A Little Bit Vampy

by A. A. Albright

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I remarked. ‘She’s staring at Mark like he’s the best thing since sliced banana bread.’

  Just as Grace was about to reply, a shadow fell over our table. It was Hilda Spring, the florist who owned the shop next door. ‘What do you think about all this, then?’ she said.

  Grace gave Hilda a tight smile. ‘What do I think of delicious coffee and muffins? Possibly what everyone thinks of them, I should imagine.’

  Hilda scowled. ‘The builders were awfully quick refitting the place, don’t you think?’

  Margaret Burke, seated at the next table, gave Hilda a look of mild derision. ‘If they had’ve been working for you, I imagine they would have been even quicker.’

  Hilda blanched. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that you’re so nasty and irritating that they’d want to get away from you as soon as possible,’ Margaret retorted. ‘Just like anyone would.’

  As Hilda flounced out of the shop and slammed the door behind her, I couldn’t muster up too much sympathy. Hilda had been mean for so long, and to Margaret especially. The only surprising thing was that it had taken Margaret so long to bite back.

  ‘I think I’ll go order something,’ I said. ‘I might even buy Margaret a second muffin while I’m at it.’

  I stood up, about to approach the counter, when my phone rang. My boyfriend’s name flashed across the screen.

  ‘Good morning, grumpy,’ I answered. ‘What’s up?’

  He let out a dark-sounding chuckle. ‘I know you’re joking, but I am grumpy this morning. Very grumpy, considering I’m at the scene of a murder. Fancy clicking your fingers and joining me at Greg’s apartment building?’

  ≈

  When I arrived at Greg’s building, my heart finally stopped racing. The Wayfarers were not at his flat. Instead, they were at a residence directly across from his. I was devastated for whoever was murdered, but oh so relieved to find that Greg and Pru hadn’t killed one another. Yet.

  Roarke, who wrote the puzzles for the Daily Riddler, was pacing up and down in the courtyard, looking anxiously up at the flat every few seconds.

  ‘Ash!’ He rushed towards me. ‘I’ve been trying to get sense out of Dylan and the Wayfarers, but they’re too busy examining her body. Can you tell me what’s happening in there? Was it an accident, or …?’

  I glanced up at the flat. I knew that it belonged to Amber, a wizard who did a lot of work for Roarke’s band, the Powerless Ballad Band. ‘I’m so sorry, Roarke. I didn’t even know who was dead until I got here. I know you and Amber were close, so I’ll try and get some answers for you.’

  He gave me a bleak smile. ‘Thanks. It was me who found her, so I already have the biggest answer I need. She’s very, very dead. She’d missed our last couple of gigs, y’see, and we’re due to play tonight. The stuff she does with our speakers and mics is second to none. So I came here to see if she was okay, and to get down on my hands and knees to beg her to come back. But she didn’t answer, so I … well, I kicked the door in.’

  He looked somewhat bashful. ‘I know it was a bit over the top, but it just wasn’t like her to be out of contact with me and the band for so long. I was worried about her. Turns out I was right to be. Amber was talented with electrics, and now she’s met an electrifying end.’

  I was about to ask him what he meant, when he went to the nearest bin and threw up. ‘Sorry,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘It’s just … I didn’t expect to see a dead body on Monday morning, y’know?’

  ‘I know,’ I told him, patting him on the back. ‘Can I get you anything? Some water?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine. You go and do your thing. I’ll see you later.’

  As I walked away, he sat down on one of the courtyard’s benches. His own flat was in this same complex, but he clearly needed the fresh air.

  As I neared the dead woman’s flat, Dylan came out to greet me. Disappointment washed over his face.

  ‘Oh. I hoped you’d have Greg with you.’

  ‘Gee thanks,’ I said. ‘Nice to see you too, honey buns.’ I pointed across the way. ‘Surely seeing that monstrosity of a fountain would clue you in to the fact that Greg’s enjoying being a vampire a little bit too much. He said he doesn’t want to work with us anymore.’

