The Warlock Weapon

by Pearl Goodfellow

  I picked my way around the edge of the foray to the front desk, holding my bag that contained the book close to my side.

  I was about to alert Spinefield to my arrival so he could get David when one of the men in handcuffs invaded my personal space. His face, not more than six inches from mine, sneered at me. “Hattie Jenkins, you’re too late.” He snarled.

  Let me tell you, I was quite taken aback. “What? How do you know my name? What do you mean I’m too late?”

  The first handcuffed man, who had nearly made it through the doors to the holding cell, overheard his ally and shouted his own sliver of wisdom at me. “You’re too late, Hattie Jenkins. You’re all too late.” The man threw his head back and guffawed an awful, awful laugh, as the officer shoved him through the opening.

  The other detainees were pushed, likewise, through the door, to take to their cots in the cells, leaving the shrieking harpy wives behind to fall into sobbing wrecks.

  I inched my way toward the desk, raising my eyebrows in question at desk sergeant Spinefield.

  “Don’t mind them, Hattie,” he said waving one hand dismissively and writing with the other. “They’ve been shouting the same thing at the Chief all day. We have no idea what they’re talking about.” He looked at me over the rim of his glasses while he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Bloody Warlocks,” he said conspiratorially.

  “They’ve said the same things to D--”

  “Hat?”

  “David!” I said, running over to my friend. “What’s going on here? Are these more Warlocks getting arrested?”

  “Yep. Seven in total now. All acting suspicious in public places, all caught with the Warlock Weapon. Red Handed.” He ran a hand through his hair. I noticed how pale he was. “They’re being handed to us on a plate, Hat,” he said. “And, I don’t like it.”

  Goddess, I didn’t like it either. I had a really icky feeling about all of this.

  “Do they know us, David? The Warlocks? They said my name. They said we were ‘too late.’”

  David looked at Spinefield. “You know where we are.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  My friend turned to me. “Yeah, I still don’t know what that’s all about,” he said, ushering me down the hall to the interrogation room. “I’ve asked them. Numerous times. But they just keep jeering the same words ‘too late.’”

  The chief opened the interrogation room door.

  I looked up at him. “Is?--”

  He nodded. “Spinefield’s on it. Two minutes or so.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and bobbed my head.

  We took our places on one side of the scuffed table and waited.

  THE DOOR OPENED about a minute later. Spinefield’s head popped in.

  “Sir?” he moved aside to let the woman in. “She’s here.”

  “Very good, Spinefield, that will be all,” David said. Spinefield closed the door.

  “Please, take a seat, Eve,” the chief motioned for Eve Fernacre to sit down.

  Eve sat. “Everything okay, chief?” She gave a nervous chuckle. “So, I made it to the interrogation room after all, huh?” She joked.

  David sighed and nodded at me. I couldn’t believe I was about to do this.

  I pulled her pressed flower journal from my bag and nudged it across the table toward her.

  Eve’s face was expressionless as she saw her life go down the tubes. Not a flicker of the eye, not a twitch of the jaw. Deadpan. Or, maybe just dead inside.

  “How’d you put it together?” She said, her voice flat. Had all the life just drained out of Summer Eve Fernacre?

  “I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but when I asked you if you knew anything about Foxglove, you said you’d never heard of it. Something didn’t feel quite right about that statement, and it’s only now I realize what it was.”

  Eve cocked her head to the side.

  “About a month ago, you and Spinefield were having a conversation about gardening, and you had told him how much you loved it. I overheard you. You didn’t know I was listening. That was the first thing.”

  I looked down at my hands and folded them.

  “What else?” Eve asked.

  “Kramp’s wife, Zinnie,” I said. “She told me Barnabus thought you were stealing from him. She mentioned the medication among other things.”

  “Paranoid old fart,” Eve said. “Yeah, I stole some of his pills, but I didn’t touch any of his other stuff. I’m not a thief.” She sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

  “How did you do it, Eve? How did you administer the Digitalis?” David asked.

