A Hive of Secrets and Spells

by Ellen Jane

  “I don’t know.” Heather’s voice sounded tiny, even to herself.

  Silence followed for several seconds. “You don’t have to tell me, but can I ask why we left the café in such a rush?”

  Heather’s head thunked sideways into the wall, and she closed her eyes. “I lost their voicemail.”

  “Whose?”

  “My parents.” She heaved a sigh. “It was the last message they ever left me, and in all that muck up with the phones, it’s somehow gone.”

  Years had passed since her parents died; why did losing their voicemail hurt so much? She thought she was over this.

  The silence stretched on longer than before. “You had a voicemail from your parents?”

  “Just one.”

  “You never told me that.”

  Heather shrugged, though Sinéad couldn’t see it. “It never came up.”

  “Yes, but you never told me.” A strange tone crept into Sinéad’s voice, but before Heather could question it, she continued speaking. “That must feel awful.”

  Awful didn’t begin to describe what Heather felt. Rather than think about that, she stared at the plain, solid wood of the bathroom door and imagined it as a painting that came to life, with vibrant outdoor scenes that changed with the season. She could probably mix a varnish that did that.

  “We don’t have to meet Cian today if you’d rather stay home.” Sinéad interrupted her thoughts. “If it’s too much.”

  Maybe not a varnish. It might match the basics of cooking in construction, but it was far removed from food. Heather worked best when she stuck to food, or at least concoctions that were edible if you wanted.

  Sinéad’s voice turned a little sharp. “You can’t hide in there forever. You need to face up to your feelings.”

  Heather’s eyes snapped toward the sound of Sinéad’s voice. “Excuse me?” She stood up from where she had perched on the corner of the bath and pulled the door open. “You’re telling me to face up to my feelings?”

  Sinéad stood firm, her lips pursed in irritation. “Yes. You’re running away. It’s okay to grieve right now; it must be like you’ve lost them all over again.”

  All the ways Sinéad had tried to put off this meeting with her brother in the last twenty-four hours flooded Heather’s mind, but she swallowed them down and stormed past Sinéad instead. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. It’s just a voicemail. I’ll be over it soon. Now, are we going or what?”

  “It’s not just a voicemail,” Sinéad insisted, trailing after Heather as she charged aimlessly through the house. “It’s the last voicemail you had of your parents. The last record of their voices, for god’s sake! I know I can’t identify with that exactly, but I’m not a monster. I can imagine how much that hurts, so why won’t you talk to me about it?”

  Heather came to a halt so suddenly that Sinéad barrelled into her, nearly toppling them both onto the floor. Teddy, Bear, and Lucifer stared mournfully at her from the other side of the kitchen, as if they all understood something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Something sharp tugged inside her chest. If she didn’t scream, she would explode, and if she did scream, she’d break apart.

  “Let’s go.” She turned to Sinéad, ignoring the wary assessment in her eyes. “We’re already late. Let’s not keep him waiting any longer.”

  Sinéad regarded her in silence for a moment. Finally, she nodded. “If you’re sure. But you can talk to me about it whenever you like.”

  “I will.”

  There was nothing to talk about.

  *

  When they arrived at the meeting place, Sinéad’s soothing attitude faded to make way for a bristling, prickling sort of agitation that affected even the area around her. Since time was pressing, they had agreed to Cian’s meeting time and place rather than suggest another.

  Which meant that Heather now possessed the dubious honour of seeing Sinéad step foot into a dingy pub far removed from her usual restaurants and jazz bars. Her crimson pencil skirt and white blouse leapt out from the surroundings, out of place against the graffitied tables and flickering neon lights. But despite her initial mood when she and Heather had walked through the door, her features no longer held any sign of agitation or unease. Her hair had been swept off her face in a sharp, high ponytail, and she gazed around the room with what appeared at a distance as polite interest.

  Heather couldn’t take her eyes off her.

  “The letter didn’t say how to recognise him,” Sinéad said, lifting her voice above the whining grunge riff. “I suppose he must know what I look like?” She pulled a thoughtful face. “That or he’s a complete idiot. That would be just my luck.”

