A Familiar Sense of Dead

by E L Wilder

“Nope, they’re fairy princesses,” said Cordelia, dripping with sarcasm.

  “Don’t they get summers off?”

  “Why would they do that?” she asked. “It’s pretty hard to teach foraging and phytomancy in the dead of winter.”

  “Phytomancy?”

  “Plant magic,” explained Cordelia. “My favorite subject.”

  “So what is this place?” Hazel asked, nodding at the building.

  “Harmony House,” said Cordelia, with more than a hint of disdain.

  “Harmony House. That’s Cass’s coven . . .”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Not a fan?” Hazel asked cautiously. It was hard to think that anyone might not love with the grandmotherly councilwoman, but it certainly appeared the Strange family bore her ill will.

  “They like to pretend like they’re the premiere coven on campus,” Cordelia said, “But they’re mostly a bunch of stuck-up brats.”

  “Cass said my Gammy was in Harmony House.” Hazel had spent all day feeling like a stranger in a strange land, but to be so near a place that her Gammy had frequented was comforting. Though Gammy had never mentioned it before. Hazel wished, not for the first time, that she had paid better attention.

  “It’s not entirely shocking that your grandmother was in Harmony House.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Cordelia shrugged. “You keep your nose clean is all, and the apple never falls too far.”

  Why did that not feel like a compliment?

  “And were you in a coven?” asked Hazel.

  Cordelia nodded. “Hecate House,” she said. “Just like generations of Stranges before me.

  They moved on and drew nearer to the tower. “Almost there,” said Cordelia. Up close, the structure looked no less bizarre—a seamless structure a smooth dark material that seemed to pool light on its side like liquid mercury.

  “What is that?” marveled Hazel.

  “The Spire,” she said. “It’s Silverwell Academy’s library.”

  “Wait,” said Hazel. “Why are we going to a library? Is that really the address Winkworth wrote down?”

  “Yep,” said Cordelia. “And if I had to guess, that crusty old bat Zelda Ogden probably needs some serious meds to keep that withered old heart of hers beating.”

  “Who’s Zelda Ogden?”

  “The librarian and sole employee of the Spire, unless you count the Shelver—and you shouldn’t count the Shelver—so if Winkworth delivered something here, it was definitely to Zelda. Just mind yourself. She is the classic crabby librarian. So try to stay on her good side. Goddesses know I haven’t.”

  * * *

  The interior of the Spire was as mind-boggling, if not more so, than its exterior. In fact, only the small lobby into which Hazel and Cordelia now entered seemed to make any sense. A circulation desk stood off to one side and a few glass displays showcased ancient books or other artifacts—a wand here, a wizard’s robe there.

  Everything beyond the lobby was pure madness. The building itself was carved of the same dark glossy material and seemed to be completely devoid of ninety-degree angles; instead, walls bent and curved, rippled and flexed, and in the cracks and crannies were hidden study carrels and bookshelves, staircases and doorways. Just beyond the edge of the lobby, a gaping hole bored into the floor, a spiral staircase corkscrewing along its edge.

  Cordelia sauntered into the lobby as if she owned it, dragging her fingers across the tops of the display cases and leaving streaks in her wake.

  “Can I help you?” came a shrill and lilting voice from behind them. Even by Quark standards, the individual that had addressed them was peculiar. It was hard to tell whether she had more eyes or arms, but she possessed an abundance of both. The shape of her was hard to pick out. It was vaguely humanoid, though the proportions were all out of whack. Her head was an amorphous blob underneath a dyed-red perm, her many eyes adrift like raisins floating in yogurt. Each set of eyes was fitted with a pair of glasses, no two of them alike: here were some cat-eye glasses like a diner waitress, there a wire-rimmed pair all round and professorial, there a monocle with a chain that trailed off into her sweater. When she blinked, all her eyes blinked at once, and the effect was distracting at best, and slightly unsettling at worst—and distinctly spiderlike, Hazel thought.

  Zelda noticed Cordelia and immediately her eyes narrowed in disdain. “Cordelia Strange. I thought I’d never see you here again. Have you come to disregard more library policies? Should I summon campus security?” Zelda turned her attention to Hazel. “You should mind the company you keep, young lady.”

