by Sarina Dorie
“Did any of her next of kin come to collect her possessions?” Janis Meadowcloud asked.
“Like her bathtub?” Vega asked.
Janis Meadowcloud tittered as if Vega had just made a joke. “I suppose they’ll have to retrieve that too, won’t they?” She cleared her throat. “And her purse?”
“Someone from the DMV is coming to collect her and her possessions soon,” Vega said. And by soon, she meant whenever they deigned to show up.
Janis Meadowcloud smiled and hurried off. Vega was again reminded of the argument between the two women on Tuesday. Mrs. Angelopoulos had accused Janis of being her enemy. She had claimed Janis had stolen her purse, yet the following day she’d had a new purse—a green alligator bag that resembled the one Janis had been carrying the day before. Vega had assumed she’d found her purse and realized her error. It was also possible that Mrs. Angelopoulos had stolen the purse from her supposed enemy.
Which would explain Janis’s interest in the personal items of the “poor dear.”
Stealing from an enemy was a pretty gutsy thing to do considering Mrs. Angelopoulos had said she hadn’t been safe from Janis. Vega thought about all the times she had told Mrs. Gordmayer that Malisha Bane, her nemesis in high school, had tried to kill her or someone else.
The principal had never believed her. Malisha had been an adept liar.
Vega needed more information about these women. She only had been given a class list and a curriculum. She didn’t have personal information about the students. For the teenagers, she had the names of their guardians in case there were any accidents, but the adults came with less information. The registration forms had probably been turned into Mr. Gordmayer before he sent them to the Witchkin Council. She knew from experience he kept meticulous records. He probably had a copy of the papers from registration.
Vega snooped around his desk until she found a copy of the paper with Janis Meadowcloud’s personal information. It listed her next of kin, her flying violation, and address. Janis had accused Mrs. Angelopoulos of being the lush, but she was actually the one accused of flying while intoxicated.
On Mrs. Angelopoulos’s registration form, it wasn’t clear from the way she had raved and ranted before running out of space what her exact violation was. As the DMV stated, she had no next of kin. Vega supposed she could contact the DMV to ask more about her flying violation, though she doubted they would provide any useful information about her.
It was Janis Meadowcloud’s wheedling questions that had piqued Vega’s interest. She’d wanted to know whether the next of kin had collected the body.
She had been interested in her enemy’s possessions. Like the purse that happened to have a cadaver in it. Was that what Janis wanted or something else in the purse?
Fortunately, Vega hadn’t mentioned that she had it.
When Vega thought back to Mrs. Angelopoulos’s fear that her enemy had been out to get her, Vega had been dismissive. She’d been as condescending as Mrs. Gordmayer had been all the times Vega had complained about Malisha Bane during her teenage years. Now Vega wished she had listened.
As annoying as Mrs. Angelopoulos had been, Vega hadn’t wanted her to die. Guilt churned through her as she considered how this might be her fault.
If this was murder, Janis was the most likely culprit.
Based on Janis’s interest in the purse, Vega had a hunch Janis would search the scene of the crime for it. If she were smart, she would be using a glamour to disguise herself. Vega used a glamour of her own.
Vega strode out of the office, already reaching for her broom in her purse. She flew toward the corpse. She let her vision relax so that she could sense subtle energies.
As she flew toward the body, she noticed the blur of a figure on a broom near the bathtub. It was now turned onto its side. It didn’t surprise Vega that Janis flew off and disappeared through a portal before Vega could get close enough to identify her.
There were spells for following someone after a portal had been closed, reopening it, or using divination to determine where the portal had opened up to. It all required practice with portal magic, something Vega had never pursued—or wanted to know more about until now. Everything she’d needed to know for her Merlin-class Celestor exam that was related to portals she’d procrastinated studying, which she now regretted.
If only she knew where to hide the body, she could have kept it from Janis and the gnomes. That was assuming the DMV didn’t disapprove of her moving a murder victim. She didn’t know their procedures, nor did she want to risk getting in trouble.
That meant she had to protect the body the best she could.
Vega checked the wards she’d made around the school and discovered that she needed to reactivate them. She infused the essence of plants into this spell in the hope that would be a hindrance to the gnomes just as the plant ropes had been that Orsolya used.
She considered why the gnomes might be attracted to this body. She didn’t doubt they were demented, but they weren’t eating her. They’d been licking her, like they had licked the books in the library. Vega had first assumed it must have had something to do with her cosmetics, but now that she thought about it, Mrs. Angelopoulos hadn’t been wearing makeup. She could have been wearing lotion, but most lotions didn’t contain minerals.
Vega had checked the body for hexes and curses, magical tampering, and interference in her levitation and portal spell, but an enemy could use other means to inflict harm. Vega hadn’t checked for poison. Many minerals were toxic, and that might explain why the corpse was attracting the gnomes.
Knowing she was probably going to regret it, Vega used Casimir’s Hex-Detecting Spell. Usually it was employed on foods, but the spell could find poisons, hexes, and curses on other objects if they still lingered. Vega used it on the bathtub first. Purple vapor rose up from it, indicating nothing was amiss. When she used it over Mrs. Angelopoulos, the vapor turned green and smelled of rotten eggs, as the spell was wont to do when detecting poison. The sulfur of the spell mingled with the garlic odor.