  “It was easy,” Eve said. “I added powdered Foxglove to his herbal teas. The drinks I gave him for indigestion. I knew his meds contained the same basic compound as Foxglove, so I knew it wouldn’t be detected. At least not as a ‘foreign’ agent.”

  “So you stole Kramp’s pills to make it look like he had taken too many?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. My father took his regular meds, and I just topped it up with Foxglove, pushing him over the edge. Just as I’d planned. I stole his pills, so it’d look like he was over medicating.” Eve shrugged. As if to say: What else can I tell you, it was simple.

  “I never knew that someone else was out to kill him on the same day, though,” she said, referencing the Warlock bomb.

  “But, Eve, I don’t understand. Everyone kinda knew that Barny Kramp had everything to look forward to. It just doesn’t … I don’t know … sit right, I guess, that he would take his own life. You must have known that this would have raised some eyebrows, no?”

  “You don’t need to tell me how rosy my father’s life was,” Eve spat. I pushed back slightly in my chair as the woman’s face broke out into a venomous sneer.

  She blew air out of her nose and sat back in the seat. “I know how wonderful my father’s life was, thanks,” she murmured. “I’d been watching his every movement since I left North Illwind.” She nodded to the pressed flower book. “It’s all in there. It’s a pretty decent folio if I say so myself.”

  Eve looked at us. “I wanted my father’s family, his wife, everybody who knew him to feel doubt.”

  “Doubt?” I said.

  “The kind of doubt my mother and I suffered from for years before she took her life. My father promised mom many times that he’d come for us. That he’d make our lives easy, and we’d be happy, and have a garden, and a dog.” Eve swallowed. “All we had was hope and doubt. I wanted Kramp’s loved ones to feel the confusion and pain of not really knowing whether Barnabus took his own life or not.”

  Wow. Hate can be really spiteful.

  “Was that you in Galedoom?” I asked. “Firing the darts?”

  “I got your broom pretty good, huh?” She offered a quirky smile. “Sorry about that, but I didn’t really want you snooping around into my history if you know what I mean?”

  “What was on the tips of the darts, Eve?” David asked.

  “Ageratina altissima,” Fernacre replied, looking directly at me.

  “White Snakeroot,” I confirmed. “Nasty.”

  “How could you know that Kramp was going to be ‘staying’ here?” David asked, lacing his fingers behind his head.

  “I didn’t,” Eve said. “I just took the opportunity. If it hadn’t have happened this way, then it would have happened another way.” Eve looked at me. “Hey, Hattie, was old Heffer still at the institute?” She asked, half chuckling.

  “She said you were spritely,” I said. “She showed me a picture you’d drawn. You had signed your name: Summer Eve in the corner. But, I read it as: ‘A Summer’s Eve.’ I guess because of the big red sun.”

  Eve smiled. “I remember drawing that picture. That was how the sun would look when Dad came home.”

  I felt as if I was about to burst into tears. The woman in front of me had tried to kill me, and all I wanted to do was to give her a hug.

  “When did you change your name?” David asked, getting back to busines
s.

  “As soon as I left the institution,” Eve admitted. I didn’t actually change my first name; it’s still Summer, but I just use my middle name. My last name, I turned it to Fernacre ... at an illegal outfit in Galedoom. Cost about twenty sols.” She shrugged again.

  Was this how it looked when your life was utterly defeated from the outset?

  David sighed. “I’m so sorry, Eve. I really am,” he said, folding his hands in front of him on the table.

  “S’okay, chief. I did what I had to do, and that’s all I can ask for. My life was already in ruins.”

  “He didn’t know that you were his daughter, though?” David blurted.

  Eve shook her head. “My father didn’t know me. Not even when I was right under his nose.”

  She didn’t crack. She didn’t blubber. She was just flat. And wooden. I suspected that the pain had burrowed into her so deeply, and her defenses had become so primed, that the woman could barely register her feelings.

  “Summer Eve Fernacre, I’m arresting you for the murder of Barnabus Kramp,” David murmured. His eyes looked shiny. I knew this hurt him.

  And it hurt me too.

