A Magical Trio

by A. A. Albright

  I looked up at the building and, noticing that each apartment seemed to have its own balcony, an idea began to form. ‘Maybe if we head to his balcony instead,’ I suggested. ‘Technically it’ll be outside, won’t it? So maybe your finger snapping thing will work.’

  ‘It’s worth a shot,’ Ned agreed. ‘I’ll take you guys up. But you know, after this, I think Hamish ought to introduce you to some wizard magic. If you’re going to be a PI around here, you’ll need a few tricks up your sleeve.’

  While she grabbed onto me once more, I stared down at Hamish. ‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? I can learn magic. I mean, if you can then anyone can.’

  ‘Hardy har har,’ he said. ‘I’m looking very forward to seeing your first spell. I imagine it’ll involve you blowing yourself up.’

  Cleo peeped down from the balcony. Of course she was already up there, the little smarty pants. ‘Come on already!’ she hissed. ‘What’s taking you so long? Is Katy slowing things down again?’

  And to think, all these years I thought dogs were my enemy.

  Ned grasped me by the hand while I took hold of Hamish. Within a second, we were on the balcony. ‘You’re a potted plant now, by the way,’ she said, quickly turning into the same before my eyes, with Cleo and Hamish changing just as quick. This time, Ned didn’t even need to use an incantation. Desperation seemed to make her extra-talented.

  I peeped through the glass sliding door, looking in at Jonathan’s enormous loft-style apartment. ‘Is that a Jacuzzi?’ I wondered, surprised at how normal my voice sounded, considering I was a plant. ‘In the living room? And – oh my giddy aunt! – is that entire fridge filled with champagne?’

  ‘That’s Jonathan for you,’ said Ned with a shrug. ‘He likes his luxuries.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Oh my stars! Look! Cullen is strangling him.’

  She was right. Beyond the kitchen there was a hallway leading to the rest of Jonathan’s home. Cullen was there, right now, struggling with Jonathan. His hands were around his neck, and Jonathan was doing his best to push him off.

  They fell to the floor together in a tangle of legs and arms. Cullen had something at his belt loop that he was constantly struggling to reach.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be potted plants any more,’ I whispered.

  Ned nodded, mumbling the words to undo the spell. In a few seconds, we were all ourselves once more, pushing open the doors and tumbling into the apartment. Ned pointed at Cullen and screamed, ‘Conáil!’

  Before my eyes, he turned stock still.

  ‘It’s a freezing spell,’ Hamish explained. ‘He’ll be still as a statue until Ned says otherwise.’

  ‘Oh, thank the goddess.’ Jonathan staggered to his feet, his breathing laboured. ‘I was trying to do a freezing spell myself, but he kept on stopping me from getting my hand up. You guys know how useless I am at getting magic done without my finger fully extended.’

  He moved away from Cullen. ‘Well, it was him, just like we thought. Not only that, but he told me he’s going to keep going. He said he has a spell already at work among the Wayfarers and at the Wyrd Court, so that he’ll never be caught for the murders. No matter what we say, we’ll never be believed.’

  I looked askance at Cullen. Was it just me, or was he trying to shake his head? And as for that thing at his belt loop, he kept trying to reach it, his eyes looking desperately between me and Jonathan. Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to move more than a centimetre or so. I wasn’t sure whether the fact that he was moving was a good thing or not. Did it mean Jonathan’s spell was weak, or that Cullen was just stubborn enough to resist? I was going to go with a little of both.

  The device looked familiar to me, and I was sure I’d seen one just the same very recently. My eyes lit up. Those Wayfarers, Wanda and Finn, had the same thing on their belt loops.

  Following my eyes, Jonathan said, ‘He was trying to disempower me. He’s managed to steal one of the Wayfarer disempowerment devices somehow.’

  I had no problem believing Cullen would be a thief, but I did have a problem believing that the Wayfarers were dumb enough to let one of their devices stay working if it were to be stolen. So what did that mean? I looked at Cullen more closely and, once again, he seemed to be trying to shake his head.

