by Jaime Munn
It was an enchantment I had put Livia under, a fairytale enchantment. I wondered if I should have Kevin come round to wake her with a kiss. Would it give their brief romance another chance to spark? It seemed the right thing to do, so I spent the morning tracking him down via the telephone.
For a man who worked a desk job, he was surprisingly hard to reach. I got him to promise to drop by the store after work and then slipped into the day. Only one or two customers asked about the woman sleeping behind the counter. I told them that she was a princess under a spell, waiting for her prince to come. It pleased them. We’re all princesses, even if some of us are waiting for another princess to come.
I worried about Livia more than I worried about Grace St John as the day progressed. Sleeping Beauty seemed at peace. The enchantment was a simple one though stretching it to one hundred years would certainly not be magic to sneeze at. I didn’t think I could pull that one off. What I could do was put Livia into a restorative sleep and hope that it would be enough to begin the healing that her spirit needed. Livia might not remember the trauma inflicted by incubus possession, but her body and her spirit certainly did.
Fortunately I was busy enough to distract me from my concerns and fears and the day almost flew to its end. I started watching the clock when it began ticking down to five o’clock. I expected to see Kevin opening the door any minute, but it was a giant of a werewolf that arrived first. He was tall and had massive muscles. He barely seemed to squeeze through the doorway. I instantly thought bull in a china shop and grimaced at the thought of what he could do to my lamps.
He was dark skinned like midnight. When he met my eyes he smiled and I saw a few golden teeth among the ivories. They were sharpened, which I was guessing scared the crap out of most people. Knowing he was a werewolf I figured he’d had them sharpened for when he wolfed out. It didn’t make me comfortable with his golden wolf teeth, but at least I understood the reason behind them and felt reasonably sure that while in human form he wasn’t going to turn those fangs towards gnawing on my bones. He was dressed in baggy jeans and a loose fitting t-shirt that suggested he was used to throwing off his clothing and wolfing out at a moment’s notice. Built like a tank, I wasn’t giving myself any points for guessing he was Cleo’s muscle, or at least one part of team muscle.
“Boytjie. Cleo sent me,” he said confirming my thoughts and strode over towards me. I started, recognising the name. He was the wolf who’d killed Daudie Schalko. I swallowed. He seemed oblivious to my reaction, but paused a few steps away from the counter anyway, eyes locking on F.C. and sniffing at the air. I tried not to imagine him snacking on Daudie’s throat and tried instead to assess the man as though I knew nothing about him. I thought his name was really in poor taste. The man was clearly Goliath. I wondered in a purely non sexual kind of way what he looked like naked. Curiosity isn’t exclusively a heterosexual quality.
“He won’t bite you,” I told Boytjie and reached out a hand to stroke F.C. half worried that the werewolf was going to try and eat my familiar. I wondered what I’d do if he tried.
Boytjie’s eyes switched from F.C. to me and back again. “He smells funky.” The werewolf sniffed again.
F.C. stretched, like he wasn’t at all concerned about the scrutiny. He yawned and his teeth were scarlet barbs.
Boytjie blinked. He grinned and for a moment I thought he was going to lunge jaws first at my cat. Instead I realised it was an honest, human grin of delight as Boytjie asked me in a large and eager voice, “Can I get one?” Maybe his name wasn’t so unsuitable after all.
“F.C is one of a kind,” I told him. As his expression changed from delight to sorrow I added, “I’ll let you know if there’s ever kittens.”
The thought made me stiffen in my chair. I’d have to keep a close eye on the neighbourhood cats. Would F.C. breed true? Gods save the family who had to face living with those kittens. I hoped it didn’t end up with someone getting eaten. Boytjie brightened at the thought of kittens and didn’t notice that I had probably gone a whiter shade of pale at the thought of little F.C.s roaming the streets.
“Cleo sent this.” He stepped up to the counter boldly, laid a box on it and petted F.C. with a large hand. F.C. didn’t try and bite him.
