Carbon and I swerved our heads slowly to look behind us. Fraidy blocked our view for a second as he leapt over my head to land in front of me on the stick. It was a pertinent move, because now at least he had a wall between him and the licking flames from the thatch of the broom. Another firefly rushed by. Only, I realized now that these points of light weren’t luminous bugs; they were fire-tipped darts, and one had successfully reached its target in the thatch of dried twigs at the end of my besom.
Onyx and Shade were stunned into statues, their heads, pulled back into their bodies, was the only noticeable sign that they registered the fire.
“Carbs!” I shouted into my cat’s face. “Think you can do anything about that?”
I brought the broom downward. We needed to land before the besom fell from the sky on its own accord, but I didn’t want to risk touching down anywhere near the phantom shooter.
Carbon pushed away from my back and scrambled over his statue-like, brothers.
He shielded his eyes with one paw, and with the other, he extended it over the flame. I heard him mutter some ancient fairy language -- probably in Cait Sidhe tongue -- as he pulled his paw upward, drawing the flames into his outstretched mitt.
He was sucking out the oxygen from the flames; essentially vacuuming up the fire’s energy and power. The light brightened at first, and then lowered to an orange glow. Finally, the crackling sounds of the twigs fell to low hissing murmurs.
“Thanks, sweetie!” I shouted back at our fire-loving life saver.
Once again I heaved out a relieved breath, and, spotting Galedoom central station, I lowered the broom to prepare for landing.
A lovely woman by the name of Nora Breeze showed us into a waiting room just off to the side of the reception desk at ‘Galedoom Women’s College.’ The place looked cheery and full of color. I felt my shoulders relax as we took our seats to wait for whomever it was that was going to tell us a bit about the place before it became a college.
I stared at the artwork on the wall; all amateur masterpieces created by former students. My cats sat, almost obedient-looking, at my feet.
“Are you enjoying the artwork, Hattie?” Fraidy asked, his voice suspiciously conversation. I pulled my eyes away from a pastoral watercolor.
“They’re very pretty,” I replied.
“Lovely, yes, just exquisite. Hey, I know! Why don’t we all have a little stroll in this delectable little gallery here, and discuss the beauty of the works?” His voice was getting strident, near hysterical. “ I mean, that would be a reasonable thing to do after just escaping a maniac killer, right?”
“Buddy, calm down,” I said, picking him up and holding him into me. Fraidy held his breath and thrashed for a couple of seconds while he squeezed his eyes shut and screwed his face up at me.
I kissed him on the head. “I love you, sweetie,” I said. “I really do.” I pulled his body into my chest.
Fraidy’s body calmed almost immediately. He flopped his head under my chin in defeat.
“Okay, okay,” he said, his nose scraping my chin. “But, Goddess, we were nearly killed a few minutes ago, and now we’re here appreciating the art?”
I held onto my kitty with one hand and rummaged in my bag with the other. My fingers brushed against the dart in the pocket of my purse. I plucked it out and stared at it. Fraidy’s head popped up from beneath my chin and Shade, Onyx and Carbon jumped up to inspect the weapon.
Onyx squinted. “Looks like there might be some kind of resin at the end there,” he said nudging his nose close to the tip. I brought the stick up to my face. “I think you’re right. I think this dart has been dipped in something.” I twirled the missile under the light of the waiting room.
“Chocolate?” Shade asked hopefully. We looked at him, our faces blank. “Could it have been dipped in chocolate?”
Eye roll.
“They’re not going to send chocolate on the first batch of darts and then flames on the second, bozo,” Carbon sniffed.
“We need to take it to Maude,” I said, putting the weapon carefully back into the secret pocket in my handbag. “We’ll do that as soon as we get back to Glessie.”
“That time couldn’t come sooner,” grumbled Fraidy.
“Ms. Jenkins?” A crisp voice said from the door. A rounded and ruddy lady of about sixty years filled the entry way.
I stood up, putting Fraidy on the floor. “Hi, I’m Hattie, yes. You are?”