  As she said the words, a figure seated in partial shadow toward the back of the pub lifted his hand and waved at them. Sinéad stiffened for a moment before she nodded and led the way to the table.

  When they drew close enough to see him clearly, Heather had to bite her tongue to avoid gasping out loud. If she had to pick anyone to be Sinéad’s biological brother, she would have chosen a businessman, or a lawyer, or someone drawn to power and influence—at least over their own lives. After all, it so defined Sinéad, and surely even the distance of growing up apart wouldn’t squash such a strong trait.

  The man before them didn’t even sit like a lawyer. He had his right knee drawn up so his foot rested on the bench, his right arm propped on top of his knee, and Heather no longer had any idea what to expect. His black hair wasn’t sleek, like Sinéad’s; he had spiked it on top of his head with a gel so strong Heather smelled fake strawberry scent from two metres away. His grey singlet had a tear several centimetres long across the stomach, and the arm holes revealed more skin than the rest of the shirt concealed. He wasn’t wearing shoes.

  Heather glanced at the man’s fingers where they tapped out a rhythm on his knee. His nails were coated in black polish, and spots of blue paint flecked his skin. It hit Heather that Sinéad was an artist. What would she have looked like if her artistic side had overridden everything else?

  Sinéad’s fingers twitched, as though she had gone to clench them but changed her mind, before she drew in a slow breath through her nose and sat down.

  “Cian, I presume?” she asked, her voice lilting on the name. “Or did you just want to buy my girlfriend a drink?”

  The man laughed, flicking a glance at Heather and grinning before he turned back to Sinéad. “Christ, you’re exactly how I imagined. D’ya want a hand getting that stick out or are you used to it by now?”

  Sinéad’s mouth fell open in disbelief, while Heather choked a little on her own saliva. But before either of them could speak, he waved his hand dismissively.

  “I’m only joking. I like it. And don’t worry; your girlfriend’s all yours, though she is gorgeous.” He winked at Heather.

  Against all odds, Heather had no urge to yell at him. Somehow, he’d actually managed to wink at her platonically.

  “I’m Cian.”

  He extended his hand to Heather first, who shook it more on autopilot than anything else. When he held out his hand to Sinéad—who waited three whole seconds before taking it—Heather noticed that Cian’s nail polish was as perfect as Sinéad’s, like a manicure. Their two hands matched, black nails against red.

  She shook her head a little to clear it, still dazed.

  “Can you prove you’re my brother?” Sinéad asked.

  “You mean you don’t just feel it?” Cian held his hand over his heart and crumpled his face. “I’m wounded.”

  Sinéad leaned forward and bared her teeth in a smile. “Cut the crap. You’ve got ten minutes before I’m walking out of here.”

  Cian mirrored her pose, grinning laconically at her as they leaned in almost nose to nose. “When’s your birthday?”

  “March second.”

  “Mine too.” He made a show of gasping in delight. “Twinsies!”

  Heather gaped at the two of them. Sinéad held herself so still, Heather began bracing for impact.r />
  “Twins?” Sinéad’s voice was flat. She took a slow breath, her chest rising and falling in a steady wave. “What else?”

  The smile dropped from Cian’s face. “All right, sweet sister. Answer me this, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Have you been a little blue lately? A little melancholy and wistful?”

  Something had changed in Cian’s voice. It became deeper somehow, lingering. His words floated around Heather and drew her in, even though it had nothing to do with her.

  “I’d guess it’s a familiar sensation,” he continued. “Something you know intimately, something you’ve felt deep down in your bones for as long as you remember. You haven’t noticed it in a while, haven’t allowed yourself to, but in the last few weeks it pushed its way to the surface. You miss your family. You miss your home; but wait, that doesn’t make sense, does it?” He leaned back, drumming his fingers slowly on the table. “Isn’t it odd to miss what you’ve never had?”

  Sinéad’s nostrils flared, and whatever frozen state of shock she had been operating within thawed. “What does that have to do with anything?” she snapped.