  ‘Seriously? But that’s … I mean, we’re a team. You, me and Greg.’ He stared at Greg’s door. It was opening, but it wasn’t Greg who was emerging. Instead, it was Pru. She looked exhausted, annoyed, and not in the mood for a conversation. She didn’t seem to notice the commotion over on this side of the building. She just vaporized, and disappeared from our sight.

  ‘Pru was supposed to be talking sense into him,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t look like it went too well. Can I see the body?’

  He stood aside, and I entered the flat. Shane, the Wayfarers’ healer, was standing close to the settee, where Amber was seated, facing her television. An episode of Witch Wars was playing, and Amber’s hand was on the remote control. Actually, Amber’s hand was stuck to her remote control, and there was a strong smell of barbecue in the air.

  Her hair was sticking up on end, and her skin and hair seemed to be smoking.

  ‘So Roarke wasn’t wrong when he said she’d met an electrifying end,’ I remarked.

  ‘It sure seems that way,’ said Shane. ‘Paul!’ He called across the room to a wizard who worked in Major Crimes, a short, skinny, prematurely balding guy who often joined Greg for gaming marathons. ‘You’ve had a look at the other bodies. Would you say this is consistent with what we found on them?’

  Paul, who was chewing on a cheese sandwich, nodded. ‘I’ve scanned the remote control. It’s a wizard remote, invented by a guy I know, actually. It channels power from Crazy Crystals inside, and you can use it to make your TV play whatever you fancy, no matter whether it comes with your subscription or not. They’re illegal, but a lot of wizards have them. The remote isn’t the same as what killed the other wizards, but again it was a device gone wrong. Just feast your eyes on her while you can, though, and prepare for a shock.’

  I was still stuck on the fact that they had mentioned other bodies and other wizards, but I followed their eyes as they stared expectantly at Amber. No sooner had I looked her way, than it happened – within the space of less than a second, her body disintegrated, falling to the couch and the floor in a great big lump of ashes.

  ‘Just what we were afraid of,’ said Shane with a sigh. ‘I’ll get Paul to perform a spell to gather her ashes, and then you can come to the morgue if you like. I’ll explain more when we get there.’

  ≈

  I stood in the Wayfarer morgue, shivering. It wasn’t the cold. Magical morgues had ways of preserving bodies that didn’t require freezing. The reason I was shivering was that there were two more piles of ashes lined up close to Amber’s. Clearly, they were the other dead wizards Shane and Paul had mentioned.

  There was a photo next to each pile, showing how the bodies had looked before they’d disintegrated. Just like Amber, they’d had charred skin and crazy hair.

  ‘They were electrified,’ said Shane. ‘And on the surface of it, it seems like their devices went haywire and fried them.’

  Paul put down his cheese sandwich and pointed to one of the ash piles. The photo next to the pile depicted a tall, skinny guy. ‘This was Aloysius Oddball – he had his name officially changed to that a couple of years back. He was a mate of mine – and of your mate Greg’s, actually. He really was an oddball, though. He’d even blown up some buildings in the past during his experiments. Me and him were due to meet at a cheese lovers’ convention last week, and when he didn’t show I went round to his house and found him fried. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I was sad, sure. But everyone who knew Aloysius expected him to come to a weird and wonderful end.’

  ‘We chalked it up to the usual Aloysius hijinks,’ Shane said. ‘But then we found her.’ He pointed to the next pile. Now, she was a great big lump of nothing,
but her photo depicted a smiling, vivacious woman with bright pink hair. ‘This was Candy Jackson. She was a wizard best known for her everlasting candy canes. She also volunteered in the same orphanage where I volunteer, so when she didn’t show up for her Saturday morning stint, I got worried and went round. I found her attached to one of her sweet-making machines, fried to death.’

  Shane shook his head, his blue eyes haunted. ‘Candy didn’t disintegrate as quickly as Aloysius and Amber, so I got a chance to examine her first. It seemed like she was fried from the inside out – but slowly, over time. I only had a few seconds to examine Aloysius before he disintegrated, but considering everything else matched Candy’s death, I think that just like her, he died over a period of days. Which is not consistent with a wizard being electrified by his own contraption.’

