Acting Up

by A. A. Albright

  I stood up, groaning. I’d met a dog at the same wedding. A dog who just happened to be the familiar of the wickedest witch of all: Mandy Parker.

  ‘If that’s Mandy’s dog,’ I muttered, rushing to the door and yanking it open. ‘Then I almost hope Mandy is with him.’

  18. This Time It’s Not a Rehearsal

  The dog pushed past me immediately. Oh, that was Mandy’s dog all right. I’d recognise that puffed up poodle anywhere. He was wearing a diamond collar (yup, I said diamond) and an expression that said he owned the world and everyone in it.

  ‘About time, too. It’s not as though I want to be here, is it?’ He jumped up onto the hall table so he could look me in the eye. Confession time: I didn’t have to stoop all that much to help him out.

  ‘Bonbon,’ I said, my voice hollow. ‘Why are you here? Is Mandy okay?’

  He wrinkled his perky nose. ‘Have we met before, Wayfarer?’

  ‘Yes! Just the other day, in Mandy’s dressing room. And at Bryce Blue and Veronica Berry’s wedding, too. You were extremely rude to me.’

  He regarded me more closely. ‘Oh, that’s right. You had confetti on you. You’ve put on a bit of weight since then.’

  ‘Hey!’ Max had arrived next to me. ‘Watch it, buddy! Wanda is perfect. Better than your skinny witch!’

  The dog growled. ‘Take that back, weredog. My Mandy was the most stunning, most …’ He paused, then sank down to his belly, whining.

  Max’s face fell. ‘Was?’ he said, his voice croaking as he turned to me. ‘Oh, Wanda, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  I pulled him in for a brief hug. ‘It’s not your fault he’s so rude.’ I turned back to the dog and attempted to pat his head. He growled. ‘Okay. Listen, Bonbon, you’re going to have to talk to me, little guy. Why are you here? Is Mandy …’

  He growled for a minute more, then eventually said, ‘Dead? Yes. You’ll be pleased to know that my witch has been murdered.’

  ‘Pleased?’ I sat down on the stairs, looking at him. ‘I’m not pleased. Not at all. What happened? Who killed her?’

  The dog began to shake. ‘I’m not sure. She left me with the security guards and said she’d be back. But she never came back. I just know in my bones that she’s dead. And I think … I think it might have been Dashell Berry who killed her.’

  ≈

  I was just about to phone Finn when he phoned me. Before I could even manage to greet him, he said, ‘Mandy Parker is dead, Wanda. She was found in her dressing room. And this time, it’s not a rehearsal.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘And seeing as it’s such tragic news I’ll even let you away with that terrible pun. Bonbon is here. Her familiar.’

  ‘That annoying white poodle? That makes sense. The security guards said he’d gone missing, but they figured he’d just gone off to die the way familiars often do. It’s a pity you can’t bring him with you. I’d like to hear what he has to say.’

  I glanced at the dog. ‘I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. It might upset him.’

  He jumped up, yapped a few times, then said, ‘Upset me? Upset me? Not solving my witch’s murder, that would upset me.’

  ‘Well, he clearly has good hearing,’ I said wearily into the phone. ‘So there’s that. I can’t bring him as he is, though. Too many people are asking questions about me as it is. But I might have a way I can make it happen.’

  ≈

  ‘I’m not happy about this,’ said Bonbon as we prepared to leave. ‘Dressing up is all well and good, but did you have to make me look bright red?’

  I curtailed a gleeful grin. As far as I was concerned, he looked amazing. I’d been swotting up on glamour spells lately. Mostly because I never wanted to do another doppelganger spell again, but also because it was kind of fun. I was nowhere near as good as Gretel, but I wasn’t too shabby.

  ‘I think you look distinguished,’ I said. ‘A bit like an Irish setter. If anyone asks, I’ll say you’re a shelter dog that I’m looking after.’

  ‘A shelter dog!’ Bonbon looked horrified. ‘They’re flea bags, the lot of them. If you tell anyone I’m a shelter dog then I’ll … I’ll …’

  ‘You’ll what? Mess up your witch’s murder investigation? Cop onto yourself, Bonbon. This case is a mess. I’d love to get your help, but I’ll just as happily leave you at home.’

