by R K Dreaming
“Sorry buddy,” she said. “You’re not coming home with me today. You’re going to stay with Lucy tonight.”
The kitten was looking at her disapprovingly as if it did not like what she had just said.
“It can’t be helped,” said Percy. She tapped its nose. “You be good now, and consider it a favor to me. I need you to keep Lucy out of trouble. If he has to stay home and look after you, he can’t be out hitting the town and getting into any shenanigans.”
The kitten mewled as if asking it to babysit Lucifer was the worst thing Percy could ever ask.
The office door opened and Lucifer charged in. His eyes lit up when he saw Percy, and he said, “Hell’s Bells, finally you’re here! That thing has been harassing me all day.”
“Where have you been?” she asked him accusingly.
“Taking a break,” he said.
He shifted a little uncomfortably as he said it, and Percy noticed right away. Her eyes narrowed. She sniffed. She could smell smoke. The sort of pungent smoke that kids smelled of after they had been loitering behind the bike shed.
She glared at him “I know exactly what you have been doing,” she snapped, “and I don’t think you should be doing it!”
“Who is the parent?” he demanded. “You or me?”
“Exactly!” she said. “Clearly it’s me!”
He gave a shout of laughter and ruffled her hair. “And that’s exactly how I like it,” he said, and collapsed into his chair as if he was exhausted.
“This work lark,” he said. “Never have I done anything that’s more draining.”
“Work?” she said scathingly. “I’ve yet to see you do a minute’s work. The library is falling apart. Nan has been complaining about it all week. This used to be her favorite place. But now none of the returned books have been put back on their shelves. Stacks them of them are piling up everywhere. And kids have been leaving litter and mess on all the tables and in all the corners. You don’t even tell them off!”
“True,” he said. “It’s turning into a veritable hovel. I can’t live like this. I really must hire some staff.”
“You are the staff,” she told him.
He groaned. “Staff,” he lamented. “Me? Never did I think I would be brought so low.”
He lay back in his chair and put his hand over his eyes as if the thought of work was simply unbearable.
Percy dropped the kitten into his lap. “I need you to look after her,” she said. “There’s something I have to do after school, and I can’t take her with me.”
Lucifer’s eyes flew open in alarm. “Look after her? But my shift is finished! I have plans this evening!”
“Then you can just cancel them. Because she needs to be fed regularly, and I won’t have you gallivanting around town while she is starving.”
“But it is not my job to look after her,” he protested.
“Do I ever ask you for any favors?” said Percy. “I can’t believe that you are going to say no the first time I ever ask you for anything. What kind of parent is that?”
He sulked. “But you said that I’m not your parent. You can’t have it both ways.”
“Friend then,” she said. “Nan and I have something urgent to do.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “You’re going back to Magicwild Market to flash that photo around some more, aren’t you?”
Percy’s eyes went wide. She had hoped he had forgotten about the photo. She wasn’t sure what his reaction would be at finding out who the man was.
“That man had the same green hair as you do,” he said. “Is he your father?”
Percy shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.
“What do you need him for?” Lucifer sulked. “Who is he anyway?”
“That’s what I want to find out.”
“If you don’t know, then you don’t need to know,” he said immediately.
A knock came on the door of the office. It opened, and a student popped her head in.
“Sir, we’ve been waiting for ten minutes. We need to borrow some books.”
“Do I look like I’m your servant?” asked Lucifer irritably.
The girl blushed.
And then she squealed as the kitten dashed past her ankles like a little grey streak.
Cursing, Percy ran after it. The library was huge. She had to catch it before it disappeared out of sight amongst the many towering shelves. She would never find it if it decided to play hide and seek, which the cheeky little thing was very likely to do. And it would starve if it got lost in here overnight.
“Kitten!” she called urgently. “You come back here right now!”
But the kitten did not look back.
Students laughed, watching her chase the scampering fur ball, and then to Percy’s horror she saw the door of the library opening up ahead as more students came in.
“Shut that door!” she bellowed.
But it was too late. The kitten had already gone through it.
With a muffled scream of frustration Percy charged out of the door, almost trampling over the students as she did so.
“Watch it!” one of the boys said.
“You watch it!” she snarled.
The kitten was fast. It was racing down the hallways as if it knew exactly where it was going, and Percy flung herself after it, skidding around corners, desperate not to let the kitten out of her sight.
All of a sudden the school seemed full of doors — classroom doors, bathroom doors, office doors, exit doors.
All the kitten would have to do was go through one of them and disappear out of sight, and Percy would never find it again.
“Kitten,” she pleaded.
And then to her surprise, the kitten came to a stop. It went right up to a blue door with great certainty and started scrabbling at it frantically as if it needed to get inside.
Relieved, Percy closed in on it. She was just about to scoop the kitten up, when the door opened and two boys came out. The kitten dashed in through the gap, past their feet.
Percy was going to run after it when she noticed the damn door led to the boy’s toilets. The two boys who had emerged looked at Percy with raised eyebrows.
“Dammit,” she said. “Can you going and get my kitten?”
