Three Charms for Murder (The Case Files of Henri Davenforth Book 5)

by Honor Raconteur

  In any case, it wasn’t my mirror or my portable case. He could bear the expense of replacing both when this stupidity caught up with him. For the time being, the mirror seemed sound enough. I made a mental note to bring my own, however, when we did this for Jamie.

  Seaton set the mirror on top of the bureau, the most stable place to put it in this room. It made the mirror more or less the right height, which was all we needed for this. I didn’t anticipate we’d leave the connection open for more than five minutes at most. Just enough to verify that it worked, it would remain stable, and that we’d gotten the right place.

  I pulled out my wand, Seaton pulled out his, and we looked at each other. For all of our planning, we hadn’t communicated who would do what. It would take more than one spell to make this happen.

  “I’ll handle the connection,” Seaton offered. It was the more demanding of the spells, as it meant scrying out to a far-off point in space and then doing a seeking spell to find the exact spot he wanted—in this case, the Edwards’ residence. He also was the one in possession of a vial of Jamie’s blood, so it only made sense for him to do that part of the spellwork.

  “I’ll handle the receiving and transmitting spells, then.” The easier of the two, but not easy in any sense. Not over that kind of distance. It was partially why we needed another magician with us, someone of a Royal Mage’s caliber. This was insanely draining magic we discussed.

  Seaton gave me a nod, readied himself, and aimed the wand at the mirror. What tumbled from his lips was a ridiculously long designation of precise points in space, the numbers a reflection of what Belladonna had jotted down.

  The mirror lit up subtly, a faint glow around the edges as it stopped reflecting the room. Colors of greens, browns, white, and brighter pops all swirled in the center before it abruptly changed to nothing but white sparks and deep, inky blacks.

  Space.

  I had never before seen such a close-up view of the celestial plane, and I watched in fascination as Seaton directed the scrying mirror past the atmosphere of our own planet and outward. Stars seemed to zoom by, as did multiple planets, there and gone again before I could get a proper view of them. I’d seen exhibits, naturally, of observations of planets, moons, and stars before. They paled in comparison to this.

  Seaton’s spell homed in on a large, round planet with a great deal of blue and white, the landmasses a mix of brown and green. Earth, I presumed. Not that I was in the habit of viewing any planet from orbit, as we hardly had the means for that yet. But Seaton was the one using the connecting spell to Jamie’s home planet, so this must be Earth.

  I still found it curious, after all this time, the idea of life on other planets. It had taken months for me to wrap my head around the concept of Jamie being an alien. Sometimes I toyed with the idea of her world being a parallel universe to mine, but in truth there were far too many differences between our worlds to make that theory feasible. We were similar, yes, but not kin.

  The scrying didn’t slow down so I could properly view it, but continued at the same speed. With the planet in range, Seaton reoriented the spell again. He slipped the vial of Jamie’s blood from a pocket, removing the cork stopper with a flick of his thumb.

  “Seek for Dirk and Amaya Edwards’ residence. Blood to blood with Jamie Edwards. Let blood call to blood.”

  The planet abruptly disappeared as we zoomed into it, heading for a larger continent and further in. I saw nothing but glimpses of buildings, farmlands, whole areas of forests, and cities. Nothing I could focus on and examine, sadly. Just the glimpses were fascinating.

  “Mirror, mirror, mirror,” Seaton muttered under his breath. “I detect multiple mirrors I could connect to. I think I have the right house.”

  The house gave the impression of a well-to-do family, with white brick and a small but perfectly landscaped lawn. His use of a blood-oriented spell combined with a name was the best method of finding her parents’ home. Assuming we didn’t accidentally go to some other relative of hers with a similar name. It was a possibility. Hence this test.

  “Ahhh,” Seaton intoned in satisfaction. “I have one, I think. It’s nice and large, should be perfect. I’ll connect to it.”

  The image abruptly stabilized and focused on a wall painted mint green. A single picture hung just in view of the mirror, showing the edge of a frame and hint of a seascape. The confines of the room looked rather narrow, in fact, and an alarm sounded distantly in the back of my head. It could very well be that architecture on Earth was different—I assumed it was—but…this looked remarkably like a bathroom. That was hardly the right room to connect to. All things considered.

