A Catastrophic Theft

by P. D. Workman

  So she knew she was just being stubborn and rebellious when she refused to stand exactly there Calliopia said she should.

  She waited for the next step, getting the distinct impression that Calliopia had expected her to go down on her knees. Calliopia stared at Reg for a minute, considering the situation, and then reached for her belt and drew the knife.

  Reg took a step back, bringing her hand up in self-defense. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on, there!”

  “We will sever the connection.”

  “How? If this involves cutting me again, I’m not on board. No more cutting.”

  “It is not a physical cut.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Calliopia reached out and grabbed Reg by her injured hand. It was healing nicely, and Reg didn’t like Calliopia assuming that she could just do whatever she wanted to. She resisted, pulling back.

  “Tell me,” Reg insisted. “I didn’t ask you to show me. I want you to tell me with words.”

  Ignoring her, Calliopia held Reg’s hand firmly and brought the knife closer.

  “No,” Reg tried to pull back.

  Calliopia started to chant, her own fairy language that Reg couldn’t understand. The least she could do was repeat the incantation in English, so Reg would know what to expect.

  Calliopia ran the knife down Reg’s forearm and hand. Not cutting into her with the point or the side of the blade, but skimming over the surface with the blade held parallel with Reg’s hand and arm, as if cutting away invisible cobwebs. She might have shaved a few hairs, but she certainly didn’t do any damage. When Calliopia was above the healing cut that had been inflicted with the knife in her hand, she paused, still chanting, but examining the condition of Reg’s hand, studying the wound with a professional air.

  “It’s healing,” Reg commented.

  Calliopia ran the knife over the spot several times. That was where Reg felt their connection, so it made sense for Calliopia to focus her attention on it.

  While it seemed ridiculous to the old, cynical Reg that a knife could actually have lasting magical connections that needed to be cleared away with a chant and ceremonial severing, the new Reg accepted that this was so. Even if she didn’t understand it, she knew that there was some kind of connection between her and Calliopia. She wasn’t sure she wanted it severed, but if Ruan and Calliopia thought that was for the best, then Reg was willing to give it a try. Especially if it meant her psychic abilities would go back to normal so that she would stop damaging things and could perform a find if she wanted to track something down.

  Calliopia’s chanting wound down. She pressed the handle of the knife into Reg’s injured hand, wrapping her fingers around Reg’s to tighten Reg’s grip on the instrument. Reg gripped it, letting the roughness of the handle press against her hand.

  After a few seconds holding it, with the chant still echoing in her ears, Calliopia released her hold on Reg, and pulled the knife back out of her hand. She ran a thumb over the cut on Reg’s hand.

  “This was an evil wound,” she observed.

  “It wasn’t any fun, that’s for sure,” Reg replied flippantly. She paused. “So is it better now? Our connection is gone?”

  Calliopia made a face. Reg had no idea what that meant. That it was gone and Calliopia was sad about it? That she hadn’t been able to sever it? Or was it an expression with another cultural meaning that another fairy would have understood?

  “The knife is contaminated,” Ruan said.

  Calliopia looked down at it.

  “Show it to me,” Ruan ordered.

  Calliopia didn’t seem offended by his terseness. She held it out closer to him. Ruan didn’t take the knife from her hand, but just looked down at it.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Reg asked.

  “It is not just your blood,” Ruan told Calliopia.

  She looked down at it. “Mine from the blood spell. And yours.”

  “And hers,” Ruan nodded toward Reg. “And other piskies.”

  “It’s my knife.”

  “It should be unmade.”

  “No.”

  “If it were to fall into the wrong hands…”

  “It will not. It’s my own.” Calliopia slid it back into her sheath and looked at Ruan stubbornly.

  “This is an evil thing,” Ruan warned. “It will bring you both pain.”

  “It’s already brought me pain,” Reg said. “Hopefully, that is done.”

  “You have psychic power?” Ruan asked. “Look at it. Is it done?”

  A rush of images flooded through Reg’s head. She tried to grasp them, but could not hold on to any of them. It had been so quick, she hadn’t been able to get a sense of what the future held for the knife, but she knew that what both of them said was true. It was an evil blade, and it would cause the both more pain before it was finished.

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Seven ⋆

  K

  arol was the first to leave. She got up from the couch and headed to the door without a word.

  “Fare thee well,” Calliopia offered.

  “Good bye,” Reg added, not sure what to say to this pixie who had barged into her home. She was glad to see Karol go, but sorry to see that she was so unhappy about not getting her sister back. Unlike Ruan, she didn’t seem to be happy about seeing Calliopia and being able to know her as a fairy. She wanted everything to be as it was supposed to be, with Calliopia the fairy turned back into Alicorn the pixie, taking her place in the family.

  Ruan said nothing by way of goodbyes. Maybe male pixies weren’t that voluble. Ruan had never had a lot to say, keeping his counsel if he didn’t have something to impart.

  “She didn’t leave anything here, did she?” Reg asked, looking around the coffee table top and feeling under the cushion where Karol had sat. “I don’t want her to be able to come back in without permission.”

