Murder, Magic, and Moggies

by Pearl Goodfellow

  That “good night’s sleep” I was supposed to have gotten? Yeah. Didn’t happen. I had spent half the night puzzling at the garbled proclamation passed onto us by the spectral Spithilda and the other half imagining what Chief Trew – David – would look like in swim trunks on a tropical Hawaiian beach with a piña colada in one hand and me in the other.

  Aloha baby, lei me!

  I shook myself out of my reverie, and somehow noticed Amber’s refreshed, confident air. Gone was the teary-eyed damsel of the night before. In her place was a composed, articulate executive assistant. I shrugged. I guess we all process grief at different paces, and in different ways.

  Wait. Was that Berry Banshee on her full, pouty lips? Not exactly a mourning color.

  “Old Lady Bristlethwaite called. She swears she has ‘poultrygeists’ and demands you come out and do something about them.”

  “Poltergeists, you mean?” the Chief groaned.

  “Nope,” Amber insisted. “She said ‘poultrygeists’. She can hear them clucking. She thinks her house is built on top of an ancient chicken coop and is determined they are going to turn the tables and fry her up instead.”

  The Chief hardly looked up, rubbing his eyes. Apparently, he hadn’t slept well either. “Figures.”

  “But, on the bright side, I brought you one of Gabrielle’s spook-tacular scones!” Amber proffered a string-wrapped box with the golem’s bakery logo on it.

  The delicate little pastry, topped with a candied purple flower, seemed to put a little zing back in Chief Trew’s demeanor.

  “That’s fantastic, Amber. Thank you so much.” He stood up and gave her a quick hug.

  Hmph. It wasn’t that fantastic.

  Amber giggled girlishly and minced her steps all the way back to her desk.

  Puh-leese!

  “Oh! And, Chief?” Amber called again.

  “Wha?” Chief Trew mumbled through a mouthful of his cranberry-orange scone.

  Amber tapped the business end of her pencil on the message pad. “Druida Stone called from the library. She says you have an overdue book. The Joy of Hex?”

  The Chief nearly choked on his scone as half of the crumbly pastry went down his windpipe and the other half went sailing across the room and smacked against the back of Hector’s head. The zombie appeared unfazed and went back to stamping his paperwork, slowly and methodically. I chuckled. Still faster than most government workers. But, the Chief was still choking.

  I leaped to my feet and vigorously patted the Chief between the shoulder blades trying to dislodge the problematic pastry.

  “Oh, my goodness, Chief!” Amber cried in alarm. “Are you okay?”

  The Chief gave us a big thumbs up, but still took a moment to collect himself.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” he finally replied verbally. “I, uh, completely forgot I had that book.”

  I narrowed a suspicious stare at him. “David Radagast Trew. Have you been doing magic?”

  He jumped to his feet. “What? Tartarus, no!” He protested a little too enthusiastically. He busied himself dusting crumbs from his uniform. “It was…research! Yeah. Research for a case.”

  “Well, Mrs. Stone says unless you want to be investigating your own murder, you had better get that book back to the library and pronto!” Amber stated.

  Druida Stone was Gless Inlet’s head librarian and town historian. Not a native of Glessie — nobody, actually knew where she hailed from exactly — but, the cranky witch was definitely zany enough to seem like she’d been born on the isle. Her background was allegedly from the Celtic Lore. Interestingly enough, however, was the fact that she had a penchant for Romani Lore. The shelves dedicated to magic, were definitely showing signs of cultural imbalance of late. I had heard a fair few wizards voicing their disgruntled complaints of them no longer being able to find magic of the Norse variety. Apart from rankling the local witches, she also struck fear in the rest of Glessie’s book borrowers. Don’t even think of returning a book late — you’d be much better off going on the run instead. Yep, Drudia wasn’t the easiest of company to keep.

  “Hey, um, Hat,” the Chief looked at me sheepishly. Would you mind dropping this off for me on your way back to the Angel? I’m just so busy right now.”

  He gestured to his empty desk.