  ‘And you think Amber might be the same?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘We do,’ Shane confirmed. ‘And we’re confused as heck about it all.’

  ‘We can’t pick up anything at the scene,’ added Paul. ‘That’s why I was hoping Greg might be with you guys today. We need his mad genius to help us out on this one.’

  ‘I hear you,’ said Dylan. ‘I’ll try to get him on board.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ I muttered. I looked at all three piles of ashes, wishing that the bodies were intact. I couldn’t see anything of interest now, but I had the feeling that, had I had one or two more seconds to look at Amber’s body, there would have been some magic to be seen.

  ‘They all lived alone?’ I asked. ‘I know Amber did, but Aloysius and Candy?’

  ‘They did,’ said Shane. ‘And from talking to their friends and family, it seems like no one spoke to any of them for quite a few days prior to us finding them. It’s em … it’s kind of becoming common knowledge that you’re half-fae, Aisling. What with your dad being Brian the Brave and all. I know that your people have a different way of seeing things. Could you pick up anything from the scene? Anything our equipment might have missed?’

  I shook my head. ‘Unfortunately not. Whatever magic might have been involved seems to have disintegrated along with the bodies. But you’re right – it’s far too coincidental for three powerful wizards to meet the same “accidental” death. There has to be more to this.’

  ‘That’s what we think too,’ said Shane. ‘But what?’

  3. See You at the Crossroads

  For the time being there wasn’t much I could do about the wizards’ murders, so I headed back to work to write a story about their deaths. When I got there, I found that my broom was sitting at my desk, waiting for me.

  ‘It’s not time for a lesson,’ I told it, picking it up and setting it gently on the ground.

  It jiggled petulantly (or that’s how it seemed to me) and lifted itself up and plopped back down again as though it were taking a very teenage-like sigh of dissatisfaction.

  ‘I have to work,’ I said firmly. ‘I promise you we’ll go for a fly soon.’

  It jiggled again (it moved hopefully this time, I’m sure of it) but finally settled down quietly, allowing me to get to work.

  Even though we suspected foul play, I kept that out of the story, keeping the piece as straightforward as possible and presenting nothing but the facts. Whoever was killing these wizards was doing their best to make it look accidental, and until we caught them, I was happy to make them believe that Dylan and the Wayfarers were falling for their ruse.

  Roarke, on the other hand, couldn’t be palmed off in the same way. He already suspected Amber’s death was a murder, and I wasn’t about to lie to him. To be honest, I was surprised that he’d made it in to work at all. According to him, keeping his mind busy was the only reason he wasn’t falling apart.

  There were more stories to prepare (a local farmer had added some alpacas to his herd, which was sure to excite the locals) so I followed Roarke’s example and kept myself busy all morning. I barely glanced at Greg’s office at all. Maybe just once or twice, with a forlorn, misty-eyed gaze.

  But he’d be back soon, surely. And, like Grace said, it didn’t really matter if he returned as a vampire, just as long as he returned. Sure, I hoped he’d be a little less vampy if he did come back, but that didn’t mean I had a problem with vampires. It just meant that I didn’t like ugly fountains and silly cloaks.

  Despite how much I missed Greg, it was far easier to concentrate today than it had been recently. The reason for this was that I no longer had to answer the phone all day long. Grace’s search for a replacement receptionist seemed to have finally reached an end.

  A witch called Chantelle had arrived that morning, and after only some brief training from Grace and me, she seemed to have everything in hand.

  She had white-blonde hair cut into a bob, and she dressed in the latest fashions. Or at least Grace said they were the latest fashions – I wasn’t well-versed in things of that nature. She had only just turned twenty, and had received her power a year earlier. She still hadn’t gotten the hang of any complicated spells, but she did have some clever ways of handling phone calls. She’d also hooked things up so that everyone who was waiting to speak to Roarke could enjoy one of his riddles while they held the line.