  “We’re here on official business, Mrs. Ogden,” said Hazel. “I represent the Council and we are conducting an investigation.” Hazel tapped her badge for emphasis, just in case had it escaped the notice of Zelda’s many eyes.

  Zelda arched an eyebrow—somehow she still only had two of those—and asked, pointedly, “And her?”

  “I’m Wand of the Council too,” replied Cordelia coolly.

  “Pfft. Oh that’s rich. Are they just handing out badges to anyone with a pulse now?”

  “It would seem so,” said Cordelia, shrugging.

  “So I suppose you’re here to do some research then?” asked Zelda curtly. “Something for the Council?”

  “No research,” said Hazel. “We’re here to ask you some questions, Zelda.”

  “Me?” Zelda’s tough exterior immediately cracked, and her face reddened, nearly matching her perm. “Why would you need to ask me questions? I’m no criminal.”

  “Nobody said you were a criminal,” noted Hazel.

  “Yet,” muttered Cordelia. “Though that perm might be a misdemeanor.”

  “We just need to confirm a purchase from Dr. Winkworth’s Medicine Show,” said Hazel. Hazel held up the case and the librarian’s reaction was instantaneous. Somehow she blushed an even deeper shade of crimson. She rushed back behind the circulation desk where another smaller desk was tucked in the corner. She tore open one of the drawers and pulled out an identical case and looked from her case to Hazel’s suspiciously as if confirming with each of her many eyes that she was still, in fact, in possession of her case and had not been the subject of some campus prank.

  “No, Zelda,” sighed Cordelia. “We didn’t steal your case. We also didn’t eat in the library, talk in the stacks, or write the books.”

  Hazel shot Cordelia a look. “But it would be helpful if you could tell us why you purchased the kit in the first place.”

  Zelda huffed mightily. “I hardly see how it’s any your business. You haven’t even told me what this is all about. I have rights, you know.”

  “Three people have purchased this same treatment kit from Dr. Winkworth, Zelda,” Hazel explained patiently, “and one of them is now dead.”

  Zelda paled, all her eyes going wide and her hand going to her throat. “Oh my. I just took a dose. Am I in danger?” She gagged a little.

  “Not unless you have a habit of turning into a murderous spider,” remarked Cordelia.

  Zelda seemed genuinely perplexed at the comment. “What?”

  “We’re investigating the death of Silas MacGregor,” said Hazel.

  Immediately Zelda’s face softened. “Oh no,” she said almost apologetically. “Not Silas.”

  “You knew him?”

  “He was one of our prized alumni. Or one of my prized alumni, anyway. What happened?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping to figure out,” said Hazel. She fished the library card that had fallen from the ledger out of her satchel and held it out to Zelda. “Could this be Silas’s?”

  Zelda took the card and looked at it cursorily and shrugged. “All these eyes and I still can’t tell the difference,” she said. “Every borrower’s card looks identical. Only the system can tell them apart. Of course Silas did have a card. Technically his borrowing privileges should have been discontinued when he graduated—but I could never say no to Silas. Such a hungry mind needs to be f
ed!”

  “He came here often?”

  “Often does not begin to cover it!” said Zelda. “He might have been down in the stacks more than any other person. Especially lately. He’d been coming here every day for months. I thought it odd that he stopped suddenly, but I never thought . . . oh my—” She put a hand over her mouth and stifled a sob.

  “Do you know what he was researching here?” Hazel asked gently.

  “He was obsessed with riven,” said Zelda slowly. “He was always looking for more information. You would think he’d have plumbed the depths of that topic over the years. The day he was last here, he did seem particularly excited about something. He came up from the stacks in a tizzy and he was going on about lesions. I couldn’t make sense of a word of it. He was so excited, he was nearly unintelligible.”

  “Lesions?” asked Cordelia. “Like sores?”

  “It could be,” she said. “Perhaps a symptom of the riven?”

  “Did he check out any books?” asked Hazel.

  Zelda looked appalled at the suggestion. “Goddesses no, my child,” she said. “The books in the library do not circulate. All materials must be used in the reading rooms.”

