by Ellen Jane
“I feel like you’re pushing this,” she said quietly. “And I’m not sure why. But it doesn’t feel like you.”
Sinéad bristled. It looked as though she wanted to say something, but then her face fell, an unreadable expression passing across it, and she shrugged and kept walking. Heather hurried to keep up, but she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know what she had just seen.
They rounded the corner and saw the lawyer’s office across the road. Elegant gold writing marked the name on the window, and the entry set looked as though it cost more than Heather’s entire house. The two of them froze, staring at the building with twin expressions of horror, but they pushed forward and entered all the same.
“No walk-ins. Do you have an appointment?” The secretary turned another page in her magazine and didn’t look up.
“We’d like to make one,” Sinéad said smoothly.
“When would you like?”
She reached for her appointment book, manicured nails clacking against the desk as she searched without turning away from the article.
“Is two pm, Wednesday available?” Sinéad asked, staring at the secretary with one eyebrow raised.
The secretary didn’t notice. She glanced at her appointment book, nodded, and made a note. “Mr Richards can see you then. Name?”
“Heather Millington,” said Sinéad.
The secretary jotted it down and turned back to her magazine. “Thank you. We’ll see you at two pm on Wednesday.”
“Excellent.” Sinéad paused, but the secretary’s eyes remained glued to her magazine. Sinéad cleared her throat. “We’re here to see Mr Richards.”
Finally, the secretary looked up at them, a small frown marring her brow. “Didn’t you just make an appointment?”
Sinéad smiled. “For two pm Wednesday.”
The secretary stared at her, lips parted and frown deepening. Then her eyes widened and she looked at the calendar, then back at her appointment book. She swore under her breath, stood up, and glared at Sinéad.
“Don’t do that again. It’s rude. You might get me fired.” She walked to a door at the back of the room, knocking smartly. “Mr Richards? Ms Millington is here to see you.”
“Who?” A voice called from inside. “She wasn’t in the book this morning. Tell her she needs to make an appointment.”
“She did.” The secretary shot another glare at Sinéad.
Muttering spilled from behind the door, followed by the sound of something heavy, like a pile of books, landing on the ground.
“Send her in!” came the voice again.
The secretary opened the door and ushered them inside. The only light in the office came from a sliver of witch-light above the desk. Judging by the source of the witch-light—a knitted lampshade shrouding a globe-less lamp—and the jar of knitting needles sitting on the desk, Heather assumed Mr Richards was a knitting witch as well as an intimidating lawyer. Even the yarn looked too expensive for Heather to afford, and the stitches were impeccable. Piles of leather-bound books covered most of the floor and the desk, leaving a small window of space in front of the chair. Mr Richards frowned at them and waved them forward.
“Come in, come in. Don’t mind the mess—thought I had the afternoon free of consults. Take a seat if you can find one. Millington, was it? What can I do for you?”
“I’m… er…”
Heather looked around for a seat, but stacks of books covered the only chair. It was astonishing there were any left on the bookshelves at all. She opted to stand.
She tried again. “I’m in a bit of a legal bind.”
Haltingly, she described the situation, prompted here and there by Sinéad. When she finished, Mr Richards studied his fingertips in silence. The pause had stretched to uncomfortable levels when he finally spoke.
“You certainly have a case,” he said.
Heather’s heart lifted, but he cast her a warning glance that filled her with dread once more.
“The problem isn’t that you’ve done anything wrong. The investigation was brief enough and vague enough in so many of its details that we can easily frame you as a private citizen assisting the police by providing information, rather than a detective providing professional advice. And the relationship between the two of you makes it possible to argue any exchange of money as being familial gifts rather than money in exchange for services. The problem, as I have said, is not that you have done something wrong. It is that Mr Branson and his colleagues have more money than you, more time than you, and—from what I can see—infinitely more spite.”
