A Kind of Magic

by Shanna Swendson

  Fortunately, either no one else noticed the bag lady or no one considered her a viable potential witness, because no one suggested interviewing her. He could feel her eyes boring into his back, but she didn’t draw attention to herself. She’d gotten it into her head that because he’d been touched by the fae, thanks to his experiences in trying to rescue his erstwhile wife from the fairy realm, that made him something like she was, a person who could mediate between the worlds of fae and human. He’d prefer to be just a cop, even if he happened to be one who could see weird things that were usually hidden from human eyes. Like the ghostly horse that wasn’t there.

  He noticed that Mari, through with her interview, was staring up at a few faint snowflakes swirling around the angel fountain. “Hey, look, it’s snowing!” she said.

  “I thought you hated winter.”

  “I hate cold. I like snow—while it’s falling, before it gets nasty on the ground. This”—she gestured toward the faint flakes dancing around the angel’s wings—“is almost enough to make you believe in magic.”

  “I had no idea you were so imaginative. Let’s give the area a look before we go find the family. That is, if you’re through greeting the first snowfall.”

  Three

  The Upper West Side

  8:00 a.m.

  Mari pushed the buzzer at the victim’s building with an air of authority before glancing up at Michael. “You’re talking to them, right?”

  Sometimes he was tempted to make her deliver bad news, but he really was better at it than she was, and he thought the needs of the victims’ families were greater than any need to push Mari out of her comfort zone. “We don’t know if there’s any ‘them’ to talk to yet,” he said.

  Of course, at that moment a female voice came through the intercom. “Hello?”

  “This is Detective Murray with Detective Lopez of the NYPD. Is this Valerie Johnson’s residence?”

  “Um, yeah. I’m her roommate. But she’s not home. I think she’s out for a run.”

  “We need to talk to you about her.”

  “Okay, I guess. Come on up, but you’ll have to wait a sec.”

  The door buzzed open, and they found the apartment. Michael figured it was the kind of place that wasn’t posh, but that wouldn’t be too scary—normal for a twentysomething woman. A roommate was to be expected if she wasn’t living with family. He’d been hoping for family, since a roommate meant more people to break the news to.

  A few minutes later, the door opened, still on the chain. “I don’t want to be rude, but I should probably ask for some ID,” the voice on the other side said. Both Michael and Mari had their IDs out and ready to show. Michael wanted to commend the young woman for her caution. It was amazing how many people were willing to open their doors and let someone in, just because they said they were cops. After a moment, the door shut enough for the chain to come off before opening again to reveal a tall, lanky woman in her mid-twenties. She wore jeans and a sweater and her dark hair was pulled into a low ponytail, but she wore no makeup and was barefoot. Michael got the impression she’d thrown on clothes after they’d buzzed her. “Okay, come on in,” she said.

  She gestured them toward a futon in the tiny living room, and she perched on a barstool by the countertop that also seemed to serve as a dining table. Mari flipped open her notepad, and the young woman said, “So, what’s this all about, anyway?”

  “Can I get your name, please?” Michael asked.

  “Melanie Jacobs.”

  “And you’re Valerie’s roommate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know where she is right now?”

  “Like I said, she went out for a run. Actually, I’d have thought she’d be back by now. She usually is. She works downtown, so she needs to get home in time to get dressed and get to work.” Her eyes went wide, and she gasped. “Oh God, that’s what this is about, isn’t it? Something happened to her?”

  Her reaction seemed genuine enough, and she really looked like she hadn’t been awake long, so Michael didn’t see any need to drag out the suspense. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid her body was found in the park this morning.”

  Melanie pressed her hands against her mouth and whimpered. Her eyes blinked rapidly, fighting off tears. “Oh God! I was always so worried about her going out running in the dark like that. I knew something bad would happen to her. What did happen?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’ve only just begun our investigation. Now, do you know what time she left to go running?”

  “No, by now I’ve learned to sleep through her getting up and ready, and she’s really quiet about it. She’s training for a marathon, so she does it all the time. I think it’s something like five-thirty or so. I always thought that was ridiculous.” Her last word broke into a sob, and Michael gave her a moment to collect herself, even though he could sense Mari’s impatience. She wanted out of there right away.

  “Do you know if she ran with anyone—a training team, a running buddy?”

  “I don’t think so. She didn’t say anything.”

  “Does her family live nearby?”

  “They’re upstate.”

  “Is she in a relationship?”

  “No.”

  He caught Mari’s start at her vehemence, so he said, “You seem pretty sure about that.”

  “Well, unless she’s got a secret boyfriend at work and only goes on lunch dates, I don’t know when she’d see him. We spend just about all our evenings together. We watch a lot of chick flicks and Disney movies and complain about not finding Prince Charming. Or we did.” Her voice broke again, and Michael reached for the small packet of tissues he kept handy for these situations. She mouthed a “thank you” as she pulled a tissue from the packet he offered her and wiped her eyes before blowing her nose.

  “Would you mind if we took a look at her room?”

