A Familiar Sense of Dead

by E L Wilder

  We should really get off the street in case that troll and his posse come back this way.

  She nodded. “And maybe you can finally get around to telling me exactly what’s going on here.”

  Clancy paused. You’ve been more than patient. Let’s go in and I’ll tell you everything. There’s a key in the flowerbox.

  Well, at least there was something in the flowerbox other than withered stalks and a grimy statue of some foul beast that might have been a gremlin. She started parting the flowers and rooting around in the dirt.

  It’ll be inside the imp.

  She lifted the figure and found a hole, well placed by anatomical standards but poorly placed by most others.

  “Oh you’re kidding me.”

  Silas had a twisted sense of humor. Get fishing.

  She shot him a withering look before probing—no, not probing—plumbing the depths of the gremlin until a heavy skeleton key plopped into her palm. She shuddered.

  She glanced at Clancy and there was no mistaking the unapologetic joy dancing in his eyes.

  “Don’t even look at me right now,” she snapped as she opened the door and let them both inside.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The interior of Once Upawn a Time was less like the average pawnshop and more like an antiques and curios shop. Shelves girded the room, crammed full of oddities: baubles and trinkets; lamps, both electric and oil; a flintlock that could have been used in the Hamilton/Burr duel; glass jars with strange fleshy objects suspended inside.

  “This place is amazing,” she said. “Silas must have been a character.”

  He was. One of a kind. Too odd even for Quark, but that’s why I loved him dearly.

  Hazel stopped browsing the shelves and turned to Clancy. He sat in the middle of the showroom, his eyes closed. “How did you meet?” she asked. She’d assumed that Clancy must have come from Quark, though he never talked with her about the subject. But if she was going to help Clancy, it might behoove her to find out more about him.

  He helped me out in dire times, said Clancy. Silas had a way of acquiring things that nobody else could get their hands on. Maybe that’s why he got into the pawning business in the first place. Or maybe he started the business because he needed to justify his hoarder tendencies. Either way, we started out as business partners, but Silas could never take business seriously enough for it to stay strictly professional. We were fast friends before I knew it. He was accepting of me in a way that few people ever have been. That was the thing about Silas. He always made you feel at home, no matter who you were. I fear that may have been his demise. Maybe he let the wrong one in.

  His tails dipped and lowered his head.

  “I’m really sorry, Clancy.” She knelt next to him and rested a hand on his back. She expected he might, at the very least, pull away from her touch, if not bite her mercilessly, but he did nothing of the sort. To her surprise, he leaned in and rested his head on her knee. It lasted only a moment, until Clancy shot upright and returned to his rigid posture once more.

  She realized that for all his talk of comradery and familiarship, Clancy himself might be totally clueless about how to achieve it. Could he be relying on her to do the heavy lifting because he lacked the strength? She tucked the thought away for now.

  “I hate to ask this,” Hazel said, “but how do we even know Silas was murdered? If a mountain lion mauls somebody to death, does it count as murder? And if that mountain lion happens to be a spider. . . . What if all we need here is a serious exterminator?”

  Spiders are still spiders, even beyond the Postern, he said. Except, of course, when they’re not.

  “And that’s supposed to mean . . .”

  There’s no such thing as the sentient eight-legged.

  “So, what, somebody trained their pet spider to do their bidding?”

  He shuddered. Honestly, I hate that we need to answer that question. But I have no idea.

  “Where do we start?” she asked.

  You’re the investigator.

  “No, I’m not. I’m an actress, Clancy. I have no real-world skills.”

  So, play the role of the detective.

  “Right.” She could do this, she said to herself. She’d done it once before when she’d investigated Eric Moore’s death, so she had some real-world experience to draw on. Where does an investigator begin?

  “Does anything look . . . out of place to you?” she asked.

  I hope I brought you here for more than that.

  “Calm your double heart. I’m just warming up. I could always cast a detect magic spell,” she said, more to herself than to Clancy. The spell had helped her immensely last time and revealed that the killer had wielded dark magic.

  Great idea, Clancy said. Except that everything in this world is infused with at least a little magic. You’d have just as much luck casting a detect water spell at SeaWorld.

  “Right,” she said. “I guess we start with the obvious. Who might have had a grudge against Silas?”

  It might save us time to say who didn’t begrudge him something. The man ran a pawnshop. He was hardly dealing with people at their best.

  “Solid point,” said Hazel.

  Besides, Silas and I haven’t talked in a long time. We had a bit of falling out before I left Quark . . .

  “Care to explain?”

  Not really.

  He looked toward a beaded curtain at the back of the room that Hazel had somehow not seen until now. Some detective she was shaping up to be. She pointed to the curtain. “The back room, I presume?”

  Stunning deduction.

  Hazel slipped through the beads and into a room that was only dimly lit by a small window. She snapped a ball of light into existence, revealing a room consumed in clutter. She raised the ball above her head and let go, leaving it bobbing gently in the air like a buoy.

  “What a mess,” she said.

  Clutter and mess are not the same. Silas thrived in organized chaos.

