by Mara Webb
Finally, I came across ‘A Reel Good Time,’ a book with a moving photograph of an old film reel that was spinning and projecting a short movie onto my face. This is it! I found the chapter that Quin had mentioned and read through instructions. I would need my wand, a board from the game ‘Guess Who’ and a ‘can-do’ attitude. At best I had two of those things.
I brought the book down the ladder with me and tucked it underneath my pillow. “What is to stop them coming back?” I asked Quin.
“Well they want their threat to sink in. No use frightening you and only letting you stew in it for forty-five minutes. That won’t be long enough for them. I will stay downstairs with the kittens and patrol. You need some rest. If you could just hop downstairs and open that big bag of kibble in the cupboard by the sink that would be great.” Quin peered over the top of his glasses at me.
“Are you wearing that all-night, Sir?” I teased. He transported his detective costume out of sight and bounced down the stairs to brief the kittens on their night of security guard duty. I tore off the entire top strip of plastic from the kibble bag and left it at an accessible angle and waved goodnight to the kittens who were now doing deep lunges at Quin’s request.
When I lay down in bed, I could feel the hardness of the book’s edges through my pillow. I wiggled it backwards so that the spine no longer pushed into the side of my face and tried to relax. I was nervous about the days to come, I soon learned that the nerves were justified.
9
I woke to the sound of an alarm I didn’t remember setting. My eyes moved beneath my eyelids searching for the light I was too tired to see. Wake up. I forced myself to a seated position, my eyes still closed, searching for the alarm clock on my nightstand so that I could slap it into silence.
Winter days meant dark mornings. It was such misery to wake up and be greeted by the moon, cold cheeks and air you could see your breath in. I tried to find a silver lining, but this had already been going on for weeks and I was over it. I loved sweater weather as much as anyone but if I had to defrost my car one more time this week I would scream.
I remembered the events of yesterday in flashbulb moments. A flash of sitting in a meadow with Brent and the sound of the river, it had been so serene. Flash. I was opening a velvet bag to release Quin from its magic hold, he then ‘let the cat out of the bag’ about the illegal books in the attic. Flash. I was screaming at a cheerleader with one earring at a University outside of town, flames rolling along my skin with rage in my heart and justice on the mind. Quin had stopped me. What would I have done if he hadn’t?
Flash. She was now dead on my lawn. Her family blamed me; they had threatened me. I was in danger. My brain brought me back to the present, sat up in an icy bedroom with my eyes closed. I needed to face the day, I had a murder to solve and my innocence to prove.
I raised my upper lids slowly and blinked the memories away. Reaching back to grab the book under my pillow I was ready to get started with the spell. I needed a new identity before we went back to the University to ask for information about Hannah. Where had she gone after we left? Who had she spoken to? Did she leave the campus or was she taken?
Quin was curled up on the rug by the fireplace when I came downstairs. It seemed that he had set up a system for taking turns on patrol, several straws lay next to him on the ground, one noticeably shorter than the other. Howl, a white kitten with one blue eye and the other a greeny-brown, sat by the window staring out. The short straw must have been his at the last draw. I smiled in his direction; they were trying to help. I appreciated it.
Once I had dragged my slippers onto the kitchen floor, I heard the rumble of cats springing to life from the other room. They weren’t likely to sleep through an opportunity to eat.
“Quin, I have a spell that we need. I’m not sure about the description it gives for changing your ID, but I think the rest of it makes sense.” I took a bite of a Danish. My magic sometimes worked in my sleep, filling the fridge or cupboards with whatever food I had dreamed about. I didn’t recall a fantasy about sweet pastries from Denmark, but it was delicious, so I wouldn’t complain.
“I can do the ID bit, I’ve done it so many times, you wouldn’t even believe…” he trailed off. I didn’t want to ask about why he, a cat, would have needed to pretend to be a different cat. It would be a long story; I just knew it. “Are you ready for this? It is going to be a long day. Should we eat lunch when we get there? They have a cafe on site, it has literally everything you could want. Or we could make a sandwich and shove it in a paper bag.”
“As you seem so enthused about the idea of eating one of my home-made creations for lunch, I think we will visit the cafe of wonders. You haven’t eaten breakfast though, lunch is hours away,” I said.
“You think I got to this age without planning five meals in advance?” He said this as if I knew how old he was. I hadn’t ever thought about it until now. I couldn’t even guess. Did familiars live longer than regular cats? How old was he when he volunteered to become a familiar? Did his human age add on to the years he has lived as a cat? Or did he start again at zero? Urgh, it is seven in the morning.
I had spotted a box for the Guess Who? game in a cupboard upstairs, Edith seemed to have collected board games. She had everything. I grabbed the box and brought it to the dining table, settling it down next to my wand. I positioned one board facing Quin and the other facing towards my seat.
The instructions were simple enough for this spell. With my wand in my hand I must say the words: ‘The face I have is just for me, I now will change what others see, take my canvas, wash it clean, to paint upon what shall be seen, when I decided to change it back, I give my face a painful smack.’