He regarded the two of them over the top of his steepled fingers, his eyes kind for the first time. “It’s a case of the little man fighting big business, and not only will they find loopholes, my dear; they wrote them. I can offer you discounted prices, but I can’t offer you a pro bono service.” He waved a hand at the books. “As you can see, I’m swamped. And unless you can enlist services pro bono, I simply don’t see how you can fight this. It would be far more economical to pay the fine.”
“But it might destroy my business,” Heather protested.
“Yes,” Mr Richards said sadly. “It might.”
With nothing left to try, they thanked Mr Richards for his time and accepted a breakdown of fees and services for if they decided to return. At least when he wished them luck, he appeared genuine. It was a small win.
The wind had picked up by the time they emerged onto the street once more, sending their hair flying around their faces. Heather bundled her scarf tighter, tucking it into the front of her forest green coat. A flurry of movement on the other side of the road caught Heather’s attention. She looked up to see a woman staggering backwards with her shopping bags as her scarf flew up into her face. Heather was just about to run across and help her when the woman whistled a strange note and her scarf twisted back on itself, out of the way.
Heather had to learn that trick and put it into her cooking magic somehow—maybe an assortment of sweets to keep her hair flat. While she was still working up to crossing the road and asking for information on the spell, the woman’s hair blew aside and Heather recognised her.
“Isn’t that Rose Smith?” she asked Sinéad quietly.
Sinéad turned and narrowed her eyes. “It is. Do we have any questions for her? Or did we decide the Smiths had nothing to do with it?”
“We’d ruled them out,” Heather agreed, “but we shouldn’t turn down an opportunity when it falls in our lap.”
She marched across the road, already planning how she might tactfully frame her questions, when Rose whistled another strange note and disappeared.
Or she would have disappeared if Heather hadn’t been looking right at her. As it was, the edges of her coat became strangely blurred, like sunlight reflecting off water, and Heather had the strongest urge to look away. If she wasn’t already familiar with the properties of a misdirection charm, having cast them herself to avoid attention at unwanted parties, she might have fallen for it.
“She’s up to something,” she murmured to Sinéad.
The atmosphere changed between them, and they dropped into investigation mode. They crossed the road discreetly and fell into step a block behind Rose.
The traffic whizzed past, cars intermittently blaring horns at each other and swerving around people who were trying and failing to reverse park. At least now it served as good cover. They blended in with the small crowd of people dashing about, and soon they had followed Rose all the way down several interconnecting streets without drawing attention to themselves.
She ducked into an alley, and they slowed down to follow inconspicuously. By the time they rounded the corner, Rose was already down the other end. They ducked behind an industrial rubbish bin and peered around the edge to watch her. Rose appeared to be rifling through an old suitcase in a pile of donated furniture behind the shopping strip’s charity shop. After a few minutes, she kicked the suitcase, letting loose a quiet shriek, and pulled out her phone to make a ca
ll.
“She doesn’t seem as docile as she did at the house,” Heather pointed out. “Was it all an act?”
“I’m not sure,” Sinéad said, eyes narrowed as she watched. “What is she saying?”
Heather leaned in against the wind, but the rush of noise surrounding them made it difficult to hear the words exactly.
“Of course it isn’t here. Why would it be here?!” Rose snapped, voice lifting above the wind for a moment. “I told you, she’s lying! It’s probably in bloody St Ives.”
“St Ives,” Heather murmured. “That’s where they holidayed with the Dunnes and the Careys.”
Sinéad didn’t say anything, her brow furrowing deeper. Rose spoke for a little while longer, but her voice didn’t carry far enough, and before long she hung up and strode back down the alley toward the main road.
Heather and Sinéad flattened themselves against the rubbish bin and waited until she had passed, hearts racing in their throats.
“That was close,” Sinéad whispered after Rose had disappeared around the corner and out of sight. “I don’t fancy explaining why I’m spying on someone any time soon.”