Boytjie clearly wanted to stay longer and perhaps play a little more with my funky cat, but I got the impression that Cleo had given him firm instructions. He left the store with a reluctant and almost petulant look on his face, passing Kevin as he did.
“Wow, he puts the Greek gods to shame.”
I wondered if Kevin was curious about Boytjie naked too. His attention, however, was quickly focused on Livia.
“How did you manage to get her to sleep? I thought she’d never sleep again.”
I studied Kevin. He didn’t look in as bad a shape as Livia did, though perhaps that was down to the fact that I didn’t know him nearly as well as I did my best friend.
“I sang her some lullabies.”
He turned towards me looking startled like a deer in the road.
“I’m really that good.” I smiled as his eyes widened a little more in surprise, then he grinned back at me.
“Maybe we should let her sleep.”
I shook my head. “She’s slept the whole day. I know some people think that sleeping away a week is a good time, but you and I both know that Livia would sooner take up crocheting.”
Kevin laughed. It was a pure and rich sound. It made me certain that right now there was nothing better for Livia than his company.
“Why don’t you wake her, Prince Charming, and take her off on a magic balloon ride or something?”
“Wake her?”
I could almost sense him connecting the dots, but just to make really certain of it, I pushed him a little with a sliver of magic. Kiss the girl, the magic said. Like a true prince he did it with style.
Rounding the counter to Livia’s side, he caressed her cheek, his eyes drinking in her sleeping features. They were royal blue. I wondered if it was the light that made them suddenly so noticeable or if I’d just paid them no heed before. Guys weren’t my thing and Livia’s guys tended to be rather fleeting. I couldn’t blame myself for seeing Kevin as just another stand-in boyfriend. Gently brushing her hair back behind her ears, he bent down to lightly kiss her forehead before moving to her lips.
I wondered if Livia would realise that maybe this time she’d found herself a keeper.
I let the enchantment unravel as their lips met. I guess I still hadn’t learned my lesson about playing fairy godmother.
She woke and instinctively gave herself to the kiss before her eyes even opened. I turned away for Kevin’s sake when I saw his cheeks flush. He didn’t break away from Livia though I noted.
F.C. had no shame. He watched with an intensity that definitely made me wonder about the practical applications of feline safe sex. When it became clear that Livia and Kevin weren’t going to be coming up for air anytime soon, I cleared my throat and turned back to face them.
“Oh,” Livia gasped. She fanned herself dramatically with one hand, while holding onto Kevin with the other. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“I think you need to get sleeping beauty to a nice restaurant first,” I told Kevin. “You just nodded off, Liv. I didn’t want to wake you but Kevin insisted.”
Kevin’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.
“That’s because he knows better than to let me sleep away a day,” Livia grumped at me and rose off the chair to snuggle into Kevin’s side and under his arm. Kevin’s expression changed and he mouthed a silent thank you.
“Sometimes you need to do questionable things for the good of your friends,” I told her. It felt good to express something honest and true. I got another silent thank you, this time from Livia. It felt good. My smile was wide and easy.
“You don’t mind if I postpone that girl’s night again do you, Nils?”
“Absolutely not,” I told her already wondering if I could call Sofia. I shooed them out of
the store and began closing up. It was only as I readied myself to head home that I spotted the parcel that Boytjie had delivered. I had put it completely out of my mind. I had no doubt that the box contained the wolf pack’s dossier on Grace St John. The thought of reading it sickened me. No happy ending tonight for the fairy godmother, I grumbled to myself.
I opened the box and was surprised to find not only a thick folder, but a glove in a clear plastic bag. Cleo was obviously very good at her job. I picked up the bag and studied the glove. It looked like one of the pair Grace had worn on the day I had met her. I shuddered at the thought. I definitely rued the day her shadow had crossed my threshold. That was an old saying that had certainly survived the passage of time. There was also a very brief note from Cleo herself.