Once the spell had been spoken, I simply flipped down the faces I didn’t want on the Guess Who? board, so if I didn’t want to be seen with a ginger beard then I flipped all those faces down. My appearance would then be a mix of all the faces left standing. It was just for today, and when I wanted the spell to end all I had to do was slap myself, hard.
Hopefully I didn’t get slapped by anyone else while in disguise, that would be a real downer.
I spoke the words, made my choices and I felt my face fizz, a pop-rocks like sensation. It was slightly painful but in a tolerable way.
I watched Quin do the same. He grimaced slightly as he felt his body transform. I couldn’t see any difference in myself, I looked the same in my eyes. The mirror was now playing tricks with my reflection. Quin however, oh my.
Quin had selected, for some reason, the bald characters, the ones with facial hair and glasses. The spell could only do so much, he wasn’t transformed into a human. Quin was a hairless cat with jet black skin coloring in the shape of a moustache beneath his nose. The rest of him was nude and pink. I bit my tongue so hard I drew blood. A small snigger escaped my mouth.
“You look...very different Quin.” I laughed; I couldn’t help it. Why would this be the disguise he chose? He did look completely unrecognizable to the plush, hairy black cat he was only moments ago. His face blushed a little with initial embarrassment.
“For laughing you are buying me two lunches. I don’t care what I look like, that’s a problem for everyone that can see me, I can’t, can I? So why would it bother me? You, however, look beautiful. Not more or less than before, just like a different beautiful witch that also is mean to the creature that loves her the most.” He smiled. I leaned over the table and nuzzled behind his bald ear.
“You went for blond hair, blue eyes and glasses huh? I love the freckles. You look like you work as a beach lifeguard,” he said. I would have to take his word for it, I could still see a brunette when I looked at myself. We still had to establish new names and IDs to go with the change in outward appearance. “Give me your driver’s license.” Quin reached out a paw to collect my card.
I pulled my wallet out of my purse and prized the plastic out from its tight slot in the leather. Before handing it over I gave it a quick glance at the details and
photograph on its surface. Quin turned it photo side down onto the dining table, placed both of his front paws on the back of it and said ‘Commuta habitum’. He pushed it across the table towards me. “Try it out! I just handed it to you so, at the moment, it is my ID.”
I picked up the plastic and flipped it in my hand. The picture now showed Quin, the bald version of Quin I could see sitting beside me. The name was changed to ‘Elliot Spindles’ and he had a new address.
“What? How have you done this? How do I use it?” I asked, somewhat concerned that I had a long day at the DMV ahead of me applying for a new one to replace this.
“It shows you what I want you to see. I just concentrate on the information I want you to get from it and that is what it shows you. You try, think of something then hand it back.” I spun a wheel in my mind for new name options. Astrid? No, sounds too magical, I don’t want to stand out. Lauren? No, not that. Elliot? That is the name Quin is using! Orla? Yeah, Orla!
I handed the card to Quin. “Ah okay, Orla Benson,” he read aloud, “lives at number 56 Ash Avenue, relationship status: confusing. You don’t need to have a relationship status on a driver's license Nora, but otherwise this works. I will just go grab one of my cards from upstairs, I have a few fake IDs in a box for such an occasion,” he said gleefully. We both went upstairs. I changed into warmer clothes for the day and met Quin back in the entryway.
In the car we went over our strategy for the day. We had a few people that we definitely needed to speak to, other than that it would be a stab in the dark to solve this murder. As we pulled up into the University parking lot, we could see that the workday was already in full swing here. Students hurried towards building with arms full of books and papers. One guy had a suitcase following behind him three feet above the ground, it bulged at the zips.
The sun had risen during the drive and the pinky-orange light just peaked above the building we had entered through yesterday. I saw all sorts of creatures scuttling along the ground behind their humans, a crocodile, three lemurs and a Tawny Eagle circled overhead as if hunting for prey. I spotted the teacher that had been shouting at Imogen on the field, she was the first person we wanted to speak to.
I parked the car and Quin started to rummage around in the glove compartment, throwing scraps of paper over his shoulder and muttering quietly. “In here somewhere...definitely remember...unless...aha! Got it!” He tossed a cardboard box towards me. It was a box of diazepam.
“I stored these in your car about a week ago, it was after you slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting that bird. I thought I was going to fly through the windscreen! Anyway, I figured if we take one it will help us stay calm when that seagull is screaming. That way we can write down our fake names and get to our detective work uninterrupted.” He snapped a pill in half, then half again and swallowed the quarter. I swallowed one whole.
We obediently stuck to the path across the lawn, we didn’t want the imps to attract any attention to us. Quin lead the way up the stone steps, through the narrow gap in the oil slick wooden door, through the strange laundry room and into the entrance hall.
I felt nervous. My stomach was tightening, and my feet refused to carry me to the visitor’s book. The bear on guard, Lyle, looked more enormous than before, I wondered what would happen if we tried to get passed him without a visitor pass. I imagined all sorts of bear swipes coming towards me and I felt a sweaty sheen glaze my forehead.
Paranoia set in now, I could swear that everyone was watching us. We were suspicious, they knew that we were lying, they knew we shouldn’t be here. Quin nudged at my shin with his body. “Come on,” he whispered. “Orla, we need to sign in over there,” he spoke louder now. He had caught my attention. We walked together to the corner with the book.