“Too close,” Heather breathed, her blood still thumping audibly in her ears. “Let’s not risk that again.”
Sinéad made a thoughtful sound. “It was probably nothing, though. I wouldn’t worry. I mean, look at her.” She snorted. “She’s not even five foot tall. I highly doubt she’s dangerous at all.”
“But how do you know?”
“There’s no reason to think this has anything to do with the kidnapping. She’s searching through charity bins, so I’m willing to bet their housekeeper donated something she wasn’t meant to. Rose probably lost an earring.” Sinéad shrugged. “I’d use a misdirection charm as well if I were going to rifle through back alley junk.”
Heather chewed on her bottom lip, unsure why she didn’t agree with Sinéad but only knowing that she didn’t, not even a little. Her gut told her to follow this lead. “What about St Ives?”
“Ten quid says the Smiths own a holiday house there and visited in the last three weeks. We already know they went there with the Dunnes last summer. She probably dropped whatever she’s lost down the back of the couch.” Sinéad linked her arm with Heather’s and smiled at her, blinding and beautiful. “Come on. Let’s go out for dinner. There’s nothing more we can do until Cian’s back tomorrow. We won’t rule out that Rose was acting suspiciously, but until we have more to go on, I don’t see the point in worrying.”
Heather paused for a moment longer, but Sinéad’s smile made her heart stammer in her chest, and the suggestion of a night out called to Heather like a siren song. “All right,” she said, grinning. “So long as there’s wine.”
Sinéad laughed. “I think we can make that happen.”
Chapter Seven
The soft afternoon sun pooled on the counter in Sinéad’s kitchen. Heather sat at the bench, tracing invisible shapes onto the laminate surface while Bear nuzzled her leg. As the country settled closer to rest, families retreated inside for the final meal, and Sinéad’s house grew quiet. Soon, the only sounds to disturb Heather’s solitude were the birds twittering outside and Bear’s occasional whimpers when Heather went too long without patting her.
Sinéad had left to check in at her studio since it had been a few days. She needed some quiet time to paint and recharge her magic, hoping to bring forth some new ideas and fresh angles to their case. While Sinéad had a workroom set up at home, she—along with most magic users—found it harder to focus with other people around. Every time Heather had walked past the workroom, she found Sinéad angrily wiping her canvas free with a spell and starting again until she gave up and declared she had to leave. Heather had intended to use the free time to do the same with her own magic, but when faced with the opportunity she didn’t seem capable of actually standing up and doing anything.
PI work had to be treated so differently to the detective work she loved. A witch had no trouble finding lost things; that meant dealing with objects, not people. But PI work relied on people, and the stakes were so much higher. Her magic didn’t help her with this, and thanks to the constant, invisible presence of Mr Branson and his snide judgement, Heather felt less confident in her abilities than ever before.
Even if she came up with a creative solution, she didn’t have a clue where to start. More than ever, Heather wished she was back home in Old Wetchhaven, tracking down someone’s missing cufflinks or a lost necklace—anything that left her feeling confident and capable, like her work always did.
But she wasn’t home; she was here, and she had to do something.
Perhaps she should start by listing the useless and impossible options to get them out of the way. She couldn’t make a tracking spell for the letters because it would take too long and likely wouldn’t work anyway since she needed to find an address, not a missing object. Although, admittedly, the case had already taken longer than expected. She couldn’t influence their suspects’ mood to aid their interviews, like Sinéad had. She couldn’t make the walls talk because the full moon wasn’t due for another week and a half, and she hadn’t anticipated needing that spell while on holiday.
It seemed all Heather had achieved lately was a bread dough designed to control weather that instead just rained all the time from tiny, pointless rain clouds.
An idea popped into her mind. Controlling the weather might be out of her skill set, but what if she tried to control only one small part of it? If she made those rain clouds bigger but still localised, they might be helpful as a gardening aid. And then she might feel like she’d done something right for once.
