by Clare Kauter
He sighed and nodded. “You’re probably right. Sorry.”
“No worries,” I said. “Always happy to speak to you about your crazy delusions.”
“Maybe I’ll ask the witches if they know what’s happening to me.”
Oh, fuck. The witches. What if their memories were starting to come back? If that happened, I was dead. If they thought I’d clouded them, they were definitely going to suspect me of doing something shady. They might figure out I had the Doomstone. And also arrest me for murder.
Trouble was, Henry’s suggestion seemed reasonable. I had to talk him out of it without making him suspicious. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Well… it’s just that it sounds kind of like you’re… losing it,” I said. I hated myself for doing this, but I didn’t feel like I had another option.
“Is that what you think? I’m going crazy?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I think you’ve been under a lot of stress lately and I’m sure it’ll sort itself out in no time if you start treating yourself better. It’s just, um… maybe you don’t want them to know about this.”
“You think they won’t want to work with me?”
“If they think you’re going crazy, Henry… Well, you were in the area where the body was found tonight.”
His jaw dropped. “You think they’ll suspect me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s a risk you want to take. And you really don’t want The Department finding out somehow, do you? I don’t know if they’ll be so quick to give you your job back if they hear about this.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re right. Oh, fuck.” Henry didn’t often swear, so I knew he was really put out at the moment. “What if it doesn’t get better?”
Hearing the helplessness in his voice, my heart twinged. I felt awful. If I was willing to do this to people I liked, maybe I really was evil.
“It will get better, Henry,” I said. “Try not to worry about it. Just make sure you’re getting enough sleep, take some vitamins, do yoga.”
He nodded. “Thanks for looking out for me,” he said with a smile.
It was like a punch to the gut. I forced myself to return his smile and said, “No worries.”
We were interrupted by Daisy beckoning us over to the circle. Everything was ready to go. No time to dwell on what a horrible cretin I was, making a friend think he was crazy to save my own arse. Now it was time to distract myself by summoning up a murdered goblin’s spirit.
Chapter Seven
We all took our seats around the circle, which was drawn on the ground in chalk, punctuated by lit candles situated at regular intervals around its perimeter. Of course, when I say ‘we all’, I mean the capable members of our party. Dick just stood back and observed. I sat at the head of the circle, meaning I was the conduit for the spirit and the person all the energy would be sent to. Henry and Daisy both knew I was capable of this, but Hecate looked a little nervous about it – after all, last time I’d done a séance in her presence I’d ended up passing out from the strain.
At least, she thought it was from the strain. I had, in fact, gone swimming in the ether, something that is not generally recommended. Usually if someone dives into the ether – the swirling magic vortex that exists in no-space – they drown. I hadn’t quite drowned, but I had come up gasping for air with a bad hangover. (That’s what happens when you do magic that’s too advanced for you. You stretch yourself too far, and next thing you wake up with a blinding headache, brain throbbing, swearing off magic for life.)
I’d dipped my toe into the ether a second time while tracking down Santa and I’d come out in much better shape than I had the first time I’d tried it, possibly because I hadn’t stayed under for very long. I was keen to try again, but I didn’t know if I should under Dick’s watchful eye. Ether diving wasn’t illegal, as such, but if he knew I had that sort of power I was sure he’d have some questions for me.
Clicking my fingers, I lit the candles. They were all vanilla scented, pleasant and boring. Daisy sat to my right and Henry to my left, so after we’d all placed crystals on the floor in front of us to channel the energy (mine was the biggest to encourage the energy to head my way), I took their hands and we closed our eyes. I cast out my mind, looking for the goblin’s soul. What I found instead was the ether.
The thing about swimming in the ether is that it’s kind of addictive. It’s like being underwater, but warm and dry and you can breathe. (OK, so it’s not really that similar to being underwater at all.) The ether knows everything, something that made me very keen to spend as much time as possible there. If there was anything I needed, it was answers.
You have returned, said the ether.
Yes! And I was just wondering if maybe you could tell me what I am.
Can anyone truly know what they are?
I mean in a more general sense. Like, am I human?
(I swear the ether laughed at me at that moment.) That is a very human question to ask.
And that is not really an answer. Please, I need to –
The soul you seek is near yet far. If you don’t go now, you won’t find him.
OK, but just before I go –
It was too late. The ether had rippled around me and pushed me up, back into my body, back into the circle. Man, even the ether didn’t like me. Ouch. Way to make me feel unwanted.
Then I saw that the others were staring into the middle of the circle. There was something there, shimmering and flickering. Not a spirit. More like the memory of a spirit. It was Gnawlack, as far as I could tell, although I have to say he looked different with eyes.
“Gnawlack,” I said, addressing the weird spirit-like entity in the middle of the circle. “I want to find your killer.”
The spirit-thing turned and looked at me. He opened his mouth and moved it, but I couldn’t hear him.
“Sorry, come again?”