  “I wrote a song, maybe…” He pulled a face. “Ten years ago? I wanted to find out if my family was still around. I wanted the answer to the question every child raised by the state asks themselves.”

  Sinéad winced, but Heather’s mind raced. Cian must be a sorcerer too, and his magic worked through music—not art, like Heather had assumed from the paint on his fingers.

  “I found them pretty quickly, got the answer I didn’t want, and went on my merry way. But it never found you.” He heaved a sigh, the last trace of cockiness sliding from his features and leaving a tired emptiness in its wake. “Then I got the first letter. So, naturally, I downed a bottle of whiskey and sang the stupid thing at the top of my lungs.” He grinned at them both. “Feeling maudlin; you know how it is.”

  Sinéad snorted inelegantly but said nothing.

  He leaned forward again, lifting his finger up and jabbing it toward Sinéad. “But this time… This time, the song found you.”

  Sinéad leaned back a little in her chair, staring at the accusatory finger.

  “Best I can figure, the first time I sang it, you’d squashed any thoughts of family down so deep the song couldn’t find them. But last week, you were feeling something the magic could connect to. I guess things have changed.” His eyes flicked to Heather and back. “I looked you up, but I only found a bunch of press releases for gallery openings.” He rolled his eyes.

  The table fell silent, the noise of the pub drifting around them in a steady buzz of drunken laughter and merriment. The neon pink words on the wall above them flashed “Girls, Girls, Girls”, making the shadows on their skin dance.

  “Play the song,” Sinéad said softly.

  Cian’s eyebrows lifted, and for a minute Heather thought he would refuse. Then, she saw the idle drumming of his fingers had changed rhythm. A swooping sensation overwhelmed Heather’s stomach, almost as if she were falling into this strange beat. Then, he began to hum, the notes eerie and haunting as they surrounded their small table.

  Sinéad’s breath hitched, and she shook her head. “Okay, stop.” She closed her eyes. “I believe you.”

  Cian smiled, but it was different to the grin he had worn when they first arrived. This one was real. He squeezed Sinéad’s hand and leaned back in his seat, propping his foot beneath him once more.

  Heather cleared her throat. “You mentioned letters.”

  “Yes!” Cian smacked his hand on the table and leant over to pull something out of his back pocket. “Three letters, all sent to my home address, all within a week. And if they’ve found me, I’m sure they’ll be onto you soon, so you’d better watch your back.” He slid the letters across the table. “Don’t you two answer your phones? I had to send you a bloody letter to warn you. Very pre-modern.”

  “Was that you trying to call us?” Sinéad’s eyebrows lifted. “We had trouble with our phones. It wouldn’t even let us listen to your voicemail.”

  Cian tsked and leaned back in his seat. “Excuses, excuses.”

  Heather took the letters and opened them one by one. They all said roughly the same thing.

  “We have your family,” she read out loud. “If you want to save them, return what you stole.” She flicked between the other two letters. “Then it just says to meet them. Did you go?”

  Cian snorted. “No! It has to be a trap; I haven’t stolen anything. I never even spoke to my parents when I saw them.” He grabbed one of the letters back and waved it in the air. “How do these people even know I exist, anyway?”

  Sinéad frowned. “Why didn’t you speak to them when you found them?”

  Cian’s expression darkened. “They have a son,” he said, his casual tone at odds with the look on his face. “Seventeen years old or thereabouts.”

  Heather must have missed something because she didn’t understand the way Sinéad’s eyes widened at the news, her whole face alighting with fury. She opened her mouth to ask, but something told her to question it later.

  “Told you I got my answer,” Cian said with a wink.

  Sinéad excused herself from the table and walked up to the bar. Heather stared at her as she traversed the pub, black stilettos thudding on the sticky floor. She wanted to preserve the memory in amber.

  But that thought, along with the talk of phones and voicemails, led quickly back to what she had lost, and her face fell once more. She shouldn’t hold on like this, but every time she remembered their voices and acknowledged how she would never again hear her mother’s laugh, or the way her dad’s smile made his entire voice change, she wanted to break down and cry.