  Was he trying to tell me to cover for him? Cheeky so-and-so. But even though I wouldn’t normally feel like doing him any favours, I had the strongest sense that I shouldn’t tell the others what I was thinking. Because what I was thinking was pretty darned crazy – could Cullen be one of the Wayfarers, working undercover? And if he was, then what did that make Jonathan?

  The more I thought about it, the less crazy it seemed. Jonathan was sitting with Donal when we arrived at the Bank. So just because I didn’t see him pouring anything into Donal’s drink didn’t mean it hadn’t happened before we arrived. And he’d been very annoyed when Ned called Diane thick earlier on. Also, well … I just didn’t like the guy. And the Jacuzzi in his living room was really not helping matters.

  As for Cullen, well, if Ned and her friends had been telling the Wayfarers they suspected him for a while now, then maybe there was a reason that the Wayfarers weren’t taking them seriously. A reason that didn’t involve him somehow managing to get the entire supernatural police force to obey his every command.

  ‘Well, I think it’s time we called the Wayfarers,’ I said, trying to appear like I hadn’t just had a horrific epiphany. ‘This is getting far too serious for us to deal with on our own. And now that we’ve all seen him attack you, we have proof that he’s got something to do with the murders.’

  ‘No!’ Jonathan sad a little bit too loudly. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said you stupid woman? He’s already influenced them. He’s been using hypno-potions on them for weeks.’

  I put my hands to my hips. ‘Did you just call me a stupid woman?’

  He fiddled with the neck of his shirt. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Katy. It’s just … the heat of the moment, you know.’

  ‘He’s right, though,’ said Cleo. ‘I mean, not that you’re a stupid woman – the jury’s still out on that. But he’s right when he says that they won’t believe us. They never do. We’ve all gotten on the wrong side of the Wayfarers too many times before. So if Cullen is the murderer, then I say we just deal with him ourselves.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head insistently. ‘The whole point was to clear the name of Diane, and you guys too, seeing as Hamish could also be a suspect. How can we do that if we kill the murderer? Plus that would make us murderers, and that’s not a career path I’ve ever craved.’

  Considering the looks on the faces of the others, they weren’t wholly in agreement.

  No wonder Cullen didn’t want his cover blown. I was growing to like these people – well, Ned and Hamish, anyway – but they really were set in their ways. They would be anti-Wayfarer, right up until their dying breaths. And seeing as I was now becoming increasingly suspicious that Cullen was one of those very Wayfarers, this situation could go very badly for him. If they cottoned on that he was working undercover, they might just murder him all the faster. I didn’t want to believe Ned was capable of such a thing, but I couldn’t risk Cullen’s – or my own – life, just in case.

  So what was I going to say? My hunter senses are tingling, and they’re telling me that Jonathan might be the killer? I’d be about as popular as the Wayfarers themselves if I came out with a doozy like that. Hamish, Cleo and Ned had been friends with Jonathan for years. They’d only known little old me a couple of days. I needed to find something to back up my theory that Jonathan was up to no good.

  Jonathan rolled his eyes at me and turned to his friends, appealing to them. As he told them yet again why we shouldn’t get the Wayfarers involved, my eyes drifted around his apartment. There was something out of place here, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Somewhere, in amongst all of this chrome and leather there was something that didn’t quite fit.

  And then I saw it. Peeping out of
a window seat over to our right, there was a dark blue wizard hat, covered in bright, shining stars.

  I nudged Hamish, pointing to the hat.

  ‘You!’ Hamish screamed. ‘You killed Bradley. And as if that wasn’t enough, you had to go and nick my hat, too!’

  For a second, Jonathan looked frightened, but then anger began to twist his features. He didn’t look cute but dumb any longer. No, he looked cute in the way that Irish farmers meant the word – he looked truly cunning. And with a face like that, I wouldn’t have any trouble convincing my new friends that their old friend was a ne’er-do-well. They seemed to be finally coming to the same conclusion.

  ‘Where’s Diane?’ Ned demanded. ‘I want to see her, now.’