  He let out a faint growl and said, ‘Fine. I’ll go as I am. And you can say I’m a filthy shelter dog if you absolutely must. But just so you know, Wanda – I’ve never seen a setter who looked like he had a perm.’

  ≈

  It turned out that poor Bonbon wasn’t quite as ready to see Mandy as he thought. While he spent some time in her bathroom alone (not crying, according to him) I stared down at the body. Unlike Felix she had been found lying on her back, and I could see marks on her neck, like she had been strangled by hand. And in case I had any doubt about that, the terror on her face confirmed it. Mandy had been looking into the face of her murderer, probably begging them to stop.

  The manner of the death wasn’t the only difference at the scene, though. It was the atmosphere, too. I almost wished I had that same feeling – the sensation I had when Yvonne and Felix were found dead, like the world was shifting beneath my feet. But instead, I felt all too steady. Even if Mandy hadn’t already been positively identified by Shane, I would have been sure that it was her and not another body double.

  Ever since I’d first met Mandy, she’d put the b in witch. And if the last few days had taught me anything, it was that I wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of her sunny disposition. Despite that, Mandy’s murder worried me more than any I’d worked on before, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep until I found the killer.

  I was probably going to have one or two sleepless nights after that, too. Because for the first time since Christine had shown me those visions, I was beginning to think that maybe the future was set in stone, after all. This felt like the start of something. Something terrifying. Something that was going to lead me right up to the worst vision of all: Cassandra’s prophecy, in which I somehow had to kill this ‘great evil’ and save the world.

  Me? I shuddered at the thought. I mean, what was I going to do if some big bad evil did decide to turn the magical world on its head? Chase it off with a veggie bacon sandwich? And no, I hadn’t picked up some bad habits from those Coy fish – this was not me being modest about my power. I knew I had more than your average witch. But I also knew that I’d had an awful lot of help from my friends and family when it came to fighting off the baddies I’d been up against in the past.

  And Cassandra’s prophecy hadn’t said anything about fighting this ultra-evil with the help of my friends. It had mentioned me. Only me.

  This time, Mandy’s dressing room was properly sealed off, and Greg had arrived at the scene to help Paul out. While Paul took photos and Greg typed into his laptop, Shane and Finn approached me.

  ‘As you can see, it’s not like the last time,’ said Shane. ‘Well … the last two times. Mandy wasn’t poisoned like Felix and Yvonne were. She was strangled.’

  Finn scowled. ‘I guess the killer’s heard about her immunity, then. Well, Will couldn’t have done it. He’s still in our cells. Bruno too. They both have the perfect alibis.’

  ‘I don’t get what she’s even doing here,’ I said. ‘She had so much security. Private Berry security guards and Wayfarers.’

  ‘Security doesn’t do a person much good if they don’t think they’re in danger,’ replied Shane. ‘The guards told us she was constantly telling them to get lost. She was deluded, right up until the end. Genuinely had no clue that most of the people around her hated her. Anyway, according to our own people and the chief of the crew Will send to watch her, she got a phone call, then she clicked her fingers and disappeared, telling no one where she was going. It wasn’t that long ago, either.’

  ‘And before you ask,’ Finn added, ‘her phone is nowhere to be found. We’re waiting to hear back from her
service provider. But I’m not holding out much hope that they’ll give us anything we can work with.’

  Neither was I. If the killer had thought to get rid of the phone, then they’d probably called her from an untraceable number, too. But there was room for a little bit of hope, at least. This was a murderer who had killed two others by mistake. There were bound to be some more slip-ups.

  ‘Who found the body?’ I asked.

  Finn looked down at his notes. ‘The guy who plays the husband’s boss in the show. Dashell Berry. I haven’t questioned him yet. Apparently he fainted. He’s in Night and Gale as we speak.’

  At the mention of Dashell’s name, my stomach sank. ‘I need to tell you guys what I learned last night. And Bonbon might have something to tell us on the subject of Dashell, too. Then let’s go see if the man himself has come around, so we can question him.’

