Cauldrons and Kittens

by R K Dreaming

  Percy slid her fingers in, and beneath the lining she discovered a small piece of card. It was like it had been stuffed into there on purpose. Excited, Percy pulled it out.

  She knew immediately this was what she had come for. It was a business card. Printed on garishly purple paper, the flowing golden words on it said:

  YE OLDE MAGYK SHOPPE

  We fulfil all your extraordinary needs!

  It had a phone number on the back, and a London address — not in Magicwild Market, but in Soho.

  Percy’s heart started thumping. It looked exactly like the sort of thing that a business savvy witch or wizard might handout to their Humble customers to entice them in. Humble customers who they most certainly were not supposed to cater to, because that would definitely be breaking the International Magical Secrecy Pact. Which explained why they had such a ridiculous name for their store. They could claim they were selling just tourist crap.

  Percy felt a tingle of certainty. This was it. This was the clue she needed.

  She pocketed the card quickly, and slipped out of the bedroom, and just as easily out of the house, giving Arthur Delancey and his aunt her well-wishes on the way.

  He might be a git, but he had just lost his mother. And Percy intended to find out why.

  12. Killer Snitch

  “I don’t know why you think this is so important,” Nan said, looking doubtfully at the card from the Ye Olde Magyk Shoppe.

  They were on the street a little way down from the Delancey house. Percy had emerged from it to find a worried Nan waiting for her.

  “The thing that bothered me about Mrs Delancey’s death from the start was that she was messing around with magic,” said Percy. “It’s a red flag isn’t it? Why does a Humble need to use magic for stuff?”

  “She didn’t,” said Nan. “That potion was fake.”

  “I told you my theory that it might have been a failed potion made by a real witch,” said Percy impatiently. “How did Mrs D even know about magic? The whole of the rest of her life was normal. Her son doesn’t have a clue even though he’s dating a succubus, and you should’ve seen her sister with her stiff upper lip. If she found out about magic, she would probably have a fit! And the way the card was tucked away in that rip in the lining — Mrs D was hiding it like it was a sordid little secret.”

  Nan’s unconvinced look suddenly changed to one of alarm. Percy felt her face shifting and changing, and Nan dragged her into an alleyway to hide until the rest of the change had taken place.

  Afterwards Percy shuddered. It had felt weird to be in a body that was not her own and she was relieved to be back in hers. It felt light and free, the way she was used to feeling. Not heavy and weighed down and slow.

  “We should go to the magic shop right now,” Percy said.

  “No way!” said Nan.

  Despite Nan’s protests, Percy insisted, and was glad when Nan followed her to the nearest London Underground station. The two girls hopped onto the tube again, but when they finally arrived at Soho, they found that the shop was closed.

  A little notice in the window said that it closed at five o’clock on Sundays.

  It was a dusty and cluttered looking establishment. The sign above the large window looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in decades, and the assortment of bric-a-brac on display was not very tempting.

  There was a selection of ridiculous-looking leather bound spell books that nobody in their right minds would want to buy, since they were clearly fake and were hugely overpriced. Scattered all around were bunches of crystals arranged as if they were precious gems, and various glass baubles that served no purpose whatsoever that Nan and Percy could tell. These ineffective temptations were all splayed upon a purple velvet backing. In the middle of it all was a centerpiece of oversized tarot cards arranged in a flourish, with a notice saying that authentic tarot readings were offered here.

  It looked nothing like the reputable establishments that sold goods in the Magicwild Marketplace. Clearly even Humbles were not convinced by the tasteless display. The shops lack of success was visible in its overall shabby feel, right down to the peeling paint on the doors and windows.

  “This is not a magic shop,” Nan declared, the corners of her lips curling down in disgust.

  “That is what they want us to think,” said Percy. She was scowling at the little notice in the window that said the shop was closed. “It’s not like you can declare that you’re a real magic shop right in the middle of Humble London. But what self-respecting London establishment closes up at this time on a weekend?”

  Nan on the other hand looked very pleased to find the shop closed. “The kind of establishment owned by someone who isn’t a real witch or wizard,” she said quietly, mindful that Humbles walking by in the busy, narrow pavements of Soho were within earshot.

  Percy still refused to leave, and tried to peer in through the dusty glass in the shop door.

  Nan tugged her away. “Look,” she said in desperation, pointing at the sign. “It’s open until half past six tomorrow. We can come after school.”

  The two girls got back onto the tube and headed home towards Notting Hill Gate station, from where they walked the short distance to the end of Nan’s street. Percy handed over Lucky kitten to Nan, who accepted her, looking confused.

  “I need you to look after her tonight,” said Percy.

  Nan immediately tried to hand Lucky kitten back. “I told you I can’t keep her,” she insisted. “I’m going to get my own kitten from a well-known line of familiars. I just have to find the right one.”

  “I’m not asking you to keep her forever,” said Percy irritably. “Just for a night or two. She’s been freaking out every night that I’ve had her, and now Mr Bramble says there’s some random cat getting into the house. I’m going to have to find out how it’s getting in and block it before Lucky kitten can come home. Or do you want her to be terrified all night because of this other cat?”

