by R K Dreaming
She continued to demolish a piece of salmon with gusto, gobbling as if she had never eaten anything so delicious before, which I doubted given how much Charming spoiled her.
Watching her eat a treat I’d given her with such relish was surprisingly delightful. It was no wonder that Charming and Oberon fed her at every opportunity they got.
The little beastie loved eating every bit as much as I did.
“Yeah, that’s right. You munch that tasty salmon and remember who gave it to you,” I said. “And no telling Charming what we’ve been up to today.” I admonished her with a finger.
I didn’t know how it worked between Charming and his familiar, and I certainly hoped there was no mind-reading or anything of that sort going on between them.
I tickled her beneath her beak and said, “You can’t talk to him actually, can you? In his mind, or something? No, I didn’t think so. You just make sure our secret stays between us girls.”
The sushi bar was rather busy, but a kindly waitress who had been charmed by Squeak, gushing over how adorably tiny she was, had found us a quiet corner safe from prying eyes.
“Don’t let my boss see you in here with her,” she’d whispered, “or she’ll have my job!”
Being in here, surrounded by a crowd, but invisible among them, felt so good.
I had never been this free. During my decades in London I had been a virtual prisoner of my own making, living in solitary splendour in the apartment that the sentinels had given for my use. It was wonderful to be out in the world, and for it just to be an ordinary thing. It was wonderful to not be afraid, to not worry that a passing stranger might accidentally bump into me hard enough to break my bones.
For all those years, I had thought of Brimstone Bay with dread in the pit of my belly. But homesickness too, for my small town, where I had just been another Eldritch being, a teenager sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet her friends around a beach bonfire, frolicking in the surf, enjoying sinking my toes into the soft sand. I had missed that feeling of being home. I had felt a great big invisible lack all around me in the world, as if home was a set of loving arms which had once held me, and were now gone forever.
I had thought I felt that way because of my psychic sensitivities. But even when my psychic gifts had gone, I had still felt that way, even right in the heart of Brimstone Bay. I didn’t know where home was any more. I didn’t know what I wanted it to be.
Charming, whispered a voice at the back of my head. I felt at home when I was with him.
Shaking off this melancholy thought, I munched the last piece of crunchy crab roll drenched in a sticky spicy sweet sauce.
My visit to Gwydion’s had not got me anywhere I had expected to get. The Grey Queen. A helpless girl in danger, who Rodan had been trying to save. All I had wanted to do was catch The Reaper, but now my head was buzzing with so much else.
And worse, I feared I was chasing a big fat nothing. I had been so certain that the key had been going to free someone from The Reaper. But the key was a dead end.
Or was it? Had it been the key that someone had killed Rodan for? This incredibly expensive and deadly key?
All this time we had been thinking that it was Amelie who the killer had been after and that it was Rodan who had been collateral damage, but what if it was the other way round?
What if Rodan had been the real target?
Which meant I really had been right, and The Reaper had nothing at all to do with this.
Which meant that I was no closer to catching him.
But then how had the killer known to stage the scene as if Amelie had been killed by The Reaper? Who could know that The Reaper was after Amelie? Or was it just a coincidence?
“What do you think, little buddy?” I asked Squeak, but she was now having a little snooze on the table, conked out from her big meal.
I was tired too. It was late evening, and I wanted nothing more than to go home and have a hot bath and switch my brain off and forget about all of this for just one night of deep dreamless sleep.
But going home meant facing up to Charming.
It was this realisation that I was sitting here dragging my feet because I didn’t want to see him, that I was being a big old coward, that made me grab my phone and call Allegra Westbrim.
I felt guilty for having kept her waiting for so long, but she didn’t complain when she arrived, and cheerily etherhopped me back to Brimstone Bay and outside my house.
She graciously wished me a good evening before departing. Now there was a woman with a charmed life, I thought wistfully as she disappeared into the ether with a pop.
As I dug in my bag for my keys, I wondered briefly how good friends she and Oberon might actually be. My brother was younger than her, but wouldn’t she make such a lovely girlfriend for him? If only witches and vampires were allowed to mix that way.
I chuckled to myself at the mere thought of me trying to match-make for Oberon. I was sure that, sweet as he was, he would be horrified.
As I let myself into the house, already dreaming of that long hot bath, and determined to ignore Charming if I saw him, the first thing I saw was an envelope that someone had slipped beneath my door.
The sight of it lying not-quite-innocently on my marble tiles made my stomach flip-flop. Why would I be getting mail in Brimstone Bay? Nobody knew I was in town but Oberon, and he could have just texted me.
My stomach had clenched in the familiar old panic.
The envelope felt menacing, but I didn’t have my psychic music anymore, so I didn’t really know if it was menacing or not.
I ripped it open.
Inside was a gift card with a gilded chicken on front. The hand written message inside read,
Dear Sigourney,
What does a woman deserve who sticks her nose where it’s not wanted? How to make such a woman suffer? Oh, I know, I’ll destroy the thing you care about most.
But first, I’ll give you a chance to save it. Here’s a clue. Catch me if you can.
