by Emery Belle
“Oh no you don’t,” Kellen snarled, correctly interpreting my new look of resolve. He leaned forward in his chair, blood-red eyes snapping dangerously. “I’ll admit—” He stopped speaking abruptly and pulled an ugly face, smacking his lips as if tasting something foul on his tongue. After a few moments, he took a deep breath and continued, each word seeming to cause him considerable effort.
“I’ll admit that you’ve made some lucky catches lately, but that doesn’t give you license to meddle in any more of my investigations. The Magic Island Police Department will be the ones to catch Orion’s murderer.” Then, leaning forward even further, he pointed an enormous finger at me, punctuating each of his next five words with a jab in my direction.
“You can count on that.”
Chapter 8
“Oh, come on!” I shouted a few days later as I opened my wardrobe door and at least a hundred bats flapped out. They circled the dorm room as Garnet screamed and began waving her hairbrush in the air, trying to knock out a few only to smack Monty on the forehead with a sickening thwap.
He began swinging wildly around on his chain, howling in pain and stirring the bats into a frenzy, and the resulting noise sent Pierre diving into Garnet’s wardrobe for safety. Which, under normal circumstances, would have been fine, but he’d just spent the past hour dragging his belly through the mud in protest of the walk I’d insisted he take as part of his new exercise regimen. Thanks to all the extra sausages—both the ones I gave him and the ones he sniffed out on his own when I wasn’t looking—he was quickly approaching the size of a very well-fed hog.
Garnet turned her rage on him as he began barking gleefully and burrowing his way into her underwear drawer, poking his nose out to reveal a muddy bra dangling from the end of it. As she advanced on him, snarling, I whipped out my new wand and aimed it at the window; instead of sliding open, as I’d intended, the glass was replaced with a sticky black sludge that the bats flew into, trapping them, their wings flapping uselessly.
“Well, at least you caught them, one way or the other,” Garnet said, yanking her bra back from Pierre and groaning as she fingered the ruined mud-soaked lace.
“What is going on?” I wailed, staring down at my wand before giving it a good shake, as though that would help badger it into submission. Ever since the wand ceremony, my magic had been going haywire, disobeying me at every possible turn. In fact, I hadn’t performed an adequate spell since Cordelia had presented the wand to me… Was it possible she’d made a mistake?
“Yeah, why don’t you go ahead and march right up to Sparrow Manor to tell her that,” Garnet said with a snort when I confided my fears to her. Her voice was slightly muffled since she was currently knee-deep in her wardrobe, trying to tug Pierre out by his bottom as he howled pathetically, a pair of granny panties wrapped around his neck. “Those aren’t mine,” she added hastily, stuffing them into her pocket when I raised my eyebrows at her in amusement.
“They look like quite the tasty little morsel to me,” Monty said, unfurling his long gray tongue as his bulging eyes locked on Garnet’s pocket, where the edge of the graying underwear was poking out. Using his tongue, he picked lasciviously at a piece of food caught between his teeth, then closed his eyes and pursed his fat lips for a kiss.
Plucking a bat away from the window sludge, I pressed it against the head’s mouth. “A little furrier than I expected,” he said in a dreamy voice, eyes still closed, “but I’ve found that a well-trimmed mustache on a plump, pink-cheeked lass can be quite becoming.”
Releasing the bat, I joined Garnet at the wardrobe, and we used our combined strength to haul Pierre out. “Sorry about all of this,” I said as we slid to the floor, panting from the effort of moving the portly dog. I spread my arms wide to indicate Pierre, the bats, and the ruined window. “I don’t know what’s going on with my magic lately, but I’ll get it sorted out, don’t worry.”
“That’s the least of my worries,” Garnet said, tugging her long hair into a ponytail and grabbing her own wand from her bed. “And it should be the least of yours, too.” Raising her wand, she aimed a cleaning spell at the window, and we watched as the sludge began siphoning off, revealing the sparkling glass underneath.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, hurrying to open the window, this time with my bare hands to avoid another wand-related mishap. The bats flew a farewell circle around the room before gliding into the warm afternoon air. I watched as they disappeared into the nearby trees, perching in the dense leaves and watching me with their beady little eyes.