  19. Inner Demons

  Dashell Berry had come around. Unfortunately, he’d also disappeared. Bonbon didn’t have much to add to what Cyril had told me about him the night before: Dashell had been about to propose, but Mandy had dumped him for Will and hexed him.

  Of course, when Bonbon told us about Mandy hexing Dashell and ruining his chance of a future love life, he said that Dashell deserved it. ‘I mean, who did he think he was?’ said the dog. ‘Confronting Mandy in front of everyone like that. He said she was cruel, nasty and selfish. As if! When we track him down, I’m going to bite him where it hurts!’

  Dashell was proving a little harder than we thought to track down, which wasn’t remotely suspicious. So Finn and I left Paul to use his awesome skills of wizardry to get a location while we set off to investigate another lead: the mask Will had told us about.

  Sadly, we had to leave Bonbon in Paul’s care while we went out (honest, I was sad – for Paul). If we did manage to find Dashell, then we couldn’t risk the dog biting him. That was my excuse, and I was sticking to it.

  ≈

  According to Will, Guillermo Moriarty’s mask shop was on Samhain Street. At the thought of going to that particular enclave, I broke out in hives.

  Samhain was Irish for November. It was also the name some witches used for the Halloween or Oíche Shamhna festivities. Samhain Street, though, was not an autumnal wonderland. Nor did the shops on the street sell sweets and chocolate and party costumes all year round. It was the enclave where the witches who treaded the line between dark and light liked to live and work.

  There was a large necromancer population there, as well as the Society of Cacklers. Don’t ask. It was a small, dank enclave near the canal in Dublin. While the human areas around the waterways were filled with nice apartments and fancy cafés, once you reached Samhain Street, the niceties disappeared. The hidden areas of the canal had a permanent, rancid-smelling vapour, one that steamed and hissed at us as we walked past.

  We didn’t travel directly to our destination. In fact, there were many places on Samhain Street that were off limits to the usual form of magical transport. It was on my inner map, but instead of a bright light I could follow, there was a red circle with a cross through its centre, donating a private area.

  As Wayfarers, Finn and I could have bypassed this. But if we did that, then we wouldn’t have the element of surprise on our hands. And just like water, air, fire and earth and all those ones I can’t remember from the periodic table, the element of surprise is extremely important.

  Guillermo’s shop was supposedly in a back room attached to another shop. When we arrived in front of Ned’s Necromancy – the one stop shop for all your necromancy needs – my hives intensified. The door itself would hardly entice you in, I thought as I scratched as yet another irritating arrival. There was a sign with the name and the unimaginative marketing blurb I mentioned above, and every other space was covered with an incredibly long list of terms and conditions.

  ‘What’s with you and necromancy, anyway?’ asked Finn as I continued to scratch. ‘I mean, sure, it’s creepy. But the rest of us aren’t allergic to it.’

  ‘You should be,’ I replied with a grunt. I was too busy scratching to manage more than that, but you know my feelings about necromancy. It’s total and utter don’t go there territory as far as I’m concerned. Despite the fact that the original Wanda seemed to have a penchant for the practice (according to one or two Tall Tales I’d read, anyway) I found the whole thing more disturbing than my father’s toenails.

  I wasn’t the only one who harboured this point of view, so there were a lot of laws in place surrounding the practice. You couldn’t just bring anyone back from the dead because you fancied it. The deceased had to put their desire in writing before they passed.

  But even if they wanted to be brought back from the dead, that wasn’t quite what happened. Sure, there were lots of stories about successful returns, but the stories were just that – stories. All anecdotal, with no proof to back them up. The most that I’d ever known a necromancer to achieve was to bring the body – and only the body – back to life. While they might be able to make it do a jig, they weren’t able to get any sense out of it. The person who had once been inside that body was gone.

  It didn’t stop people trying. Everyone seemed to want to live forever, for some reason. But why? So they could have never-ending disappointment instead of just a few decades of it? The way I saw it was that if you couldn’t make a happy, fulfilling life for yourself within your natural span, then having forever at your disposal wasn’t going to change a thing.

