“It would.”
“Did Hawthorne-Rose steal it? Or did he pay you for it? Maybe he even paid you to get your blood on it in the first place. Maybe there was no magic, just a girl cutting herself for the money.”
“Such a thing would never even be considered in a fairy household,” Mr. Papillon insisted.
“I thought there was no right and wrong.”
He closed his mouth and stared at her morosely.
“We can always ask Hawthorne-Rose,” Jessup said. “We know where to find him.”
⋆ Chapter Thirty-Three ⋆
S
tarlight was pleased to see Reg when she returned to the car with Detective Jessup. He jumped into her lap and rubbed against her, with only the usual amount of static electricity.
“I’m glad to see you too, Star.” Reg rubbed the fur on his nose and his white spot. “You’ve been very helpful to us today, haven’t you?”
She looked at Corvin. “Cats don’t like pixies or fairies,” she said, remembering something he had said earlier. “Why not?”
“They can’t exactly tell us why, can they?” He chuckled at his own intelligence. “Maybe it goes back to when fairies were described as little creatures, like bugs and butterflies and cats would be their natural predators. I don’t know.”
“But the fairy tales came from the truth,” Reg protested. “Not the other way around. Fairy tales didn’t make cats and fairies into enemies.”
“No. But history doesn’t tell us why.”
“Maybe it’s because pixies and fairies both lie so easily. And cats don’t like lies.”
He raised his brows. As he drove them back to Reg’s cottage, Jessup told him about Reg’s suspicions. He considered them from various angles.
“You may be right,” he admitted. “There aren’t a lot of ways that a fairy blade could come into a cop’s hands through legitimate means. It isn’t like he was breaking up fights in the playground or performing weapons searches of their lockers. There would be little need for a police detective to be present at a fairy school. Even less so at a fairy’s home. Unless, for example, their daughter has been kidnapped and they report it to the police to get help getting her back.”
“And they didn’t report it until after Hawthorne-Rose was in jail.”
“It’s still worth thinking about. But… there’s not much we can do about any of this. Selling an artifact isn’t illegal.” Corvin glanced over at Jessup. “At least, not usually. Even if Calliopia did sell it to Hawthorne-Rose, that’s not against the law.”
“I just think… there’s more to this than meets the eye. A lot more.”
“As someone who spent much of the day invisible… I concur.”
“But does it mean anything to us?” Jessup asked. “We found Calliopia. We returned her to her family. We’ve done our job. The police can’t interfere with the lives of other races. We can only be involved when we are asked to be, or when it turns out to be part of a case we’re already working.”
“Isn’t it, though…?” Reg asked.
“No. There’s nothing for us to pursue. Not yet.”
When they got to Sarah’s house, they saw that Letticia was there, looking around impatiently for them. She looked disapprovingly at the big black car.
“Is this something new? I thought I said Regina was supposed to be taking it easy, not gallivanting all over town taking in the sights. Come on. Let me in so I can take a look at that hand.”
Reg picked up Starlight and led the way. Letticia and Jessup followed her into the cottage, but Corvin didn’t cross the threshold. Reg pointedly ignored his reasonable requests to be allowed into the cottage and his promises to behave himself.
“You don’t invite a wolf into the fold on the promise that he won’t eat the sheep,” Letticia contributed. She and Jessup were clearly on Reg’s side of the matter and didn’t let Corvin’s arguments gain any footholds.
Letticia unwrapped the makeshift bandage around Reg’s injured hand.
“I can’t believe you would go off and fight with an injury like this. You knew it would just make it worse.”
Reg sighed. “We had to get Calliopia out of there. We knew she was in danger. A full fairy being held by the pixies? We couldn’t just leave her there and let them… do whatever they do to fairies…”
“Humans interfering with the magical races… never turns out well.”
“Well, in this case it did. It all turned out just fine.”
Letticia studied Reg’s cut hand closely. Reg was quiet and still, then bent down to get a better look herself. “It’s not looking so bad!”
“This is most unexpected,” Letticia said, not sounding pleased.
But Reg was delighted to see that the wound was finally starting to knit together, instead of the split getting wider and more ugly.
“What did you do to it?” Letticia demanded.
“Uh… nothing. It started to bleed again, and Jessup put more yarrow on it and dressed it again. Then… there was a fight with the pixies.”
“And you protected your injured hand.”
“Well, no… not actually… and then we were turned invisible—”
“Sent to the world of shades,” Corvin clarified from somewhere outside, his voice coming in through the window.
“Whatever. That.” Reg flapped a hand in Corvin’s direction. “Then… not much else. Took Calliopia back to the fairies. She brought me back to the visible world…” Reg looked at her hand. “Maybe that was what made it better. Her holding my hand.”
