by Alisha Basso
“Lily, sometimes you can be too crafty for your own good.”
“It was fine, and it all worked out. They loved the cream puffs.”
Nock snorted, “Hah! Really, Lily? Whatever happened to the days of Little Red Riding Hood and the Boy Who Cried Wolf? The days of the savage, feral beast hunting the moors by moonlight? The slavering, howling adversary to be feared? Instead they sat about dining on cream puffs brought in by a caterer!”
We pulled out of Chris’s driveway and I made a right turn.
I looked over at the gnome, my own personal Cheshire Cat. Half the time I wasn’t sure if he was serious or playing with me. Did he really expect a serious answer?
“These are civilized werewolves.”
“Civilized? I don’t believe it. Did you see how they devoured the meat, those sharp, rending teeth? Wouldn’t want to be caught out during a full moon with such savages.”
“You just said....”
“I was making an observation about how absurd some situations can be.” Nock looked around and said, “Why are we going this way? This isn’t the way home.”
Trying not to alarm him, I kept my voice casual. “We’re going to the bank.”
“Why now?” he whined. “Can’t it wait?”
“No, I have to check on something right away.”
He turned to look at me, his eyes speculative. His scrutiny made my hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Why are you worried?”
“I’m not.” At that moment, my living tattoo, a Japanese-inspired wave, flowed down my arm and settled on my wrist in a froth of foam.
“Yes, you are.” His glinting eyes followed the wave’s progress. “Your tattoo always surges and crests when you’re agitated. What’s happened?”
“I can’t say for sure until I check at the bank.” I braked hard for a delivery truck that pulled to the curb abruptly. Swearing under my breath, I felt my confidence slip. What would I do if I found out we had nothing? I didn’t have an answer, and the blankness rankled. It reminded me the loss of my memories. The emptiness was always present, like a terrible, hovering, black hole which could suck me in at any moment.
Nock rolled his eyes. “What? We’re broke?”
Startled, I jerked my head around and stared at him. Did he know something I didn’t? My head started to pound. “Why are you jumping to that conclusion?”
“Do I look like a house fairy?”
I rolled my shoulders in agitation and my tattoo washed over the back of my hand, small tendrils of water lapping at my fingertips. “You just said they don’t exist.”
“They don’t, but that’s not the point,” he said with a long-suffering sigh, like I was some stupid just-turned vamp and didn’t know which end was up. “I’m not an idiot. I can figure it out.”
I bit my lip, trying to stay calm and rational. “There’s nothing to figure out...yet.”
His eyes were serious when he looked at me. “Have you talked to Olivia?”
Struggling not to show my alarm, I shook my head. “No. Not yet. Like I said, there’ll be no talking about anything until I have the facts.”
“I’m not liking this. Olivia’s apartment is perfect for me. I have a small garden, plenty of sunlight, and the best room.”
“You live in the closet.”
“Hey, it was good enough for Harry Potter.”
I snorted. “Yes, and Kreacher is your favorite character.”
“What’s your point?”
Deciding I was only fueling his irascibility, I quit talking, and he just shrugged. Most days I enjoyed riling him, but today I was just too tired and worried to spar with him.
“You’re giving up too easily,” he said softly. “This is going to be bad.” Then he promptly went invisible.
Sometimes I wish I could do that, too. But ostrich behavior aside, I needed to power ahead and learn the truth.
Our business office was located just outside of St. Paul, not far from Chris’s supply company, and across the street from the bank.
Since the bank wasn’t open for another two hours, I unloaded all the catering equipment and, instead of wasting time fretting, I filled the dishwasher and fired it up. By the time I had everything washed and put away, it was time for the bank to open.
I walked across the street. Traffic was light, with only a few people moving along the sidewalks. It was still chilly, but the red sky was gone, and I was relieved. I already had enough on my plate without additional ominous portents.