  A sharp rapping noise on the table in front of her brought her back to the present, and she turned to see Cian regarding her curiously.

  “Where’d you disappear to then?” he asked but continued before she could answer him. “And I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Heather,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. “Sorry, I’m a bit distracted right now. So how are we going to find your parents?”

  Cian grimaced. “Not sure yet. That’s why I wanted to meet with Sinéad. I thought she might know something about them that would lead to a clue, but the look on her face when I mentioned them destroyed that idea nice and quick.”

  Heather agreed. Sinéad’s expression had been unreadable when she discovered her parents lived so close at hand, but Heather knew her too well. Leaving the table had been an excuse to hide the shock. She glanced at Cian, curious to know how he had seen through the walls as well. Did he read people exceptionally well? Or had their twin bond held its strength despite the distance?

  Now that she looked at him, the resemblance struck her once more. It existed in the subtle shifting of his features, the way he held his head—even his hair, once she’d become used to the gel. Sinéad might look out of place in her brother’s haunt, but despite their differences, there was an eerie sense they belonged together as well.

  Sinéad rejoined them, setting a tray of shots down on the table, along with three lemon wedges and a salt shaker. The salt shaker had fallen over at some point, leaving a pile of salt behind.

  “To our strange new bond,” she said drily, handing the two of them a shot of tequila.

  Cian grinned in delight and shook some salt onto his wrist. “To getting back our deadbeat parents!”

  Heather followed suit, overcome with the urge to laugh hysterically at the expressions on both their faces. “To solving crimes,” she said pointedly.

  Sinéad gave her a warm smile and lifted her glass. “Cheers.”

  They all knocked back their shots, but no sooner had Cian dropped his glass back onto the tray than his eyes widened and he smacked his hands down on the table.

  “What the bloody hell did you do to that shot?” he gasped. “Every organ in my body is crying out for water. Holy Christ, it’s like I just drank a hangover.”

  Sinéad t
ipped her head back and laughed, just as Heather noticed the tiny drawing etched into the salt on the tray. She burst out laughing, while Cian whooped and shuddered, dragging himself over to the bar and begging for beer.

  “Don’t worry, the headache will disappear after a beer or two,” Sinéad explained, twisting the empty shot glass between her fingers. “It’s not a full hangover. I’m not that mean.”

  Sinéad shot her a sideways glance, eyes sparkling, and Heather decided that Sinéad wasn’t quite so out of place after all.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re sure you don’t have any in stock?” Heather held the phone a few centimetres away from her ear, on account of Annie’s strident voice being audible somewhere in France.

  “Sorry, Heather, love. Fresh out of your tracking spells.” Annie’s tone softened in sympathy. In the background, pots clattered together and people yelled incomprehensibly. The kitchen at The Shepherd’s Inn was a busy place. “You remember Ethan? Well he went and lost the keys to the front door seven times. I swear that boy would lose his bloody head if it wasn’t attached to his body.”

  “Seven times?” Heather frowned. “Why did you keep giving them to him?”

  “Yeah, I have to cop the blame for that one, don’t I? He was just so convincing each time. Swore it wouldn’t happen again. He’s banned from solo openings now, though. Can’t set foot in the building without a buddy. But anyway, yeah, we don’t have any more left. Is it difficult to make?”

  Heather’s tracking spells worked best when lighting a path from one half of a pair to another, like when locating a missing earring or a copied key. It might not help their current case, but Heather didn’t possess any other magic that had a chance of locating a missing person while also being quickly obtainable. She had a salve that made walls talk, which she used to great effect last Christmas, but she’d run out of stock and brewing it relied on the full moon, which wasn’t for another two weeks.

  While her tracking spells weren’t calendar sensitive, she’d only ever been able to make the spells work as a spice. Dehydrating the herbs required time she might not have, and her hope that she could buy back a jar or two she had sold to Annie in Old Wetchhaven had already fallen through.