Beezley and the Witch series Box Set

by Willow Mason

  It would fit with the increased consumption of TV. I supposed I should be grateful there wasn’t doggie social media for him to be immersed in every hour of the day.

  “I’ll pop by the vet’s office on the way home.” In front of company, I hid the wince as I calculated how much that particular visit would cost and turned to Glynda. “What did you want to talk to me about today?”

  “First things first.” She glanced at her watch and surveyed the empty harbour again with a huff of frustration. “Since it doesn’t seem Brianna’s turning up under her own steam, I’ll need someone to hunt her down for me.”

  “Payment up front,” I said with a smile, holding my hand out. “Two hundred cash deposit and I’ll take a cheque for the daily rate of four hundred at a minimum two-day retainer.”

  “Isn’t there something you’d like to trade instead?”

  “Such as? I’m done with lessons and we’re in a negative cashflow situation at the moment.”

  “How about an appointment to third tier member of the coven?”

  Prue’s intake of breath was so loud I laughed. “That’s an appointment by committee. If you think you have the numbers to put me through—black magic and all—then I’d say it was going to happen, anyway.” I tilted my head to one side, studying Glynda’s face. She’d be a dab hand in poker, I’d give her that.

  But so would I.

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “But I don’t have my chequebook on me.”

  “That’s cool.” I linked my arm through her elbow, ignoring the appalled expression on her face. “You’ve got your phone so you can get online and direct deposit the money.” Chequebook was rapidly changing into a turn-of-phrase more than something I expected a client to have.

  “You were just joking about the appointment, weren’t you?” Prue asked, her face pinched. “Because I have to say it would be a terrible idea.”

  Harriet skipped a few steps to catch up with me. “I think it sounds marvellous,” she said, casting an impish grin at the other young woman. “Would that make you the youngest appointment to the third tier?”

  “We won’t find out,” Glynda snapped, wrenching her arm away from mine. “Not without Bri. She has a casting vote in any appointment.”

  “Is that another enticement?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Because I’ve got to say, I’m happy to work just for the cold, hard cash.”

  As my ankle turned, the stony beach underfoot getting the better of me, Harriet caught my arm and helped keep me steady. “There’s money in the appointment,” she whispered. “Everyone in the elite gets paid a stipend for their service to the coven.”

  “Really? I thought the whole thing was just to get a better seat at the coven meetings?”

  Prue shot a disgusted glance my way before peeling off from the group to go and sulk in her car.

  “Can you two stop talking about an appointment that might never happen?” Glynda opened her car door and sat in the driver’s seat, legs outside. “Do you have your account number handy?”

  “It’s preloaded under Beezley and the Witch.” If I smiled any wider, my dimples would be in danger of coming out. “Just load it across with the code mermaid and I’ll know where to assign the funds.”

  “And you’re not going to offer me a coven discount?”

  “Already applied.”

  With a low growl, Glynda finished the transaction, then turned the screen to show me the acceptance page. “And if you can’t locate her within the two days I’ve just paid for, forget about it.” She pulled her legs inside the car and started the engine. “Brianna’s mother will need to know I’m doing something, but she’s not worth more than that.”

  I jerked back as the car took off, momentum slamming the door shut. Memories of past mermaid forecast days flooded into my mind. Warmth. Excitement. Anticipation. With one swipe they were wiped clean and today’s disappointment etched in their place.

  Then my phone vibrated, and I pulled it out, smiling at the bank notification. Our current money worries could be pushed back a few weeks and if Glynda changed her mind, we might last out the month, riding high.

  “If the vet doesn’t charge me an arm and a leg,” I muttered, remembering my promise. Beezley sat in sullen silence next to the car, growling when a passing witch came too close.

  “Ready to go home?”

  “I’ve been ready for ages.” Beezley aimed for the passenger seat while I held the door open but missed, catching his chin on the edge while he fell down. With a quick glance around the car park to tot up who’d witnessed his embarrassment, he tried again, this time landing in the seat.

  I hadn’t noticed until now, but he was growing pudgier by the day. Those long hours spent in front of the telly were taking their toll.

  “I thought it’d be a good idea to have the vet check you over before summer hits,” I said, wincing against the anticipated argument. But Beezley just slumped in the seat, not even trying to see over the dash. “This week, if he can squeeze you in.”

  “Whatever.”

  And there it was. Fully fledged teen disengagement. I felt silly for not reading the signs before. “But we have a job on. Find a missing mermaid and restore the sanctity of the parade day for all the supernaturals.”

  “Did you get the payment?”

  “Up front, as required.”

  “Wake me when we get there, then.”

  I was about to nudge him into saying where exactly he thought we should be going, but he yawned and shook himself. “And I hope if this pub serves giant fish ladies it won’t object to giving a beer to a dog.”

  The pub it was, then. I hoped the veterinarian wouldn’t have space on his appointment calendar until tomorrow at the earliest. The last thing I needed was a telling-off for letting a teenager drink.

  Chapter Three

  “Yeah, I’ve seen her,” Jesse, the bartender and owner of the Rusty Nail Bar and Bistro said with an uninterested nod. “You might say she’s a regular.”