  Clancy had a point. Some of the most brilliant directors and artists she’d worked with had dwelled in what could only be described as a hoarder’s paradise. Perhaps Silas had been of the same ilk. Not to mention that by nature, a pawnshop owner was in the literal business of clutter. Still, the place could stand a sweeping.

  Like the showroom, the back room was ringed with inset shelving, but instead of being packed with trinkets and oddities, these shelves were reserved exclusively for books, scrolls, and scraps of paper.

  She couldn’t help but be intrigued. The Book of Bennett might have been lost, but could she perhaps find something here to supplement her travel spellbook and to expand it into something worthy of passing on to future Bennett witches?

  What are you looking for? Clancy asked.

  “Spellbooks?”

  Though I didn’t bring you here to go shopping, I’m sure you could find something in there. A lot of it is mundane, or at least not about spellcasting. But there’s bound to a magical treatise or two in the mix. Though don’t ask me to decipher Silas’s shelving system. It defies understanding.

  “Later, of course,” she said, turning her attention back to the matter at hand.

  In the center of the room stood a huge table covered, inches deep, with yellowed maps, scrolls, and schematics. A ream of parchments had been swept off the table but had never made it to the floor. Instead, they floated in midair, as if frozen in time. She stepped closer and saw that they were not, in fact, floating but stuck on a few nauseatingly thick strands of spiderweb.

  She looked up. A thick nest of spiderweb clung to the ceiling, a few loose threads dangling down from the mass. She pointed. “He must have been suspended here.”

  She leaned in closer and inspected the table, fighting the wave of nausea that rose in her stomach. The maps were dappled with dark red spots. “Blood,” she said. She pulled the papers free and brought them close to her light.

  I think that counts as contaminating the scene.

  “Oops.”
<
br />   The parchment was covered with writing, much of it nearly illegible cursive, or, as best she could tell, foreign languages with alien alphabets.

  It looks like it’s mostly draconian and goblin, observed Clancy. Silas was a bit of a polyglot.

  “That sounds dreadful.”

  It’s not a disease. It means he knew a lot of languages. Something like sixteen, if I remember correctly.

  “Jeez. Most Americans can barely speak English, never mind another language. How does one even learn that many languages?”

  If you live long enough, you pick up a thing or two.

  “And how old was Silas exactly?”

  I never asked. No more than two hundred, I think.

  “Two hundred?! How is that even possible?”

  You can do a lot with magic if you take the time to get good at it. And find yourself a familiar.

  She ignored the pointed barb. “Wait, he performed magic? I thought all men performed black magic by nature. Destructive magic.”

  I’m not sure where you’re getting your facts, but that sounds like a seriously feminist take on the mystical arts. Black magic is about ill intent, he said. Didn’t you learn that with Ronnie?

  “I thought Ronnie was a perfect storm of bad practice. ‘Be you man or meanless or mean, there a withered soul has been.’ ”

  Ah yes. That folk tune was always a favorite of the Bennett clan. I assure you that magic can be just as destructive in the hands of the wrong woman.

  Why had her Gammy always been yammering on then about keeping magic out of the hands of men? And why had all the Bennetts of yore believed the same? Yet another thing she would need to look into.

  She looked again at the parchment, but for all the draconian and goblin, she found some phrases in English that she could decipher. There were references to magical maladies: curses, hexes, jinxes, poxes, and the like. She plucked the light ball from the air and brought it over to the table. Clancy jumped up on the table and joined her in poring over the documents there.

  They discovered more of the same. Amongst the mess of books and papers, most of them were on medicine.

  “Why all of the medical magic?” she mused aloud.

  Clancy was silent.

  “Was Silas sick?” she asked.

  Again Clancy was silent.

  She pulled a notebook out of her satchel, grimacing at the wave of peppermint that came with it. In the hubbub of getting out of the kitchen and shirking her auntly duties, she’d forgotten to unload the cannoli at Bennett Manor.

  What is that stench?

  “Yuletide cheer,” she said, as she jotted down a few notes. “Is there a picture of Silas around here that I can see?”

  Try the desk.

  A rolltop desk was pushed into one corner, its tambour raised enough to reveal that every slot, nook, and cranny was stuffed full of papers. She went over, settled into the worn swivel chair, and pulled herself up to the desk. She quickly uncovered a framed picture in the debris. In it, a group of young men and women gathered on the sun-drenched steps of some grandiose building. A familiar not-a-cat posed with them. “Is that you, Clancy?”

  He hesitated for a moment. She caught a few telepathic hiccups and false starts before he finally answered. My father.

  The response gave her pause. He had until now danced around the subject of his family. She could understand that. She had never known her own father and spent much of her youth feeling his absence. Perhaps Clancy’s had pulled a runner too. She looked at him sympathetically.

  Don’t, he state flatly.

  “Is he . . .”

  Dead? Yes.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  It’s a fact. He is dead and has been dead for years. Third from the left, that’s Silas.

