A Spell in Mag Mell (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 5)

by Pearl Goodfellow

  Dilwyn laughed. “I know I come off as a bit of a country bumpkin, but I did live a full life before settling down on this farm, you know? I rubbed shoulders with all the big-wigs on Talisman at one time, and I used to be with those hoity-toity alchemists myself before—“

  A loud whinnying shriek from the fields stopped Dilwyn's historical ramblings in their tracks. The Griffins, tangling themselves in their harnesses, were in a state of panic. The plow they were so dutifully pulling previously, was beginning to cut crooked into the ground, as they tried to fly upward for safety. I could just make out a boy behind them; a boy with a wicked grin on his face. That smile evaporated when he saw Dilwyn’s furious face.

  “Lye!” he yelled as he ran for the fields. I was right behind him, though I had no clue what good I could do.

  Dilwyn's wayward son ran off for the nearby woods while the Griffins continued their mad scramble in the air. I was fairly curious about how Dilwyn could detect that it was Lye and not Styx out there causing trouble. The twins were identical in every way, and yet their father had just identified one from more than one hundred feet away.

  Out of nowhere, a black streak jumped on the plow -- using it as a launch pad -- and landed on the back of the lowest griffin. Midnight dug his claws into the leather harness and was muttering something in a language I didn’t even know he could speak, let alone understand. I had to remember; this was a member of the Infiniti. An immortal clowder of magical kitties. My cats had seen more than was even believable, I imagined. Who knew how many dead languages they had grasped in their time? Gradually, the Griffins calmed down, untangled themselves from the snarled lines their panic had created and landed back on the ground, where they pawed the earth nervously.

  Dilwyn surveyed the damage this little episode had caused and shook his head. “Don’t know what you said, Midnight boy, but I’m grateful you said it.”

  “Hey, no worries, Dil,” Midnight said as he trotted over to us. I gave him an affectionate kiss on the forehead. Even in his current condition, my kitty had done me and his siblings proud.

  “Looks like we’re going to need to start the plowing all over again,” Dilwyn added, giving the field a wistful glance. “At this rate, I’m never going to get those green beans planted.”

  “Are they for Verdantia’s—“ I started to ask.

  “Oh no, it’s for the pegassi. For them, it’s the equivalent of horse oats.”

  Dilwyn cast a baleful eye on the wood. “That boy of mine." He sighed. "Lye and Styx are good kids, believe me. They're just misguided. By a father who knows nothing about fathering. Although I try my level best, that's for sure. I just wish their mother was still alive so that she could calm them down.” I squeezed Werelamb's arm. He looked so tired right then.

  “You never considered marrying again?” Midnight asked, raising a droopy eyebrow.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, you little gossip,” Dilwyn said with a rub of my kitty’s head. “But yeah, I’d love to get married to the right woman again. Still, between this farm and my new duties at the vet’s office, when would I ever have the time to go dating?”

  “Well, I’ve got ears everywhere. So if I hear of any interesting prospects—“

  Dilwyn scratched Midnight’s head again. “Thank you, but no. If I’m ever going to meet the right woman; I’ll do it on my terms.”

  I sighed. “Well, anyway, after you look over Midnight, I need to get back to the shop. No telling how awake Millie is right now.”

  That got my farmer friend’s attention. “She’s having trouble staying awake too?” I nodded.

  “Yeah, nighttime insomnia for Millie. You think they’re connected?” I asked, knowing that he’d have the same icky feeling about this as I did.

  “In your shoes, I’d be suspecting something,” Dilwyn confessed as he picked up Midnight. “But I can’t know for sure. So why don’t we go ahead and give Midnight a look over?" He took up the path toward his makeshift surgery. "Oh, hey. How's Jet, by the way? I sent the package over last week by mail. Hopefully, he's steadying out a bit? That batch was pretty potent stuff. Had seriously high levels of THC." I looked at Dilwyn probably the same way I had looked at Verdantia earlier, because he added, as if it might satisfy my confused look

  "Terribly High Catnip."

  "Wait. What? Dilwyn, what are you talking about?"

  "That wasn't your signature then?" Dilwyn's face showed me that something was dawning on him. Something he apparently found to be fairly humorous, if his jiggling belly was anything to go by.

  "Dilwyn, can you PLEASE tell me what's going on?"

  "Oh, just that your agoraphobic cat clearly isn't happy with his home doses of his favorite herb." Dilwyn chuckled. Midnight dangled like a spaghetti noodle, fast asleep in Werelamb's rough hands.

  "Thanks to his forging of your signature, Jet is a card-carrying recipient of Medical Catnip."

  I have no words. Seriously. None.

  Chapter Four

  As I entered through the back door of The Angel after our visit with Dilwyn, glorious waves of laughter came rushing at me. How something so commonplace and innocent could bring so much relief was another kind of magic. Artemus was doing a fine job of keeping my assistant awake by way of some amusing anecdotes and stories.

  I noticed the alchemical apparatus had already been set up on the kitchen table. I placed Midnight down on the floor, and he padded off to the bedroom for some much-needed shut-eye. Dilwyn's ministrations hadn't really helped more than the tea I had made earlier. I admit I was getting pretty anxious about the whole affair. I leaned down toward the working equipment. The substances for World Egg were boiling in a water bath and slowly dripping their distilled contents into a waiting beaker. Millie peeked around the corner and gave me a tired smile.

  “Thought I heard someone back here,” she said. “Manage to get what we need?”

  “Yeah, even got an advance,” I said, pulling the ingredients out of my purse. “The rest of the shipment should be arriving before closing time. You two been having a good time?”