Beneath the words was stuck a slim golden coin with a woman’s face on it. She was smiling. A single drop of red fluid, now dry, was dripping from beneath the coin.
I unstuck the coin to look at the other side and found the same face, this time not smiling. And where the coin had been was a tiny red clawed pawprint, the drop of blood coming from it.
The card had a faint but horrid herbal smell clinging to it that made me feel sick.
The shock of finding it here in my home hit me like a hammer. My fist clenched as I stared at it, almost crumpling up the card before I made myself stop.
I raced upstairs, breathless, dashing into Charming’s bedroom, but he was not there. I ran through the rest of the house, checking, and was relieved that he had not come home yet.
It was only a taunt. If he had harmed anybody that I knew, he would have left his mark over their dead body. Not in a card.
No. This card was a warning. He was going to destroy the thing I cared about most in the world. Gaia.
Did that mean that he knew where she was? That he had found her?
No, I realised. No. This taunt was a distraction. It didn’t seem in character for him. It must be because I was getting too close on this case. I had alarmed him. I was getting too close, and he still had work left to do.
One thing was for certain; he must have been watching me, while I had felt so safe and secure in a crowd. Why else would he have put a gilded chicken on front of the card?
I clutched it in my hands, pacing frantically up and down the front hallway, but no visions came to me. I touched the blood, but got nothing from it.
I wished Charming was here, so I could show it to him and ask him what he thought.
My mind kept returning to the fact that this was The Reaper trying to distract me, and oh how happy he would be if he saw how well he was succeeding.
Did this mean that I had been so completely wrong then? That The Reaper really was behind Amelie’s murder after all?
&nb
sp; Angry with my agitated pacing, Squeak had flown off my shoulder with loud complaints and perched on the banister.
When I flung the card aside in fury, she hopped over to investigate, and pecked at the spot of blood.
“Stop that,” I snapped, and plucked it out of her reach.
I went to the kitchen and put it in a plastic bag, because this was what I would have done in my old life, because it was evidence. But I had no intention of taking it to the Conclave. This was for my eyes only.
The coin was clenched tightly in the palm of my hand, but it was giving me no visions.
Shaken, but determined to not let The Reaper get the better of me, I checked the locks on all my doors and windows, then went upstairs to take my hot bath and clear my mind.
And it was only when I had sunk into the steaming water and closed my eyes, soothed by the sound of Squeak perched at the edge of the bathtub trilling as if she was a purring cat, that clarity came to me in a sudden burst.
I laughed. What a fool I had been! This card hadn’t been sent to me by The Reaper. Dear Sigourney, it had said. It should have said Dear Heart, because that was what The Reaper had called me in the last letter that he had left for me.
And the real Reaper would never give me a warning that he knew where I lived. He liked to turn up out of the blue with his nasty little surprise.
This card had to come from the copycat who had killed Rodan and Amelie. The copycat who knew that The Reaper destroyed things that people cared about most. It wasn’t a threat to Gaia. It was just another diversionary tactic.
“Oh thank goodness,” I murmured to Squeak.
She chattered meaninglessly, and I was pretty sure she was agreeing with me that I had been an idiot.
“This is all your boss’s fault,” I said to her. “Without him, I’d have had my psychic music, and I’d have been able to tell if that card was a bunch of nonsense immediately.”
She had resumed her relaxed purring, as if she was enjoying the steamy hot sauna experience of the bath.
“What would you call him anyway?” I mused. “Boss, buddy, papa-bear? You are his familiar, but he is your what exactly? What is the opposite word to a familiar?”
After my bath, I put Squeak in an empty partially-opened drawer in my bedroom, along with some chicken feed granules and fresh water in case she felt like having a midnight snack, and went to bed.
Charming still had not come home. I had left my bedroom door slightly ajar, in case Squeak preferred to join him when he finally did. She was roosting on the edge of the drawer, and I wondered if she normally roosted on his bedpost, watching over him as he slept. Lucky girl.
I lay restlessly on my pillow, my mind drifting to all the possibilities of who could have killed Rodan and Amelie.
Charming had to think it was Noah who had done it. Why else would Oberon have been checking if Noah had been at a beach cottage with the actress, Jenny James?
But Noah was too young to be The Reaper. Did this mean that Charming was coming round to my way of thinking?
Gosh, I was tired. Too drowsy to think clearly. The heavy golden coin was still clutched in the palm of my hand, so I put it safely under my pillow.
It was an odd thing to send. Such a specific, unique item. Had the killer meant to imply that the coin belonged to this person who I was supposed to care about most in the world?
Gaia, I thought. Gaia, Charming, and Oberon.
My list was short. The killer probably imagined it was far longer. That there were plenty more people for me to worry about.
Or was it the idea that a killer had been to my house that was supposed to freak me out? This did alarm me, especially as it hit me that I was all alone in this big house. And yet I had ensured before I rented it that the house had the usual magical protections. If anyone broke in, an alarm would go off to alert me.