I hear you can’t kill her dead. Sucks to be you. If she gets in our way it doesn’t count. She wasn’t in when we called so we got a little up close and personal with her apartment. Bitch has issues (page three). P.S. The glove reeks of hellebore, so wash your hands after getting physical with it. Cleo.
I raised a brow at the message. I didn’t think anyone could find a memo from Cleo boring. It was a mix of aggressive and passive aggressive, like underneath all the veneer of violence lay another layer of deeper violence. I didn’t want to get on her bad side ever.
I flicked through the folder of loose pages and found page three was a photograph. It was a bedroom. There was a large four poster bed with a deep purple canopy. It dominated the room. It took me a while to figure out why Cleo had drawn my attention to it. There were manacles on the posts and they seemed to have been part of the bed’s design. The next page showed a close up of one of the manacles. It was wrought iron, but the interior was lined with a thick padding of velvet. Whatever issues Grace had I didn’t think the manacles were intended for pain.
I thought for a woman who’d fallen for a wolf, Cleo was rather vanilla when it came to sexual kinks. I closed the folder and returned it and the plastic bagged glove to the box. I tucked the entire package under my arm and headed for home. F.C. kept pace with me without seeming to really try. With his short limbs that had to be an illusion and I wondered how he was pulling it off. I wondered if making him my familiar had given him a touch of magic too or if he got his witchiness from Grace St John.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
There was a hex on my door when I reached the apartment. It was drawn in blood and sand. It looked little more than some smear of dirt across the woodwork like a muddy pawed animal had scratched the door in passing. I didn’t need F.C.’s warning growl, but it comforted me that I wouldn’t have blindly walked into it had I not taken a moment to assess it before reaching for the door handle.
It was full of malevolence. The blood and the sand weren’t important ingredients in the curse, but acted liked adhesive to keep the curse from drifting away before it could anchor itself to its victim. I didn’t need to hear my name to know that the curse was for me. I scowled at it and turned on my heel to backtrack to the supermarket. It was a relatively minor spell. The weakest attack that Grace St John had yet thrown my way, though no less deadly in its way than the homunculus or the incubus. Dead is dead, whether you’re poisoned or ripped apart by a wild animal. It still struck me as out of character. Was Grace growing desperate? Was her bag of dark tricks running empty? Or was I missing something?
I bought some bottled water along with a selection of groceries to make the trip worthwhile and headed back home. I summoned a little dissolution spell and instilled it in the bottled water, before I sloshed the liquid against the door. The dirt flowed away quickly leaving only a faint mark against the paint. I waited till I felt the curse dissipate, attuning myself to the silent note it made in the ether as it departed. I hoped I hadn’t sent it into the ever after. I glanced at F.C. before I opened the door. He seemed satisfied, so I took his cue and unlocked the door and headed up to my apartment.
The weak attempt by Grace to curse me continued to trouble me as I unpacked my groceries. I found myself raising the issue with F.C. like my familiar could offer me some insight into the warlock’s scheme.
“It’s not very violent or very direct. Grace has never been anything other than direct,” I told F.C. and he listened attentively. “Do you think she’d suddenly stoop to something as indirect as a curse?” I shook my head as F.C. licked a paw looking to my mind like he was giving my words some serious contemplation. “I mean it’s effective…though if you’re after a supernatural being you’d best be more circumspect than dabbing black magic on the door.”
F.C. gave a few heaves like he was trying to cough up a fur ball. I preferred to interpret the sound as a Frankenstein’s Cat laugh.
“It doesn’t feel right, F.C.” I said slamming the grocery cupboard door and moved to the table to open Cleo’s spy box. I slumped into a chair and flipped it open and pulled out its contents. I reread Cleo’s note, shuddering at the implication that Asbelia’s terms meant nothing to the pack. I wondered though who would get the blame if Grace managed to get her throat ripped out. Somehow I didn’t think Asbelia would hold the werewolves responsible. I sighed, set the note aside and delved into the report that Cleo and her people had prepared. It had a lot of figures in it and maths had never been my strong suit, but I knew enough to gather that Grace St John was a very wealthy woman.