He tried to talk again, but to no avail. His voice wasn’t working. What the hell was going on? I’d never seen anything like this before. Usually summoning spirits in Hell was easier than it was back on earth. Less distance to travel, you know. But this guy looked like he wasn’t really here. Like he was on his way to the after-afterlife. Which, as far as I knew, meant not existing anymore.
But how? Getting rid of a spirit wasn’t the kind of thing an ordinary person could do. That was a Satan-level kind of power. Death could do it too, although he didn’t really like to. Not strictly part of his job description, except when cleaning up one of my murder scenes. I wondered if Death had anything to do with this. Maybe he’d seen me with the body and had assumed I’d killed the guy, then got rid of the soul before I could get in trouble. It seemed pretty unlikely, but I’d get Satan to ask him for me. (The Reaper and I weren’t currently on speaking terms, thanks to a series of betrayals he’d perpetrated against me.)
Gnawlack’s spirit was flickering, growing dimmer by the second, and there was nothing we could do. His glimmer turned dull, his translucence transparent, and his edges became wispy like smoke and dissolved into the air until he was no longer in front of us.
“Well, that was a waste of everyone’s time,” said Dick from the corner of the room.
“Shut up, Richard,” said Henry. “No one cares what you think.”
I grinned at Henry. It hadn’t been the wittiest comeback, but it was effective because it was true and Dick knew it.
We broke the circle, and although it could have been my imagination I thought Henry’s hand lingered on mine a little longer than was strictly necessary. I felt another pang of guilt thinking about how I’d basically tricked him into thinking he was insane. I wished I could tell myself that it was for his own good, but it wasn’t. It was for my good, plain and simple. If Henry started trusting his memory, I was going to go down.
While the others headed down to the parlour to fill Satan in on what had happened, I offered to cle
an up the attic. Henry, Daisy and Hecate filed out the door, but Dick remained in the room, watching me as I worked my way around the room, putting out candles, sweeping the floor and returning all Satan’s crystals to the shelves.
“What’s your problem, Dick?” I asked.
“Just making sure you don’t slip any of Satan’s materials in your pockets,” said Dick. “Wouldn’t want a repeat of the UTI incident from earlier today.”
“You have a urinary tract infection? Oh, how awful.”
“I had one. Quick little counter-curse sorted it right out.”
“I think you’re being paranoid.”
“When it comes to you, it pays to be paranoid.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Dick raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, had you not noticed that everything you touch turns to mud?”
I looked down at the crystals in my hands. No mud there. Still solid rocks. I held them up in the air as I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“A disgraced Department supervisor, two police officers under investigation, a ghost accused of murder –”
“A ghost guilty of murder,” I said, putting the crystals in their place on a shelf.
“– a hundred drained elves and Santa dead –”
“The Department wanted Santa dead! Besides, he tore his own head off. You can’t blame me for how that turned out.”
“– and one missing Doomstone.”
“That’s with Ed, the poltergeist who killed all those people to get it.”
Dick stared unblinkingly into my eyes. “Is it just?”
I frowned, concentrating hard on not swallowing. I couldn’t afford any tells. “Yes, it is.”
Dick shook his head. “You see, I saw what happened when you killed that demon today. You nearly died. Your magic wasn’t strong enough to fight him off. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, you get about a hundred times more powerful and kill him in a moment. Now I find out that not only have the cops tracked the stone to Hell, but they also know it was used at around the time you summoned that demon.”
I gave Dick a slow clap. “Brilliant. Really, well done. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that maybe Ed was there and used that stone to summon that horrendous monster to try and kill me?”
Dick narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re the only person known to have seen him since he stole the stone. It’s at the very least a possibility that he gave it to you.”
More than a possibility. Out of everyone I’d been hanging out with tonight, I did not expect Dick to turn out to be the master sleuth. “Why would he kill for a rock only to give it away to the person he betrayed to get it? And if he did give it to me, why do you think I wouldn’t hand it in? My friends are in trouble over it, like you said. What good is the stone to me? I don’t even know what it does.”
He folded his arms, resting them on his pot belly. “Turn out your pockets.”
My heart began to thump loudly in my chest. So loudly I was worried Dick might hear it.
“What?”
“Show me what you’ve got in your pockets.”
“No,” I said.
“Then I’m just going to assume you have it.”
“Why would I have it? Ed betrayed me. It’s his fault I’m here now, and that I had to meet you. He is not in my good books, believe me.”
“I don’t believe anything you say.”
“Fine, Dick. I don’t actually care what you think.”
“You do realise that your future is in my hands?”
“Dick, if I had this all-powerful Doomstone, do you really think I’d be going along with The Department’s orders? I’d be doing unlicensed magic left, right and centre, and you wouldn’t be able to stop me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t trust you.”
“Likewise,” I said. “So we don’t trust each other. What else is new?”
Having finished cleaning up the room, I stalked past Dick and down into the parlour where Satan sat with the other three, all of whom looked terrified to be in her presence. I was in a bad mood now thanks to Dick. He knew, and something told me that he wasn’t going to give up on finding the stone that easily. He was going to make me hand it over one way or another.
As if I needed another reason to murder him.