  “Fine,” I agreed reluctantly. “But don’t think you’re off the hook. You’re gonna owe me, and don’t think I won’t collect.”

  I snagged the book from his extended hand.

  Druida Stone’s domain was a simple, nondescript building on the outside. It had four plain, brick walls, one story, sixteen windows, a jejune entrance, and a block-lettered shingle hung above the door that read: Keziah Mason Memorial Library. To the humble folk of Gless Inlet, it was known as simply ‘The Mason.’ Sixteen Georgian styled windows faced the street, hiding their leather bound secrets from blind reflective eyes.

  The real magic was on the inside, though.

  Books.

  Shelves upon shelves. Rows upon rows. Stacks upon stacks…of books. I always loved coming to Druida’s library. Not to see Druida, mind you. She was prickly at best. No, I just love it here because it reminded me of home. Before they had…passed on, my mother and father collected books. Books of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Grimoires were nestled side-by-side on shelves next to books by Unawakened authors.

  “The beautiful thing about books, Seraphim,” my mother would lilt in her sing-song voice. “The wonderful thing is every book is magical. They can transport you to faraway lands and let you meet so many different types of people…without ever whispering a single word of a single spell. Now, that’s powerful magic.”

  If only I could find magic powerful enough to reverse the events of that fateful night.

  “Waxing melancholy, Hattie?” Druida’s sharp whisper startled me. She had come up behind me with that ninja-like stealth all good librarians have.

  “Druida!” I exclaimed.

  “Shh,” she snapped shut an enormous, dusty leather bound volume in my face to emphasize her immediate need for quiet. I spluttered a feeble apology through the mushrooming dust cloud of the snapping book. Druida motioned for me to follow her into her office. Once inside, she closed the door so we could speak freely.

  “So, Hattie. I see David Trew still has you doing his dirty work.” She gestured to the overdue book in my hands, an almost gleeful sneer plastered to her heavily made up face.

  “What? Oh! This? More like a favor between friends.”

  She peered over bottle-thick lenses. “Mmm hmm.”

  “But, actually, Druida, I came here hoping to ask a favor of you.”

  “Oh, no, no, no! I will not forgive his fine just because he is the Chief Para-Inspector. Not even he sends his little darling to do his dirty work.” Her accent was hard to place. It sounded like a mish mash of every forgotten, ancient Indo European language that ever existed. It certainly wasn’t the lilting brogue you’d expect from someone from the Celtic Shores.

  “Understood, Druida. But, David’s overdue borrow here isn’t the reason for my visit.” I leaned forward. Druida leaned forward to meet me. “I need a little history lesson.”

  “You don’t say?” she asked nonchalantly and leaning back just as cooly. But, I could tell I’d definitely piqued her interest. And, I also knew that our resident librarian loved nothing more than to impart her knowledge far and wide. Suffer the fool who would put their hand up to say they knew more than her. This chick lived for history. It was the only time that she put her personality to the background, and instead, let the knowledge she contained shine, live to the fullest, and let the words speak for themselves.

  I stole a glance at Gless Inlet’s book warden. She was probably in her forties, given the amount of time I had known her. But, her skin care regime was clearly top notch, as she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Her skin was flawless, and I vaguely wondered what products she was using. Druida never purchased from the Angel, this much I knew. I briefly pondered Dr
agon Lard. But, of course, that particular beauty enhancement hadn’t been available for at least a hundred years now. The Dragons being dead, and all. She was apparently from the Celtic Shores, but her olive skin belied that fact. Druida was positively Mediterranean looking, which made me think maybe it was olive oil that was preserving the badly dressed librarian so wonderfully. If her skin and looks were exemplary then her fashion sense was the complete opposite. An insult of wild colors, textures and cuts, Druida had no problem wearing banana yellow shoes — yep, with plastic bananas on the uppers as decorations — with her regulation, gray jacket and skirt. Her accessories ventured into the insane territory; right now, from her ears, dangled silver unicorns, with rainbow jewelled eyes that refracted light at every opportunity. In sunlight, the horned beasts were positively blinding. Druida’s neck scarf was a mess of swirling multicolor, the big knot facing front, and bulging out of the confines of her neutral blazer. Druida hurt the eyes. But, unless you got her onto matters of history, the librarian hurt the ears just as much. Her voice was querulous, slightly off pitch, and ear-splitting high. She always seemed to be on the very edge of hysteria. And, once there, she was very reluctant to come back to the land of reason.