The bulk of the document was made up of photographs as though Cleo had known that date of birth, residential address, bills and bank balances meant next to nothing to me. They’d methodically gone through Grace’s house and taken photographs of every room like they were detailing a crime scene to enter it into evidence. I laid them all out on the table into piles dedicated to each room, but there were none of the spell room I had glimpsed when I’d shaken Grace’s hand. I wondered if that meant that the spell room was located elsewhere, or so well hidden that not even a pack of werewolves had been able to sniff it out.
Grace’s home was dark. There were heavy drapes in front of every window. The photographer had been thorough enough to open one of the velvet-like curtains to photograph the window it covered. I was surprised at how narrow it was.
“Isn’t that taking the whole creature of darkness theme a little far?” I asked. F.C. jumped up onto the table to take a gander at the picture himself. He put a paw down on the photograph. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out if he’d uncovered something important, before deciding that it was probably more a statement of self importance from F.C.
I shooed him off the table and went back to studying the images. I wanted to find something that would solve everything in one single stroke with no blood spilled. All I learned was that I didn’t like Grace’s interior decorator. There was one room that was at odds with everything in the house. It was a little girl’s bedroom. There was a large dolls house, very intricately designed, and a collection of dolls that showed absolutely no creep favour whatsoever. The room was overflowing with pink from the bedding to the curtains. It seemed the perfect little girl’s room, but the wardrobe was filled with clothes that were far too big for a young child.
I wondered if the room was where Grace intended Emma to stay, but in the meantime was being used as a spare closet. None of the clothing though seemed Grace’s style. They were more Glinda than Wicked Witch.
There was one photograph of the outside of the house. It looked as stark and dark as it did on the inside. The walls were scorched face brick and the roof was a dull black. The fencing was all wrought iron railings that loomed up dramatically before the house. Old trees abutted the building on either side, casting long and deep shadows. The windows were all the same narrow openings. Though it had been skilfully done, I could tell that it was not part of the original design of the house.
I went back to the facts and figures that Cleo had provided with a vague notion that there was something important there. I found it hidden among the background history. Grace St John had inherited the home from her mother, Millicent St John. She had spent most of her adult life loo
king after her ailing mother who’d suffered from some mystery illness that made me quirk my brows into a heavy frown. Andrew St John, Millicent’s second husband and Grace’s father, had died soon after Millicent had fallen pregnant with Grace. If that wasn’t an omen, I needed a refresher course from the Oxford Dictionary on the meaning of the word. If I had missed the significance it would have been highlighted by the fact that Millicent’s first husband had died in very similar circumstances when Millicent had fallen pregnant with Simon Gold.
It seemed a detour from Grace St John, but my witchy instincts told me that it was an important part of the puzzle. I needed to learn about the witch bloodline that had flowed down through the generations to rest now in the veins of the youngest addition, Emma Gold. Witchcraft isn’t sexist, but I had the feeling that Millicent might have been. I hated using Erica, but she was the only way I would get close enough to question Simon Gold about his mother and sister. Cursing, I rang Erica.
She answered sounding a little out of breath.
“Hi, Erica. I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
“Oh, Nilla. No, not at all,” she gulped in a breath of air. “What a surprise hearing from you.”
I got the definite impression I was interrupting something. The breathless Erica made me think it was something very sensual and intimate. Quite possibly it was still ongoing, making me feeling like I’d unwittingly become part of a threesome. I was pleased for Erica, but part of me felt a stab of jealous-driven curiosity. I couldn’t help but picture Sofia with Erica. Who else had been on the radar? I pushed aside the desire to know who was with Erica and focused on why I had called.
“I was just thinking about little Emma Gold and wondering if you’d seen her again since the funeral?”
“No,” Erica gave a quiet little gasp and hesitated.
“I could ring you tomorrow,” I said feeling a little awkward.
“That would be great,” Erica replied quickly and before the connection ended I heard a soft moan of pleasure.