  The man indicated was middle-aged, with a wild dark goatee and deep eyes. He looked like he’d gotten dressed in the dark, clad with a mishmash of stripes and plaid. Something about him looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  She set the picture aside and examined the rest of the desk. “If clutter is a sign of brilliance,” she said. “Silas must have been a certifiable genius.” If there was something important to find, it stood to reason it might be here. She set to work sifting through the clutter.

  We don’t have time for this. Alestranos could come back at any time.

  “Well,” she said casually. “Unless you see something labeled Big Clue, I don’t see where we have an alternative.”

  It wasn’t until she shifted a stack of first-edition books on the history of paper production that, she found anything of interest. One corner of the desk had contained the smallest of safe doors. Hardly the most inconspicuous of locations, she thought, but perhaps a spellcaster could afford to be less subtle.

  With that thought in mind, she gingerly reached out and gripped the little handle on the safe and turned. To her surprise, it turned easily and popped open.

  She tossed the ball of light into the interior of the safe, but instead of illuminating the interior space, the light immediately disappeared.

  “What the—”

  It’s enchanted. It’s a pocket dimension. Technically.

  “Technically,” she repeated. Though she had never attempted to enchant anything, she knew the practice was exceptionally difficult and fraught with peril. She’d only knowingly ever seen one other enchanted object before—the phone booth in the Bennett family library capable of making calls beyond the grave.

  We should check it out.

  “No way I’m reaching into a pocket dimension,” she said. “It could be filled with mousetraps for all I know. Or a spider’s nest.” She shivered at the thought.

  I had no idea you were so squeamish.

  “Not squeamish—cautious,” she explained. “And having a healthy fear of spiders is completely reasonable. They’re disgusting.”

  If you catch the right ones, they’re very palatable.

  “Stop,” she said, nearly gagging. “Just . . . please.”

  I don’t complain when you bring those toxic drinks to training sessions.

  “They’re not toxic. They’re kombucha, which is good for your gut.”

  Nothing that smells like that can be good for anything.

  She reached into the safe and marveled as her forearm disappeared into a space that was far too deep for the desk to accommodate. Her fingers brushed against a number of objects.

  Hazel began excavating the contents. First she pulled out a pouch full of some strange-looking coins. She picked one of the coins out and examined it. On one side was the silhouette of a bearded wizard, a hole punched through the coin where his eye should have been; the other side of the coin was engraved with a coil of braided rope.

  It’s a Knot, the official currency of the Witch and Wizard Conglomerate.

  “Is that gold?” she marveled.

  It’s currency. We don’t do paper money here. Just the real thing.

  “I guess pawning is a lucrative pursuit.”

  Silas was hardly the picture of wealth. I’m as surprised as you that he has this much money stashed away. And if he did, that he wouldn’t take the time to lock his safe. Though he was always a bit flighty.

  “So we can probably rule out robbery-gone-bad as a motive here.”

  She reached back into the safe and her hand closed around something cold and smooth to the touch. She pulled out a pendant necklace that glistened in the light of her spell. At first she thought the pendant was crafted in the likeness of a human crouched in a fetal position, but the longer she stared at it, the less it looked like that or anything at all for that matter. It was like trying to find shapes in the clouds on a windy day.

  What is it?

  “Deeply unsettling,” she said, carefully setting it aside.

  She reached into the safe yet again and pulled out a wooden case that looked like a travel chessboard, except its surface was painted with the name Dr. Winkworth’s Medicine Show.

  “Didn’t we see Dr. Winkworth
performing his medicine show on Common Place on the way in?”

  I believe we did.

  “Interesting,” she said. There was a narrative developing here. Between the parchments on the table and the contents of the safe, it seemed much of this back room was dedicated to curing some sort of magical malady. Had Silas been sick?

  She reached back into the safe. Her hand closed around another item.

  “There’s a book,” she said.

  Let’s see it.

  “I don’t think it’ll fit.” She could tell right away that it was far too big for the opening of the safe. How it got in there in the first place was a mystery.

  Clancy sighed. Just try it.

  Hazel shrugged and complied. Much to her amazement, the opening of the safe responded as she pulled at the book, shifting and distending as it disgorged the volume. “That was as disturbing as it was helpful,” she said.

  Regardless, she felt a growing respect for Silas. She had been putting in what felt like endless hours on her magic over the last month and had barely made any progress. The very idea of being able to create something like this deep-bellied, wide-mouthed safe made her smile in admiration.

  The book that had emerged from the safe was thin and broad, bound in a dark leather cover and embossed with strange symbols. She placed it gently on the desktop.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  It’s his ledger—where he keeps all of his accounts.

  “Could it provide us with solid leads?” She opened the book and was greeted with what looked like an old-fashioned spreadsheet. The word SALES was written in bold across the top of the page. And what followed were pages of names, addresses, items sold or pawned, and signatures.

  If I know Silas, he said. That is no ordinary ledger book. See those sales? People had to sign for them. Now look at the back cover.

  Hazel closed the book and flipped it over. An emblem was embossed on the back cover. It was a complex design, a series of Escherian twists and turns and folds that made her think of a Celtic braid, though this was no Celtic braid.