  ‘Asleep,’ he said in a nasty voice.

  Ned’s face grew red with anger and, pointing her finger, she mumbled,

  ‘All of these walls shall now be clear

  So we may see all that is here.’

  Instantly, every single wall in the apartment became see-through. We could see that Jonathan had entire rooms dedicated to his many collections – watches, cologne, shoes, wands, cloaks, and even a room dedicated to what seemed to be a collection of porcelain dolls. He had at least a dozen bedrooms, too. But the one we were interested in was farthest away. It contained a curtain-draped, four-poster bed with a beautiful woman atop it, snoring loud enough to wake the dead.

  ‘Asleep?’ Ned narrowed her eyes. ‘I knew there was something wrong with her. She was disinterested in our plans, she was yawning every two minutes. I remember your attempts at Sleeping Beauty spells back at college. They were slow-acting, and you had to perform them half a dozen times before you got them to work.’ She let out a snort of disgust. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Diane’s under a Sleeping Beauty Spell, isn’t she?’

  ‘Snoring Beauty, more like,’ muttered Cleo.

  Ned extended a finger, and I could tell she had a humdinger of a spell in mind. Unfortunately, I was never going to get to see it, because before she could begin, a cage dropped from the ceiling and surrounded Ned, Hamish and Cleo. Somehow – maybe because of the go-faster stripes on my shoes – I managed to sidestep it just in time.

  The cage had oddly wavering bars and, seeing as Ned and Hamish were stuck within, I was guessing that their magic was somehow supressed. Even Cleo seemed to be stuck. I’d wait to feel smug about that after we’d miraculously escaped, though. Speaking of miraculous escapes … I looked at Cullen and raised my brow. Once again, all he could do was barely shake his head.

  Fluff it, anyway. He did not look like he was about to make an eleventh-hour escape from the freezing spell.

  Jonathan squinted at me through eyes that looked beady and horrible. ‘Doesn’t matter that you’re not trapped,’ he said. ‘It’s not like you can do anything but watch on in horror while I kill them all and blame Cullen on the murders. And after that, I’ll live happily ever after with Diane.’

  ‘Happily?’ Hamish growled at Jonathan. ‘She’s comatose, you numpty! I mean, what is this? You never even asked her out!’

  Jonathan turned to Hamish with a smirk. ‘Why would I do that? So she could go out with me a couple of times and then dump me? No, I had a better plan. I was going to kill off every other man who was interested, until finally she saw me. Because I wanted her to see me, the way I saw her.’ He shrugged. ‘But it was beginning to look like she might need some extra encouragement to look my way, even with the rest of them dead. So … yeah. I’ve got her in a Sleeping Beauty spell. Just long enough for the love potion to take hold and to get her away to a private island, where she’ll only ever see me.’

  ‘You idiot!’ screeched Ned. ‘If you’ve used as many spells on her as I think you have, then I sincerely doubt you’ll be successful at waking her up. And you definitely shouldn’t have added a love potion on top. Let us out of here so we can help her, Jonathan.’

  ‘Not on your life,’ he said with a sneer. ‘I’d rather she stayed asleep than give you the chance to play any tricks on me.’

  Hamish was growling louder and louder. I could see by the way his buckle was shining that he was trying all the magic he could, too. I crossed my fingers, praying that the wizard-turned-dog was going to be the hero of the day.

  ‘I can’t believe you stole my hat!’ he said, sitting back in his haunches. ‘Wait – did you turn me into a dog, too?’

  Jonathan sniggered. ‘Of course I did, you idiot. Out of all the men Diane has dated or fooled around with, you’re my only real competition. You’re the only one she has real feelings for. So I figured it might be fun to turn you into a stupid little mutt. That way, you could watch on in agony while she went out with man, after man, after man …’ He sniggered again. ‘Who knows? I might even take you to the island with us, just to torture you some more.’

  It was a good thing he was having so much fun gloating, because with no one else stepping up to save the day, I was afraid it might be down to me. And luckily, Jonathan wasn’t remotely interested in looking my way.