“I’m Matron Heffer. You came to ask about Summer Greenfield?” I spotted a folder in the crook of Matron Heffer’s arm.
“Did you know Summer?” I asked, moving closer to the woman and taking a seat nearer the door. She looked at me warily. “I’m asking on behalf of a friend,” I said, smiling. “It’s possible we know the whereabouts of Summer’s father.”
The rotund woman took a hesitant seat across from me. “Summer’s father never visited her here, why would he be interested now?”
I kept my voice light. “I guess, as we age, we have time to think about the things we’ve done? Or, should have done?” I ventured.
“Yes, well, Mr. Greenfield, or whatever his name is, is going to be very disappointed, I’d imagine.” Heffer pursed her lips.
“Oh? Why’s that?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair.
“Summer was a spritely, ill behaved child. I can’t imagine she’d have grown up to be any different.”
Somehow I got the sense that this woman would brandish any child ‘ill behaved’ or ‘spritely.’ Matron Heffer didn’t seem to have a whole lot of patience or compassion.
“Children.” I smiled again. “They have their own funny ways, don’t they?”
Heffer just grunted. I knew the matron thought kids were demons. She’d may as well have been wearing a placard around her neck stating as much.
“Did Summer have any visitors while she stayed here?”
“Visitors?” Heffer balked. Her eyeballs looked as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. “Summer didn’t even have any friends, much less, visitors.”
My heart constricted, and I breathed through the dull pain there.
Heffer huffed.
“I have some bits and pieces of Summer’s here,” she said, thrusting the file at me.
I opened it up. The first picture was a woman in her mid-twenties. She had wild chestnut hair, lit up like a torch from the fall sunset on the lake behind her. Her eyes sparkled with sincere joy as she ran after the toddler running toward the person taking the shot. Again I felt my heart squeeze. Deevie. And, Summer. The little girl apparently held onto it; physical evidence of her mother’s brief existence.
“Summer was always vulnerable to peer pressure. She’d get outraged when the other kids teased her about her mother’s suicide. We’d put her in the hole, of course, but every time she was goaded about this, she’d blow up in a rage.”
Heffer shook her head, apparently disgusted by the memory of this demon child who acted up when her peer group stabbed her with the suicidal-mother jokes.
The back of my throat burned, I was so angry with this stony woman before me.
I didn’t even want to ask what the ‘hole’ was all about.
“Nurse Duffy was way too easy on Summer, though. Encouraged her to continue to work with her plants. If Duffy was on duty, Summer was put in the nurseries for punishment instead of the hole. Pah!” Heffer spat. “What good is a greenhouse for comeuppance?”
“Summer liked plants?” I asked. Tears threatened my eyeballs. Summer loved plants. I felt an instant connection with the girl.
“So much so, that she poisoned the math teacher, Mr. Grubbin, with wormwood. All so she could get out of a test!” These memories were causing much outrage in Matron Heffer. I couldn’t help but feel that maybe it was time for this dinosaur, with her prehistoric views of childcare, to retire.
I also couldn’t help but chuckle at Summer Greenfield’s brazenness. They were exactly the kind of tricks and schemes I got up to when I was in schoo
l.
“Do you know what happened to Summer after she left here, Matron?” I looked at the woman with the angry red face. “Did she ever visit? Tell you what was going on in her life? Where she moved to, perhaps?”
“No. Nothing like that. We never heard from former inmates, Ms. Jenkins. Not a thank you note, nothing.
Thank you note?
I had nothing but empathy for the girls who had lived under Matron Heffer’s brutal reign.
I shuffled through the various pictures and documents of the file folder. I was about to pass it back when a flash of color caught my eye. I pulled at the edge of the paper that grabbed my attention.
“Aw, that’s sweet,” Fraidy whispered, peeking over my shoulder. There was no need for him to whisper. The woman in front of us was most definitely Unawakened, so my cats were in no danger of being overheard.
The drawing was sweet. Heartwarming. A mom, a dad, a little girl, all holding hands in that child-like picket fence way. A big red sun, that looked to be setting, in the middle, with a smiley face, of course. Bright, green grass and a house with a sign outside that only said “Happie Home.”
