Another Bloody Love Story

by Rachel Green

  Pennie laughed. “Thanks,” she said again and followed the two officers to the door. Once outside, Mike radioed the station. Pennie could hear the words ‘crime scene unit’ bandied about.

  “Too much television,” said Chase, coming down the stairs. “They all think they’re TV stars these days.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Pennie. “I don’t watch TV.”

  “I don’t very much.” Chase said quickly. “It’s all rubbish on there anyway. Look, I have to get back to the sanctuary. Will you be all right? Take the rest of the day off.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Pennie. “I’ll need a lift in tomorrow, though. My car’s still parked in the yard.”

  “No problem.” Chase climbed into his car. “I’ll see you at eight.”

  “Eight tomorrow or eight tonight?” Pennie called, but Chase was gone in a roar of bio-diesel fumes from his Jeep. The police car started up and followed him out. She watched them both go down the street, the police car’s lights flickering as they caught up to Chase. She couldn’t help smiling. They’d chased Chase. She was glad she wasn’t working this afternoon; he’d be like a bear with a sore head after a speeding ticket and an emissions fine.

  She closed the door, climbing the fourteen steps to her flat with an increasing feeling of despondence. Why her? What could she possibly have that a burglar could want? All her assets were stored at the bank.

  She pushed through the mess, wincing whenever something cracked or splintered beneath her shoes. Her desk had been ransacked. Her computer―not that it was top of the range in the first place-had been destroyed. The keyboard had been put through the screen and there was a dent in the side of the tower case she could keep a fruit bowl in.

  She carried it piece by piece to the front door, suspecting that by the time she’d carried the rubbish outside the council would probably charge her an excess fee for the refuse collection. They knew how to add insult to injury.

  When her desk was cleared she pulled her sleeve down and used it to wipe the surface. Dust and fragments of glass from broken picture frames cascaded to the floor and she scraped the worst of it away from the carpet with her foot.

  A brief search of the room located the four drawers that fitted the desk and the files that went into the lower one. They hadn’t been broken, though it was probably not by design. That was one small mercy at least, as the desk had belonged to her grandfather and was the only heirloom she had.

  The matching chair had a missing leg. At least it looked like a clean break and she knew a man skilled with his hands who would probably mend it for her. She stood at the desk and ran through the box file of her assets. Photocopies of the original documents, they were all worthless in themselves and had not been touched. She spread them out on the desk. Even the records of the divorce were present, the assets divided with scrupulous fairness between them. Steven had been good like that.

  The thought of her ex-husband was enough to breach the dam of her emotions and hot salted tears spattered onto the cheap photocopies. Unable to sit, Pennie leaned against the desk, great wracking sobs leaving her shaking under their unexpected ferocity.

  She wept for her flat, for the broken knick-knacks she’d collected over the years, for her computer full of memories of the past, how she regretted that scanner! Her memories would be safely intact on sepia prints instead of lost in a cloud of free electrons. She wept for her lost virginity, her misjudged openness and her failed marriage. She wept for her dead parents and a brother who’d committed suicide at twenty two for no good reason other than ‘she’ didn’t love him. Pennie hadn’t even known he was in love at the time, and only met Elizabeth when she turned up to his funeral in Lizzie Dripping stockings and two lip piercings asking about the will.

  Most of all she wept for herself and her failed marriage. Steven might have been gay, he insisted he was bisexual. Pennie couldn’t come to terms with it but he had been a good husband. The clichéd ‘best friend with benefits’ had seen her through more trials than anyone in her life. Why wasn’t he here?

  She hunted the flat for her bag. She remembered taking it out of Chase’s car when they’d arrived, but had to retrace her steps to discover its fate. It was on the bookcase. Chase must have put it there when he was picking books up off the floor. Her hand found her mobile phone and flipped it open. Steven was on speed dial but when she pressed it to her ear, all she heard was an automaton speaking.

  This number is not in use. Please replace your handset.

  How odd was that? Steven was never far from his mobile phone. Even when he was in meetings he habitually switched it to silent so he could see any missed calls. For there to not even be a message request was unheard of.

  She pulled a pen from her handbag and carried it to the desk. The back of the television service guide, and what use was a service guide when there was a hole in the screen the size of a doc marten’s boot, served as a makeshift notepad.

  First she dialled the company that brokered her house insurance and requested a claim form. Her tears reduced to dry streaks on grimy cheeks, she interrogated the woman on the other end to determine the things to claim for on the policy, which would give the best rate of payout-to-increase-in-premium and made a note of them.

  “Yes,” she said, looking across the room to the growing pile of rubbish for the council lorry. “It was a new computer. Fifteen hundred pounds four months ago. No I don’t have a receipt, what do you mean I can only claim for seven hundred?”

  Her mouth hardened into a cold, hard line and when the calls were done, there was a second call to a security company and a third to the police station. She began to take photographs of the chaos and damage, using the built-in camera on her phone. The insurance company wouldn’t know what had hit it when her claim went through.