“You shouldn’t have kittens in school, mosshead,” said one of the boys.
“Very clever,” snapped Percy. “If you’re not going to help, then get out of my way.”
The boys laughed as Percy went into the bathroom, calling out “Girl incoming!” as she went.
There was no need. The bathroom was empty. There were no boys inside.
Outside the door, she could hear the laughter of the other two boys fading away. She was glad. The last thing she needed was for them to hang around watching her and laughing as she chased a kitten around the boy’s toilets.
The kitten had disappeared from sight, so Percy started opening the cubicle doors one by one to see where it had got to. When Percy got to the last cubicle, sure that the kitten must be in it, the door would not budge. It was locked.
A gap of several inches at the bottom of the door was large enough for the kitten to squeeze into. Percy bent down to take a look. She gasped. “Sorry!” she yelped.
There was a boy inside. She had seen his shoes and ankles. The kitten was sitting next to him.
“I didn’t know you were in there,” she said. “Er, could you shoo my kitten out please?”
The boy did not respond. Percy was annoyed, and then it occurred to her that maybe he’d been skiving off classes. Maybe he was asleep in there.
She took another peek. It certainly looked like he might be napping from the way his legs were skewed to one side, as if he was leaning against the cubicle wall.
She knocked louder, more insistently. “Excuse me? School’s over now. Wakey, wakey!”
The boy did not answer.
Percy took another glance under the door. The kitten was still sitting there, looking at the boy’s shoes. It
mewled, but did not come out when she waved her hand at it.
And then Percy saw what she had not noticed before. There were little pills lying all over the bathroom tiles. And a discarded bottle that looked suspiciously like it had been full of stuff much stronger than soda. It was now empty.
“Crap!” Percy yelled.
She banged on the door loudly, but knew now that the boy would not answer.
“I’m coming,” she said to him urgently. “Hold on. I’m coming.”
The outside of the lock mechanism had a slot that could be turned to unlock it. She fished out her keys from her backpack and used the end of one to turn the lock. The door sprang open.
Inside was the lumpy faced boy, Frank Eaton-Philips. He was slumped over, his head at a very awkward angle against the cubicle wall. The moment that Percy saw him, she knew that it was too late for her to help him. For anyone to help him.
With a gasp of shock, Percy grabbed her kitten and then backed out of the cubicle. She was about to run out and scream for help, when she realized she might be wrong. She hastily went back in, reaching for his throat to check his pulse.
The moment she touched him, the boy fell forwards, his head hitting her chest with a dull thump. Percy grabbed him. She couldn’t let him fall on the floor. It would be so undignified. He wouldn’t like that. And as she held him, the door of the boy’s bathroom burst open behind her.
She turned around, her heart racing, opening her mouth to call for help. But Bella and Blanche and Barbie crowded into the cubicle doorway, wicked grins on their faces and their phones held ready to film Percy.
“Making out with Frankenstein in the boy’s toilets!” Bella screeched in glee.
And then the Three Bees seemed to notice how Frank was slumped over. That he was not moving. They realized that Percy was holding a dead boy and they screamed.
6. Cats With Character
“And then Bella shouted ‘Murder!’ with this really gleeful expression on her face,” said Percy. “And she screamed for help until that horrid woman came.”
It was lunchtime the next day, Thursday. Percy and Nan were in the furthest darkest corner of the library that they had been able to find, tucked between two towering bookshelves, sitting cross legged on the floor and whispering.
The kitten was scampering excitedly between the two of them. Nan offered her finger to the kitten as a chew toy and the kitten delightedly wrestled with it.
“And all the while,” said Percy, “poor Frank was drooping lower and lower in my arms. He was so heavy! But did the Three Bees help me put him down gently? The hell they did.”
The previous day, after the discovery of the body, all students had been sent home immediately. Nan had called her mother, who had demanded she come home at once, so this was the first opportunity that Percy and Nan had had to speak about Percy’s discovery in private.
Earlier that day, for the second time in the week, morning break had been taken up by a special student assembly during which Headmistress Glory had regretfully announced the death of Frank Eaton-Philips. Encouraged by nods from the headmistress, a couple of students had gone reluctantly up onto the stage to speak in memory of Frank. Neither had seemed to know very much about him.
Nan nodded sympathetically. “That horrid woman is called Madam Winnifred Strickt. She was the replacement judge at the Beauty Pageant remember?”
“What the heck is she doing at our school?” Percy demanded. She had disliked the smiley old prune on sight.
“She bullied her way into the Beauty Pageant and now she’s bullied her way into a job at the school,” Nan complained. “She’s the school’s new Eldritch Student Liaison Officer. A letter came to our house about it. Since when did we need an Eldritch Student Liaison Officer?” she finished sourly.
“I bet you she’s a plant from the council,” said Percy. “Do you reckon she’s any relation to Councilor Strickt?”
“Probably,” said Nan. “It was the council that recommended her to be the replacement judge.
“She sort of looks like him,” said Percy.
“Does she? I didn’t think so.”
“He’s a squirrelly gaunt giant and she’s a squirrelly little bird.”
Nan laughed.