  Calliopia looked around and shook her head. “I think not. She will not want to return here.”

  “She’s not going to come back for the emerald? She stole it once, you know.”

  Calliopia gave an unconcerned shrug. “The gem was important to her… but I do not think she will come for it again.”

  “Sarah will die if it gets taken away. She just about died this time.”

  “Humans are short-lived,” Callie observed.

  “Well… yes, usually we are, but that doesn’t mean our lives aren’t worth anything or that we don’t want to prolong them when we can, when the person has good quality of life…”

  Ruan stared at Reg inscrutably. Calliopia made no indication that she had even heard the comment.

  “She will yet live,” Ruan said.

  Calliopia took him by the hand again. They looked like mother and child, Calliopia so much taller and Ruan with his boyish pixie face. They walked out the door without any farewells.

  Reg looked at the closed door after they were gone. She wondered how they would get back to their car and their picnic.

  “Well… good riddance, I suppose. I didn’t actually want them here, and now they are gone.”

  Starlight made a couple of meows of agreement. Reg went over to him and scratched his ears.

  “You just never know what’s going to happen around here, do you? Every time I think I’m getting a handle on what’s going on, something new pops up.”

  Starlight purred and rubbed against Reg.

  “At least now I know you’re not going around burglarizing houses and stealing jewelry.”

  Thinking about Sarah and her emerald, Reg decided she should go over to the main house and see how Sarah was faring. Hopefully, she was recovering her strength and would be out of bed. Reg wasn’t sure how much longer Sarah would have to live, but hopefully she could have good quality of life for at least a couple more years. Reg didn’t want to lose her.

  She knocked at the door and waited. She felt heavy and tired after the strange events of the morning. Dueling magic was not something
she wanted to get in the way of.

  The door opened and it was not Marian, but Sarah. Not the Sarah that Reg had left in bed the day before. She was bright-eyed, dressed and made up for the day. The dark, hollow eyes and deep wrinkles were gone. If anything, she looked younger than she had when Reg had first met her. Reg stood there with her mouth open, unable to find the words.

  “Well, don’t just stand there catching flies,” Sarah laughed. “Come in, Reg.”

  Reg followed her into the kitchen, and Sarah motioned for her to sit down, going over to the stove to stir something she had bubbling on the back burner. Reg shook her head in disbelief.

  “I don’t understand. I thought… everybody kept saying that the emerald couldn’t make you younger, it could only stop or slow the aging process…”

  “I’m really not sure what happened,” Sarah said slowly. “It’s never done that before. I was just sitting in my bedroom, trying to get up the energy to get out of bed and get myself dressed, and the emerald started to vibrate. I was holding on to it, and it nearly writhed right out of my hand. It started to glow and pulsate and kept buzzing…” Sarah shook her head. “The whole room was glowing. I felt like it was going to burst. And when it eventually stopped… I didn’t have any trouble getting up to get ready. I had the energy, and my knees didn’t hurt…” She gave a little laugh. “Nothing hurt! It’s been a long time since I could say that.”

  “You look amazing.”

  “I feel amazing. But I can’t explain what happened. I wasn’t aware of any power the emerald had to reverse the aging process. I don’t know what I did to trigger the reaction…”

  “I might know something about that.”

  “You?”

  Reg motioned for Sarah to sit down, then told her about waking up to find the pixie in her living room, and the encounter with Calliopia and the dueling magical powers.

  “So Karol was trying to use the emerald to reverse Calliopia’s change, and Calliopia was pushing it back,” Sarah said slowly. “Reflecting that magic right back to me.”

  “I guess.” Reg shrugged helplessly. “I can’t say I understand how it all works. Every day, I learn something new. You’ve had the emerald for years, and you never knew it could do that?”

  “It may be something that only pixies can access. They have an affinity for gemstones. Things that come out of the ground…”

  Reg leaned back in her chair. “What a rollercoaster this has all been.”

  After Jessup’s stubborn refusal to believe that Reg hadn’t been involved in the theft of the emerald, Reg wasn’t in much of a mood to call her. If they were going to be friends, or if Reg were at least going to consult on future cases, then Jessup should believe her and not the wild stories told by Corvin or anyone else.

  But Reg had been retained to try to find the knife before the whole emerald affair had begun, so she felt some responsibility to report back to Jessup the details of what had happened. Jessup suggested The Crystal Bowl for dinner, and since Reg hadn’t had a real meal in a couple of days, she agreed, so long as it was on Jessup’s tab.

  They looked at each other across the table warily. It was too bad, when Reg could be so useful to Jessup and could have used another friend, that they had to be separated by their respective associations with the law, Jessup in law enforcement and Reg… frequently on the other side of the fence.

  “You had something to tell me?” Jessup asked, brushing back a lock of hair that had escaped her sleek police bun.

  “It’s about the knife. Hawthorne-Rose’s knife.”

  “What about it?”

  “Calliopia has it.”