  “Davenforth,” Seaton urged.

  Oh, right. I drew the sigils for both receiving and transmitting spells with my wand, the tip of it sparkling white as I wrote in glowing lines. When each sigil was complete, the mirror absorbed it and the view altered subtly. I studied it carefully, looking for any fluctuations, but it held steady. Fortunately. I felt the drain against my magical power already.

  We truly did have to have Felix’s help on this when we did it later. I wouldn’t be able to maintain this but for another few minutes.

  “Davenforth,” Seaton said slowly, his eyes straying to the right of the mirror as if focusing on something just out of view. “Does it look like early morning to you?”

  “Well, yes, now that you say that. Why do you—oh no.” It hit me that if it was truly early morning, odds were people were still at home.

  We did not want people at home for this.

  Seaton and I shared a look of mutual panic, but we had no chance to concoct a plan. A woman strolled into view, her body encased in a fuzzy, purple bathrobe, her dark hair a mess and laying over one shoulder. One look and I recognized her. Not only from the portrait that hung in Jamie’s apartment, but from her appearance. Jamie had her eyes, her dark hair, and the same tawny skin tone.

  She glanced toward the mirror and then leapt backwards, hands splaying against the wall and eyes wide. I shared her panic. Great deities, I’d no intention of seeing my Jamie’s mother in a state of dishabille!

  She yelled something—a name—but I didn’t understand fully what she said. I belatedly remembered Jamie’s built-in translation spell. She didn’t naturally speak my language. Of course I couldn’t understand this woman without a translation spell active on the mirror. The panicked part of me wanted to end the connection immediately and save us both the embarrassment of this situation.

  “Should we cut it off quickly?” Seaton asked, tone unsure.

  Absolutely, yes. As soon as I thought that, practicality kicked in. “No, wait. This way we can organize a time of when they’re available. We won’t be guessing when we try to connect Jamie to them.”

  “That’s a good point. Although how we’ll explain this, I don’t know.” Frowning, he lifted his wand again and applied a translation spell to the glass. There was a bit of heat to his cheeks, as he clearly also found the situation uncomfortable.

  I squirmed, wincing as he applied the spell. Great dark magic, really, we could have planned this out better. Look at the situation now.

  “—two men in the mirror!” Amaya Edwards yelled to someone in a different room.

  A man’s voice, still rough with sleep: “Woman, are you still asleep?”

  “I am not, get in here!” She went back to staring at us with alarm.

  “My sincere apologies,” I started, and watched her jump once again. “We did not intend to alarm anyone. I’m Henri Davenforth, this is Sherard Seaton. We’re very dear friends with your daughter, Jamie.”

  Amaya switched from terrified to nearly clinging to the mirror, her hands pressed against the glass, eyes confused but hungry. “You know my Jamie? Where is she?”

  “On an entirely different world.” Seaton grimaced, and I could tell the drain of maintaining the spell slowly affected him, too.

  The man entered the room, pulling a robe over himself as he did so. I could see Jamie pull
ed strongly from her mother’s looks, but she had her father’s height and athletic build. Dirk Edwards looked bleary around the edges, dark stubble on his face, but his eyes focused sharply on us.

  “On a different world?” Dirk demanded. “What does that mean? How did she get there? And how are you doing this?”

  “A selection of magical spells. A very evil witch cast a spell she shouldn’t have and pulled Jamie through.” I put a hand against the bureau to brace myself. We were losing time, and quickly, too.

  Amaya shook her head slowly from side to side. “I’m not sure I believe this.”

  That was a fair reaction, I suppose. If a strange man appeared in my mirror and talked of my missing daughter, I’d certainly like proof. “Ask me anything about her and I’ll answer.”

  “Favorite color?”

  “To wear or to collect? Because she wears a great deal of blue, but all her possessions seem to have green in them.”

  A spark of hope lit her eyes, but it was weighted down by caution. “Favorite hobby?”

