by Willow Mason
“Remember she’s a witch. Water’s easy to move even if her magic’s on a low power setting. If not her, then Lucinda could’ve done the job, although…” I stared back at the house, the mess inside not as scented as the pool but still as disgusting.
“Although what?”
“It doesn’t look like the kind of place that’s seen a mother’s touch. Brianna mightn’t value her privacy enough to stay away from the local pub, but I doubt her mother’s seen the state of her home.” I put my hands on my hips, feeling something else out of place but not immediately able to put my finger on it. Then Beezley tiptoed forward to the edge again, and it clicked. “This pool should be fenced off. That means the council hasn’t been around here either. They’d never sign off on something this dangerous.”
“Dangerous to whom?”
“You, for a start.” Above his protests, I picked up Beezley and headed back to the house. “And it’s law. If some human kid drowned in there, she’d be up on manslaughter charges.”
“I’m aware of what the law is,” Beezley grumbled, shoving his paws into my chest until I set him back on the grass. “Don’t witches have some ways to get around council restrictions? If she can transport a pool’s worth of seawater with ease, how hard can it be to hoodwink a building inspector?”
Good point. I stared into the distance rather than concede.
“And she wouldn’t be able to get her chair through a fence.”
“They can—”
“Brianna? Is that you?”
Lucinda Hawick stood at the entrance with a nose wrinkled in disgust. Her eyebrows pulled together as she stared at me and Beezley, turned mute with surprise.
“What on earth are you doing in my daughter’s house?”
Chapter Four
“Hey, Mrs Hawick,” I managed after a tight swallow. “Brianna isn’t here, I’m afraid. Glynda asked me and Beezley to investigate her disappearance.”
The woman sagged, placing a hand against the doorway for support. “I’d hoped…”
She trailed off, and I felt like an intruder in her grief. Before the woman understood I actually was an intruder, I went over and offered her my arm. “Why don’t we sit in the front room?” I suggested, picking dust over filth. “We just have a few questions for you.”
As I assisted her into a chair, Lucinda’s face aged a decade. For somebody who must already be in their seventies, nudging eighty, it was a devastating advance. The wattle underneath her chin wobbled as she fought back tears, then her mouth curled. “There’s dust everywhere!”
Given the immaculate nature of her dark emerald suit, I understood the concern. In a split second, the woman went from weak to strong as she wiped the worst of the grime off the chair fabric before she dared to sit.
“You’re private investigators, then?” When I nodded, she continued, “What do you know so far?”
“Your daughter was—”
Beezley bustled forward, cutting me off. “Has your daughter ever disappeared before?”
Lucinda raised one shoulder while she turned her face away. “As a teenager, she’d sometimes leave for a few days without telling anyone. Not since then.”
“And you’re in regular contact?”
The woman fumbled with her purse, pulling out an embroidered handkerchief which she pressed to her eyes. “We phone each other occasionally, but probably not as often as we should. You know how it is when you both live busy lives.”
“When was the last time you saw your daughter?”
“Well, I—” Lucinda stared at me with a slight frown. “Is this how it goes? You just sit there while this small dog barks questions at me?”
“Pretty much.” I moved to the window, staring into the back yard. No birds were landing near the pool to feast on all the dead fish. An absence that made Beezley’s suggestion of chemicals more likely. “The house doesn’t look the way it would if I was expecting my mother to visit.” I turned back to her. “Or anyone.”
“Brianna always suffered a problem with cleanliness. After her accident, it became more noticeable.”
“And that was?” Beezley sat back, stamping his front paw when Lucinda didn’t answer him immediately.
“Twenty-seven years ago. I’ll never forget the day.”
“Brianna?” a voice shouted from the front door. “You’ll never guess what—”
The new arrival was a fairy who gasped when she saw us gathered in the room. Her small wings were see-through, like cellophane with a faint pink tinge. Completely inadequate for lifting her chubby body off the ground.
“Who’re you?” Lucinda snarled. “And how dare you walk into my daughter’s house, uninvited?”
After a moment to regain her composure, the fairy jingled a set of keys. “I have Bri’s permission to be here. Something I don’t think any of you can say.”
“We’re investigating your friend’s disappearance,” I said, leaping over with my hand outstretched. “Have you seen her recently?”
“Yesterday.” The fairy’s face collapsed into confusion as she registered what I’d said. “What do you mean, disappeared? She’s at the mermaid parade if she’s not here.”
“No, she’s not.” Lucinda pressed the hanky to her eyes again, a delicate gesture. “For the first time in twenty-two years, she skipped the event. Who are you?”
“I’m Delia Morrow, her best friend.” The fairy turned her back on us as she whipped her phone out and started scrolling. “There’s no message here, telling me what she’s up to. Are you sure she’s not out in the harbour? Sometimes she likes to rest on the pontoon in the next bay, especially if she tied one on last night.”
“We’re sure. She disappeared from The Rusty Nail, yesterday evening,” I said, earning myself a reproachful glare from Beezley. “Are we able to read through your last few messages? It might help us work out who she’s met lately.”