“Did we not have an Eldritch Student Liaison Officer before then?” said Percy. She was too new to school to know, and hadn’t taken much interest in the staff.
“Not as long as I’ve been here,” said Nan. “They’ve put her in the School Counsellor’s Office and given her that role too. It’s just what we need. A council plant spying on the students who most need someone to talk to. It makes me sick.”
“She’s got that horrid fake smile,” said Percy. “You should have seen her smile at me like all her Christmases had come at once when Bella pointed at me and said, ‘Murder! She did it!’ and started bawling her fake tears again. I bet that’s what she did to get out of the Beauty Pageant trouble too. I’m surprised Councilor Strickt didn’t arrive on the spot with my arrest warrant!”
“How did you get out of it?” said Nan.
“Barbie told Madam Strickt that none of them had actually seen me murder him. You should have seen Bella and Blanche glare daggers at her like she had betrayed them. Anyway, the booze and pills were everywhere. And he had left a note explaining why he’d done it too, so she had to let me go.”
“What did the note say?”
Percy shrugged. “Dunno. Madam Strickt snatched it off the ground and wouldn’t tell us what was in it.”
“It said,” said a snide voice, “that life was grim and he just couldn’t take it anymore and the worst bit was that he didn’t even have any friends to say goodbye to and please could somebody tell his mum that he was sorry, not that he thought she would care.”
Percy and Nan looked up to see Octavia Smythe-Smith and Felix Fiori standing over them. They had come out from behind a bookshelf without Percy even noticing.
Percy glared at Octavia, wondering how long she had been standing there and how much she might have heard.
Nan’s mouth had dropped open and she looked a little upset on hearing the contents of Frank’s note.
Percy demanded. “Is that really what it said or did you just make that emotional crap up?”
“It’s really what it said,” said Felix regretfully.
“And I suppose you two got to read it because you’re Councilor Strickt’s favorite little pets,” said Percy.
Octavia glared. She looked behind the bookshelf and up and down the library, craning her neck to make sure nobody else was within earshot, and then hissed, “Would you keep your voice down!”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Nan. “I suppose your best bud here told you all about us? Well you had better keep your mouth shut or you’ll get the sort of trouble from the Eldritch Council that you don’t want to know about.”
“Ooh, scary,” said Percy. “Now, if you’re done bullying my best bud—”
“I was not bullying her!” said Octavia, looking offended.
“Big bully vampire,” said Percy.
Nan asked, “Is that what you came to tell us or did you want something else.”
“If you must know, Councilor Strickt had asked us to take statements from all the students involved to ensure that everything was as it looked. That includes you.”
“Councilor Strickt, huh?” said Percy slyly. “Are you sure it wasn’t Madam Strickt who told you?”
The look of affront on Octavia’s face told Percy all she needed to know.
“Ha! So it was Madam Strickt who told you. Is Councilor Strickt delegating through his, what — wifey? — these days?”
The stiffness of Octavia’s expression told Percy that she had scored again.
Octavia crossed her arms. “His sister actually. And so what? He’s still the one we ultimately report to. Nothing’s changed.”
“Yeah, whatever. A creepy spy is a creepy spy. If you want my statement, hurry up about it. What do you want to know?”
>
“Everything about how you found the body,” said Octavia. “And what you were doing inside the boy’s toilets in the first place.”
Percy pointed to the kitten, who did not seem to like Octavia much and had taken refuge in Percy’s lap. “My kitten ran off into there and I was chasing it.”
Octavia leaned over to check under Percy’s knee where the kitten had tucked itself. “What are you doing with a kitten in school?” she snapped.
“Why? Is it against the council by-laws?” said Percy.
Nan shot Percy a look to tell her to stop being such an ass.
“The kitten is sick,” explained Nan. “We’ve had to ask Mr Darkwing to look after it.”
Octavia’s eyebrows shot up. “The librarian? Why would he be helping you look after a kitten?”
Nan flushed. “He’s er… he’s…”
“My uncle,” said Percy smoothly. “Not that it is any of your business.”
“Hmmm….” said Octavia, and made a little note of this fact in her notepad.
“So your kitten ran into the boy’s bathroom,” prompted Felix gently.
“Yep, ran right into the cubicle where Frank was. I couldn’t believe he was dead.”
“A likely tale,” said Octavia.
“A true tale,” said Nan sharply.
“Why didn’t you shout for help immediately?” demanded Octavia, her pen poised as if it was about to write something incriminating.
“Like I said, I couldn’t believe he was dead. I went to check his pulse and he fell forwards onto me, and that was when the Three Bees all burst in with their stupid camera phones. You can check their footage.”
“We have,” said Felix. “And we’ve confiscated it,” he added. “And warned them not to share it.”
Percy was surprised. “Er, thanks. That’s cool.”
“That’s our job,” snapped Octavia. “We’re here to prevent friction in this school.”
“And punish any of the eldritch students who might cause it?” said Nan. “As if it is always the eldritch at fault? The Humbles give as good as they get, you know.”
“The Humbles are people too,” said Octavia coldly. “And they deserve to be protected.”