As I drifted off, I thought of Bridgit Corkmony with her prim blouse buttoned up to her neck sitting meekly in the coroner’s waiting room. And of her fluttering her long lashes at Charming in Rodan’s office. Charming was not home yet, though it was late. Was that where he was? With her?
Sometime later I was aware that I was asleep, and yet I was also aware that I was clutching the coin in the palm of my hand under the pillow. And I was dreaming.
The golden coin was glinting on the ground, covered in blood, and the face on it was weeping. Beyond it, laying on the ground was a woman with long black hair, whose face I could not see. She was deathly still. Mother, my heart screamed. A baby was wailing. The man ignored it. He picked up the coin, blood and all, and slipped it into his pocket.
And then the dream changed, and what I saw soothed my thundering heart.
A little boy with shiny sable-black hair and shining eyes was bouncing up and down. I smiled, knowing it was Charming. Charming as a little boy no older than five, and he was delightful.
He was with his mother in a place that I knew must be their home, and I could smell something delicious. Little Charming could smell it too. He was begging his mother for a treat, and she was shaking her head and laughing. But that didn’t stop him begging. She picked him up and twirled him around and he giggled uncontrollably.
On a table nearby were freshly baked little lemon cakes, so many of them, arranged artfully as if awaiting guests or the market. Their aroma was mouth-watering. Charming reached for one, but his mother shook her head, still laughing.
“It’s mine!” he said. “You know it’s mine.”
“Later,” she said.
“Heads or heads,” he said. “If she smiles, I can have it now!”
His mother tweaked his nose, but she agreed. She flipped a golden coin, and it landed in the palm of her hand. The lady of the coin was smiling. Little Charming cackled in glee, and he snatched up a lemon cake, the only one with a bright red cherry on top. The one that his mother had baked especially for him.
I woke up from the dream smiling. It took a while for reality to catch up with me and for the smile to fade from my face. The coin had belonged to Charming’s mother.
And the coin had belonged to The Reaper.
But that was impossible. Charming’s mother was centuries dead. How had The Reaper got her coin?
The next thing I knew, I was on my feet, my heart pounding loudly in my eardrums. The coin was Charming’s. The killer had said he would destroy the thing I cared about most, and he had meant Charming.
Chapter 18
SIGOURNEY
I raced to Charming’s room, but the bed was empty. I knew he was not in the house, as there was no reason for him to angrily sleep on the couch. More like he had angrily slept elsewhere.
Could someone kill a genie, I thought, staring at his empty bed.
He was trapped by that lamp, immortal and imprisoned, until an act of true love or fifty years without a wish freed him. But was it possible for someone to murder him?
I knew he could be hurt. I had seen it happen when he’d been caught in a magical blast.
Did that mean that this killer could savage him, catch him unawares and do terrible things to him? Charming had told me that his magic didn’t always work. It didn’t always do what he wanted it to. What if he couldn’t save himself?
And I already knew this killer was fiendish and clever.
I couldn’t bear to think of him being harmed.
I raced back to my bedroom and grabbed my phone to call him, pleading with the powers of the universe for him to have actually taken his phone with him and have it switched on. The call refused to go through. Wherever it was, it was off.
And so I resorted to the one thing I told myself I would not do. I screamed his name, “Charming!”
He did not appear. My heartbeat rocketed.
“Charming!” I screamed again.
Squeak was highly agitated by this point, flapping about the room and screeching in a surprising loud voice for such a tiny creature. She looked reluctant to come anywhere near me. I had terrified the poor creature.
I did not know who was gladder — her or me — when he appeared before me with a gunshot crack a few minutes later, looking grouchy and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“What?” he demanded irritably.
Squeak flew to him immediately with a squawk of alarm, complaining at my terrible behaviour.
I stared at him with wide eyes. He was unhurt. Thank goodness!
And this made me angry for some reason.
“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.
He was looking around my bedroom suspiciously, and said bluntly, “Why did you call me? I thought—”
He didn’t finish the thought. He thought I must have been in danger, like I had thought he must be in danger.
I started laughing, hysterically, and I didn’t even know why, but I couldn’t stop it. Not until he held my shoulders and gave me a firm little shake.
“What the heck is going on?”
On his shoulder, Squeak was chirruping away, having a conversation that only she understood, because he clearly didn’t, as he was looking at me expectantly.
I grabbed the gold coin from under my pillow and thrust it at him.
“Take it,” I said. “Somebody sent it. It’s yours.”
His mouth dropped open as he looked at it. “Where did you get this?” he asked in a strangled voice.
Not bothering to answer, I raced downstairs to the kitchen where I had left the card, heedless of him chasing me.
I thrust it at him, plastic bag and all, and said, “Somebody sent it in this. Read it.”
I paced impatiently as he scanned the note, my arms crossed self defensively over my chest, hugging myself. “It’s not The Reaper. It’s a lie. He would have called me Dear Heart, remember? But it has to be Amelie’s killer who sent it. He is trying to scare us off the case. He’s trying to scare me off the case.”
Charming said grimly, “Then maybe you should listen.”
I threw him a furious look. “I’m not going to let anyone chase me off. And you don’t still think it’s Polliver, do you?”