“More fairy magic,” Letticia muttered darkly. “I have brought some rowan berries. They should help to reverse the injury caused by the fairy blood. And you need to rest it. No more fighting and chasing all over town. Lie down and relax for a few days.”
“Okay,” Reg agreed, smiling. “You’ve got a deal.”
It was some time before Jessup headed home. Reg watched her go from the doorstep and then walked toward her bedroom, yawning. A nice long sleep was just what she needed. But a few moments later, she could hear shouting. She listened for a minute, not sure of the source, then thought that it was Jessup. Pausing only to slide her tired feet into a pair of flip flops, Reg cut through Sarah’s yard and hurried to the front of the house to see what was going on. Jessup was in a full-on shouting match with Corvin, waving her hands and yelling loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
Jessup turned to face Reg. Her usual calm demeanor was gone.
“That is what’s wrong!” she pointed to her car, parked at the curb.
It took a few moments for Reg to realize that Jessup’s car should not have been parked at the curb. That was where they had left the big black car, which would need to be returned to the club, and Jessup’s car retrieved from where she’d left it before entering the pixie tunnels.
“Oh. Who brought it back? That was nice of them.”
“Nice? Sure it was nice. And they drove off the car from the club.”
“They must have sent someone to retrieve it, then.”
“My things were still in that car.”
“Oh. Didn’t they put them in yours?” Then Reg saw that Jessup had her soft-sided briefcase in her hand. She blinked, trying to figure out what Jessup was so upset about.
“Yes. They put my bag into my car. Everything except the dagger!”
“Calliopia’s dagger?” Reg echoed faintly.
“Yes!”
“Oh… but I’m sure if you called them and explained about it being missing, they would make sure it got back to you.”
“You’re sure of that, are you?” Jessup’s voice was shrill. “That was evidence! It wasn’t even supposed to be out of the bag. I did you a favor by bringing it over here, and then what a fiasco it all turned out to be!”
Reg gulped. It wasn’t her fault that the knife was gone. A lot of things tended to disappear when Reg was around, but she hadn’t had anything to do with the loss o
f Calliopia’s dagger.
“I’m sorry, Detective Jessup. It… it wasn’t me.”
Jessup was brought up short. “You? I don’t think you’re the one who took it, Reg.” She cast a look over at Corvin, who was still hanging around, his own car parked behind Jessup’s.
“Oh. You think Corvin had something to do with it?”
“Of course. Who else? It’s his club. He called them to get the car. He’s the one who made all of the arrangements. And then a rare weapon imbued with fairy blood disappears all by itself? Either he did it alone, or he did it with the assistance of that exclusive club of his!” She turned toward Corvin and started yelling again. “So help me, Corvin, I’ll make sure you never have anything to do with any other police investigation again for the rest of your life! You can forget about asking me for favors or advances or access to magical objects that I just happen to come across in the course of my investigations. You will never have anything to do with another police case in Black Sands!”
Corvin was attempting to remain calm, but his face was red. Reg had seen him angry before and didn’t really want to experience it again. He was dangerous enough when he was in a good mood.
“I didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of your evidence,” he said through clenched teeth. “I will, of course, place a call to the club to ask them to please check the car, but if the dagger was that important, maybe you should not have left it in the car.”
Reg could see immediately that this was part of the reason that Jessup was so angry. She felt guilty, because she was the one who had left the dagger in the car instead of keeping it on her person. She was the one who had allowed it to be stolen.
“I’m sure it will turn up,” Reg assured her. “If you left it in the car, then that’s where it will be. Someone at the club will find it and bring it back.” She forced a smile in Corvin’s direction. “They aim to please, right?”
“I’m sure it will turn up,” Corvin agreed, his smile just as stretched.
Reg wished she could be sure. It was only too obvious to her that Corvin was hiding something.
Reg tossed and turned restlessly. She told herself it was just because she was too tired. It had been a long, eventful day, and she was just too tired at the end of it to settle in for sleep. Her body ached. She couldn’t stop thinking about the knife, Jessup, and Corvin. The knife had not been returned by the club and Jessup knew she would be facing discipline, maybe even dismissal. Reg hated to see how upset Jessup was about it. Even though Reg was just a consultant that the police department had hired, she had started to feel like she and Marta Jessup could be friends.
Reg knew that if she had been the one responsible for the loss of something so important, she probably would have run rather than to stay and face the music. But Detective Jessup was determined to report the theft and take whatever discipline they felt appropriate.
So Reg was overtired, and she was worried about Jessup. She couldn’t complain that her throbbing hand was keeping her up, because for once it was feeling better. Still sore, as one would expect from a knife wound, but not like it had been.