  “Reading. Although she’s not able to do that well here—not yet. She’s still learning the language. But she loves to cook, to sing, and she is quite possibly the worst adrenaline addict known to man. And she’s utterly unrepentant about chocolate.”

  “Our little girl has a sweet tooth,” Dirk agreed, and tears shone in his eyes. “My god, you really do know her.”

  “Very well, yes.”

  “Then why didn’t you send her back?” Dirk pressed in closer, staring at us as if he could divine answers from our expressions alone. It was eerily similar to how Jamie looked at suspects during an interrogation.

  “We would have loved to,” Seaton answered on a long sigh. “But her body was changed in such a manner that it’s impossible to do so. And frankly, it’s taken us this long just to figure out where Earth is in relation to our own planet.”

  “This call was meant to be a test, to see if we could reach the right location. Nothing more,” I tacked on. “We’re woefully unprepared to speak to you for that reason. Seaton and I don’t have enough power in between us to maintain this for more than a few minutes. But we want to connect you properly to your daughter at a later date so you can talk.”

  “We can’t speak to her now?” Amaya demanded.

  Seaton shook his head. “Would if I could, dear lady. But by the time we fetched her, we’d be out of magical power. It’s better to coordinate now a good time for all of us. You’ll have an hour and a half to speak with her, then.”

  Dirk switched immediately to logistics. “Then tell me a good day. I’ll make sure we’re right here, waiting.”

  I looked to Seaton, unsure. “Nine days from now? Is that reasonable?”

  “We still need to get Felix in on this,” Seaton returned, frowning in thought. “And he’s neck-deep with work at the moment. Let’s say ten days. Ten days from now, I’ll connect again to this very mirror.”

  I looked at a mother’s face, frantic for news about her missing child, and chose to maintain the connection a minute longer. “She’s alright, I promise you. She’s working as a detective over here and is my partner. She’s constantly cooking strange and delicious foods for us and introducing machines we’ve never heard of. She’s thriving here, you don’t need to worry about her. She just misses you all, too, and we want to give you the chance to speak.”

  Amaya had tears in her eyes as she nodded. “Thank you for that. We’ll be right here in ten days.”

  “Until then.” Seaton cut the connection with a sigh. “Well. That didn’t go as planned.”

  “Truly.” Although in a way it was preferable, as this way we were sure the connection made it to the right place. I’d fully anticipated having to jump mirrors at least three times, viewing the outside world, and trying to piece together what I saw with what had been described to me.

  With a grimace, I headed back to the chair and heavily sank into it. That had drained me rather more than I’d anticipated. And to think, Belladonna had done something even more demanding than this and pulled an entire person through. Not just an image and sound. If she hadn’t been so mad, she would have been an incredible magician. Perhaps a legend.

  Seaton went to the side bar without a word and brought me a small plate with a pastry and a cup of strong tea. I took it with a slightly embarrassed smile of thanks before promptly biting into the pastry. In situations like this, our differences in magical power became acutely obvious. I appreciated that he didn’t do anything to pour salt into that particular wound.

  He returned back to the sideboard to pour himself a cup of tea as well. “When you contact Felix—”

  “Now wait a minute, why am I contacting him and not you?” I objected.

  “—make sure to relay that he has no choice about the designated meeting time, alright?” Seaton neatly ignored me. “He’s terrible about trying to reschedule at the last minute.”

  “I would like to observe that you are the one who is colleagues with him, not me.”

  “That’s entirely why you should make the request and not me.” Seaton took a sip of his tea, expression demure.

  I eyed him suspiciously. Just how bad were the relations between these two men, anyway?

  “JAMIE!”

  As a cop, you learn how to wake up in a split second. I think I broke a new speed record when I heard my name. I was out of the bed and halfway across the room before my eyes had even properly opened. Still in a loose sleep shirt and shorts, I had my gun in hand—now when did that get there?—and hair probably resembling Hagrid’s as I charged into Henri’s hotel room.

  “—nice that you caught it, but I don’t want to see it,” Henri was explaining in earnest as I burst in. He perched on the dresser like a monkey, nightshirt askew, with the most plaintive expression I’d ever seen on a human being’s face. When he saw me, he lit up in relief. “Oh good. Maybe you can get through to him and—for deities’ sakes, Phil! Don’t release it in here!”

