The Curse of the Wolf Girl

by Martin Millar

  Kalix stared at Dominil, quite shocked at her frank assessment of her condition.

  “I advise you to make your life normal again. Get back to your routine. You can still investigate, if you feel you have to. But there’s no point letting yourself go so badly. You’ll only end up dead of starvation. Or laudanum.”

  “I haven’t been taking that much.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Kalix flushed angrily but didn’t bother to deny it. She looked at Dominil with loathing and refused to speak to her again.

  When they reached Kennington, Kalix left the car in silence and didn’t look back as she made her way to her flat.

  * * *

  As she lay on her bed, Kalix pondered Dominil’s words briefly but found her thoughts turning towards the dream she’d had while unconscious. Poor Wolf and Robber Wolf. That was a strange thing to dream about. For some reason, she felt oddly reassured to have remembered the child’s tale. Normally she couldn’t remember anything good about growing up at Castle MacRinnalch. But the story cast a tiny glow of warmth back in time, as it were, making some part of her childhood seem not so unpleasant. It couldn’t have been entirely bad if someone was telling her stories. Who told her the story of Poor Wolf and Robber Wolf? Her mother? It seemed unlikely. Someone must have told Kalix the traditional MacRinnalch tale, but Kalix couldn’t remember who it might have been.

  Chapter 82

  Distikka handed a sheet of parchment to the Fire Queen. “Your itinerary, mighty Queen.”

  Malveria smiled at her ever-efficient advisor. “Almost free of tedious council meetings. Excellent work, Distikka.” Malveria now delegated Distikka to represent her whenever she could. She knew that her Council of Ministers didn’t like this, but there were other, more important matters she needed to attend to. “Distikka, can you believe that the foul Princess Kabachetka has secured an invitation to the grand charity event featuring Mr. Felicori? An event to which I am forbidden to go? Is it not intolerable?”

  “It’s absolutely intolerable,” replied Distikka, smoothly. “Perhaps if you acquaint me with the circumstances, I might be able to suggest a means of securing an invitation?”

  The Fire Queen beamed. “Of course! Well, as you know, Thrix MacRinnalch’s rather barbaric family has never approved of our friendship, and nor has my First Minister Xakthan—” Malveria gave Distikka a full description of the events, personalities, and problems surrounding the fundraising event. Distikka paid close attention, standing quite still in her black chain-mail, listening to the queen’s every word. “— and to make matters worse, I’ve fallen out with Thrix.”

  “A serious dispute?”

  “I don’t think so. Her temper was frayed by the lunar eclipse, I believe.”

  “It sounds like a minor quarrel between friends that can easily be made up,” observed Distikka. “From my knowledge of your previous friendship, I’d say that visiting the enchantress with a bottle of wine and a cheerful greeting would probably be enough.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “You could compliment her hair as well.”

  “An excellent idea. Thrix is susceptible to compliments about her hair. I really must not fall out with her, Distikka. Not only does she supply me with fabulous clothes, I need her to engage in some sort of romance if I’m to wrest the secret of Queen Dithean’s lip coloring from her.”

  Distikka nodded sagely. “The fundraising event is a more awkward problem, certainly. But I’m sure I can find a solution. Meanwhile be sure to encourage Thrix’s relationship with Easterly. I can see that working out well.”

  “Distikka, you are a marvel. Your fine advice almost makes me forgive your chain-mail and sword. What is this piece of paper?”

  “The promotion for General Agripath, mighty Queen. It needs your signature.”

  Malveria scribbled on the parchment, authorizing the general’s promotion to Commander.

  “If only my other problems were as easily solved,” she said, and she went off to dress for her evening engagement.

  Chapter 83

  Kalix was worn out from her adventures. It would have been comforting to change into her werewolf form, but the moon, briefly visible after the eclipse, had now disappeared. She sipped a little laudanum and thought angry thoughts about her fellow werewolves. How dare Marwanis and Morag kidnap her and the Duncan-MacPhees try to kill her? She’d have her revenge.