  For a girl on her first day, she sure was doing well. At around noon, though, I noticed her looking rather excitable while on the phone. She was giggling, twirling her hair around her fingers, and saying, ‘Em, no … she should be back in a minute, though. But you can keep talking to me in the meantime.’

  I walked over to her walnut desk, confused. ‘Who’ll be back in a minute? Grace is just upstairs and I’m right here.’

  Chantelle’s face turned beetroot coloured, and she passed the phone to me. ‘Sorry, Miss Smith,’ she said (not sounding sorry at all). ‘I thought you’d popped out. It’s Detective Quinn on the phone.’

  I grabbed the phone. ‘Dylan? Why didn’t you call my mobile?’

  ‘Because you left it in my car after the morgue.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a good reason.’

  ‘Listen, there’s been a sighting of Darina Berry. I’m on my way there now. You want to join me there and check it out?’

  ‘Sure. Where is it?’

  ‘The Crossroads.’

  At the mention of the location, I felt a leap of worry. The broom, however, was feeling just fine. It flew towards me with an expectant aspect to its jiggling. ‘Fine,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes.’

  ≈

  Seeing as I’d only had one official flying lesson, this probably wasn’t the wisest idea – particularly when I could hardly ask Greg for some of his motion-sickness potion. But with the latest spate of murders, I doubted I would make it to my next scheduled lesson. So, with a nervous shake in just about every part of my body, I climbed aboard the broom, made us both invisible, and headed to the Crossroads.

  I had good reason to be worried about the place where Darina had been sighted. The Crossroads was a soft spot, a place that had once been an entry into the faery realm. These days, that door was shut, but the area was still filled with magic. Magic that had already been taken advantage of by a chaos demon the summer before.

  Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your perspective) I was so nervous about flying unsupervised, that I didn’t have too much time to dwell on thoughts of chaos demons. The fae didn’t fly on brooms, and I certainly hadn’t inherited a love of flying from my mother’s witchy side, either. My mother had preferred to read and write, and had been given this broom not because her father thought she’d love it – she’d been given it because it was expensive and coveted by just about every witch in Ireland.

  Despite its looks – a crooked shaft and messy bristles, all with quite a bit of cracking and charring – this broom was worth a whole lot of gold rounds. It had been one of Aengus Wayfair’s first creations, back when he was just a kid. It was designed for the inexperienced and reluctant witch, and it certainly knew how to encourage (bully) me into flying when I’d rather be doing anything else.

&nbs
p; Today it flew quickly, ignoring every spell I used to slow it down. I’d like to think that it was trying to encourage me to push through my nerves, but really I think it was just curious to see what the Crossroads had in store.

  The broom got me there within minutes, and I stared down at the ground. Today, it looked just as innocuous as it had last Midsummer. The Victorian building on the site was just as ramshackle as ever.

  I descended ungracefully and undid the invisibility spell. When I walked into the house there was a fresh pile of horse manure on the floor, as well as a bra I’d not seen last time. Clearly there was a horse out there who not only had a penchant for old underwear, but that also had no aversion to damp and terrible décor.

  Dylan was in what had once been a kitchen, waving a scanner around. He looked up at me, smiling. ‘That was quick. Hey, I didn’t know Grace had hired Chantelle Rundt.’ He let out an involuntary shudder.

  ‘You don’t like her?’

  ‘You know me. I don’t like anyone who’s too friendly. Which is why you and me get on so well.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, she seems to be doing great, either way. I didn’t think you knew her, though. Oh, that’s right – I remember her and her friends giggling in your general direction the first time you took me to Riddler’s Cove.’

  ‘They weren’t giggling.’

  ‘Sure. Women don’t find you remotely attractive. Even I just put up with you because you make a good cup of coffee.’ I kissed him softly. ‘So what’s going on here?’ I said as I reluctantly broke the kiss. ‘Someone saw Darina in this pretty palace?’

  He grunted. ‘It was Edward, your cleaner at the Daily Riddler. He had a job out this direction after he left your offices and he saw her coming outside.’ He pulled my phone from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘He called you first, of course – because why shouldn’t a reporter be informed of something before the cops are?’