Vega stepped back and waved the stench away. She had a code of colors and scents for this spell when detecting foods she was allergic to, but she hadn’t adapted it for specific poisons.
She should have guessed poison sooner. Arsenic was odorless. When it was heated, like after it had been baking for hours in the sun on a sweltering summer day, it smelled like garlic. She would need to perform an alchemy experiment to test her hypothesis, but that took ingredients she didn’t have.
Even without a test, she was fairly certain arsenic was the method.
It had been the red eyes that had thrown Vega off. She’d been so focused on portal magic that she hadn’t considered other options. And when she had, she’d grasped the easiest solution possible.
This hadn’t been an ordinary accident. Mrs. Angelopoulos had been exposed to arsenic. Very likely, that exposure had occurred at the hands of an enemy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Go Big or Go Gnome
Vega tried not to think about that mouthwatering corpse in the purse. Good Witchkin who abided by the rules and kept their jobs didn’t fantasize about sinking their teeth into rotting flesh that smelled like cherry pie.
That corpse in the purse was none of her business. When she handed over the purse and the body, she would let them know about the arsenic poisoning. It would soon be out of her hands. She couldn’t be accused of starting a scandal at her present school if she didn’t stick her nose where it didn’t belong.
As she had done in the past.
It would be one less thing her current principal would hate her for. She wanted to show the principal how much she had changed. She was most certainly not a corpse magnet.
As Vega was flying back to the front entrance of the school, she spotted holes in the wards at the statue of the Lady of the Lake. She chased off gnomes with pickaxes and constructed more wards. One of them carried a piece of white marble. Vega c
onjured a sphere of ice as quickly and easily as she had in high school when she’d played air pelota. She hurled it at the gnome.
He shrieked and dropped the piece of statue. Vega swooped down and picked up the piece of stone. It was a toe as large as her hand.
She circled back to the statue. The little demons had managed to crack the foot of the statue. She tried to fit the toe back into place but pressed too hard, and the rest of the toes dropped to the side.
The statue was solid marble—or it should have been. But underneath the toes was a hole the size of her finger. It looked like it opened to a dark void.
That was curious. She hoped the gnomes hadn’t damaged the statue from below. It would be at risk of falling on people if they had.
She projected a light into the void. It was cavernous below. She brought her eye to the hole, observing the stone walls. It didn’t look like what she imagined tunnels created by gnomes would look like. They appeared to have been created from stones and mortar.
A heady aroma wafted out of the hole. The scent was unlike anything she had ever smelled before, cinnamon, spice, and everything death. Even when inspecting ancient artifacts from Egypt with Kenji’s father, she had never scented a corpse like this one. It was buttery and as sweet as honey, like fresh baklava.
Her mouth watered.
She gazed up at the statue, feeling as much awe as she had the first time she’d come upon the towering woman. Could this be the tomb of Lady of the Lake? There was a grave in the forest just far enough from the cemetery to make people wonder why it wasn’t with the rest. In school, she had been taught it was the grave of Lady of the Lake, though some thought she was entombed in the crypt below the school. It was possible the school crypt extended below the school and the statue was over the Lady of the Lake’s tomb.
The idea of the gnomes getting into the school and defiling the dead in this way horrified her. With all their burrows under the ground, she had no idea what kind of damage they were doing to the school crypt. Tears filled her eyes as she thought of the dead, resting in their graves, only to be desecrated in this cruel way.
Vega carefully replaced the toes and used an Elementia spell to heal the marble’s wound. Rock magic wasn’t her natural affinity, but she could do it. She was sweating by the time she’d finished.
Today she had used more practical applications of magic than she had in months. It had to be good experience for getting through her future Merlin-class Celestor exam.
Unfortunately, unlike a test given in a classroom, the gnomes were unrelenting.
The vermin were out of control. They would be the death of her. As much as she resented cleaning up after them, she also knew she only had herself to blame for this.
She was the one who had sent away Sydney from GRS the first time she’d arrived at the school.
Vega dreaded the idea of dropping off the estimate. She would have to explain it was no longer accurate because GRS had changed their mind after seeing the gnomes lick the corpse, but if she did, she would have to explain there was a corpse on the school grounds. It wasn’t like Vega hadn’t tried to tell Principal Gordmayer the day before. And she had dropped off the good news/bad news messages, so she had informed her.
Still, Vega didn’t want to be the reason the principal came home early from vacation and held it against her for the rest of the summer. Or her life. How was Vega supposed to show the principal what a great teacher she’d make at the school if she didn’t even make it past her first week of flyer-ed classes in the summer?
* * *
Vega dropped off the estimate and a note in Mr. Gordmayer’s box that evening to inform the administration she was going to call around to get another estimate the next day. She hoped that would buy her some more time.
Knowing she had more research ahead of her, Vega went to the library. She found Ms. Chamapiwa stationed at the counter, lovingly repairing books.
The librarian cooed at the pages as if they were babies. “That’s right my dear. This is your home.” She stroked the pages as a needle and thread danced through the binding of the spine.