  “Our room. But sure. Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.” She slid off the barstool and led them to a set of pocket doors that slid back to reveal what looked like a girls’ dorm room. He knew Mari would describe it as looking “like Disney threw up all over the damn place.” He wondered if her thoughts being so clear he could read them required her to put a dollar in the penalty jar for cursing. “That’s her side,” Melanie said, pointing to the side decorated in blue. The other side was pink.

  A bulletin board over the twin bed held a number of race bibs, alongside pictures of various kinds of fairies, from the Disney variety to the wispy flower fairies of Victorian illustrations and sexier fairies straight off fantasy novel covers. There were also unicorns and castles, and a lot of other fantasy art. His five-year-old niece would have gotten along very well with Valerie Johnson.

  In short, Valerie had been a dreamer, and that shattered his rationalization that she couldn’t possibly have seen a kelpie to be carried away by one. Even if she didn’t actually believe in fae creatures—though from the looks of her room, she’d be right there clapping to save Tinkerbell—she might have wanted to believe strongly enough to see the fae, and probably didn’t know enough to recognize the danger.

  “Do you know if she left her phone and if she has a computer?” Michael asked.

  “It’s all there on her desk.” Melanie waved in the direction of a small desk that doubled as a nightstand. Mari took charge of collecting those. They’d probably send a team out to look at the place more thoroughly, but they needed to collect things like this before there was a chance anything could be tampered with. Michael got the contact information for Valerie’s parents and dreaded having to make that call almost as much as he dreaded figuring out a way to deal with what looked increasingly like a case that would be impossible to explain in a way that would satisfy anyone.

  Four

  Central Park

  9:43 a.m.

  The cold took Sophie’s breath away as she stepped through the gateway from the Realm into the park. She wasted no time in putting on her coat. Back home in Louisiana, she hadn’t even
put the heat on yet. She was so focused on her destination that she’d left the park and crossed a couple of busy streets before she noticed the headlines on the newspapers being prominently displayed at a kiosk. “CRADLE ROBBED!” the tabloid blared. Probably some rich, old executive marrying a young starlet, she told herself. It couldn’t possibly be about anything else, like a missing child.

  She couldn’t help but take a closer look when she had to stop to wait for the light to turn. Judging by the photo under that headline, she had to admit that the story did involve an angelic-looking toddler. “Oh dear,” she muttered to herself.

  Still, children went missing all the time. His babysitter might have run off with him. There might have been a custody dispute. Then there were those women who kidnapped other people’s children and pretended they were their own. It wasn’t her responsibility.

  Besides, if the fairies had taken him, the parents probably wouldn’t have known their child was gone. A changeling would have been left behind, and parents these days had no idea how to check for that sort of thing. They’d just spend years seeing doctors and wondering why their child wasn’t thriving. Though that was probably an improvement over the way things used to be, when there had been cases of children thrown into fires to prove they were changelings—and most of them probably hadn’t been.

  Even so, she was relieved when the light changed and she was able to cross the street, moving away from that nagging headline that pricked at what her sister Emily would call her overinflated sense of responsibility. She was just a dancer, not a fairy queen. She’d even prefer not to be an enchantress, as long as Amelia and Athena were willing to leave her out of it. Sure, she’d pitch in if a crisis arose, but it wasn’t her day job. She had a lot of ground to make up in her true calling.

  Speaking of which … She reached the administrative offices for the ballet company and announced herself at the reception desk. She’d been eighteen the last time she was here, a promising rising star considered to be the next big dance phenomenon. And then life got in the way. She was surprised to see that there was still a photo of her in the role of the Snow Queen on the wall, and she was even more surprised when the director himself came to greet her, bypassing the usual air kiss for a bear hug.

  “Good heavens, Sophie,” he said once he’d released her from the hug and gripped her shoulders to hold her at arm’s length so he could look at her. “You haven’t aged a second.” He glanced over to the photo, then back to her. “If anything, you look younger now. Were you spending all those years in suspended animation?”

  “It’s just good genes and clean living,” she said. She imagined her fae genes did have a lot to do with it.

  He led her back to his office, never moving his arm from around her shoulders, as though he was afraid she might escape. “I can’t tell you how glad I was to hear that you were taking class here in the city and hadn’t lost a step in all these years. It was like the answer to all my problems just fell into my lap.” They reached his office and he offered coffee before remembering that she didn’t drink it and sending his secretary to fetch tea. Not waiting for the tea to be delivered, he faced Sophie and said, “I don’t suppose you remember any of the Snow Queen choreography, do you?”

  “I haven’t thought of it in years, but I imagine it’s still in there and would come back to me.”

  “Do you think you could refresh yourself in the next few days?” Without waiting for her response, he plunged ahead. “You see, Natalia reinjured her foot—stress fracture that’s been a nagging problem, she thought she was better, now suddenly she can’t dance. The doctor says she needs six weeks of rest. We’re already down to barely having a cast because of other injuries. I could move some people around, but most of the roles involve partnering, and that’s really hard to just jump into when we open in less than a week. But the Snow Queen is a soloist with the corps—they’d hardly notice a new person being dropped in. Since you have a name, that gives me a reason to cast outside. Do you think you’re up for it?”