  Her thoughts turned to Dominil. She was grateful to the white-haired werewolf for rescuing her but still resented Dominil’s refusal to help her investigate Gawain’s death. Why wouldn’t she help? As for Decembrius, he’d phoned Dominil to inform her that Kalix was in trouble, but he hadn’t appeared to rescue her. Kalix hated him too. She scratched her arm without thinking about it. Blood flowed from her wound.

  Her anger began to turn into anxiety. She looked at her small wooden table. On it were her bag, her journal, and a few CDs. Kalix suddenly felt annoyed at the way they were strewn around. She tidied them into straight lines and felt slightly better for it. She wondered if there was anything else in her room that needed tidying, but she had very few possessions. After straightening the few clothes in her wardrobe, there was nothing left.

  “Everyone’s glad Gawain’s dead,” she thought. “No one cares who killed him.”

  She stared at her feet. Her boots were old and cracked, and she couldn’t afford a new pair. She toyed with the ring in her nose, turning it this way and that, trying to think what to do next. An idea came to her. She examined it for a while, wondering if it was good or stupid. After the debacle with Marwanis and the Douglas-MacPhees, Kalix no longer had much faith in her own ideas. However, this one seemed reasonable. She grabbed her coat and hurried from the room.

  Upstairs, Vex was slumbering peacefully under the enormous pink duvet she’d brought from the palace. The attic, sorcerously enlarged by Queen Malveria, was now a very colorful room. Vex had brought a lot of her favorite posters and toys to brighten the place up, and wherever there was a gap in the decorations, she’d hung Hello Kitty T-shirts and strings of beads bought from Camden Market so that her room now resembled a market stall itself, full of bright clothes and gaudy plastic jewelry.

  “Vex, wake up!”

  Vex didn’t stir. Kalix shook her shoulder.

  Vex opened her eyes, sat up, moaned, and lay back down again.

  “Get up, I need your help.”

  Vex attempted to rise again. Her spiky bleached hair pointed in all directions, covering most of her face. She dragged some spikes a few inches to the side and peered at Kalix. “I’m tired.”

  “I need your help.”

  Agrivex dragged herself out of bed, making a sorry spectacle with her crushed hair and smeared makeup. The young Fire Elemental didn’t feel like getting up or like helping Kalix or like doing anything, but it was a sign of her good nature that she did her best.

  “Okay, I’m up. What are we doing? Emergency shopping?”

  “No, we’re investigating. Can you teleport us to Gawain’s?”

  Vex shook her head. Her powers of teleportation were nowhere near those of Malveria, and she couldn’t transport another person.

  “Then we’ll just have to get the bus.”

  “I need breakfast,” said Vex, which frustrated Kalix. She paced around the living room while Vex ate a bowl of cereal and drank water, stopping occasionally to complain about how tired she felt. “But it’s all right. I’ll feel better when we’re shopping.”

  “We’re not going shopping!” cried Kalix. “We’re investigating.”

  “Oh. All right. What are we investigating?”

  “Come on,” said Kalix, and she dragged Vex from the house.

  They made an odd sight on the bus. Two thin girls, one with bleached hair in a chaotic spiky mass and yesterday’s makeup still visible around her eyes and the other with extremely long hair, rather unkempt and tangled; Kalix with her long coat and scuffed, heavy boots, Vex with a denim jacket thrown over her Hello
Kitty pajamas and an even heavier pair of boots, black and new, bought only last week as part of Vex’s apparent quest to find the largest footwear she could possibly manage.

  The police had cleared away their tape from around Gawain’s room. The landlord had repaired the door. The small flat was still empty, but there was little sign that a crime had ever been committed there, save for the bloodstain on the floor.

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Vex, for the fifth time in as many minutes.

  Kalix growled in frustration. Vex seemed unable to hold a thought in her head for more than a minute.

  “Read the remnants of auras. You can do that, right? I want you to tell me about everyone who visited this apartment before Gawain was killed.”

  “But it was weeks ago,” complained the Elemental. “They’ll all be faint now, and mixed up. I’m not that good at reading auras.”