  Because of everything I knew about necromancy, the long list of terms and conditions didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me, however, was the face that greeted Finn and me when we entered the shop.

  ‘Well, helloooo there,’ said a bright and breezy woman (yes, she did add all those Os). She was dressed in a gorgeous floral dress, and she had fresh daises plaited through her blonde hair. She was sipping from a cup of chamomile tea and wearing sandals on her feet. ‘I’m Ned. What can I do for you today, my lovelies?’

  ‘Ned?’ My nose wrinkled.

  ‘Mm hmm. Nedina. It’s an unfortunate name, I’ll grant you that.’ She pointed to a display of candles behind her. ‘We have some lovely new Infernal Candles in today. As you know, any Decree of the Deceased cannot be sealed without an Infernal Candle.’

  I resisted the urge to shudder, but I didn’t think I was going to last much longer seeing as this whole shop was one giant shudder. Infernal Candles always had the effect of making me want to look the other way. I could describe them as plain black candles, but that wouldn’t do them justice. They’re blacker than black, and looking at them is like looking into a frightening abyss. Lighting one is even worse – instead of warming a room, the fire that dances on the wick of an Infernal Candle makes you cold to the bone.

  ‘We’re looking for Guillermo Moriarty,’ said Finn. ‘We were told he worked out of the back of your shop.’

  Ned’s face darkened. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  I held up my Wayfarer badge. ‘Yip – here it is in writing.’

  Her hand went beneath the counter, but we’d been expecting this. I hit her with a freezing spell, while Finn pointed his truncheon and said, ‘No warnings please, Ned. Where’s the entrance?’

  Her eyes darted around the shop in protest, refusing to look at us. But I could already see the light filtering through from beyond the shelf of Infernal Candles.

  After the set up for Will’s safe, a false shelf seemed positively amateurish. But then again, seeing as many people had the same reaction to the candles as I did (look away, look away!) then maybe it wasn’t so amateurish after all. I looked at Finn and nodded towards the light seeping through the cracks. He grinned, and we made our way past Ned, and pushed through the shelf.

  We passed through into a large space, with walls and shelves lined with masks. Some of them looked like the usual masquerade ball masks – pretty colours and feathers. Others looked like perfect, lifelike representations of people’s faces. But all of them had something in
common – they gave me the willies. A glance at Finn told me they were having the same effect on him.

  The shelves were high, but a neon sign on the ceiling pointed the way to the desk. As we weaved our way through the shelves, a man’s voice called out, ‘If you’re bringing me more of that ice cream, my gorgeous little Nedina, I’ve thought of some fun we could have with it.’

  The look of disturbance on Finn’s face was hilarious. We rounded the last shelf and came face to face with the man who had made such a lovely romantic comment. He was at least twice as old as Ned, a tall, thin, dark-haired man who gave me the willies even more than the masks did. As Finn and I drew nearer to him, I narrowed my eyes.

  ‘What are you?’ I asked. I could almost always tell what manner of supernatural a person was. So why was this man so hard to figure out? I could sense strong magic. It wasn’t witch magic, that I was sure of. But there was something vaguely familiar about the power.

  He smiled pleasantly. ‘I’m a witch, of course. Look into it. You’ll find that the records support me. And of course I know what you are. You’re the Wayfarer.’ He looked askance at Finn. ‘Ah, and you’re the sidekick.’

  He was working on a mask as he spoke, his eyes darting between us and his work. He didn’t seem surprised or put out that we were there.

  ‘He’s my boss, actually,’ I said.

  ‘Is he?’ Guillermo gave a lacklustre shrug. ‘Not what I heard. I did hear about the murders, though. Terrible situation altogether. I expect you’re here to ask me about the mask I sold to Mandy. The Inner Light was the name. It’s quite a popular mask among the dramatic profession. It makes a person’s good qualities shine through. My masks are responsible for sixteen Plummy awards and twenty Leroys.’

  Finn and I had been working together a long time now. Too long, I was beginning to think. Because it had gotten to the stage where I knew what he was thinking: this guy was giving up the goods all too easy. Maybe he was responsible for more than just Mandy’s mask. But it was an interesting place to start, all the same.