  That’s when my attention fell to the bed. Phil sat on the covers with a half-dead mouse squirming in his mouth, his ears flat against his head in a crestfallen manner. He rolled his eyes at me sadly, like a child denied something.

  Ooooh boy. I think I got the gist of the situation. “Phil, my darling, did you catch a mouse to show Henri?”

  Phil gave a forlorn nod of the head, sending the mouse squeaking in protest.

  “That’s very exceptional hunting on your part,” I praised. You had to praise cats first, let them know they’d done a good job. Otherwise, they repeated things you really didn’t want them to repeat. “But you know, Henri doesn’t like mice. They scare him.”

  Henri spluttered (still on the dresser, mind you), “They don’t scare me!”

  I ignored that whopper of a lie and explained as gently as I knew how to the still sad kitten, “So he’s very happy that you hunt mice. Just maybe tell him about it instead of showing him, okay?”

  Phil let out an unhappy little growl in the back of his throat. At his size, it sounded too adorable to be taken seriously.

  Clint deigned to grace us with his presence at this point and hopped up on the bed. He rubbed his head along Phil’s in a brotherly gesture before taking the mouse out of Phil’s mouth. Then he gave a jerk of the chin, a silent ‘c’mere kid’ and hopped back down, sauntering out the door. Phil followed, tail tucked in between his legs a little. Awww. Poor baby.

  Only when they were gone did Henri climb off the dresser. I gave him a hand down, as it was rather tall. I was impressed he’d managed to scale it to begin with. “You could have just reasoned with him instead of yelling for me, y’know.”

  Henri glared at me. “He put it in my mouth.”

  I blinked back at him. “The mouse. He put the mouse in your mouth?”

  Henri’s glare upped to volcanic fury. “Quite.”

  A laugh escaped me before I could bite it back. The picture was all too clear in my head of a proud Phil, wanting to show off his conquest. Of Hen
ri, dead asleep and probably snoring a little. Phil losing his patience when Henri didn’t wake and putting the mouse into that handy opening. Of Henri waking up to a half-dead mouse in his mouth and freaking right out.

  What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall.

  “Jamie,” he sighed, still very upset and growing more irritated by the second. “This is not amusing.”

  “I beg to differ. It’s hysterical.”

  Ignoring me, he snatched for his wand, performing several cleaning spells on his mouth.

  I tried to mitigate this a little. “You do realize that for Phil, having a mouse in his mouth is routine? Their mouth is how they carry things.”

  “I realize. And I realize he’s very young and obviously hasn’t properly put it together yet that humans operate under different parameters. Do explain this properly to him, won’t you?” Henri rubbed at his forehead. “I have no faith I can manage it.”

  “I’ll try,” I promised. I had absolutely no faith I’d get through, as Clint still did weird things from time to time with me, but I’d try. Maybe by the time I’d stopped laughing about it, I could make a go of it. Next week, maybe.

  Scribe Day—otherwise known as Friday for us Earthlings—dawned warm and fair. The unseasonable snow was long gone and not a trace of it in sight. I was thankful for it, too, as I didn’t want to tramp outside in the snow, market or no market. I still wore a light jacket, but I didn’t miss the scarf or gloves.

  Once again, Drummond drove us, and we all unloaded at the fairground entrance. I panned my head, taking in the area with some surprise. The place was much larger than I’d anticipated. It looked something like a cross between a farmer’s market and a flea market, with fresh vegetables for sale right next to someone offering used furniture.

  Penny drew up next to me and made the same sweep of the eyes. “That’s bigger than I expected.”

  “Girl, same.” I cocked my head and tried to think of an approach. “Should we split up? I think we’ll be here all day otherwise.”

  Gerring stood on my other side and made the same evaluation. He’d shed police uniform for casual dress, and I didn’t blame him. He was here to work a case, not be accessible to the general public. I didn’t want him pulled into something when he was supposed to be focusing on something else. He pointed to the far right and offered, “Why don’t McSparrin and I take the right, you and Dr. Davenforth take the left?”