  “What can you tell me about the Roach family?” I tried to get her mind back into the history annals before her personality could erupt, well, all over me.

  “Oh, plenty. There’s enough history in that one family alone; I could fill TEN books!” She gushed. Bingo!

  Druida was referring to, of course, her life’s work: The Complete Compendium of Coven Isles History, the Untold Stories. It covered everything and everybody that made the Coven Isles the unique and magical place it was, and included dark, family secrets, heretofore unknown alliances, plots to foil governments, and more mundane things like how to catch a brownie and what to do if Nixies infest your house. It was, in short, a vast cornucopia of useful information to anyone who needed information on the Isles or its inhabitants.

  The only caveat was, Druida never let anyone read the darned thing and swore to the Lord and Lady that no one would until she had written the definitive last word on Isles’ history.

  Since new history was being made every second of every day of every month of every year? Well, you do the math.

  She stored each volume on an enchanted bookshelf. No matter how many volumes she created, the magical shelf could accommodate them all without so much as adding an extra millimeter to its size. And if someone tried to pull one of the volumes down without Druida’s permission?

  Have you ever seen one of those pressed flowers? You just didn’t mess with this woman. She was too temperamental, and there was no way of knowing how powerful her magic was.

  So, reading the books was taboo. But, Druida loved to talk about the contents.

  “The Roaches are a very old line of witches. Nearly as old as your family’s, Druida began. “They were one of the first families on the island. Indeed, they used to own a great deal of Gless Inlet. Had their finger in every pie.”

  “But, the only Roach I’ve ever known or heard about is Spithilda. Until Amber Crystal came to Gless Inlet, I had no idea Spithilda even had family.”

  “Well, that’s largely in part to the enormous feud that happened within the family. Spithilda had been estranged from the rest of her family for years! That’s why she lived way out in The Humps. Because she wanted nothing to do with them. Hagsmoor was the old witch’s refuge from familial interaction. Or, rather, human interaction.”

  Druida shuffled to the shelf and drew down a cumbersome, dusty volume. She blew the cloak of dust from its cover and turned through the crackling, yellowed pages until she came to what she was looking for…an old, faded photograph of the Roach family. They looked uncomfortably stiff standing in their little group. Archibald Roach stood next to a stern, but beautiful woman I assumed to be Minerva Roach, the Roach matriarch. Archibald’s hands were on the shoulders of the two girls in front of him, but it did not look like a gesture of love. It looked more like the domineering gesture of a tyrant; a man who commanded obedience. A modern day person might say: control freak. The two young girls did not resemble each other as much as they resembled each of their parents. The taller girl inherited the stern, severe scowl of her father, the grim set of his jaw, and his raven black hair complete with widow’s peak. The only feature she seemed to have gleaned from her mother was the defined angle of her cheekbones, a line so sharp it cut. I looked at the caption: “Roach Family. Glessie Isle Founder’s Day Celebration.” I looked for the dark-haired girl’s name.

  Hyraceum Roach. Amber’s mother? Spithilda’s sister? Why didn’t we know about her?

  I wondered what had happened to her. She certainly didn’t seem to be involved in Amber’s life. I looked back at the picture. The youngest, a fair-haired pixie of a girl, was full of life and charm. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was Spithilda! There was nothing of the twisted, bitter crone who dwelled in the dismal, dim recesses of The Humps.

  “This photo,” Druida suggested, “is quite possibly the last known picture of the entire Roach family in one place.”

  “Why so?” I pressed.

  “Well, a long time ago, way before you were even born, Spithilda got involved with a boy.”

  “Rad Silverback,” I offered. Druida looked a little surprised.

  “You know the story?” she asked curiously. I waved a hand.