“I can do better than that,” Delia said. She curled her finger at me and Beezley, walking through into the kitchen. Without a second glance at the mess about her, she sat at the dining table, removed a laptop from under a bundle of laundry—clean or dirty, I couldn’t tell—and tapped on the keyboard. “There you go,” she announced triumphantly. “Her dating profile.”
“What’s happened in here?” Lucinda asked with the horror I expected from a normal person. “There’s rubbish everywhere.”
“Bri liked to keep it smelly,” Delia said. “It attracts bugs.”
Unfortunately, she didn’t offer any reason why someone might enjoy that feature. Having already acclimated to the pigsty, I sat and nosed about the dating site while Lucinda stood very still at the edge of the room.
“This says she was going to meet someone last night,” I told Beezley, then turned to Delia. “Did she always meet her prospective dates at The Rusty Nail?”
“Yeah. It’s the closest place that she didn’t have trouble getting to in her chair.” Delia squinted over my shoulder. “Although her standards have gone downhill if she’s picking men who don’t even have a real photo.”
The profile of Brianna’s date only showed a cartoon figure, featureless enough to conclude it’d been built from an app.
“Brianna told me about a case a few years back. A coven up north was convinced the bones dug up from an old riverbed belonged to a mermaid rather than the Taniwha they were labelled as.”
I swivelled the chair around to face Delia. “Why did it matter what they were labelled?”
“It didn’t, but the group believed mermaid bones were infused with magical powers, even after death.” She scrunched up her face and glanced up at the ceiling. “I don’t think they got far. From memory, the council intervened while they were still mid-conspiracy.”
“Fascinating,” said Beezley.
I frowned at him before nodding to Delia. “So, you’re saying if an entire coven could believe mermaids were powerful, someone else might now think the same?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. It mightn’t b
e relevant at all.”
While Beezley rolled his eyes, I sent a text to Harriet at the occult library, asking her to pull any volumes that dealt with mermaids and their magic abilities. “It’s worth following up on. Thanks for sharing.”
Speaking of sharing…
“Can I show you something?” I ignored Beezley’s glare as I pulled a flash drive from my pocket and slotted it into the computer. “This is footage we got from the bar.”
Delia gasped as the room exploded in white. “Where’d she go?”
“Kind of what we’re trying to figure out.” Lucinda picked her way across the carpet to stand behind me and I closed the window and reselected the file. “I’ll play it again.”
The older woman gave an indrawn breath as the man appeared onscreen and I paused the recording. “Do you know him?”
Lucinda nodded, then tilted her head to one side. “I thought so at first, but it’s hard to tell from just his back. Do you have a better view of him?”
I wish. “No, just this. He stood at an awkward angle for the other cameras.” I set the video playing again, repeating the entire recording once it reached the finish, this time at a much slower rate.
“Her legs came back,” Lucinda and Delia said in unison. The fairy sounded close to tears, and I turned to look at her. “It’s just…” She pulled at a wing with her fingertips. “Bri and I were kind of in the same boat. She was half fish, and I was half insect.”
“What kind of insect?” Lucinda sniffed. “An overweight housefly?”
Delia glared daggers at the older woman. “A butterfly,” she spat out from between thin lips.
Lucinda said nothing but raised her eyebrows and I had to agree with her. I’d never seen a butterfly with clear wings but a fly? Yep.
“Were you able to recognise him this time through?” I asked, getting the conversation back on track. “We’d really like to chase him down.”
She tapped a finger against her cheek while pursing her lips. “Maybe. I’ll have to look through some old photographs to be sure.”
“You don’t have to be sure,” Beezley said. “Just give us what you’ve got, and we’ll start from there. If you’re wrong, we can rule them out fairly quickly and that’s just as important.”
For a moment, I thought Lucinda would say more, then she gave a quick shake of her head. “Just leave it with me. Even if it is the same guy, I don’t remember his name.”
“It looks like black magic to me,” Delia said, replaying the footage again. “Aren’t there a group of black magic practitioners up the coast? It’s the kind of awful thing one of that lot would do. You can’t trust anyone who’d use black magic over white.”
I stared very hard at the ground in front of me.
“I think you’re right,” Lucinda said. “Those low-lives wouldn’t think twice about doing all sorts of terrible things to my daughter. Remember earlier this year when they caught that bloke who was killing witches before they could even be inducted into the coven? Evil, that’s all black magic users are. Pure evil.”
Beezley cleared his throat while I closed my eyes and wished for the conversation to be over. When I opened them again, I caught the dog mouthing a phrase at the other two, but I was too late to see what.
Lucinda touched the back of my elbow. “Except for you, dear,” she said in a stilted voice. The awkwardness of her smile forced me to look away. “You’re fine just as you are.”
“Is there any way we can get into his dating profile and find out where this guy lives?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. “The website must collect that data, right?”
“Don’t look at me.” Delia held her hands up. “I can use a computer but I’m no hacker.”
“And I can barely use a computer,” Lucinda said. “That’s what staff are for.”