The annoying bird had been screaming since we arrived, we had heard it from outside. The volume it could achieve was astonishing. Quin went first. The table dropped down to his level and he wrote his name, species and his ‘must have skin care product’. The seagull watched him write and then turned its eyes to me once Quin had his lanyard. The laminated photo around his neck showed him as the bald Elliot Spindles applying a high SPF moisturizer.
It was my turn. I stepped forward and the table shot up to reach my height, I picked up the pen and began to fill out the entry. ‘Orla Benson, Human’. I then had to answer the question ‘what is your favorite moon in this solar system?’ Up until that point I had never thought about it. ‘Europa’ I wrote. It’s a moon around Jupiter with a subsurface salty liquid-water ocean, what’s not to love.
My lanyard materialized. I had done it! The image of my newly blonde hair surrounded by moons and stars swirling around me filled the laminated square. I gazed at the image of my disguised self. I really liked the new look, maybe I should go blonde after all this crime solving dies down, I’ve been a brunette my entire life and I haven’t been to a hair salon in a long time. Might be time for a more permanent new look. My features were subtly different in shape but the tone of my skin and eye color seemed to make the biggest difference to my identity.
The seagull squinted at me as I turned to walk away. I felt a heaviness on my chest as I increased the distance between the bird and I, waiting for it to raise the alarm that two spies had snuck into the University.
But nothing happened. We got through the door.
Okay, we were in. Now what?
10
“Let’s find the teacher first, see what we can get from her,” Quin said. He had a new confidence in the hairless body he temporarily was living in. He marched down the corridor and we stopped inside the circular room we had exited the day before. I looked out of the large window to a now empty field. The cheerleaders must be doing something else first thing in the morning.
We continued through the corridor, now deeper into the building than we had previously ventured. In between doors to classrooms they had decorated the walls with paintings of heroic deeds performed by witches or wizards. Portraits of magical beings that had been pioneers, that had done something bold and admirable. The little plaques beneath the frames told students, and now me, of the amazing potential outcomes when you dedicate your time to something.
Quin paused and then turned towards a door standing between a scene from the Battle of the Somme, filled with deep greens and browns showing wizards fighting alongside humans, and an image of Elizabeth Blackwell. Elizabeth had not been a witch, but the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, it was such an impressive feat that her face could adorn the walls of a University full of magic.
The door he had stopped in front of was the door to the staff room. At his request, I lifted him to peer through the glass window. “There!” he said. He had spotted the teacher we were looking for. “Okay, we are both private detectives working for the Huxley’s, got it? Good!” Before I had time to process what he had said, I heard the sound of him knocking on the door and saw movement inside.
I put Quin back down as a man opened the door, revealing his outfit of pajamas and hiking boots. He looked very well groomed, his light chestnut hair was freshly trimmed and not a strand was out of place. The stubble across his chin, cheeks and around his mouth was clearly intentional. The edges were neat, and I could smell the same beard oil my stepdad used to use. The clothing threw me off.
“Good morning! What can I do for you?” he said enthusiastically. With one hand still on the door handle, the other was free to carry a very large travel cup with steam billowing from the mouth spout. The scent of coffee was powerful and delicious. It reminded me that I hadn’t drank my caffeine hit yet today, a death threat can mess up your routine like that.
“Good morning Sir, we are just looking to speak to the lady there.” Quin pointed towards the teacher we had been searching for. “Could we come in? It’s regarding Hannah Huxley.” With that Quin turned to reach up to my purse, I lowered it and he pulled his ID card out of the bag and grabbed mine. “We are working on behalf of the family.” He flash
ed the card to the teacher, I followed suit.
It must have worked. Whatever we had both shown him had convinced him enough to step aside, pulling the door open even wider. “Can I just ask about the pajamas?” I said. I couldn’t help myself, everyone else in the room was fully dressed and he had clearly put in the effort with the rest of his appearance. It was an unusual visual combination.
“Sure! It’s for charity. I asked my students to chip into a fundraiser and I would wear my pajamas for the day, a silly sponsorship idea. I would be terrible at a sponsored silence and that would make for a terrible day of teaching if I couldn’t speak! Anyway, they have sponsored me now every day for five months! I’ve had to put on thermals underneath, so I don’t freeze, but I have generated over six thousand dollars for a local homeless shelter!” He smiled as he spoke.
“That’s great!” I smiled back as we walked into the staff room. I heard him close the door behind us as we navigated through plush armchairs, around a coffee table and passed a row of computers on mounted wall desks. Our first interviewee was chatting with another teacher in a kitchenette area. Toast joined the coffee scent.
“Martha, they’re here for you!” the pajama clad man yelled across the room. She turned to face us, I forgot for a second that she couldn’t possibly recognize us. I kept my head down and my eyes on my shoes until I heard Quin speak. I then remembered our spell from this morning and lifted my chin to face her.
“We just wanted to ask you a few questions about Ms. Huxley, I’m sure you know by now of her death.” Quin was good at this, but I would have to jump in too, this was my problem. I was the one getting threatened.