  “And she was here today?”

  He pursed his lips and glanced along the counter, giving a relieved sigh as he saw a grizzled man tilting an empty glass. While Jesse dealt with his client, I lifted Beezley onto a bar stool.

  “I can’t say I remember seeing her this morning, but she was here last night,” the bartender said, rejoining us at the far end of the counter. “She in trouble?”

  “She’s a no-show for an important job—something she’s never been late to before.”

  “And you think I’ve got her stashed out the back or something?”

  I held my hands up to either side. “Just trying to find out her movements, mate. There’re no accusations here.”

  “Hey, Warwick? You remember what time the wheelchair girl left yesterday?”

  “Wheelchair girl?” Beezley whispered to me, frowning. “Is that some weird spell she’s put them under?”

  I shrugged, but the disguise seemed a stroke of genius to me. It saved the neural network having to go into overdrive every time Brianna went out in public. Nobody looked twice at a disabled chick; not close enough to see the shape under her rug didn’t resemble legs.

  “Dunno,” was the only response Warwick could come up with after an intense bout of staring at his rapidly emptying glass. “Don’t remember.”

  “Yeah, nor me.” Jesse came back to stand in front of us, refilling a jar of straws and looking miserable. “She defo came in here, but I can’t remember seeing her leave. Usually, she needs a bit of help to get rolling.”

  Beezley huffed a sigh and turned to go, but I jerked on his leash. The blank look on the two men’s faces as they discussed how nothing had happened could easily be the neural network operating at full power.

  There were cameras in all corners of the bar, and I’d noticed two mounted on the outside. “Do you mind if I look at the camera feed, just to make sure? Her family’s worried and if I can tell them I saw her leave here, safe and sound, it’ll help set their minds at ease.”

&
nbsp; Jesse appeared startled at the thought.

  “I’m not interested in anything else that went on in here,” I assured him. “Just the wheelchair girl.”

  “I don’t know,” he said with great reluctance, an emotion that eased when I pushed two twenties across the counter. “It should still be on the hard drive until next week unless the tapes got out of order and it’s wiped.”

  “Sounds great.” I followed his pointing finger into a back room that had me briefly wondering if something very bad was about to happen. Luckily, the worst thing to assault me was the odour of damp mould. “Can I grab a beer while I watch these?”

  When he returned with the brew, I’d sorted out the viewing system and queued up the footage from the previous night. Once Jesse closed the door, I set the beer in front of Beezley—much to his delight—and fast-forwarded through the early evening hours until Bri rolled into the bar.

  “She’s pretty.”

  “Yeah. Her mother was a beauty queen and Bri sure takes after her, apart from in the leg department.”

  “How long ago did all that happen?”

  “Before my time. I didn’t know until Glynda told us and I’ve been watching Bri’s appearances in the harbour from the age of six.”

  On the screen, Brianna wheeled herself to a corner of the room and set to work on the half-dozen glasses arranged in front of her. It would’ve been a lot cheaper to just buy a bottle of discount whiskey from the off-licence and set herself up at home, but perhaps she enjoyed the company.

  In the first few minutes after her arrival, three men had wandered over to her table, being dispatched with a silent, two-word invective that my lip-reading skills suggested both began and ended with the letter f.

  Pickling might be a real thing, as judging from the video, Brianna appeared to be in her early thirties. Given her mother’s retirement and her own long history as the mermaid forecaster of Fernwood Gully, she must have a decade on that, at least.

  I shot a glance at the glass in front of Beezley, wondering if it could work magic on my complexion, too. I’d seen a wrinkle just the other day. Not one of the lines that formed due to changeable expressions but a real one. One that stayed even as I forced my face to relax. One that turned up in my selfies.

  “What’s the ratio of men to women in this place?” Beezley asked with a guffaw as another few men approached Bri’s table and were quickly rebuffed. “Do you think her hobby is telling men no?”

  “It’s every women’s hobby,” I muttered, but it wasn’t true. The last man to approach me in a bar had been the owner to kick me out, right on closing.

  Just one reason I didn’t hang around pubs much. Another being a lack of funds, even though I was a lightweight when it came to drinking.

  After half an hour, I fast forwarded through the footage, sure we were on a hiding to nothing. Almost as soon as I pressed the button, the entire screen lit up like Guy Fawkes’ night.

  “What was that?” Beezley jumped to attention beside me.

  I rewound the video, tensing in anticipation as I played it back.

  Brianna sat in the corner, nursing her drinks. A man approached, back to the camera, his face concealed. He sat, ignoring the mermaid’s gestures and her shouted abuse. When his hand gripped onto her forearm, the screen lit up.

  “Go back. Show me again, slower.” Beezley jumped into my lap, stepping onto my knees to be closer to the screen. I closed my eyes, lights dancing across my eyelids. When I opened them, the flash showed again onscreen.

  At a third of normal playing speed, the video caught a split second before the room exploded into light. The hand on Brianna’s upper arm took most of my focus, then I saw the man toss something into the air from his free hand. Boom. Light.

  Beezley didn’t have to tell me to run it again, I got it done, slowing it down still further. This time when we reached the end, we both gasped.