Vega hated to interrupt someone having an intimate moment with a book, but she had problems.
She waited until the thread had bound one section of the book and tied a knot before speaking.
“Excuse me, Ms. Chamapiwa. I need to do some research. How do I get a permit from the Witchkin Council to exterminate gnomes?”
The soft expression on the librarian’s face hardened. “You won’t be able to get a permit to exterminate precious Fae creatures. They rarely give them to anyone.”
Vega realized she was going to have to explain a little more of the situation. “Gnome Relocation Services won’t remove the gnomes and find them a new home because they say they need to be exterminated. The GRS expert saw them licking the corpse—the student that died whom I told you about—and now they think the gnomes are necrophages. I thought it might be easier to get an extermination license.”
Ms. Chamapiwa raised an eyebrow. “GRS thinks they’re necrophages? But are they?”
Vega shrugged.
Like many adults who had worked at a magical boarding school for witches, Ms. Chamapiwa had a knack for detecting fabrications of the truth.
“Why were the gnomes licking a corpse if they aren’t undead cannibals or some other such thing?” she asked.
“I have determined the corpse didn’t die of natural causes. She was poisoned. Most likely with arsenic.” Vega wondered if it would impress the librarian if she mentioned that she remembered that arsenic smelled like garlic when heated because she’d once read it in one of the school’s library books. “What do people do when they think someone has been murdered? Who do I report this to?” Surely a librarian was full of knowledge and answers.
“Oh, Vega!” Ms. Chamapiwa covered her eyes with a hand.
“What? You act like I did something wrong.” Vega would have thought Ms. Chamapiwa would be pleased to get rid of the gnomes after what they’d done to her books.
“Why must you go near that corpse?—Or get mixed up in matters of her death at all? Let the Witchkin Council decide what caused her death.” She clutched one of the broken books to her bosom.
Vega supposed those were fair questions. It would have been so much easier to ignore the problem and pretend it wasn’t there.
“What if the person who poisoned her was another student in my class?” A bully, just like Malisha Bane who had tormented Ruth and created the portal that had killed her. Vega had told the principal numerous times about her nemesis’s despicable ways, and she had done nothing. Vega didn’t want to be negligent like that. People like Ruth deserved justice.
As did Mrs. Angelopoulos.
Vega lifted her chin. “Do you think the Witchkin Council will figure that out without me helping them?” They probably wouldn’t even look into the matter if they thought Mrs. Penelope Angelopoulos died in a flying accident or suffered from a stroke.
“Getting back to the problem at hand, how quickly can I get a permit to exterminate dangerous necrophages?” Vega asked. “From what I’ve seen of the Witchkin Council, they don’t do a very thorough job in their investigations.” They tended to execute Witchkin first and ask questions later.
“Exterminating a species of pure-blooded Fae is a tricky matter.” Ms. Chamapiwa gingerly set the damaged book on the counter. She strode over to one of the library shelves. “Once you report the matter to the Witchkin Council, they have to report to the Fae Council. That might take some time.” She selected a volume from the shelf titled Fae Law for Dunces and gave it to Vega. “If they determine you are in error, and these are merely “normal” gnomes—meaning their depravities are within the range of what is ordinary for the little imps—they might fine you for wasting their time.” She selected another tome and handed it to Vega.
Vega scanned the books. She could see the librarian was correct. GRS might be convinced the gnomes were corp
se eaters, but anyone who actually did a thorough investigation would see otherwise.
Vega used the card catalogue to look up information about her newest enemy: gnomes. All magical creatures had weaknesses. For most Fae, cold iron, electricity, plastic, and chemicals created in the Morty Realm were harmful to them. All of those would also injure Vega, though not to the same extent.
Many winter furies might be able to handle one element like water or have an affinity for the cold, but it didn’t mean they could handle fire or heat. She imagined it must be the same with gnomes, though she couldn’t find anything that direct in books. Since gnomes’ food source and abilities centered around the element of earth, it made sense that they had difficulty getting out of ropes made of plants, though that wouldn’t hold them forever. She needed to find wards that were the perfect combination of their weaknesses.
If only she were allowed to use forbidden magic to contain them. But she supposed it wasn’t a good idea to resort to that after her past at the school.
Vega approached the circulation desk with a couple of manuals on protective wards against Fae and long-term wards for buildings. Ms. Chamapiwa checked out her books.
“If I do manage to round up all the gnomes, where would I relocate them to?” Vega asked.
“You can send all those little devils to hell where they belong.”
That wasn’t the helpful answer Vega had hoped for.
For several hours in her room, she studied the protective wards she intended to try that night. The wards were complex enough they required multiple magic users—not that she needed assistance. She was skilled enough and powerful enough to perform complex magic on her own. She dressed in a sleeveless dress with a high hemline. It was comfortable for starbathing and ensured she absorbed the maximum amount of starlight necessary for casting powerful spells.
She worked on the wards for three hours after dark, specifically focusing on the stone of the school building and the marble statues and fountain. Lastly, she tried to repair the perimeter where more invasive Fae species could get in. That was where the greatest damage had been done.