  While he continued to gloat, I took my attention to my bag. In it, I had two items: my uncle’s Soul-Sucker and his binder. My fingers brushed against the knife, and I heard it whisper: ‘If anyone deserves to die at my blade, surely it’s him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I muttered. ‘But for some reason, I really hate the idea of giving you what you want.’

  I kept the knife close at hand – just in case – and pulled out the binder. Jonathan was still telling poor Hamish all of the ways in which he was going to make his life a misery, so while he droned on, I opened the binder wide, and said, ‘I, Katy Kramer, on behalf of witch hunters everywhere, bind thee foul witch, Jonathan!’

  And oh, sweet stationery! It worked! With a cry, Jonathan’s body whipped towards me, twirling in the air, growing smaller and fainter with each moment that passed, until he fully disappeared.

  The others, of course, were staring at me throughout.

  ‘You’re a …’ said Ned.

  ‘She’s a …’ said Hamish.

  ‘You’re a witch hunter!’ cried Cleo, with a yowl for added emphasis.

  ‘Yip,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’m Katy Kramer, and I’m a witch hunter. And whether you believe me or not, I have really enjoyed getting to know you all.’

  Feeling a strange mixture of sadness and success, I clapped the binder shut with a bang. And then I did what I’d wanted to do from the moment I entered this sleazy apartment: I pulled out my phone, and I dialled the Wayfarers.

  24. Agent Idiot

  I sat up in my bed, wet and shivering.

  ‘You …’ I stared at my mother in shock. ‘You threw a glass of water over me!’

  ‘Not a full glass,’ she said with a nonchalant shrug. ‘Just enough to get you up and out of your pit.’

  I pulled a pillow over my sopping wet head, groaning. ‘Mammy! I’m tired.’

  ‘Don’t you “Mammy” me. I’m not your typical Irish mammy, you know. I’m not going to make you cups of tea and let you wallow, not when what you need is a good kick up the arse – or a glass of water over the head.’ She pulled the pillow off my head and sat down on the edge of my bed. ‘You loped in here yesterday evening and you’ve been in bed ever since. You’ve been ignoring your phone. I’ve had to answer it to Uncle Faster, and all your other friends have been texting you nonstop. I didn’t even know you had a friend called Nedina. What kind of name is that?’

  I looked longingly at the pillow, wishing I could wrestle it off her and hide beneath it once more. I knew I was being pathetic – believe me, I wasn’t under any illusions that my current behaviour was anything other than cowardly.

  But it was either hide in my bedroom, or face everyone I’d betrayed. Because I had betrayed them. Ever since I’d arrived on Samhain Street, all I’d done was lie. And now that they’d heard the words I used to bind Jonathan, they all knew what I really was. A witch hunter. Someone even more loathed by them than the Wayfarers. And they really hated Wayfarers.

/>   Sure, I’d saved their lives from Jonathan, but where had I even sent him? Had I killed him? Had I sent him to limbo? I didn’t know, I’d just … done it.

  ‘What’s Uncle Faster been saying?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, mostly he’s been asking why you’re not back with his cheese and onion crisps yet. But he also said you were working on a case and you went incommunicado. By which I think he means you wouldn’t answer your phone. What did he have you doing, Katy? You know I don’t want you getting involved with all this private investigator malarkey. I mean, don’t you need a licence? Oh, and this Mud person’s been trying to get a hold of you, too.’

  ‘It’s Müd. There’s an umlaut.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Well, why’s he so eager to get in touch with you? This fella works with your uncle, I know that much. So what did the pair of them have you doing? Did he make you work as a honey trap? Because if he did, then I’ll give him a pair of broken legs to match your uncle’s.’

  ‘He didn’t use me as a honey trap,’ I muttered absentmindedly. My mother thinking I was trying to catch cheating husbands in the act was the least of my worries right now. I was far more interested in what she’d said about Müd. Grabbing my phone, I flicked quickly through my messages until I found one from him:

  I imagine you might be a little worried and upset, given what happened with Jonathan. Come into the office and we’ll have a chat.