  Brianna stood and shielded her face with her arm as the powder or potion or whatever-on-earth-it-was struck. She stood and the nanna rug across her knees fell away.

  She stood on two legs, not a scale in sight.

  A single frame caught the pair, then they both disappeared in a wave of light.

  “I don’t know what you think we’re going to find here,” I said to Beezley as we approached Brianna’s house. “Whatever happened in the bar, I doubt it was organised to transport her three blocks home.”

  We’d taken a copy of the camera footage and with my adrenaline in overflow, I wanted to run after someone or, better still, speed after them in a car. Instead, we were going to a suburban home. My thrill of the hunt dwindled with every second.

  “The first rule of policing is to check the obvious places first, so you know for sure. When you have a missing person, you don’t start searching the country from top to bottom until you’ve checked their house.”

  “But we just saw her dissolve into a beam of light in a bar!”

  “Something that’s just as likely to send her home as anywhere else.”

  I could fault Beezley’s logic, but I couldn’t persuade him any different. And, to be perfectly fair, I didn’t really know what else to do. Tell Glynda and make it her problem was top of my list but that might lead straight to a reversal of charges on my bank account. I should also do some research on magic powers and reappearing legs at the occult library but reading my way to a victory left me feeling cold.

  “If I lift you over the gate, can you check out the back of the property to see if there’s a doggie door?”

  Beezley snuffled at the doormat, trying to paw it aside. “Does Brianna have a dog?”

  “No, but you didn’t either until…”

  “Why don’t we try the door key first?” He nudged it out from its inadequate hiding place beneath the welcome mat and stood back, tail wagging.

  “If you ever get back to being a policeman, I hope you run some community sessions on how not to invite burglars into your home,” I grumbled, embarrassed I hadn’t thought to look there first.

  “Yeah. It’ll be my top priority. That way no unqualified private investigators can search and resolve petty crimes, leaving my department to spend their time on more important matters.”

  “Don’t you think a missing person is important?” I slotted the key into the door and braced myself for the shrill cry of an alarm. But Brianna disappointed me again.

  “It’s ten-a-penny down at the station. Most people turn up later the same day they’re reported.”

  “And the others…?”

  Beezley barked and trotted inside the house, his nails clicking on the marble tiles.

  That didn’t bode well.

  Inside, half the house appeared to have dust sitting in it from when Brianna had bought the place while the other half was a pigsty. Food containers sat on the bench and the floor, while the bin was empty. The microwave oven had a thick crust of splatter on the door. Whatever the liquid had been when it exploded inside, it had been left to harden.

  I kicked an empty pizza box away and dislodged an army of flies from the half-eaten remains. Where was pizza rat when you needed him?

  “I suppose I should think about how difficult it is for a girl without legs to move around,” I grumbled, lifting my foot out of something congealing on the floor. “But I can’t help but think of… Oh, what’s the phrase? Hiring a maid?”

  “She could be an intensely private individual.”

  “Brianna goes out drinking every night at the pub when she could just stay here and get plastered for less. That’s not the MO of someone who guards their privacy.”

  “How about we try outside?”

  A fantastic idea and one my nose and lungs appreciated. After a deep breath of what I expected to be fresh air, my stomach revolted, sending a spurt of burning acid up the back of my throat. “Ugh. What is that stench? How can Bri have contaminated the entire outside world with her grunge?”

  “It’s the pool.” Beezley didn’t appear nearly as upset by the smell as I was
. In fact, he danced in a circle in excitement.

  I tentatively took another sniff. “It smells like rotting fish and garbage.” For a second, I thought of calling the police and reporting the mess. If Brianna had died in the pool—and that was the highest probability in my mind—then they could take care of it.

  But Glynda had hired me. More importantly, she’d paid me well. I edged closer to the pool, holding my nose when the foul odour tried to jam into it again.

  “It’s just fish,” Beezley said, scampering around the edge, his tail wagging a mile a minute. “I think they’re all dead.”

  “They smell like they died inside something bigger that also died.” I left my eyes unfocused as I drew closer, not wanting to scar my retinas with whatever horrors were making the Frenchie so happy. But when I finally focused on the scene, there was nothing there to frighten me. Except for the depths some people could sink.

  A raft of dead fish corpses floated on the surface; their bellies grotesquely swollen by the heat of the summer sun. Others were further along in the process of putrefaction and had sunk to the bottom in a cloud of murky goo.

  It was a distressing sight but there was no witch, half fish, or mermaid tangled up amongst the piscine dead.

  “What do you think killed them?” Beezley placed his paws on the very edge of the pool, inhaling deeply. “There’s a weird chemical tang to the water.”

  “Chlorine, I hope. And what makes you think they died here? Bri could more easily have bought or caught them and dumped them into the pool, already dead.”

  “It’s a saltwater pool.”

  “So? They still use chlorine.”

  “This is ocean saltwater.” Beezley stuck his nose so close to the surface, it rippled when he breathed in. “Not normal pool saltwater. I guess Bri was trying to have a controllable sea environment at home.” He stepped back from the edge, allowing my anxiety levels to sink. “There isn’t a filtration system or anything. Goodness knows how she got the water here, to begin with.”