  Eve was taken away by Spinefield, and David and I walked to the coffee machine on the lower level. We didn’t talk. There was nothing to say. Except, maybe, that this case sucked in the biggest possible way.

  We walked past another Warlock being brought in, and I watched as he was loaded into his cell.

  “You think all these guys are Shields scapegoats? You think the governor is trying to keep our attention here while he gets up to no good somewhere else?” I said, looking at the chief.

  A rattling of metal made us both spin around. Dargon Snothatch squeezed his pinched face through the door of his cell. “Scapegoats?” He laughed. “We’re not Scapegoats, we’re devoted servants! And you and your Custodian’s are too late!”

  The bars of the other cells rattled, and the sound of stomping feet and dark jeering filled the air. “You’re too late, you’re too late, you’re too late.”

  The menacing chant got louder as David and I fled for the door out of there.

  The chief slammed it shut behind us. I leaned against the wall in the corridor of GIPPD. “Okay, I’m officially freaked out,” I panted. “This is all getting too weird now, and I’m ….well, I’m scared.”

  David leaned on the wall next to me and rolled on his heels. “I know, Hat. It’s creepy, for sure. But..” He pushed off the wall and faced me, placing his hands on each of my shoulders.

  “...We’ve just solved a murder case. Well, you mostly did. It wasn’t an easy one, obviously, but we served justice today.”

  My bottom lip trembled.

  “Hattie, we’ve solved a case. Orville is working his fingers to the bone trying to find the right way to temper Dragon Steel, the rock grumlins are fighting to get through the rock to block off the waterfall, and Artemus, Carpathia and Gabbie are working on the document that Morag Devlin left in the bell, AND we’ve got at least seven guilty Warlocks filling our cells downstairs.” David lifted my chin.

  I looked at him. “So? What’s your point?”

  “My point is, is that you and I have entirely wrapped up a murder investigation, and everything else that matters right now is already being taken care of. I mean that it’s now time to have a breather, okay? Rest. Go home, be with your kitties for the evening. We can meet tomorrow at Portia’s. We’re going to need to have a Custodian’s meeting. Tomorrow at four p.m. See where we’re at with the Warlock/Dragon threat, and whatnot.”

  He sighed and squeezed my shoulders. “Hattie Jenkins, is what I’m saying making sense to you right now?”

  It was, and I hated him for it. I felt so powerless that all I wanted to do was tear around and find more clues, more evidence that would point us on the right track to deter the Warlock threat. Something that would lead us to the Cathedral governor. Shields.

  But, I was spent. Worn out from pointing the finger at someone who deserved better chances in life. Exhausted from sucking up Summer Eve’s pain and her lifelong fear of abandonment. David was right. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my beloved cats.

  “I’m going home,” I confessed, finally. I smiled, with quivering lips and wet eyes, at my friend.

  “Sleep well,” he said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I’ll see you at Portia’s tomorrow.”

  I was already walking away. My feet heavy with longing for the comfort and safety of The Angel.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Even though the cats knew they were about to see their fairy cousin, Hinrika, their demeanor was subdued on the ride to the Gorthland’s. The news about Eve had upset them, and they were dealing with their own emotions over the woman’s fate.

  Jet had come along for this ride too, being that a Custodian’s meeting was on the cards for the day. I wondered briefly if the brotherhood would let me sit in on the meeting as they had the last time. I felt close to their cause, and I knew I was contributing some good work too. I had no desire to really be in the society, I had no intention of practicing magic as a matter of course, but neither did I want to be elbowed out into a place where I wasn’t considered an integral part of the cause.

  The sky was already a deepening shade of violet. I could see even deeper vermillion bands of light as the sky descended into the horizon.

  Verdantia and David were standing on Portia’s driveway. They were deep in conversation. David looked simultaneously shocked, then delighted, as Verdantia shared her gem. I brought the broom down just in front of them.

  “Hattie,” Vee said, already gliding over to embrace me. I kissed her cheek. “Vee, always lovely to see you,” I said.

  David’s expression still looked bemused. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, half laughing at my friend’s amusing face.