  “Bits and pieces,” I recalled our conversation with Portia Fearwyn. “But, please. Go on.”

  “Well, the Silverbacks owned a stretch of heavily shaded woodland in The Vale. Archibald Roach was very interested in purchasing the land. The woods were filled with Wild Goldenseal. You still run Chimera’s apothecary, right?”

  “I do, indeed.”

  “Then you must know how incredibly rare — not to mention, valuable— Wild Goldenseal is.”

  I nodded. “Grammy Chimera used to fuss all the time about how much she had to fork over to suppliers for the herb. And that was when she could even get it!”

  Druida shrugged. “Law of supply and demand. And, you know as well as I do that Wild Goldenseal has powerful blood purifying properties. It counteracts poisons beautifully. Now, imagine if all the people who were singled out as witches during The Burning Times had had some Wild Goldenseal? They would have been able to neutralize the ill effects of the infamous Tituba’s ‘witch cake’ and escaped their death warrants! Does it surprise you that so many of us would like to keep some on hand now?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Right. But, people went a little overboard. They hoarded the stuff, harvesting willy-nilly. And the Unawakened didn’t help, what with the rapid deforestation of Wild Goldenseal’s habitats. And, for the Unawakened’s burgeoning interest in all things natural. Goldenseal can only grow in a shady forest, so its reach is sparse, to say the least.”

  “And, that’s why it’s on the list of endangered flora and fauna. It’s insanely regulated by Talisman.” I offered, thoughtfully.

  “And wildly profitable. Only one supplier is ever allowed to harvest each year. If you are that provider?”

  “You’d be rolling in gold,” I answered her implied question.

  “Or, in this case, Goldenseal.”

  “No wonder Archibald Roach wanted the property so badly. Did the Silverbacks sell?”

  “Not at first. No matter how much money Archibald offered, Heinrich Silverback wouldn’t budge. But, Archie was a shrewd businessman. He knew. Everybody has a price. He kept pushing and finally discovered something that Heinrich Silverback loved more than money.”

  “And what was that?” I asked.

  Druida leaned in conspiratorially.

  “Power. And he was ravenous for it. Heinrich had been in talks with Atropa Belladonna to join the two families through a marriage between Portia Fearwyn and Rad Silverback. Heinrich wanted the power and prestige of becoming part of family with ties to the magical Congress. Atropa wanted a piece of the Silverback wealth.�
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  “So, how does Spithilda fit into all of this?” I asked.

  “Well, do you know that Rad and Spithilda were seeing each other?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that little hiccup was derailing the plans of two of the most powerful magic families in all of the Coven Isles. It was easy for Heinrich to control Rad. He just threatened to cut him off. And we all know how much Rad likes living the high life. The wild card was Spithilda. Heinrich told Archie if he kept Spithilda away from Rad, he would give him the parcel of land he wanted, and, so, a deal was struck. Rad broke off the relationship with Spithilda. And when Archibald forbade Spithilda from seeing Rad? You can imagine how that went over. And all for the love of money and power.”

  “And that’s when Spithilda put the were-curse on Rad?”

  “Oh! So you know about Rad’s secret?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’d make a decent historian yourself, Hattie. Well, after that, the Fearwyns wanted nothing to do with the Silverbacks. Apparently, Atropa Belladonna did not believe in mixed marriages. But, Spithilda did not leave it at that.”

  “Oh?”

  “She swore she would take her father, Archibald, for every dime he was worth. And she stayed true to her word as she proved to be a craftier business mind than he. Archibald Roach died, a penniless old man. Spithilda even acquired the goldenseal parcel.”

  “Wow. No wonder she was so twisted and bitter.”

  “Her sister Hyraceum finally moved away to the Isle of Mag Mell where she met and married one of the Fae. It’s said she’s even mastered some of the Fair Folk’s magic over the years. But, here’s where it gets fascinating. Spithilda wasn’t satisfied that Archibald died without a cent to his name. She didn’t want anyone from the family to take anything that belonged to her again. That included her sister, Hyraceum, and subsequently her niece, Amber, her only two remaining living relatives.”