Chapter Eight
Seeing as the séance had been such a bust, and it was super late at night (it was 3B by now), I was ready for bed. Unfortunately there’s no rest for the wicked, and it turned out I was one of them. Just paint me green and call me Elphaba. (Musical theatre joke. Anyone? No?) Satan had given me the next day off, so at least I wouldn’t have to be up in five hours like normal. She wanted me working on this case so it would get sorted as soon as possible.
Henry knew a dive bar where Gnawlack and his friends liked to drink when they were in town, so we were headed down there to question the rest of the goblin gang. I was not particularly looking forward to it. I knew the bar in question, and ordinarily I wouldn’t visit without Satan herself as a chaperone. The clientele at the Wolf’s Fang were rough, and that was putting it lightly. It was a goblin bar, named purely to wind up local werewolves. There were brawls there at least twice a week when wolf packs would come in to pick a fight with the goblin patrons.
Frankly, I was surprised Henry was tough enough to survive any time in there. He was light, after all, and the dark magicals didn’t tend to take kindly to lights. I suppose there was some advantage in being able to transform into a lion or bear or dragon at a moment’s notice. To be honest, even the gorilla form was pretty scary. I’d gotten used to it, but that was probably only because I knew Henry and was well aware that he was not at all scary. The little goblins probably didn’t want to bother him, just in case.
The outside of the pub was exposed brick, cracking and crumbling at the corners. A faded sign bearing the pub’s name and a painting of a fang hung from a chain above the entrance. We pushed through the heavy wooden door and were immediately thrown into the fray. There was magic flying around the room and wolves howling and snapping their teeth at goblins and chairs smashing and just plenty of general cacophonous violence. Of course we’d walked into a brawl. Of course we had.
My first instinct was to back out quietly and come back later when everything had calmed down. Henry, it appeared, had other ideas.
“The goblins are more likely to talk to us if they think we’re on their side,” he whispered, then he walked over to a nearby wolf and pushed him. The wolf turned, snarling, and snapped his jaw at Henry.
“Alfonse?” said Henry.
The wolf frowned. “Who are you?”
“Henry.” The wolf continued frowning. “We went to school together.”
“Oh, right,” said Alfonse. “You were that shifter geek.”
Take it from me, that is not a smart thing to say to a fully-grown man in gorilla form. Werewolves weren’t renowned for their intelligence, and I doubted Al was the cream of the crop. Before anyone knew what was happening, Henry’s fist had collided with the side of Alfonse’s face and sent him flying.
Now, you may not know this, but for a murderer I’m not that big on violence. But watching Henry punch that arsehole wolf in the face stirred something in me. Well, two somethings. The first was that I really wanted to see Henry in his human form again so I could tell him how impressed I was to his face. Like, right to his face. Very close. With lip contact.
The second thing that stirred was bloodlust. I wanted in on this fight.
I watched Hecate and Daisy run past me, already preparing their magic, holding balls of light in their hands. Dick was nowhere to be seen – I presumed he’d retreated to the street to keep from getting his hands dirty. Or getting kicked in his tiny schlong. (More like his schlort, am I right?)
Scanning the room, I tried to decide which wolf to attack first. The one with the most blood on his or her fur seemed like a good idea. After all, t
here was a good chance one of these wolves was responsible for Gnawlack’s death. I doubted it would be more than one, though, because the body hadn’t been mauled. If the whole pack had attacked him, one or two definitely would have had a nibble on the body. There were a lot of wolves with bloody coats, but whether it was from killing someone or just participating in this brawl wasn’t clear. OK, so my strategy wasn’t going to work. Better to just kick some werewolf arse and question the other goblins afterwards.
I bent my knees, lowering my centre of gravity to steady myself for casting, and waited until the first wolf came my way. She had brown and grey fur and growled at me as she stalked towards me.
“This isn’t the place for a pathetic little girl who can’t hold her own in a fight,” she said.
“Oh, I know,” I said. “So you should probably leave.”
She didn’t seem to appreciate my quick wit and lunged at me, snapping at my throat. I temporarily considered letting her bite me, just to see if the results would be as interesting as what had happened to the vampire who bit me, but I decided against it when I saw her bared teeth. They didn’t look all that clean and I still wasn’t totally convinced I hadn’t picked up a disease from the vampire. Plus I didn’t think the she-wolf was going for a nice, clean bite. She looked more like the ‘rip out your throat and leave you twitching and bleeding on the floor’ type.
Nope, I would have to find out some other day if my blood was magical to everyone who drank it. Right now, I needed to act. With a quick forward movement of my arm, palm facing her, I shot out a stream of energy. It wrapped itself around the wolf, halting her mid-leap. She yelped at the sudden stop.
“Should have listened to me,” I said.
Her eyes widened as I began to spin her like a lasso, faster and faster. She howled as she was thrown round and round. After spinning her enough times to make her so dizzy she could no longer wail, I released her. She flew across the room at speed thanks to all the momentum I’d built up, yelping agian when she hit the wall.