But I didn’t need to ask what Garnet meant—not really. I knew what she was going to say, but with everything else going on in my life, I just couldn’t deal with one more catastrophe, and that included confronting my new boyfriend’s insane ex-girlfriend. Because there was no doubt in my mind that this was another of Remy’s calling cards, just like the pile of rotting fish, and the morning when I woke up to find that my room had been transformed into a jungle, complete with mosquitoes and poisonous mushrooms, and, oh, yeah, did I mention the horde of baby trolls that chased me down the sidewalk, swinging their clubs at my head? And each time Remy made her presence known, Sebastian would clam up and refuse to talk about it besides muttering an embarrassed apology and conjuring up yet another bouquet of flowers for me that were becoming increasingly extravagant.
“There is something seriously wrong with this woman,” Garnet said, aiming her wand in Pierre’s direction. My familiar howled indignantly as invisible hands scraped the caked mud off his fur, and when his coat was shining again, she sent a blast of warm, peppermint-scented air at him to mask his natural… aroma.
When she was finished, she admired her handiwork before spinning her wand around in her hand and tucking it into her pocket for safekeeping. Garnet had really started to come into her own after receiving her wand—her confidence had grown leaps and bounds, while mine was sinking further into the ground every time I tried to perform a spell. But again, I couldn’t worry about that now. I had more pressing issues to deal with.
“I couldn’t agree more that she’s off her rocker,” I said to her, slipping into a pair of jeans and sneakers, grabbing my purse, and heading for the door. “And I promise I’ll give some serious thought to what I’m going to do about Remy… just not now.”
“So, what, you’re going to wait until she turns you into a porcupine so Sebastian can’t kiss you anymore?” she called after me, folding her arms sternly over her chest. But I kept walking, pretending not to hear her, and I didn’t stop until I’d reached the hospital. After jumping through the usual hoops, I arrived at the highly infectious diseases ward and waited for Dale to finish administering a garlic poultice to a vampire who’d been bitten by a rabid monkey.
“I have no idea why humans think garlic repels vampires,” Dale said, stripping off his protective gear and dousing himself with more flames from the blowtorch for an extra round of cleansing. “It actually boosts their immune system a hundred-fold. A few more of those garlic poultices and he’ll be good as new. So.” He smiled at me. “What can I do for you, Wren? I don’t have you on the schedule today.”
“No, it’s my day off.” I hitched my purse higher up my shoulder, feeling the weight of my trusty notebook inside. Against all reason, I was actually starting to feel slightly excited at the prospect of having another murder mystery to solve… if anything, it would take my mind off my personal troubles, which were starting to pile up. Looking around the ward, which was as busy as ever, I gestured to an empty patient room. “Mind if we talk in private for a few minutes?”
“Your wish is my command.” Dale grimaced as he led me into the room and shut the door behind us. “I really have to stop saying that—I picked it up from a genie we had on the ward recently. He had a horrible case of the yellow whooping plague, but he kept trying to bribe his way out of the hospital by promising the nurses and doctors whatever we coveted the most. When he told me he could get me enough gold to buy a private island in the Indian Ocean, I
almost took him up on it.” He shivered. “Dangerous creatures, genies. If I can give you one piece of advice, Wren, it’s to stay far away from them.” He perched on the edge of the bed and smiled at me. “So what can I do for you?”
Setting my purse on the ground, I rummaged through it until I found my notebook and a pen, then opened the notebook to a fresh page and poised my pen over it. Dale watched me curiously. “I’m going to find out who killed Orion,” I said. “And who almost killed me.”
The smile fell from Dale’s lips, and he looked at me in concern. “Shouldn’t you leave that to the professionals? I know for a fact that Kellen’s all over this investigation…” Then he trailed off, his eyes locking onto my notebook, and then my face, as if seeing everything for the first time.