As I reached the bank, a man came out and held the door for me. He smiled, showing sharp incisors. I smiled back as I went in. I felt the subtle pressure of the vamp’s gaze before he turned away. To them everyone was a potential blood companion, even witches.
Several people were doing business at the tellers’ windows, and one was writing out her deposit slip. I went to the closest open teller.
It said Sarah Jane Watkins on her name plate, a perky brunette who gave me a big smile and a welcome to the bank. I asked her for the Kitchen Witches account balance.
“Oh, where’s Olivia? I haven’t seen her in about a week. She’s always dropping off the receipts. She even brings me some of your amazing cream puffs. I’ll have to get her to make me some more. I have a party to….” She trailed off and frowned. My stomach dropped.
“The account is empty. There aren’t any funds in there, which is completely weird, since you had a big balance just yesterday.” She pressed some more buttons and released her breath slowly. She bit her lip. “Oh, here it is. The funds were withdrawn.”
“Who withdrew them?”
She typed in some information and then turned her brown eyes on me. “Olivia.”
“When?”
“Yesterday, just as the bank opened.”
“Break take it,” I cursed softly, the air rushing out of me in a whoosh. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath. “And our personal joint account?”
The woman typed in more information, and even before she spoke, her eyes told me the truth. My chest felt so tight I could scarcely breathe.
I think I thanked her. Her face had been full of kind concern. I left the bank and crossed the street to our small business office. I went to the back room and sat down heavily at Olivia’s corner desk.
We had saved to open up a shop. It had been our dream. Something we had planned together. In fact, it was originally Olivia’s dream. It had come true and, for some unexplained reason, she’d destroyed it. Why?
“So, are we broke?”
I jumped when Nock materialized on the end of the desk, his short legs dangling. He took one look at my face and said, “Toadstools, I really hoped I was wrong.”
“She took everything.” I was just too numb to absorb what it meant. I looked down and saw the overdue notices for rent on our apartment, our commercial property, power, supplies. I had no idea how to rationalize this terrible betrayal. I couldn’t even pay the staff for last night’s party or draw my usual salary to cover my own expenses. I was completely screwed.
“You need to talk to her and find out what happened. Something must have happened.”
“Of course something happened!” I snapped, as the shock started to wear off and seething anger built. “Our best friend stabbed us in the back.”
He tried to put on a brave face. “Don’t get melodramatic. Olivia wouldn’t do this to us.”
“She did, Nock,” I said with a snarl.
He looked alarmed, his big eyes narrowing and his hands twisting in his lap. “Let’s go home, then. She should be there. We’ll talk to her about this. There must be some explanation.”
I nodded. Fatigue hit me like a sledgehammer, and shock returned like a fog drifting over the moon. All the way to our apartment, my thoughts whipped around in my skull, trying to think of reasons she might have had for cleaning out the business. Then shock slammed back into anger. It sizzled through me like an out-of-control spell, ferocious and consuming. How could she have done this to me!?
&n
bsp; When I reached our street, I found a parking space easily, since most of the residents were at work. I braked hard and Nock protested, but I was on fire. Then I saw her car, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had truly expected her to have vanished. I grabbed my bag and didn’t even bother to lock the T-Bird, just slammed the door with a thump. With determined strides, I stomped up the stairs. As I fit my key into the lock, a crackle of energy snapped lightly against my skin like a rubber band.
“What the…?” Had she spelled the lock? I bit my lip as my muscles tightened against further unexpected snaps of energy. I shoved the door open.
“Olivia,” I yelled.
The apartment was silent, in the eerie way a space can be after a disaster. I smelled it the moment I got close to the kitchen. The heavy, metallic odor was unmistakable. Even though I was afraid, I hurried to the kitchen anyway.
I stepped through the doorway and gasped, tears welling. My eyes darted over her, as I shivered under the pinch of panic. “Olivia,” I cried, full of grief, yet gridlocked by my anger and inability to understand why she’d betrayed me.
