeing as Patty didn’t seem so friendly now that he knew we’d lied to him. Daisy wrote her phone number on an old envelope on the coffee table before we left and told Patty to call her ‘only if you’re going to confess or your life is in immediate danger’.
Once we were out the front door, Officer 2 turned to Daisy. “Detective, we were actually trying to reach you and the chief all morning. We had a bunch of weird reports about magical phenomena last night –”
“Even more than we usually get in the lead-up to the full moon,” interjected Officer 1.
“Yes,” said Daisy. “I suspect I’ve already heard about a few of those.”
“This murder –” said Officer 2, before looking at me and pausing. “Is she a civilian?”
“She’s my consultant. She can be trusted. Go on.”
“This murder was of a magical nature. We very much need your assistance. And the chief’s, if she’s free.”
There was a whooshing sound as Hecate rounded the corner of the house on her carpet, with Henry (still a cat) sitting next to her, digging his claws in and hanging on for dear life. “Sounds interesting,” said Hecate. “Shall we?”
Chapter 8
We followed the police car to the opposite side of town, right to the outskirts. It was late afternoon now – the trip had taken a little while since the cops were somewhat more respectful of the speed limit than we’d been earlier. Eventually we reached the crime scene.
Aside from its university, there was very little that drew anyone to Goonoogal. Our crime scene was in an industrial area, or as industrial as an area can be when it’s part of a town in the middle of nowhere. There were wrecking yards, storage units and inexplicably large expanses of gravel with nothing on them. On one of those large empty plots of gravel, about 200 metres back from the road, there were a bunch of cops milling around something on the ground. I suspected it was the body. (That kind of deductive reasoning skill must have been why I got lumped with this horrendously confusing Quest of Mystery – too clever for a regular quest.)
While Officers 1 and 2 parked their cars up near the road with the other police vehicles, we headed right on down to the action, still on our carpet. As we neared the group, the body on the ground became more visible. I could now see that the police were giving the body a wide berth as there were still some green tendrils snaking over it, pinning its wrists, ankles and neck to the ground. Green tendrils, hey? Normally this wouldn’t mean too much. Loads of people cast green magic. It was hardly uncommon. But the fact that it happened last night – and to Ed’s housemate, no less – suggested that this was the work of the same mystery Big Bad.
It was getting to the point where I couldn’t really tell if we should be looking for the person responsible or running the hell away from them.
“Tell me, Henry,” I said, “is everyone’s quest this much fun? Two murders? Police involved? A hostile takeover of a coven? Zombies? Vampires?”
He was silent for a moment. He sort of squinted and tilted his head like it was something he had to think about. “Well… the other quests I’ve supervised haven’t been quite this intense, no.”
“I thought not.” Sigh. We hopped off the carpet and walked closer to the body. The police moved right out of our way, looking quite relieved that this freaky magic murder was now someone else’s problem. Thanks, guys.
“Alright, so Jon here was presumably attacked by the same dude who attacked us last night and killed Eddie boy a week ago, right?” I said.
Everyone nodded. By everyone, of course, I mean Hecate, Daisy, and Henry, not Ed or the normal cops who were watching me kneel down beside the body and looking slightly apprehensive, like I was approaching a bomb that might go off and destroy us all. I looked closer at the restraints, careful not to touch them or the corpse. After what happened when Ed touched his grave last night, there was a chance that I was, in fact, approaching a bomb.
“So why didn’t these binders” – the rope-like strands of energy holding him to the ground – “break when we broke the coven’s spell?”
I looked at the three useful people standing nearby, hoping one of them would have an answer. They looked back at me, frowning, and then all began to scan the area around us. I stood and looked around also, hoping to spot whatever they were looking for. Nothing. I didn’t have particularly good eyesight, but I couldn’t see any crazy wizards chilling nearby, inexplicably maintaining a spell on an already dead man. That would have been too easy, to actually catch the person responsible. What were the others looking for? There was nothing out there, and even if there were, given what we knew about this psycho’s track record, it would surely be clouded.
“I can’t see anything,” I said.
“Nor can I,” said Hecate. She looked questioningly at the other two, who shook their heads. Officers 1 and 2 caught up to us. Number 1 spoke.
“Can we search the body yet? No one wanted to touch it before –”
“No!” said Daisy, cutting him off.
“It’s a good thing no one did touch it. We don’t know what enchantments are guarding it as of yet,” said Henry.
“Thank you for your help, officers,” said Hecate, addressing the group at large, “but my team can take it from here. For your own safety, I suggest you head back to your car until we’ve diffused the situation down here.”
Several of the police nodded before walking back to their vehicles, trying to look calm but walking a little too fast to pull it off.
“Nessa,” said Hecate, turning to me, “can you sense any energy hotspots nearby?”
A shudder raked down my spine at the thought of the last hotspot I’d encountered whilst in Ed’s room. He was looking a little sheepish at the memory himself. I closed my eyes and reached out. Suddenly I was being pulled in all directions - there was a lot of energy here.
“It’s everywhere,” I said.
“Try to focus in. Where is the source?”
I tried to get my head straight. It felt like I was drunk; like my usual way of sensing energy was wobbly and slurred and couldn’t walk straight. There was so much magic all around, a blue mist filling my head and seeping into every crevice of my mind. Unlike mist, however, this substance was so thick with energy it felt viscous, slowing me down and making it nearly impossible to identify the source.
I took a deep breath. Nearly impossible. I knew I could do this. The mist was inebriating, but acting sober while drunk was one of my best party tricks, or at least it would be if I ever went to parties. Concentrating hard, I managed to pull the energy into focus, as if twisting the lens of a camera. The mist shifted, transforming into thick, distinct strands, and I could feel the h
otspots in sharp definition. There were three. One directly ahead, one behind and one to the side.
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to recover from the exertion. Being exposed to that much energy was tiring. I stumbled back and fell on my arse. It hurt landing on the hard gravel, but at least I didn’t fall onto the dead body at my feet, I thought. Else I’d be dead.
“Three,” I said, not yet able to form a full sentence. They all understood. (Except Ed, who was of course standing off to the side looking totally bewildered. Classic Ed.)
“Triangle,” they said in unison.
A triangle, in addition to being a simple geometric shape used to torture high school mathematics students (I don’t care how long that side is. And even if I did, why do we have to go through this whole ridiculous process of using algebra to figure it out? You were able to measure the other two sides. Why not just use the same tool to measure the third? And don’t get me started on measuring the angles…), is also a tool used in magic. You always hear about satanic stars and circles and hexagons being used for casting, but the triangle is often a more practical choice. It’s simple. Three points. Quick to set up. Not as fancy, sure, but effective. Our crazed killer had prepared one and lured Jon into the middle of it, binding him to the ground and then channelling a burst of energy to kill him. The triangle had locked in some residual energy, which is what I had been able to sense coming from the points, and it was keeping the binding spell alive, although it wasn’t focused enough to kill the rest of us standing there.
“We need to get out,” I said with realisation, scrambling to my feet. If the killer saw us here, this would be a golden opportunity to take out everyone who was a threat to him. We were sitting ducks. No one moved.
“Go!” I said and started running. We had been congregating directly in the centre of the triangle, so I ran for the space between the two anchors on the side I was already facing. I didn’t need maths to figure out the shortest distance to an exit.