  “But you studied it,” said Kalix. “You became better at it.”

  “I forgot it all again. Can we go shopping instead?”

  “Just read the auras!” yelled Kalix.

  Vex started to pace around the flat, looking this way and that. Kalix took out her investigation notebook and a pencil, poised to write down names, like a detective gathering clues.

  “Loads of people have been here,” said Vex. “All the police, I suppose. And people later, repairing the door probably.”

  “What about before? What about werewolves?”

  Vex complained again that it was all so faint she could hardly make anything out, but she tried. Werewolf auras were very distinctive to a Hiyasta, and there were some traces.

  “I see a werewolf aura!” she shouted excitedly.

  “Who’s is it?” Kalix asked eagerly.

  “Gawain! He was definitely here.”

  Kalix almost exploded at the idiocy of this but managed to restrain herself. Vex did seem to be on the verge of discovering something.

  “And some more. These horrible werewolves we met at the gig. The Douglas something?”

  Kalix nodded. So the Douglas-MacPhees had been here. That was interesting.

  Vex peered in a corner then shook her head.

  “There’s another werewolf aura here, but it’s too faint. I can’t make it out.”

  “Try.”

  “My head hurts.” Vex screwed up her face in concentration. “Thrix,” she announced.

  Kalix nodded. Thrix had been here, of course, after the death. But not before, or so she claimed.

  “Did she come here more than once? Was she here before Gawain died?”

  “I think so,” said Vex. “The auras sort of merge here. I think they met.”

  Kalix bared her teeth and wrote something down in her slow, laborious handwriting.

  “Can we go now?” asked Vex.

  Kalix nodded. She felt like she’d at least made some progress. As they walked up the short corridor to the front door, Vex suddenly halted.

  “There’s a tiny fragment of aura left here,” she said. “Two auras. Mixed up.”

  Vex strained to make them out. Her dark features took on an orange hue with the effort, as if small flames might appear at any moment.

  “Decembrius, maybe.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not sure at all. It’s hardly there. It’s like…” but Vex struggled to find the words. There was no easy way to describe the faint remnant on an aura to someone who couldn’t see them. “It might be his. But I’m probably wrong.”

  Vex abruptly sat down, exhausted by her effort.

  Kalix sat beside her on the bare wooden floor. She made a final note then stared into space. Decembrius. Why would he have been here? When Vex had revived, they trooped down the dark staircase. Vex suddenly halted.

  “I think Dominil might have been here too.”

  Kalix stared at her companion. “Are you just making this up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve named half the MacRinnalch clan!”

  Vex shrugged. “I told you I wasn’t sure. I’m really bad at reading auras.”

  Kalix seemed on the verge of snarling at her companion but stopped herself. Vex had done her best.

  “Thanks for helping,” Kalix said.

  “Okay. Can we go to a café now? I need tea. And maybe an egg sandwich.”

  They walked out of the shabby old building, Vex still feeling weary and Kalix deep in thought. It had started to rain, and they hurried towards the nearest small café. Kalix wondered if Vex’s information could be relied on. If she was right, several werewolves had been at Gawain’s flat before he was murdered, and none of them had been forthcoming about it.

  “Let’s talk about our assignments,” said Vex, halfway through her sandwich.

  “Do we have to?”

  “It’ll be fun. I’ve already got lots of pictures of Tokyo Top Pop Boom-Boom Girl. I can’t wait to stick them in a big book. What are you going to do?”

  “I can’t talk to the class about anything.”

  “How about ‘My Life s a Werewolf’? You’d be great at that.”

  “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “Oh. Well, what about ‘I Have a Good Friend Who’s a Werewolf’?”

  Kalix felt like screaming. “We’re not supposed to mention werewolves at all!”

  “I suppose you’re right. Maybe Sabrina the Teenage Witch? You like that.”

  Kalix wasn’t keen. She did like Sabrina but felt the rest of the class might laugh at her for doing an assignment on what was really a children’s program. Vex, a regular viewer of cartoons aimed at four-year-olds, found this difficult to understand.