“Hey,” he said, his own face lighting up with comprehension, “I thought your name sounded familiar when I first saw it on the housekeeping staff list. You’re that new witch everyone keeps talking about who runs around the island solving murders! You’re becoming very popular, you know.”
I couldn’t help the flutter of pride in my chest, but, ignoring it, I gave Dale a grave look. “It’s not exactly a job I signed up for… well, mostly.” Sure, one could argue that I could have left the policework to the, well, police, but each murder so far held some sort of significance in my life, and Orion’s was no exception. “As I was saying.” I gripped my pen a little tighter. “I’m going to solve this case, and I need your help to get started. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Sure.” Dale shrugged. “Go ahead, shoot.”
“When I woke up in the hospital, Kellen told me that the poison imbued in Orion’s crossword puzzle book was very rare, and I was only minutes away from dying when an antidote was flown in by dragon. What can you tell me about it?”
Dale blew out a breath and ran his fingers through his hair. “You were lucky, I can tell you that. The reason no one recognized Orion’s symptoms—the wheezing, the shortness of breath, the gray skin—is because they’re also hallmark symptoms of the weasel pox, which is why he was admitted to the ward in the first place. So whoever killed him was smart enough to match up the symptoms of both diseases to trick the doctors… and it worked. We thought Orion was having a difficult time recovering because of his advanced age—you don’t reach your thousandth birthday without having a few health hiccups along the way.”
I frowned at him. “Why does that make me lucky? Sounds like it made Orion unlucky.”
“Because the poison is so rare that only one of our doctors recognized it,” Dale said, staring at me intently. “She’d seen it only once, way back in the healing academy, and happened to remember it. The poison is drawn from a tiny orange flower called the cullenberry”—he held his fingers barely a centimeter apart—“that only grows on the Isle of Caoimhe, a remote island off the Irish coast. The island is so incredibly difficult to reach because of the powerful wind tunnels surrounding it that only manticores have the strength to fly there.” He winced. “And let’s just say that manticores aren’t usually willing to act like magi-cabs.”
I gulped. I’d never seen a manticore in person, but with their enormous leathery wings, lion’s body, and venomous spiked tail, they were considered one of mythology’s most fearsome beasts. Only they weren’t myths at all—Magic Island was home to several, though they rarely left their mountainside caves.
Dale let out a short, humorless laugh. “So I guess you could say that whoever had it in for Orion was pretty determined.” He paused, then added, “And also pretty callous. The killer obviously didn’t care if anyone else was hurt, because”—he waved his hand in my direction—“as we’ve seen, just touching an object imbued with that much cullenberry poison was enough to cause serious harm.”
A shiver ran up my spine. Until now, I didn’t think I’d quite understood just how close I’d come to dying. My hand faltered as I began jotting down all the information Dale was providing, but I did my best to focus on the task at hand. The best thing I could do right now was track down Orion’s killer before another islander was struck down.
“What about visitors?” I asked, moving on to the next piece of the puzzle. “Was there anyone unusual—or maybe even not so unusual—who came to visit Orion?”
Dale shook his head slowly. “I couldn’t say. The staff on this ward is incredibly busy—there are people milling around constantly, and we really don’t have time to pay them much attention. As for anyone unusual?” He laughed. “Have you taken a look around lately? We deal with nothing but the unusual up here on the twelfth floor.” Just then, something very heavy-sounding slammed into the wall separating us from the adjoining patient room, and I jumped back from it, my heart in my throat.
Dale gave me a meaningful look, as if to say, see what I mean? Then he looked at his watch and stood. “It’s time to give Mrs. Ogby her medicine—without it, her head keeps sliding right off her shoulders.” He gave me a brief smile. “I hope that was useful, Wren, and I hope you’re able to do right by Orion. I have a dream that someday every room in this hospital will be empty, and it’s people like you who bring us one step closer to that happy day.”
Before leaving, he clasped me briefly on the shoulder. “Good luck, Wren… and be careful out there. The more time I spend in this place, the more I come to understand that monsters really do exist.”