“Aw,” Fraidy had one hand to his chest. “She even titled it ‘A Summer’s Eve,” he said eyeing the corner of the picture where the title was scrawled.
I felt my cat’s empathy. It was flooding me right now, in fact.
“Matron Heffer, I’d like to thank you for your time,” I said, standing. I needed to get to a bathroom to cry. Summer’s Eve.
The Matron left the room while I gathered my bag and thought about the child who had drawn a sunset and a happy family. Perhaps she believed that the fateful day her father would come home to them would be an evening with a beautiful sunset that bathed everything pink. The child had labeled her work ‘A Summer’s Eve.’ Even the playful dance with the words, how she’d used her first name to conjure up the warm imagery. My heart melted for this unlucky little girl.
“Come on, guys, let’s go home,” I said, reaching for the doorknob.
Shade had his forepaws on the back of one of the waiting room chairs, staring intently at an oil painting. I moved over to him to see what had grabbed his attention.
He looked at me and smiled and then looked back at the painting.
“These are the beautiful flowers my bae had her last photo shoot in. For her Poofiful and Wild Instagram?” He breathed out a lover's sigh. I shook my head, but the vivid colors of the painting grabbed my eye.
I looked at it. The flowers that stood boldly on the canvas were Foxgloves.
“Buddy, when was Poof’s last photo shoot and where was it?” I asked, surveying my kitty. I ran through some hasty mental calculations. Foxglove flowered anywhere between early July and Mid October. We weren’t quite mid-October yet, so …
“Not far from the dunes!” Shade chirped, looking excited at the prospect of showing me his girlfriend’s place of work. “You know, those community gardens there?”
“Sure do, buddy. Take me there. To the spot where these flowers are.”
Just to be nosy, you know. Not that I thought the Foxglove Killer was waiting there, or anything. It was just because Foxglove wasn’t often grown on our isles. It certainly didn’t grow wild. So, wherever Miss. Poof’s photo shoot had taken place, the flowers there had been cultivated.
We made our way to the broom, and as we walked, I vaguely wondered if I might know the person growing this beautiful, yet potentially lethal bloom.
Chapter Sixteen
We landed at the edge of the dunes, just to give Carbon enough time to hop off the broom so he could take the ‘dart’ evidence over to Maude Dulgrey’s for analysis.
“Remember, buddy,” I cautioned. Keep the tip away from your face, and be careful when you hand it over to Maude, okay?” Carbon nodded but said nothing. He was holding the stick in his mouth and didn’t want to disturb its positioning.
“Tell Maude, if she’s not too busy, that I’d like to get results on this as soon as possible. She can call my cell anytime, I’ll have it on me. We’ll meet you back at the shop later, okay?”
Carbon bobbed his head again and trotted off.
Fraidy, Onyx, Shade and I continued onward to the Sugar Dunes Community Gardens.
“Park down there,” Shade said, as we approached the allotments. He pointed to a kind of gardener’s alley that pushed through the back of the gardens.
I tipped downward, and we made a gentle descent until we were at the end of the alleyway. The plots lay on either side of the lane.
“Remember which one it was?” I asked Shade. My confident cat prowled at the front of the pack, turning his head left, then right.
“This one,” he said, coming to a standstill.
I came up behind him and looked into the garden. It made my eyes water it was such a delight to the senses. Fall flowers, by the multitude, boasted their colors in brazen display. Squash, pumpkin, golden corn; all sprouted from this lovingly tended plot of land. I pushed on the small chain link gate and followed Shade into the garden, Onyx and Fraidy sticking close to my ankles.
Goddess, this spot was beautiful. I admired and envied the gardener of this plot at the same time.
“Here,” Shade said, beaming. He was sitting in front of a stand of pink and white Foxglove, looking like the proudest cat on the planet.
“Wow, it’s beautiful,” I murmured.
“You think it’s beautiful now?” Shade scoffed. “You should have seen these when they were graced with Poof’s face!” Shade’s face softened at the romantic memory.