  “Vee just told me … well, you tell her, Vee,” David said, waving a finger at our fairy friend.

  “Oh, heavens, yes,” Verdantia said, raising her fists to the sky and doing a dainty little jig. “Dilwyn Werelamb just came into a whole wack load of money, Hattie!” Vee punched the air again, and David clapped and laughed.

  “Can you believe that, Hattie? Dilwyn’s going to complete that merman pool, after all. That old coot …” David shook his head and laughed.

  I swooned.

  “Hat?” My friend ran over to me. “Have you caught my illness?” He joked. But, the chief took my face in his hands and studied my eyes. “You okay?”

  I blinked.

  Then I laughed like a freaking maniac. I fell on my back, rolled over, held my stomach and laughed like a hyena with rabies. I think I may have even frothed at the mouth a little. Dilwyn Werelamb came into money! My prosperity ward had unfurled magic I didn’t know existed within me.

  My eyes caught David and Verdantia standing over me, looking down at me and murmuring between themselves.

  “I’m okay, guys,” I said, finally sitting up. David reached for my arm. “No, really, I’m okay. I know that looked psychotic, but I’ll explain later, all right?”

  “Oookaaaay,” David said.

  I bounced to my feet and crunched along the gravel drive toward Gaunt Manor. Hinrika, in a beautiful silk number, spun in circles on the porch, laughing while the Infiniti clung onto her expensive fabric.

  Portia Fearwyn and Orville walked out of the front door. They were carrying … things. Stone bowls, torches, an old leather bound book. Arms full, they walked past the twirling Hinrika and down the stairs to greet us.

  “For once, you’re on time, and you’ve caught us a little behind with our duties,” the Witch Fearwyn snipped, as she brushed past me with her strange cargo.

  Orville followed Portia. “Hi, Hattie, good for you for coming. I wasn’t sure you would. But Portia said you would, so I --”

  “Orville!” Portia shouted. “Come on son, I don’t have all day!” She barked, pointing to a spot on a very rare patch of dry ground. “Here will be perfectly adequate,” she instr
ucted.

  Orville smiled at me sheepishly and wandered over to fulfill his duties.

  I shook my head. Maybe they were setting up some kind of lawn game?

  I wandered back over to David and Verdantia. They didn’t hear me coming, though.

  “...just don’t know if she’s ready,” David said.

  “She is ready,” Vee said calmly.

  “Ready for what?” I stared at them.

  Hinrika and the cling-on cats moved behind Vee and David. Portia and Orville joined them.

  “No,” I said, already turning away from them. “Nope, no way.”

  “Seraphim Joyvive, you will stop right there!” Portia’s bellow halted me in my tracks. I spun around. “I’m not joining the Custodians. So, you can all stop with …” I flicked a finger toward the spot Portia and Orville had been working. “....building your ritual, ceremonial, sacrificial altar, or whatever.”

  “Hat, we need you,” David said, holding his arms out slightly at his sides. “We need you,” he repeated.

  “You all know why I don’t like magic. I’m already using it too much as it is. I don’t want to get sucked into witchcraft to the point where I think it … might … actually …” I broke off.

  “Save someone’s life?” Onyx sat on my foot and looked up at me. “Are you still holding yourself responsible for your parent's death?” He said. “Dearest, Hattie, not one person in the magical kingdom could have saved your mom and dad. Believe this and know it to be true.”

  I shook my head.

  “It was balefire!” Portia blared. “You know that you couldn’t have saved your parents, even though you desperately wanted to. It was Fae trickery. Or, who knows, maybe the Warlocks were behind it. But, whatever the case, the magic in those flames was impenetrable, so it’s time you stopped blaming yourself for it!”

  The Witch Fearwyn’s shoulders hunched forward, and her neck sprang out like a turtle. Her eyes tore through me, showing no mercy for my hiding behind my historical events.

  A movement in the sky behind Portia’s shoulders caught my eye.

  “What the heck is that?” I said, pointing to the lurching object that rose and fell in the sky behind the Custodians.