  When she turned to connect her phone to the computer to print off the pictures, the empty desk mocked her. She collapsed to the carpet and flicked through her recently-used number list and dialled.

  “Winston?” she said when it connected, her sobs already colouring her voice. “I need you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Julie was relieved no-one was using the kitchen. Other than the front of the shop it was the largest clear area in the building, and she didn’t want to be opening portals in full view of the public. She took a last look down the corridor to where Delirious the imp was holding the fort. He was almost useless when it came to serving customers. Being invisible to mortals severely restricted the actual amount of sales he could make.

  He did manage work arounds. Although he didn’t have the calligraphic skills of his brother John he had managed a couple of shaky signs on the computer. Please Put Your Payment in the Till and Thank You for Visiting had started life in Times New Roman, Bold, thirty six point but by the time they rolled onto the printer out tray they may as well have been written in crayon by a dyslexic spider. Still, they looked fine laminated and most customers were happy to stick to the honour system of leaving the money for any books they wanted. Those that didn’t wished they had. Later.

  Julie closed the door. Delirious could cope for ten minutes without her watching him, as long as Harold didn’t know and Harold was unlikely to leave his office for the next half an hour. The box of cream cakes from the coffee shop on Hope Street was worth every penny.

  She laid the swab from upstairs on the pine table and drew on her power. If asked, most people would be hard pressed to decide between a werewolf and a vampire for their abilities. Julie was neither but thanks to her mother’s genes could manipulate the Plane of the Dead. Julie was a mage.

  Had it not been broad daylight the lights would have flickered as the portal opened. As it was, the balancing energies made the kettle switch on. Julie hoped there was water in it. She’d lost too many by boiling them dry.

  Her hair was sucked forwards and back as the portal opened. The
ruddy light from the dark plain beyond flickered against the now visible strands linking her false eye to this world. Julie had been born sighted but had lost it when she matured at sixteen. She was left able to hear the supernatural world around her but see neither it nor the physical plane. It was hardly any wonder her mother had locked her away in a psychiatric ward.

  When her sister had caught the were virus, Julie’s babbling about spirits and demons rang horribly true. Felicia managed to arrange for Julie to gain the Sight, and she was left seeing the spirit world but not the mortal plane. Now she wore a false eye that allowed her to see as other, normal folk did.

  “Not you again!” A figure materialised in front of her, stepping through the portal as if it were not there at all. It wore a battered felt suit and trilby hat, as if he’d been dressed in his Sunday best before being laid in the ground. “I’ve told you before,” he said. “I’m not yer’ bleedin’ spirit guide.”

  Julie smiled. “Hi Pete,” she said. “How’s life?”

  “That’s as funny now as it was the last twenty times you asked,” said the ghost. “Why do you keep contacting me? Why not one of the tens of thousands of other spirits here?”

  “I don’t know, it’s not intentional.” Julie twisted her head to check the shimmering edges of the portal. “Perhaps a bit of the portal is stuck.”

  “I’m surprised it works at all with so many of these energy lines running through it.” Pete plucked at the glowing threads which thrummed in harmony. “Why can’t you do proper magic in isolation of the Line?”

  “I don’t know,” Julie confessed. “This is how I do it, I don’t know any other way.”

  “You need to store the magic in something,” said Pete. “You won’t rely on a line then. You have to give the energy back, of course.”

  “How do I do that?” Julie frowned. “Harold does magic from his own energy. It feeds off him.”

  Pete sucked air through his teeth. It made a whistling noise and he had to stop before he blew himself inside out. “Dangerous, that is,” he said. “Cast too big a spell and it eats you up from the inside out. Not pretty.” He shook his head. “What you want is a spell focus. Something to store energy from the line so it doesn’t come from you. Ensorcellment. That’s what you need to learn. The art of laying spells in objects.”

  “I do that already.” Julie nodded toward her fake eye. “I build spells into energy spheres.”

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult to learn then.” Pete raised his hat. “Be seeing you.”

  “Wait!” Julie stood, as if to dart through the portal herself. “You haven’t told me what I needed yet.”

  “What was that then?” He paused, one hand holding the frame of the portal as if it was a door. “Make it quick, girl, I’ve got a date with an African Queen.”

  “I need to know who this is,” said Julie, holding out the swab. “It’s DNA from a living woman and I need to know why she was spying on me.”

  “Spying? Really?” Pete came forward again. “How exciting.” He ran a finger across the swab, releasing tendrils of smoke that twisted into shapes resembling hands and feet, the glint of a smile and the turn of a phrase.

  A woman appeared at the portal gates. “Becky?” she asked. “I can hear you, like a fading echo. Where are you darling?”

  “She’s not here,” said Julie. “She was here but she had to leave. Who are you?”

  “I’m her mother.” She seemed distracted, looking over Julie’s shoulder as if her daughter was behind her. “Where is she? I need to tell her some home truths about that horrid man she married.”

  “She’ll be back,” said Julie. “I could seek her out if I had her name.”