  “So why do you issue library cards?” Hazel asked.

  “Because it keeps the Shelver at bay,” said Zelda, nearly whispering. “You can’t go into the stacks without a card.”

  “So there are no records of what he was looking at?”

  Zelda shook her head.

  Hazel exchanged uncertain glances with Cordelia. Cordelia shrugged.

  “I hate to keep harping on it,” said Hazel. “But it would help if you could tell us what you needed that medicine kit for. For Silas’s sake. I aim to see justice done for him.”

  Zelda averted her many eyes to the floor and blinked away a veritable flood of tears. “I wish I could tell you,” she said. “I’ve felt unwell as of late.”

  “Unwell?”

  “Tired, restless, unfocused,” she said. “Thin. Maybe it’s just my age catching up with me, but Dr. Winkworth said he had the cure.”

  “Of course he did,” growled Cordelia.

  “Did Silas know you were taking these same cures?” Hazel asked, holding up the case. “Powdered dendrant root. Emulsified mermaid oil.”

  “Of course he did,” said Zelda. “He was the one that recommended it for me.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I don’t trust her,” said Cordelia, lighting up a cigarette and stuffing her lighter back in her pocket. They had already left the Spire behind and Cordelia had again taken the lead as she brought them to the second address. “A woman with that many eyes seems a dead ringer for a werespider.”

  “I don’t know,” said Hazel thoughtfully. “She seemed genuinely upset about his death.”

  “A true psychopath will play you like that,” stated Cordelia. “And a true werecreature doesn’t have control over their other selves.”

  “Why do I feel like we walked away from that with more questions than answers?” asked Hazel.

  “Because we did.”

  Hazel ruminated as they walked. There was a connection between the werespider, Silas, Winkworth, and Zelda. But she couldn’t see what. Could Zelda be the werespider? Could Winkworth? What was this business about lesions? None of it made any sense to her.

  “Cordelia,” she said. “Earlier when I asked you how you knew so much about riven, you said to ask Clancy. What did you mean by that? I think we’re past the point of being coy. If this could help with the investigation—”

  “It won’t.”

  Hazel stopped in the middle of the path, planted her feet firmly and folded her arms. “I have two partners that won’t tell me a thing about themselves. I’m not going any further until I get some answers.”

  “I’ve known you for all of a hot minute,” said Cordelia. “These things take time.”

  “Time is precisely the one thing we don’t have. So how about answering my question. What does Clancy know about riven?”

  “More than either of us, that’s for sure,” replied Cordelia.

  “How do you know so much about Clancy?”

  “Back when I was in school, we tried to form a familiarship and it didn’t work out.”

  Hazel felt like she’d been slapped in the face. Clancy and his kin were featured on the secret crest of the Bennett women—the crest earmarked for those with the Knack. Somehow Hazel hadn’t even entertained the idea that Clancy had tried finding other witches during her ten-year absence. It seemed to Hazel that being emblazoned on the Bennett-family crest implied an exclusive partnership. Even though Hazel herself had turned her back on her crest, learning that he had also cast it aside felt like a betrayal. Even though she knew it shouldn’t.

  The list of questions Hazel had for Clancy if she ever saw him again—and if he survived the reunion—continued to grow. For now, she tucked them away. It was clear she’d get nothing more from Cordelia on the subject. “So if, as the Council suggested, being riven is such a rare occurrence, why is Winkworth suddenly doling out the same treatment that Silas used on known riven?”

  Cordelia shrugged. “Maybe he’s just moving merchandise and drumming up profit? You can’t pay the bills if you don’t sell the medicine.”

  “Maybe,” said Hazel thoughtfully. “Where’s our next stop?”

  “Caretaker’s cottage,” said Cordelia, checking the address list.

  Hazel thought of the caretaker’s cottage on her side of the Postern and wondered what differences she would find here. She was half hoping Tyler would be present, though she knew she was just being fanciful. When at last they arrived at their destination, she found they had not gone to the caretaker’s cottage at all.