I looked around the yard. No sign of anyone. No movement from the cute little potting shed at the back of the plot either.
“We shouldn’t really be here,” I whispered, more to myself, than my cats. Onyx and Fraidy were already chasing butterflies, and Shade had plopped himself by the Foxglove, stretching out in a slice of afternoon sunshine.
I walked cautiously to the shed. Dying to see how cute it’d be inside, but feeling overwhelmingly like an intruder at the same time.
“Hello?” I called. “Hi? Anyone home?”
I moved to the door at the side of the small dwelling and pressed down on the ornate, brass handle. The door opened. I guess there wasn’t really much you could steal from a potting shed unless a few gardening hand tools were your thing.
I won’t go in, I’ll just look from the door here, I convinced myself.
It was so lovely inside. The rough wood was washed with a duck-egg blue color. Terracotta pots lined the shelves and the back of the workbench. Various tools protruded from other terracotta containers attached to the wall. It was tidy and very well organized. I felt another pang of envy that this wasn’t my own tranquil haven.
I saw the book, then. And, I couldn’t resist. A dark, mahogany leather, embossed with the words ‘Pressed Flowers.’ If this garden was anything to go by, I suspected I’d find some gems in this book. I reached for it, still not crossing the threshold.
Opening the first page, I smiled at the delicate yellow of flattened primrose. I’d always loved this springtime flower. Something clattered to the floor. It dropped directly out of the large circular spine of the book. A pill bottle. I scooped it up and put it on the workbench and turned my attention back to the book.
I flipped the page.
It was a recent photo of Barnabus Kramp, and a short bio of the man’s life, including date of birth, address, place of work, etc. I felt my world shift a little.
I flipped again. A letter. From Deevie Greenfield to Barnabus Kramp. My breath hitched in my throat, and with a shaking hand, I flipped to the next page.
A photo. Of mother and daughter, standing in front of a school. Probably Summer’s first day. Summer was crying, while Deevie was half laughing, pointing at the camera, and trying to convince the little girl everything was okay.
The next page was a letter that was never sent. A letter, written in an adult hand. A letter from Summer to her father, Kramp. My eyes flew over some of the words th
ere. The sentiments were bitter and hateful. And, vengeful.
I probably knew it before I saw the name of the person who had signed the unsent letter, but I didn’t want it to be true.
But it was true. The two words that signed off on the note made my heart feel as heavy as hematite.
I grabbed the pills. There was no label on the container, but I was pretty confident I knew what tablets were. I stuffed them in my bag with the book, closed the door and ordered my kitties out of the garden. Their faces fell into masks of concern. “What’s going on?” Shade asked.
“There was a dead body in the shed, wasn’t there?” Fraidy wailed.
“Seraphim, you look devastated, is there anything we can do?” Onyx already knew what was going on, because he could read my mind, but, in his politely thoughtful way, all he did was offer help. I loved Onyx dearly for it.
I pulled out my phone and called David, but turned to my wise cat.
“Make your way back to The Angel. And wait there for me. Just go home and stay put for a bit, okay?”
Onyx didn’t wait for an answer. He gathered his brother’s and they trotted at a brisk pace in the direction of The Angel.
David picked up. Thank you, Goddess.
My friend didn’t interrupt. He listened patiently while I gushed out what had happened in the Galedoom shanties, and what I’d found in the potting shed. It was a barely intelligible torrent, so my friend did well to understand what I was saying.
“How long before you can get here?” He asked.
“About fifteen minutes?” I blubbered. I strolled back into the little garden absent mindedly.
“Good. Okay, calm yourself down, okay? Clear your head a little before you get here. We’ll be waiting for you.”
I offered a strangled “Okay,” and hung up.
I felt like a rug had been pulled from under me. I dropped to my knees and sucked in a deep breath. I pushed my fingers into the earth and clenched a handful of soil in each hand, trying to ground myself. I pulled in a few more breaths, and on shaky legs, I ran for my broom.
To face the truth of what I’d just found in the potting shed of the avid gardener.
The Warlock Weapon (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 7) Page 16