  “Fine,” Nan muttered. “Just for one night.”

  She cuddled Lucky kitten close, gazing at her adoringly.

  Percy heaved a sigh of relief. Finally she might get a decent night’s sleep without having to completely black out from sheer exhaustion.

  Nan turned up to school the next morning looking irritable. She did not have Lucky kitten with her. Percy, who had missed the little critter overnight, was disappointed.

  “Mum said she’d look after her today, but you definitely have to pick her up tonight after school,” said Nan, holding out her arms so that Percy could see the many scratches on them.

  Percy was astonished. “What happened?”

  “That cat is mental,” said Nan. “Maybe she doesn’t like magic or she just doesn’t like us. The moment I got her home, she started freaking out, as if she realized that you weren’t coming to join us. We tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t obey any of mum’s spells. She was still scratching at the doors and jumping all over us this morning, throwing a hissy fit.”

  Percy grinned. “Maybe she was missing me.”

  Nan snorted. “Good, because you’re having her back tonight. Mum only kept her because she was horrified that we’d been leaving her at school with the librarian. Did you find the mad cat that’s been running around your house?”

  Percy shook her head.

  She had spent the previous evening desperately catching up on homework, before taking a perfunctory look around the house. She’d hoped to cajole Jeeves into helping, and had been annoyed that he’d disappeared straight after serving dinner. She had not had any luck finding any signs that a rogue cat even existed, let alone how it was getting inside the house.

  The problem was that Percy’s house was immense. It was large looking on the outside, but had also been hugely magically enhanced on the inside. It had been impossible for Percy to search the whole thing thoroughly in one evening.

  She sighed, resigned to the fact that she was going to have to make her room at least cat proof tonight. She had thought i
t already was, but the darned cat must have been getting in somehow to terrify Lucky kitten while Percy had slept.

  She and Nan made their made into the school. Percy had been dreading this moment all weekend.

  She knew the moment that she stepped into the school building that the day ahead was going to be miserable.

  The first week that she had arrived in school she had stood out like a sore thumb because of her green hair and also because she was new, making everyone curious about her. Things had gone downhill after she had cried “Murder!” when the pageant judge had died.

  In the interim week the animosity of her fellow students had been quietly rumbling, but at least people had stopped staring at her everywhere she went. That had changed today, clearly.

  Nearly every group of students that she and Nan walked past stopped to stare at Percy. Many of them glowered silently, but some of them backed away a little nervously.

  “That video of you,” said Nan out of the side of her mouth. “It must’ve got out.”

  Damn right it had got out. Clearly one of the Three Bees had kept a copy of the video of her following Delphine into that classroom, and had spread it around the school. It looked like almost everyone had seen it.

  This proved true when Shara Greyshale intercepted Percy and Nan on the way to their lockers. She showed them the video, which had been sent to her too.

  The footage had been heavily edited. The lighting had been dimmed, and quiet spooky music added to make the ordinary corridor outside Mrs Delancey’s classroom feel ominous. It showed Delphine going into the room and Percy following her. Delphine’s screams emerged from the closed door shortly afterwards, horribly amplified and distorted.

  The footage shook as the holder of the camera rushed into the classroom. Percy was revealed standing at the window, guiltily looking through Delphine’s handbag. The image zoomed in on Percy’s face, and Percy felt a lurch of sickness at how she really did look like she had done something wrong.

  Percy’s guilty face froze in the frame and the words CAUGHT IN THE ACT! appeared on the screen. The image flashed red and black and white, and all the while it zoomed in to Percy’s shifty eyes.

  The footage resumed rolling, and the camera rushed to the window, shoving Percy aside. The image panned out of the window and showed Delphine’s still body lying down below.

  Percy’s heart thudded as she watched it. If Percy had not been there herself, she would have said it was absolutely convincing.

  The implication was clear. Percy was a murderer. The video ended on a screenshot of her guilty face, with the words KILLER SNITCH superimposed over her face.

  Someone had printed that image out, and posters of it had been put up in the hallways all over the school. They were even on the classroom doors and the noticeboards.

  Percy’s locker was papered with them. She angrily tore them aside, but it made no difference. There were simply too many of them to get rid of. Everywhere she looked, there they were.

  Even the teachers had given up trying to get rid of them. Some teachers had torn them off their doors, but others had left them on, and stood in their doorways frowning at Percy as she walked by.

  Percy tried to hold her head up high, but when she walked into Maths, the first lesson that day, she was greeted with a chorus of hisses from nearly every student in the class.

  Bella and Blanche and Barbie were sitting in their usual place in the middle, glaring at Percy. The looks of grief plastered all over their faces had a hint of the melodramatic about them, but their hatred of her was palpably real.

  The three of them had chosen to wear dark eye make-up and stark red lipstick that made them look like tragic heroines. They had even rubbed a little red eyeshadow around their eyes, as if they had been crying, but Percy was fairly sure that they had not shed any real tears. After all, she full well remembered that they had never allowed Delphine into their clique, which Delphine had been so desperate to join.

  Everyone else seemed to have forgotten this.

  “Get out, killer snitch,” one boy said.