  “This is the sugarhouse!” exclaimed Hazel. Sure it was rundown and ready to collapse in on itself, but there was no mistaking the place that she’d spent the last month practicing with Clancy.

  “No,” retorted Cordelia, “this is the caretaker’s cottage.” She approached the door and knocked.

  A moment later, a familiar doughy troll appeared in the doorway, ducking so he could peer outside. “Whadya want?” Oddlump croaked.

  He seemed not to have noticed Hazel yet and she was in no hurry to change that. She took a few slow steps back just to play it safe. But perhaps her fear was unwarranted. Instead of dingy clothes, he wore a white bathrobe and carried a giant snot-crusted rag in one hand. Without his hype men, Oddlump seemed tame, almost lethargic, and if Hazel wasn’t mistaken, he was unwell.

  “Sorry to bother you at home,” Cordelia said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “But we’re conducting an official investigation for the Council of Quark.”

  “We?” grumbled Oddlump. “Are you counting yourself as a crowd?”

  Cordelia chuckled. “Nope. Just the one.”

  Well, no time like the present, Hazel thought. “She means me,” she said, stepping forward.

  Oddlump’s beady black eyes sharpened. “You.”

  “I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot.”

  “Foot,” he blurted, staring down at the appendage in question with no small degree of fascination. “Yeah! I oughta stomp you like a dog.”

  Hazel cringed. “Do you stomp a lot of dogs?”

  “Calm down, Oddlump,” interrupted Cordelia. She had suddenly transformed from the slouching rebel into a straight-backed authoritarian. Cordelia Strange was turning out to be a woman of many facets. “Like it or not, we’re here on official business from the Council. We just want to ask a few questions.”

  Oddlump seemed to consider the proposal, then consider his foot one more time. “I’ll answer your questions if she stays out here,” he said finally. “I ain’t answering to some two-bit trespasser.”

  “Our authority isn’t conditional, Oddlump,” said Cordelia. “Either you talk to both of us or all three of us start walking back to Quark for a talk with the Council.”

  “What’s this all about?” demanded Oddlump. “I’m not giving
you anything until I get some answers of my own.”

  Cordelia shrugged. “There’s been a murder, and given the company you keep and some of the information we’ve uncovered, we have reasons to want to talk with you.”

  “Oh yeah? Give me one.”

  “This for starters,” said Cordelia, nodding to Hazel. Hazel retrieved the medicine kit from her satchel and held it up for Oddlump.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” said Oddlump.

  “Oh really?” said Cordelia. “Because Winkworth says he sold you one.”

  “Winkworth,” Oddlump spat. “Silas said Winkworth’s medicine would make Oddlump feel better, but Oddlump doesn’t feel better. I ought to stomp him like a dog!”

  “It’s going to be hard to stomp him like a dog when he’s already dead,” said Cordelia.

  Oddlump looked at her funny.

  “Dead,” he repeated. “Is that why Wilhelm and Lev were at his pawnshop today?”

  “You are certainly sharp, Oddlump.”

  “How’d he die?” Oddlump asked, his voice thick with suspicion.

  “A werespider attacked him,” said Hazel. “And now we’re trying to figure out the spider’s identity.”

  Oddlump chafed at the insinuation. “Oddlump is not a werespider!” he bellowed. “You know what Oddlump does to spiders?!”

  “Stomps them like dogs?” sighed Cordelia.

  “Stomps them like dogs!”

  “Of course.”

  “This could be serious, Oddlump,” said Hazel. “We need to confirm the purchase.”

  Oddlump grumbled. “If you pull anything funny, Oddlump will—”

  “The stomping, got it,” said Cordelia.

  Oddlump stepped aside, letting them both into the shack. The interior was surprisingly tidy, considering Oddlump’s personal hygiene—or lowgiene, to be more accurate. The shack was filled with all manner of ostentation—rugs covering the floor and tapestries hanging from the walls, tables and cupboards and shelves artlessly packed with knickknacks and collectibles, plate sets and embroideries. Considering Oddlump’s size as he delicately moved through the shack, stooped to keep his head from hitting the ceiling, the kitschy decor gave the impression that he was living in a dollhouse.