The fact that it wasn’t at all relevant to their case seemed to be a recurring issue she would simply have to get used to.
Distracted, she threw together a basic dough, following her intuition more than anything, and soon a very different sort of bread sat on the window sill. There were no clouds above it yet, and it rose at an ordinary speed, so she tentatively considered it a success. At least she remained in control so far.
Emboldened, she decided to head to the shops and buy the herbs she would need for her tracking spell after all. It would take a few days, but it might still be ready in time to be of some use. With the three dogs trotting around her feet, twisting their leashes around each other, she set off down the street.
There weren’t too many people out on the footpath today. Cars filled the road bumper to bumper, and the few people Heather did pass on her way down to the store scurried past with frowns on their faces. Heather couldn’t imagine living in a place where everyone lived so closed off from one another. Even if the people in Old Wetchhaven got on her nerves more regularly than she’d like, she wouldn’t want to live without their helpful intrusions.
She cut through the park to her right, even though it made her journey a little longer than the straightforward route. It had only been a couple of weeks, but she missed the towering oaks of Old Wetchhaven’s streets, and the park at least had some trees in it. The gravel path crunched beneath Heather’s feet, and her thoughts turned once more to everything she missed about her home. But before she could spend too long reminiscing, Teddy caught sight of a squirrel and tugged all of them forward as he dove for it, breaking her out of her musing.
Heather stumbled, managing to avoid tripping on Lucifer at the last second and executing a complicated twist to fall down onto the park bench instead. She took the opportunity of a stable foundation to haul all three of them back into line. Only Bear came willingly; the other two complained so loudly Heather turned to apologise to the woman she had nearly sat on.
“They’re not normally so bad, I’m so sorry—” she broke off, eyes widening. “Ms Watley?”
Ms Watley’s eyebrows lifted, and she peered down her nose at Heather. “Ms Millington, do you always wander the streets so oblivious to everything around you? I noticed you the second you entered the park.”
“Probably,” Heather admitted. “Ho
w are you?”
Heather hadn’t forgotten Ms Watley lived in Sinéad’s area, but she’d never expected to run into her. Ms Watley had been of great help in locating the culprit of the murder last December—the unfortunate victim of which had been her nephew. As much as she was fierce and difficult to please, Heather quite liked her.
Ms Watley’s mouth ticked ever so slightly into a smile before setting once more into an unreadable line. “Quite well, thank you. I’ve been venturing into the sunshine of late since events have seen fit to remind me that life is short.”
Bear rested her head on Ms Watley’s knee and gazed up at her adoringly, apparently taken by the severity of her frown and coolness of her glare. Ms Watley scratched her manicured fingernails across Bear’s ears and hummed through her nose.
“She likes you,” Heather said, biting back a smile.
“I imagine she likes everyone.”
“Normally she’s scared of everyone, actually.”
Ms Watley gave an uncharacteristic snort and smiled properly for the first time. “Well that makes a nice and unexpected change for both of us.”
Jealous, Teddy and Lucifer lay down on either side of Ms Watley’s feet, displaying their best behaviour.
“Where are you headed?” Ms Watley asked, still scratching Bear’s ear.
Teddy whined.
“To the grocery store for some herbs.”
“Magic or cooking?”
“Magic.”
“There’s an apothecary across the road.” Ms Watley nodded toward a small path that diverted from the main. “They’re quite good, and you’re welcome to leave these three with me while you shop.”
“They’re quite a handful,” Heather said, shaking her head. “I’m not sure that’s—”
“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Ms Watley said pointedly.
With a hint of trepidation, Heather hurried off down the path to the apothecary. Since her magic emerged through cooking, grocery store herbs worked just as well, but apothecary stock often came charged with strong energy and therefore developed potent magic. She wondered why Ms Watley, who was neither a sorcerer nor a witch, would have an opinion on the quality of the local apothecary, but there was probably very little Ms Watley didn’t know.