  The spirit shifted her gaze to Julie. “Rebecca Weston,” she said. “My daughter’s name is Rebecca Weston. It used to be Clee until she married that useless lump, but would she listen when I told her it was a bad match? No! She ran away with him instead. I’ll tell you something else, too. Nothing good ever came of a marriage between an honest girl and a crook. Did you ever hear about what happened to…”

  Julie ended the connection to the Line and Pete was sucked into the closing portal like water down a bath tub drain. “Thanks a lot,” he said as his spirit splintered. “Give me some warning, why don’t you?”

  She ignored him and poured salt on the swab to prevent the verbose ghost from trailing the essence back here. Suddenly she could sympathise with Rebecca, though why the woman was spying on her had yet to be determined.

  She cleaned the table while the kettle boiled, then made a cup of tea for herself and Harold, popping his on the corner of his desk as she passed the office. The accounts were obviously not going well judging by his frown of concentration and rapid clicking of the mouse.

  All was quiet in the shop. Delirious was sitting on top of Julie’s desk, cleaning the claws on his feet with the end of a disposable biro and pressing the resultant cheese into a small mound resembling mouldy play-dough. He looked up as she neared, grinning with all seventy of his sharpened teeth.

  “Hi,” he said, ignoring her look of disgust. “You’re going to be dead pleased.”

  “Why’s that?” Julie pulled out the seat and swivelled it away from his creation. “Did you wash?”

  “Very funny. No.” Delirious scowled. “I sold a book.”

  “In a bookshop? That was brave.” Julie patted his head. “What did you sell? Anything interesting?”

  “A really expensive one,” said the imp. “The docket is in the box with the cheque. I watched him write it out myself.”

  “Super.” Julie opened the cash box that served as a till when Delirious was minding the shop. She pulled out a cheque for eighteen thousand pounds signed, J Hunt and looked at the title of the book. Her mouth dropped open in horror. “You are joking,” she said. “Please tell me this is a joke.”

  “I wouldn’t joke about selling a book,” Devious said. Her concern prompted him to check the docket she was holding. “That’s the one. Samuel Roberts’ Treatise on Animated Figures (volume two).” He looked up. “You’ve gone pale,” he said.

  “You idiot,” she hissed. “This is the book that we’re trying desperately to get back because it’s too dangerous and you go and sell another copy. How stupid can you get?”

  “Well excuse me,” said Delirious, drawing himself to his full fourteen inches. “How was I supposed to know? Had it been taken out of the stock catalogue? No it hadn’t.”

  “There was a note on it,” said Julie. “It was flagged.”

  “I read that,” said the imp. “It said that on no account was I to sell both volumes to the same person.”

  “But you did,” said Julie. “Jim Hunt already has a copy of volume one. Steven Lowry bought it on his behalf.”

  “Who would know that, apart from you?” Delirious huffed and picked up his lump of toenail cheese. “I certainly didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.” Julie slumped in her office chair. “It’s not your fault. I should never have left you minding the shop. Harold’s going to kill me.”

  “On the plus side,” said Delirious, licking his cheese like an ice cream, “at least you could talk to yourself afterwards.”

  “No, I’d be dead. I’d be lucky if I came back as a ghost and Harold agreed to letting me work for free.”

  “It’d never work,” said the imp.

  “Why not?”

  “The database is too complicated. You’d never pick it up.” He paused. “You’d never pick anything up actually. Not ever again.”

  “Funny.” Julie grimaced.

  “And money would slip through your fingers.” Delirious giggled.

  “Enough with the extrapolations.” Julie couldn’t help smiling. “It was a figure of speech.”

  “Was it?” The imp looked disappointed. “I though you co
uld see the future? I thought that was an example of your talent.”

  “Fortunately not.” Julie looked toward the office. “I’m going to have to tell him, aren’t I?”

  “Not necessarily.” The imp sidled forward and beckoned her closer. As she leaned down he whispered in her ear, the hissed consonants caressing her lobes as his teeth ground inches away from her face. “You could leave him to find the docket on the next stock-take,” he said.

  “You think?”

  “Of course. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “A horde of homunculi take over the village?”

  “There is that.” Delirious kneaded the toenail cheese like a worry ball. “There’s not much chance of that happening though,” he said. “To activate a homunculi requires a connection to a mortal; an investment in life energies. It’s exceedingly rare for a mage to have more than one homunculus.”

  “Good.” Julie frowned. “Wait a minute. What sort of life energies are we talking about?”

  “A portion of the soul. That way the caster knows what’s going on with the creature.”

  “And vice versa, I presume.” Julie picked up her pen. “What would happen if the caster used someone else’s life force?”

  “Is that even possible?” Delirious climbed down to the floor, his claws skittering across the wooden desk. “It would be highly dangerous. It’d be like creating an autonomous being with allegiance only to itself. The caster would have to have some of himself in the process to have even a hope of controlling it. How would you even do that?”

  “With a soul?” Julie stared into the glowing orbs of the imp. “What if the homunculus was given the spirit of a dead man?”

  “Then you’d have a powerful being under the command of the caster,” said Devious. “That’d be really dangerous. Really, really dangerous.”