  Jessup’s brows went up in surprise. “Calliopia? Are you sure? I was sure it was Hunter.”

  “Nope, I guess we were both wrong. I remember her asking for it at the castle… she got her hands on it somehow. Maybe the butler retrieved it, or Callie called it with some spell.”

  “How do you know? You had a vision?”

  “Better than that. She came to my house. She did this ceremonial thing, severing the link between us with the knife. I held it my hand, for part of the ceremony.”

  “You shouldn’t have given it back. Or you should have called me.”

  “I already tried to wrestle an emerald away from a pixie. I don’t think I’m about to tackle a fairy and a pixie for a knife. I’d end up with it in my throat.”

  “Most knife fights lead to—” Jessup stopped, reconsidering sharing this tidbit. “You’re probably right, but I wish you would have at least called me.”

  “Things happened pretty fast. I don’t think I could have. And then even if you got there before they had left…”

  “I might not have been able to get it back, but at least I could file a report saying that I’d seen it and knew whose possession it was in.”

  “Would that do you any good with the department?”

  Jessup sighed. “No. Probably not. Best to just let them forget about it at this point. If I keep bringing it up, they’ll just keep extending my probationary period.”

  “You’re on probation?”

  “You can’t get around losing important evidence without repercussions. Now there’s the emerald too. But I think they’re happy if they can just sweep that one under the rug without any physical evidence being logged. Seeing as they lost the accused.”

  When their meals arrived, Reg expanded on the story and gave Jessup the details of the encounter with Calliopia, Ruan, and Karol.

  “Wait a minute.” Jessup held up her hand to stop Reg while she finished chewing a big bite of her burger. “You called Calliopia?”

  “Not like on the phone. And I didn’t know I could do it. Karol kept telling me that was what I had to do, so I gave it a try.”

  “That is super complex magic. I don’t know of anyone in the community who can do a call.”

  “Really?”

  “Moving a person over time and space. What do you think?”

  “Two people. Her and Ruan.”

  Jessup shook her head. “That’s incredible.”

  “I don’t know if I could do it with anyone else. I think with Calliopia… since we were connected, it was easier for me to do.”

  “Probably, but it’s still pretty amazing.”

  Reg shrugged, not sure how to respond to this. Since she had arrived at Black Sands, she’d been told that her powers were unusual. Her ignorance of the magical world meant that she didn’t have anything to measure herself against. Before coming to Black Sands, she hadn’t even known that she actually had psychic powers.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, each thinking through the details.

  “It riles me that she stole the knife,” Jessup said.

  “I’m sure she didn’t think of it as stealing. It was her knife, she was just taking back what was hers.”

  “Just like Karol feeling entitled to the emerald because pixies claim everything formed underground. I get it, but it burns my butt. Without the knife… we still have a case against Hawthorne-Rose, but the loss of physical evidence makes it that much harder, gives the defense a crack to pry at. I don’t like cracks.”

  Bill approached their table, a towel thrown over his shoulder. “Evening Reg, Detective Jessup.”

  Reg nodded a greeting.

  Bill flourished a scroll. “Message for you.” He kept it just out of reach of Reg’s fingertips. “Maybe you could read it outside.”

  “Why should I read it outside?”

  “If it’s bad news… I don’t want any broken glassware.”

  “Broken…? Why would it be bad news, did something—” Reg suddenly had an idea of where the scroll had come from. She swore. “Is this some kind of official notification? Like from Corvin’s tribunal?”

  He gave her a shrug that was also an affirmation that she had guessed correctly. “Like I say, it may be better if you read it outside, away from the breakables.”

  “I’ll control myself.”

  He sighed and handed it to
her. Reg didn’t open the scroll right away. She looked at Jessup.

  “Is this going to be really bad?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything.”

  Reg laid it beside her plate and took a couple more bites of her dinner. “They’re not going to bind him. I already know that.”

  Jessup nodded. “That’s only done in rare cases where harm has been done and the subject continues to put others in danger or threatens the community with exposure.”

  “So what are the other options? They put it on his permanent record and don’t let him be prom king?”

  “That would be a censure, which is a possibility. They could go all the way in his favor and say that he didn’t do anything wrong. That he didn’t break any of the rules of the coven.”

  Reg made a face. She pictured Davyn Smithy and remembered the way she had felt under examination by the tribunal. They would love to put all of the blame for the incident on her and say that Corvin had followed all of the restrictions that were placed on him. They could say that he was right and it was against the constitution of the coven to restrict him from doing what he was naturally born to do. Feeding his hunger was a physical need. If he didn’t feed, she knew what kind of agony he would be in. Whether it would eventually kill him like starving would, she didn’t know, but feeling his pain had certainly affected her physically.

  “They as much as told me I was asking for it,” she told Jessup, trying to get the bitter taste out of her mouth. “I knew what he could do. I had doubts about whether he could control himself. I ended up alone with him. Therefore…”

  She shook her head and took a drink.

  Jessup reached across the table and picked up the scroll.