She lay on the floor in a huge pool of blood, the red a harsh counter to the kitchen’s stark white. Her delicate features were contorted, her big, blue eyes wide and terrified, staring unseeing in death.
I started to shake and collapsed onto the cold tiled floor, then crawled over and touched her skin as scalding tears streaked down my hot cheeks.
Nock knelt close by, fading in and out in his grief.
Her skin was cold, so cold. This woman had saved me. Given me a purpose, a home, helped me recover talents from the depths of my blank mind. After my life had been shattered, she had given me a new one.
Memories of her kindness squeezed my heart so hard. The many times she’d come into the diner where I waitressed and given me a soft smile and nice comment to boost my day. Then the offer of lunch, which had developed into a friendship. The times she’d needed a helper and asked me to fill the role. Then, because of my cooking, she got so overwhelmed with business, she needed me. The look on her face when she’d tasted my cooking, the late nights of working with her and then trying to stay awake at my day job. Then her offer. I’d been overwhelmed and so thankful for the opportunity, since I had been destitute.
Her warmth and generosity couldn’t be erased by one act of betrayal, could it? Could it? What had compelled her to abandon me, to take everything? Olivia wasn’t a thief and she wasn’t a back-stabber.
Unable to resist trying just once more to find signs of life, I felt for a pulse in her neck. At my touch, she started to glow. I bolted back. There was a faint popping sound, and all of a sudden a key appeared on a chain around her neck.
She’d obviously used a concealment spell to hide the key and had linked it to my DNA. I reached for it, and then I noticed the powder strewn on the floor around her. It was white—and it looked like fairy dust. An empty envelope lay nearby.
The blood drained from my face, then a surge of cold and light-headedness. My gaze connected with Nock’s, and he shrugged. I unclasped and slipped the key’s chain from around Olivia’s neck and fastened it around my own. It knocked musically against my pendant, the only possession I’d had besides the clothes on my back when I woke up…my silver triskelion with the Celtic symbol for the power of three etched in the center of the triple spiral. One of the main symbols of the Celts, the symbol is protective and an emblem of eternity.
I like to think of the triskelion’s meaning as power, intellect and love. The power of three. I also thought it was a good representation of the way the Break had redefined and shaped our world: the Otherworld, where spirits, gods and goddesses lived; the Mortal World which I and all the other people, and supernaturals lived, along with plants and animals; and the Celestial World, where unseen energies lived and moved about. I never took my pendant off. It was my only connection to who I used to be.
I tucked Olivia’s key out of sight.
Looking at the dust made me dizzy with fear. My first impulse was to get rid of it, but then I decided it would be best to wait and make sure I knew what I was dealing with. What have you done, Olivia? What have you done?
Staring at my cold, dead friend, my emotions a battleground of grief, betrayal and rage, my throat closed and my stomach clenched so hard I looked around frantically for the bathroom, so freaked out I momentarily forgotten where it was. When I remembered, I raced to get there in time, but, my sneaker slipped in her blood. Quickly I regained my feet, a rush of tears and a gasp of anguish flowing out of me at the same time.
I made it just in time to lose what little I had in my stomach. Salty tears ran down my face and mixed with the taste of vomit. The smell of her blood was ugly and tinged with the scent of jasmine. I kicked my bloody sneaker off hysterically and turned to the toilet once again.
My stomach was more than empty when the dry heaves finally stopped. I stayed where I was, sitting on the floor of the apartment we had shared for three years, apparently without ever really knowing each other. My forehead pressed against the cold porcelain, and I tried to contain another flood of tears. I suddenly realized someone was holding my hair out of the way, and had been for a while.
“Just breathe, Lily. Just breathe,” Nock whispered, without a trace of his usual sarcasm.
My heart was crushed. I shifted and leaned against the wall, spent and not even wanting to struggle against the deep emptiness threatening to swallow me.