  “Snitch, snitch, killer snitch.”

  The rest of the class took up the chant.

  The only ones who stayed silent were Nilgun and her friends in the corner, though a couple of them had also started to sing along, but had stopped when Nilgun had glared at them. They didn’t sing it, but nor did they tell the others to shut up.

  Nilgun gave Percy a sympathetic glance, and Percy was glad that at least Nilgun had the sense to not hang her before she had been tried for her crimes.

  Shara and Nan and Percy walked together to the back of the room. The three sat at their usual table, ignoring everyone until the teacher arrived as late and irritable as he usually was on a Monday morning and told everyone to shut up.

  An atmosphere of cold silence stayed in the air during the entire lesson. Percy felt people’s eyes crawling over her for the entire time, and knew they were all convinced she had done it.

  They thought she had pushed Delphine Carmen out of the window.

  They thought she was insane, a murderer.

  She felt a little numb. She couldn’t believe it. How could it have been so easy to persuade a class full of students who knew her that she had done it?

  She couldn’t help but feel betrayed.

  When the class ended, Percy hurried to the front before anyone could get out.

  She said loudly, “You’ve never heard of video editing? You think I would be here if I really had pushed her? Why don’t you use your brains instead of following the Three Bees around like their good little hive of worker drones?” Spitting that out, she charged out of the classroom with Nan and Shara at her tail.

  English Language came next and then English Literature after the break. Though the Three Bees were not in either of these with Percy, the classes were no better than Math had been.

  These were the lessons that Mrs Delancey had used to teach. The temporary replacement who was filling in for her had decided that the best approach was to tell them that they could read any of the various books available in the classroom cupboards, so long as they did not talk during class.

  This was not helpful, given the simmering discontent among the students. It would have been better to give them structured work to distract them. Word had got around that Mrs Delancey’s funeral had taken place that weekend and that some of their fellow classmates had even attended.

  Everyone looked miserable, and more than a few of them shot baleful looks towards Percy, all of them clearly having seen the video. They seemed to take it as a personal affront that she had attended this lesson, as if she was insulting the memory of Mrs Delancey by being there.

  Nan spent the whole of these two lessons reading more chapters of Romeo and Juliet, and elbowing Percy to do the same and keep her eyes fixed on her reading material.

  “Don’t make a scene,” she urged quietly.

  Shara had seemed unaffected by the moody undercurrent in the air. She seemed preoccupied in her own thoughts and stared at her book blankly, her legs jittering rapidly under the table.

  At lunchtime, Nan produced three sets of sandwiches from her satchel. She’d anticipated that Percy might be unwelcome in the dining hall that lunchtime.

  The three of them walked out into the grounds, to the quiet spot behind the groundskeeper’s shed, where a patch of overgrown grass surrounded by trees offered shelter for them to eat their sandwiches undisturbed.

  They ate mostly in silence. Percy did not know Shara well and clearly Shara felt awkward in Percy’s presence. Nan did ask Shara how she was doing and whether her brother was any better. Shara merely shrugged.

  Nan bit her lip, and kept looking at Shara intermittently, as if she felt guilty.

  Shara seemed to remember something.

  “Thanks for the flowers,” she said to Percy.

  Percy nodded.

  When Shara finished eating, she abruptly stood up and thanked Nan tersely for the sandwiches, and said she needed to
go for a walk to clear her head. She strode off and disappeared beyond the trees.

  “What was that about?” said Percy to Nan, when she was sure that Shara was out of earshot.

  Nan shrugged, looking miserable. “I can’t talk about it,” she said. “It’s her private business. I said I won’t.”

  “Is it to do with her brother?” Percy asked.

  Nan nodded.

  “I saw her talking to Octavia about something the other day. It sounded odd.”

  “Oh?” said Nan, flushing a little. “It must be her family stuff,” she added vaguely.

  Whatever it was had bothered Nan enough for her to lose her appetite, because she began to wrap up the remnants of her half eaten chicken and avocado sandwich. Percy, who had finished her own sandwiches, reached out for them.

  “If you’re not going to eat that, I will.”

  Nan readily handed it over. Percy’s own sandwiches had been chicken and sweetcorn, which she had been pleased that Mrs Gooding had remembered she liked, but Nan’s chicken and avocado was tastier than she had thought it would be.

  “Don’t you want to go and see Lucifer today?” Nan asked.

  Percy had not visited him during morning break that day as was her custom.

  Percy shook her head. “Let him stew,” she said. “Honestly, he is such a child sometimes. I can’t believe he thinks this whole situation is going to smooth itself out!”

  “He’s used to things going his way,” said Nan.

  “Well he’s not a Lord of Hell in Hell anymore,” said Percy. “And he isn’t going to like it when he figures it out.”

  “Did anyone from the council get in touch with you about interviewing you?” said Nan nervously.

  “Not yet,” said Percy darkly. “I guess we’ll find out. Octavia and Felix’ll be in next lesson. I bet she’ll have something smug to say.”

  Percy did not feel much like going to Double Science, her last lesson of the day. The only reason that Nan was able to cajole her into it was because Percy didn’t want anyone saying she was a coward.