On the way back from my meeting with Dale, I decided to take a little detour—okay, a big detour—to the edge of a dark, dense forest that spanned a length of the island where few dared to tread. The cawing of ravens overhead mingled with my nervous breathing as I started down a narrow, unkempt road that bordered the forest.
I’d visited the gargoyle community once before, and it had been especially memorable, though not in a good way. It would be a long time before I forgot the sheer humiliation of listening to Cole turn me down flat after I’d asked him to be my date for the coven dance, though, oddly enough—or maybe not oddly at all—his rejection had been the catalyst for my romantic relationship with Sebastian.
In the aftermath of finding out that Lord Macon had hired Cole to protect me, I searched every face in the crowd for the handsome gargoyle, and even visited a few of his favorite haunts. On one occasion, I struck up what I thought was a covert conversation with a stone gargoyle perched outside the academy until realizing that the students milling around the courtyard were staring and snickering at me; one teenage wizard even slipped me a few gold coins and asked me to pay an extra visit to the puff shop to buy a few hallucinogenic tea leaves for him and his friends.
But I hadn’t paid a visit to Cole’s house, though I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why. Perhaps because I didn’t want to revisit the scene of my recent embarrassment. Perhaps because he’d never actually invited me there. Perhaps because I was afraid of what I might find.
Eager to put the gloomy forest far behind me, I walked quickly down the narrow, potholed road lined with scraggly shrubs and tall weeds, my surroundings totally silent save for the occasional rustle of wings from the ravens soaring above me in the cloudless sky. Eventually the road widened, the shrubs gave way to beautiful oak trees with wide, inviting branches, and a small community of colorful, cheery-looking cottages and perfectly manicured front lawns came into view.
A few tall men in cloaks lingered on the porch of a yellow brick cottage, their heads bent together as they engaged in a whispered conversation—though I couldn’t fathom why they were whispering, since no one else was in sight. The whispers cut off abruptly as I hurried past, and they swung around in unison to watch me, their long black cloaks swishing around their ankles, their brows deeply furrowed. I recognized one of them, a short, stocky man with silver eyes, as the gargoyle who had initially shown me the way to Cole’s house, but when I raised my hand in greeting, he merely stared back at me, stone-faced.
“Lovely to see you too,” I muttered under my breath as I continued up the road until I came to Cole’s cottage, which was painted the palest s
hade of blue and was slightly larger than the others. I remembered Cole’s large, perfectly tended garden, and his collection of windchimes whose beautiful melodies drifted toward me on the breeze. The house’s welcoming exterior was the complete opposite of Cole, a dark, brooding, mysterious man I couldn’t for the life of me figure out.
I pushed open the gate and stepped onto the walkway, scrutinizing the tidy cottage as I approached. It looked… empty. The windows shut tight, the curtains drawn, the interior dark. I padded up the porch steps, then stood on my tiptoes to try and peek inside the tiny window carved into the door, but the glass was warped and frosted, and impossible to see through. Given Cole’s line of work, though, that was probably intentional.
I tapped lightly on the door, then pressed my ear against the wood, listening for any hint of approaching footsteps. But the house remained still and silent, and that familiar bubble of anxiety began expanding in my stomach. It was too much of a coincidence to think that Cole’s disappearance was completely unrelated to him violating the sacred gargoyle oath by exposing one of his clients, who just so happened to be the most powerful man on the island.
Crouching down, I had just started peering through the front window when a hand snaked around my arm, yanking me back. I screamed, flailing my arms against my unseen attacker, but immediately found myself pinned against the front door, facing the man with the silver eyes, whose fingers were pressed against my mouth. “Silence,” he commanded.
Who did this guy think he was? I shoved him off me, freeing my arms, then reared back and slapped him as hard as I could across the face. He staggered slightly, then quickly regained his composure, pressing his hand against his reddened cheek and gazing at me with a slow, unsettling smile.
“I could wipe the breath from your lungs quicker than you could cry for your mother,” he hissed, before reaching out a finger and tracing a line down the hollow of my neck. A shudder raced through me, and even though my body screamed at me to run, to flee, I was glued in place, mesmerized by those silver eyes that were roving all over my face.