“I don’t want to rush you, Lily, but we can’t wait much longer to call the OS,” he said miserably, his eyes reflecting the sharp light from the bathroom window. Then he left the bathroom, probably wanting to give me a moment to compose myself.
Feeling hollowed out, I awkwardly got to my feet and flushed. Washing my face and rinsing my mouth, I straightened my clothes. I emerged to find Nock standing by Olivia’s body, his face cut deep with sorrow.
I walked to a closet and pulled out the broom and dustpan. Silently I swept up every bit of dust I could find. No one just decides to up and betray two very close and important people in their life. There are reasons and decisions. Heavy duty ones. There had to be. I had to hold onto that. Olivia had been like a sister to me. She would never have done this if she’d had a choice. I would never know for sure if she had planned to talk to me about it. But I thought she would have. She wouldn’t have left me here alone with no answers and nothing to live on. I had to believe that or something within me would die. It would be like losing my memory all over again, and I couldn’t face it.
For me it all came down to questions which demanded answers, and I couldn’t go on without them.
“Lily, what are you doing?”
I kept sweeping, feeling unreal and disconnected.
“Lily,” Nock raised his voice and grabbed my wrist. “You’re tampering with a crime scene.”
Chapter Two
“I know what I’m doing. Since Olivia’s dead, she can’t give us any answers, and I intend to have answers.” I looked again at Olivia. Whatever she had done, she certainly hadn’t deserved to die like this. Someone would pay, and I was making it my mission to find out what had happened. And maybe I wasn’t being honest with myself. Maybe…just maybe this was for me. The need to know whether she had intentionally hurt us.
“Not a word of this to the OS when they get here,” I said, firmly enough that Nock dropped my wrist and stared at me like he’d never seen me before.
The organization Nock was so anxious about, Otherworld Security, was responsible for law enforcement, governed by numerous organizations: The Cauldron (witches); The Pack (werewolves); The UnderLanders (gnomes); The Flight (dragons), as well as the Mage Tower, the Vampire Council, the Fairy Dust Administration, and The Presidency (humans).
Then there was the Realized Forum, which had been formed shortly after many unreal things became real. Any fictionalized character who had taken form could belong, whether from novels, manga, anime, biographies, magazines and games; any packaging, toy, inanim
ate object, hood ornament, building sculpture, game creature, including sentient beasts like unicorns, griffins, winged horses, werebeasts, hippogriffs. All were included in the Realized Forum.
The only supernaturals without a governing body were the shapeshifters, not to be confused with werewolves, who changed into wolves exclusively. Werewolves belonged to The Pack and were a closed society. Shifters were rare and loners. Surprisingly, they rarely needed policing, as they usually shunned criminal behavior. All of these separate organizations were known collectively as Unified Otherworlders and Humans or UOH
“I’m not very good at lying,” he groused, still staring like he didn’t recognize this version of me.
“I know, so it might be a good idea if you go invisible and stay that way until they leave. Do you know anyone who can test this dust for us?”
“Yes, my Uncle Remis is an alchemist.” His lips tightened and his shoulders slumped as his eyes went back to Olivia. “We can keep it hush-hush if he does it.”
“All right.” I poured the dust into a container, locking down the lid so it was airtight. “Please take this to your uncle right now, Nock.”
He muttered under his breath and nodded. He started to fade away, but before he went, he touched my hand gently and said, “I’m sorry.”
I’d never felt more alone than I did then, gazing downat my partner, my roommate, my friend. My eyes blurred yet again, but I shoved back the tears. I didn’t have the luxury of crying right now. There was too much to do.
As I turned back to Olivia’s body, across the room the morning sun glinted on the surface of our big, commercial-grade fridge. We’d been absolutely giddy with happiness the day we bought it, marveling at the wide-open spaces which would hold everything from appetizers to dessert—even a wedding cake with just a small adjustment of the wire shelves. We’d been such food geeks.