  “I still think you could talk about Curse of the Wolf Girl.”

  “Only if I can tell everyone how much I hate it.”

  “Why not?” asked Vex. “We can pick anything. You don’t have to like it.”

  Kalix was surprised. She hadn’t realized that. The notion of strongly denouncing Curse of the Wolf Girl as an anti-werewolf piece of propaganda seemed vaguely attractive. She shook her head. “Stop distracting me. I want to think about Gawain.”

  Chapter 84

  Dominil stepped out of the bookshop on Charing Cross Road carrying a plastic bag containing the complete letters of Cicero. It was a weighty volume. Cicero had been a prolific letter-writer. She intended to walk back to her flat, which was a mile or so away. Dominil had once spent a lot of time walking through the fields and glens that surrounded the castle in Scotland, and here in London, she enjoyed walking the streets. Her phone rang. She took it from the pocket of her long leather coat.

  “Dominil?”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Buying a book.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “The complete letters of Cicero.”

  “The last great statesman of the Roman Republic.”

  “I’ve always admired him.” Dominil turned a corner onto a street with several small shops selling fabrics from India.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have much time for reading these days.”

  “Why not?” asked Dominil.

  “Well, there’s the twins’ gig. That must be taking some of your time? Making them rehearse. And keeping them safe.”

  “I’m quite sure they’re safe.”

  “I hope so. You never know what might happen to a werewolf band in London these days.”

  “I wouldn’t describe them strictly as a werewolf band,” said Dominil. “Werewolf-fronted perhaps.”

  The caller laughed. “That’s enough to get them into trouble. He came to a bad end, of course.”

  “Who?”

  “Cicero?”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Not only murdered by Mark Anthony, but decapitated as well, and his hand cut off and nailed up in the Roman Forum as a warning to others.”

  Dominil waited at a crossing for the cars to stop then crossed the road carefully. The day was gloomy with intermittent rain
, slightly dampening her long, white hair.

  “Have you been to the museum recently?”

  “Yes,” said Dominil, “though my last visit was interrupted before I could fully appreciate it.”

  The caller laughed again. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Dominil looked around carefully at the next corner. She didn’t know how Albermarle had obtained her phone number, though she wasn’t surprised that he had. He was an intelligent foe, and he had the resources of the guild behind him. She wondered if this call was an attempt to trace her location.

  “I always liked you at Oxford,” said Albermarle.

  “I know. I never gave you a second thought.”

  “Well, perhaps you should have,” said Albermarle, angrily, losing his composure for the first time in the conversation.

  “You weren’t worth it,” said Dominil, with her customary lack of tact.

  “Maybe if you had, I wouldn’t be a werewolf hunter now.”

  “I suggest you look for other employment.”

  A group of Japanese tourists studied Dominil with interest. Dominil walked by without paying them any attention, though she was taking a careful interest in her surroundings. Albermarle had caught her by surprise at the museum, and she didn’t intend to let it happen again.

  “You stole my place on the quiz team.”

  “You were sick. I was asked to deputize.”

  “I was better by the time of the competition. I should have won that trophy!”

  “And yet you didn’t.”

  “I’ll be seeing you soon, Dominil.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “Next time I’ll kill you,” said Albermarle.

  “On the contrary,” replied Dominil, “next time I’ll kill you.”

  Chapter 85

  The festival in honor of the Southern Volcano was a small affair in comparison to other Hainusta festivals. Even so, Princess Kabachetka surprised the empress by participating with a show of enthusiasm. Her brother Prince Esarax was there, being fawned over by the masses, and the princess had decided that she’d better start improving her own profile. Much as it bored her to stand around the rim of a volcano, clapping politely while local dignitaries made speeches and threw a few sacrificed victims into the volcano, she did her best to smile and wave graciously to the crowds. Though it was far from comfortable wandering around a volcano in high heels—a problem suffered by many of the Elemental aristocracy these days—she managed to make it through the ceremony without yawning or scowling.