  Sophie tried not to look as flabbergasted as she felt. When he’d called her about meeting to talk about possibly making a comeback, she’d thought he meant a spring production, after Nutcracker season, not a ballet that was opening next week. “I could try,” she hazarded. She was fairly certain her body was up to it since she’d been commuting to New York via the Realm to take professional-level classes. Whether she could resume an old role that quickly remained to be seen.

  “Good. Are you free this afternoon? We can go over the choreography as a refresher and see how you look, then decide from there.”

  Her head was still spinning when she left. This was exactly what she’d hoped might happen when she’d been relieved of both her family responsibilities and her regal obligations as queen of the fairy realm. A few snowflakes swirled around her as she walked down the street. She hadn’t lived in New York since she was a teenager, but it seemed a bit early for snow—still just mid-November. With a stern mental scolding, she forced her attention back to trying to remember ballet choreography. If she wasn’t going to let magical nonsense ruin her life again, she had to stop seeing magic in everything.

  Five

  The Upper West Side—the Antique Shop

  12:45 p.m.

  Michael was dead tired when his shift ended. Staying up most of the night was bad enough, but breaking the news of an untimely death—twice—was so emotionally draining that he could barely force his body to move. Even so, he wasn’t sure he could sleep, so instead of going home, he went to the little antique shop that seemed to mostly serve as a cover for the activities of the two ancient enchantresses who ran it.

  He instinctively ducked his head as he entered the basement shop, the little bell above the door tinkling to herald his arrival. The ceiling was actually about a foot above him, but it was low enough to make him feel like he should be stooping.

  “Detective Murray! This is a surprise!” Athena Abercrombie, the elder of the two sisters, greeted him. The tiny woman flitted forward to take his hand. Thanksgiving was still two weeks away, but she wore a sweater emblazoned with a turkey wearing a Pilgrim hat. “I’m sure you’re not here to buy antique china, so what magical problem do you have for us today?”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “How much china have you bought lately?”

  “Actually, I’m doing some early Christmas shopping.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  He couldn’t help but grin, in spite of his heavy heart. “No, sorry. I had a kelpie sighting this morning. I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “A kelpie? Where?”

  “The lake in Central Park.”

  “You’re sure it was a kelpie?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Oh my.”

  “We have one death already. I’d like to prevent any more. What do I do about it?”

  She darted over to the counter and banged her hand repeatedly on the bell while calling out, “Amelia! We have a kelpie!” Michael winced, her sudden blast of volume making his ears ring. More serenely, she said, “Please have a seat, Detective. Would you like some tea?”

  He wasn’t normally much of a tea drinker, but being served a hot cup of tea by an elderly lady sounded so comforting that he couldn’t resist. Right now, he really needed the comfort. “Yes, please,” he said, settling himself at the small table in the corner of the shop.

  Athena fluttered off to the back room just as her younger sister, Amelia Abernathy, entered. At first glance, the two seemed entirely unalike. Athena was tiny and cute while Amelia was tall and regal, but they had such similar faces that they might pass as twins in a photo lineup. He stood to greet her. “Mrs. Abernathy, hello,” he said.

  She offered her hand in a way that made him feel like she expected him to kiss it, but he settled for giving it a squeeze and a shake. “Detective Murray, how are you doing?”

  He started to say, “Fine,” but the look she gave him made it clear that she wasn
’t making social niceties. She really did want to know. “Okay, I guess,” he said. “It’s weird. Nothing has actually changed, and yet everything has. My life’s going on as normal, but what I know is different.”

  She gestured toward his left hand. “I see you’ve quit wearing your ring.”

  He rubbed his thumb against the spot where the wedding ring used to be. “Yeah. Everyone seems to think that seven years is long enough, and since I know she’s not coming back, I figured it was about time I tried to move on.”

  She placed a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder. “I know it’s difficult. Everyone mourns in his or her own way, and everyone has a different pace. You notice that I never remarried after my husband died.”

  He refrained from saying that there weren’t too many centenarians in the dating pool, because he’d seen what she could do with a well-aimed fireball. Instead, he swallowed the sarcastic remark and said, “Thanks.”

  Just as Athena came bustling out of the back with a tea tray, the front door bell jingled and Emily Drake entered, Beau the bulldog waddling behind her on a leash. Michael noticed that she, too, instinctively ducked when she came through the doorway.

  “Whoa, Michael, this is a surprise,” she said as she unclipped Beau’s leash from his collar. The dog headed straight for his bed behind the counter and commenced snoring.

  “I guess it is weird seeing your neighbor away from your building.”

  “No, I meant that you must be having a supernatural incident, too.” Belatedly remembering her manners, she said, “Hey, Amelia and Athena.”

  “You’re just in time for tea,” Athena said. Michael noticed that she’d brought out extra cups.

  Emily flopped into one of the chairs and stretched out her long legs. “So, what do you have?” she asked, taking a cup from Athena.

  “Kelpie in Central Park.”

  “Is that the seal thing or the horse thing?”