“The police digital unit would be able to access the information but we’d have to give more evidence than we have before DI Jonson would log it for us.”
“What? Telling him the areas only mermaid has gone missing isn’t good enough?”
Beezley gave his strange choking laugh. “Not when he won’t be able to see it, even when the video’s right in front of his eyes.”
“I’ll be off,” Lucinda called out, having crossed to the doorway without me noticing. “Please tell Glynda to update me with any results.”
“That woman’s hiding something,” Delia said, biting on the edge of her thumbnail. “No wonder Bri can’t stand her.”
“It’s your fault for showing her the video.” Beezley shook his head at me. “She obviously recognised the man in the frame, and she’ll be at home right now, getting his details.”
“Well, that makes our job easier, doesn’t it?” When his face continued to show confusion, I explained, “Instead of tracking down the man ourselves, we just need to keep tabs on Lucinda.”
“You’ve got her address?”
My face must have registered dismay because Delia snorted and handed her phone over. “Jot that down and take mine while you’re at it. I’d quite like updates, too.” She leaned back against the kitchen counter and flicked her nails together. “In fact, if you need another body along to help rescue Bri, count me in.”
I transferred the addresses and handed back her phone. “Sure,” I said to her request at the same time Beezley said, “Absolutely not!”
Chapter Five
On the ride back home, Beezley said, “If we’re going to stake out Lucinda’s house, we’re going to need a lot of snacks.”
“Is that what your years in the police service taught you?” I scoffed. “Bring snacks?”
“You’ll see. Investing in a she-wee wouldn’t go astray either.”
I gave him a good helping of side-eye. “Pity it’s hard to source one of those at short notice. We’ll just need to use a bathroom instead.”
“Good luck getting someone to open their door to a stranger, let alone them letting you use the bathroom.”
“Then I’ll either hold it or go behind some bushes.”
“In Lucinda’s neighbourhood? They’ve probably got a private security service running through the area every hour in addition to having the top echelon of the police hierarchy on call.”
The address I’d noted down was in Langford Views, near to the forest. Far enough up the mountains to give easy access to the ski-fields during the season while close enough to town for easy access to the main strip of shops.
Rich people lived there for the most part. The other part was occupied by the empty houses of rich people who summered somewhere else.
“If they’d call a cop on me for going in the bushes, then they’d do it for using a she-wee beside the road.”
“Most people use them inside a car.”
“Only if the people you know are contortionists. Can we change the subject, please? I don’t want to discuss my bathroom habits with a dog.”
Beezley jerked his head to look out the side window so fast, I knew I’d hurt his feelings. I tossed up between starting a new conversation or putting on the radio, then decided against a round of solid gold hits. My partner and I held differing tastes in music.
“When I dreamed about becoming a mermaid as a child, I thought they’d be a lot more fun. The state of that house!”
Even Beezley, without opposable thumbs, had maintained a better state of hygiene before I arrived on the scene. He’d at least tried to put things in the push peddle bin he could no longer operate.
“It’s like being turned into a dog,” Beezley said, bringing the conversation straight back to his sore point. “The amount of people who expect me to be happy all the time is ridiculous. Like having soft hair and a cute behind is enough reason to spend every moment jumping for joy. All I feel is trapped.”
“I think you handle it very well.”
He grunted. “Even with your help, there are so many things I can’t do, it’s frustrating.”
I let silence fall for a few moments, then asked, “Is that why you’re so
grumpy all the time?”
Beezley stood on his hind legs, resting his front paws on the window. He pressed the button to wind it down and curled up on the seat again. I risked another sidelong glance at him, and he seemed contemplative rather than angry.
“Do you know how they work out dog years?”
The question took me by surprise, but I knew the answer. It had been the basis for far too many deep conversations at primary school. “Seven to one. It’s not very accurate though.”
“Accurate enough. How old do you think I am?”
I rubbed the back of my neck in response to a sudden outbreak of gooseflesh. Had Beezley overheard my conversation with Glynda? “Maybe two or three?”
“And that gives me what? Another ten years. A few more if I’m lucky and I spend a lot of time and money on vets.”
“But we’re trying to find—”
“If there was someone around here with the power to reverse this type of spell, don’t you think Brianna’s rich and powerful mummy would’ve found them by now?”
I didn’t know what to say. I could shut down the conversation now but if we spent a few hours trapped in the car tonight on a stakeout, it would just pop up again.
“Have you heard back from Trevor? Didn’t he say he’d put out feelers?”
Beezley already knew the answer to that. I felt like someone on the witness stand being cross-examined. He’d given this discussion a lot of thought and I’d just waded into the middle of it, unprepared.
“It’s only been a month since we asked Trevor for help.”
“Two. Two months. Nearly three. How long should it take?”
“You tell me. I haven’t done this before, and I’d never even heard of an animus healer until he told me about them. Sure, it’s disheartening to take this long, but he might phone us next week or next month. We just don’t know.”
“Can’t you do something?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again without saying anything. The force of my magic was scary—even to me, the person supposedly in charge of it. When things went right, they went very, very right and when they went wrong…