She didn’t dream about Calliopia. That was no doubt because Callie was home with her family, back where she was supposed to be. Back in her own home, and her own room, with her own parents—or the fairyland version of her own parents. Jessup had reported the infant kidnapping of Callie from her original pixie parents to the authorities, but she didn’t think anyone was going to pursue it.
“Calliopia’s parents are right… it isn’t any kind of crime under fairy law. It’s sort of their method of adoption, perfectly normal and acceptable. And since no one reported it to human authorities back when it happened… there’s really no way for us to get involved now unless they ask. Under the treaty… fairies are allowed self-governance, with a few exceptions. The pixies won’t pursue it, even if they are the injured party.”
Since Callie was a full fairy now, she belonged there with the fairies. There was no question in Reg’s mind that Callie should not be returned to her pixie parents.
But there was something that kept niggling at the back of her brain, and no matter how much she tried to push it out and get the sleep that she needed, Reg couldn’t let it go.
At first light Starlight jumped up on the bed meowing for his breakfast, so Reg decided there was no point in trying to sleep anymore and got out of bed. She was still in her pajamas when Sarah came to the cottage to check up on her and make sure she had everything she needed.
“You look like you should still be in bed,” Sarah observed.
“I know… but I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well get up.”
Starlight yowled plaintively at Sarah as she looked in the cupboard and fridge, telling Sarah—quite untruthfully—that he was hungry and being neglected by his owner. But Sarah wasn’t fooled.
“Sarah, what’s an ordeal?” Reg asked.
Sarah shrugged. “Something hard. A difficult time in your life. Is that what you mean?”
“So it’s not something specific, like those ten trials of Hercules?”
Sarah turned to look at Reg, leaning on the counter as she thought about it. “You mean the twelve labors of Hercules,” she corrected. “And… not exactly, but an ordeal can also be a sort of a test of loyalty. That’s not the way it’s usually used today, but in centuries gone by… people were put through terrible tortures, and if they survived, that was taken as proof of their innocence or loyalty. If they died, then obviously that meant that they were guilty and deserved to die. Witchcraft was one thing they tested for that way.”
Reg’s heart beat harder. Mrs. Papillon had said that Calliopia had been through an ordeal. Had she just meant it in the generic, modern sense of the word? Or had she meant something more? Had she been put through what she had been on purpose, to see if she would remain true to the fairies? She’d been taken from her home, imprisoned, and had to go without food or water. In the end, she had survived the ordeal and her parents had accepted her back home. On one hand, it was difficult to believe they could put their own child through something like that, but on the other… Reg knew they had lied to her, and that they were almost as good at lying as she was. Almost as good as the pixies.
But the case was closed, and chances are she would never know the full truth of the matter.
⋆ Chapter Thirty-Four ⋆
S
arah had still been there, having a protracted cup of tea and gossiping about people that Reg didn’t actually know, when a loud cawing outside caused her to turn her head.
Reg sipped her tea. “Might be a cat in the yard. I’ve noticed that they tend to get really loud when there’s a predator around. Must do it to warn the rest of the flock.”
“No,” Sarah said, “this is different.”
She was the bird person, so Reg didn’t argue. She just watched Sarah go to the door and look out. Sarah was out of sight for a moment, and Reg heard her say ‘thank you,’ and then she returned. She held up a piece of paper rolled into a scroll.
“Delivery.”
Reg took it from her when it was offered. “Was this delivered by a crow?”
Sarah nodded as if that was perfectly normal. Maybe in her world, it was.
Reg broke the seal on the scroll and pulled it open. The swooping calligraphy gave Reg an immediate headache and was impossible for her to sort out. She turned it toward Sarah for help. “I can’t read this old-fashioned writing.”
Sarah put her glasses on her nose and peered down at the page. She only had to take a brief glance to see what it was about. She made a face.
“Corvin.”
“He sent me an invitation to something?”
“No. It’s from his coven. Asking you to attend at his upcoming examination for his violations of coven rules.”
Reg stared into the crystal ball, anxious and unsettled, trying to focus her mind. As she gazed at it, a picture formed in her mind.
She saw Calliopia walking down
the long, winding drive from her house to the highway, wearing a long dress similar to those her mother wore, topped with a black cloak Reg recognized. When she saw it, she could still feel the soft fabric between her fingers and the way it had helped her to see Calliopia and sense who she was.
Reg thought at first that Callie might be walking out to the highway to meet the school bus. But Ruan had laughed at the idea of them taking the school bus. Instead, as Calliopia reached the end of the private drive, an old beaten-up station wagon pulled over to pick her up. Callie walked up to it without hesitation and opened the door. She gathered the folds of her dress and cloak around her and slid into the seat.
There, she greeted a familiar, curly-haired boy with a kiss that was not fraternal. He gave her a wide smile and drove the station wagon back onto the highway.
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