  “Just trying to keep Ms. Midge here awake, Hattie,” Artemus said with a grin as he stepped into view. “One of the wonderful things about my job is you're privy to a good many interesting stories that you can share with others.”

  Millie sighed. “Why do you have to be taken? You’re, like, the perfect boyfriend.”

  Artemus’ grin turned a little reluctant. “I’m not so certain you would agree with me after living with me for a month.”

  “Well, you’ve been making ME feel better just by being here,” Millie said. "Thank you. Sincerely." There was no flirting or innuendo in Millie's discourse. Just simple earnestness and gratitude. Gods, sometimes I loved my assistant so much.

  “That World Egg ought to be ready in just a few minutes,” Artemus said, changing the subject.

  “Think you’ll be okay while we work on making what we need?” I asked Millie.

  “If she starts to drift,” Shade said, coming out of the shadows. "I'll just give her a gentle reminder." He raised his two front paws and sprung his claws out, a crafty grin sneaking its way to his fuzzy lips.

  I was about to reply when I suddenly heard a muffled knocking sound next to my feet. Midnight was back and was repeating the ramming-the-head in the wall approach to his sleep problem. A black streak zipped past the counter and tackled him, sending them both tumbling over each other.

  “Brother, we’ve been over this already!” Jet said as they rolled in a single black ball toward the corner. “That’s not going to help you sleep.”

  "Perhaps you could give him something to keep him awake instead, huh, Jet?" I gave my zippy cat a glowering look.

  "Er, what's that, boss?" My kitty's gaze turned downward as he toed the floor in growing shame.

  "Oh, you know. Have anything with an unusually high THC content lying around, perchance?" I continued, enjoying my cat's guilty discomfort.

  "I ... er ... didn't want to offen
d you, boss. I didn't want you to think that I didn't appreciate the 'nip we have here." He confessed, still not able to look me in the eye. He looked crestfallen.

  Of course, I caved. How could you stay mad at such a loving fur-ball?

  "Sweetie, just ask next time, okay?" I knew he'd be fine; Dilwyn had shown me the milligrams, and it wasn't enough to cause any kind of adverse side effect. Jet was in good hands.

  "Sorry, boss." He trotted over to me and weaved an affectionate body between my ankles. "I'm soooooo sorry," his tail curling around my right leg, then my left. "I love you, boss," he finished.

  "I love you too, Jet," I managed. I leaned down to give him a kiss on his chest, the place he liked to receive his loving the most. Turning my attention back to the boiling mixture, I sat down at the table with Artemus, who began arranging my ingredients in the most efficient pattern for him to brew up more of what we needed.

  “So…what can you tell me about these Presences you mentioned before?” I asked as I crushed a measure of Moon Tears down to a fine powder in the mortar and pestle.

  “Ah, yes. Well, the available literature on them is surprisingly scarce,” Artemus admitted. “Mostly the stories about them have come down through oral tradition, similar to how the Eddas were proliferated before someone bothered to write them down, albeit in Christianized form.”

  The last of the mixture finally distilled into the beaker. I shut off the Bunsen burner and said, “By that way of passing information, I guess that there are a lot of contradictory stories on what they are and what they do.”

  “To put it mildly,” Artemus replied, pouring the beaker’s contents into a vial. “Even the names vary in the telling. My favorite version of oral wisdom calls them Helios and Hecate.”

  “The sun chariot driver and the patroness of witches in Greek myth,” I said, changing out the mixing bulb for a fresh so that I could add some previously ground Green Lion. “So they represent light and dark?” I queried.

  Artemus shrugged as he pushed a clean beaker under the apparatus. “Well, the one consistent detail that pops up in all the stories is how they are complementary opposites of each other. As the allegories go, light simply can't exist without dark. And, vice versa. There would be no world -- as we know it, anyway -- without the 'being' of each. The Presences unify these contradictions in the same way Yin and Yang enfold the other. The two aspects balance out, and both signify completion: The Whole, as it were." Artemus sighed. "I think the Presences are really about detecting any potential imbalance between the light and dark aspects of humanity, and existence." As far as I'm aware they don't interfere in any way. They just set off a kind of alarm if they see that either light or dark is taking more than its fair share of glory." I nodded as a sage might. In this case the herb sage, not the wise man sage. I was completely befuddled. How did this tie in with Millie and Midnight's conditions?

  My head tampering moggie came to the rescue. "Light and dark can cover a lot of territories. It's about opposites. Like, say, sleep and wakefulness.” Onyx said matter-of-factly.

  My nose wrinkled at the foul odor of the combined Green Lion and Moon Tears.

  “That manifestation of opposites is something Gabrielle and I have seen a lot of recently,” Artemus said as he carried the used receptacles over to the sink. “When the strawberry patch went bad, the weeds out back had a sudden growth spurt. This morning, the inside of our fridge was hot, while the stove gave only cold emissions. The things the customers have been saying are telling variants on these same themes. Helvetica Grimshaw now speaks with her husband's voice, and Rufus now talks with Helvetica's, for instance.”

  I turned the gas back on the Bunsen burner and lit it with a spark spell I tripped with a snap of my fingers. “So you think that these Presences are involved in all this?”

  Artemus grabbed some acetone off the sink and began pouring it into the bulb and beaker. “Involved, no. But I believe they might be able to illustrate if there IS an imbalance in the Coven Isles, and possibly from where the imbalance is stemming. So, I think it would be an excellent place to start looking. Unless you have any better ideas?”

  “I used the last of those up this morning,” I responded with a regretful shake of my head. “Every concoction I’ve given Millie and Midnight just treats the symptoms and never lasts long enough to be worth the effort I put into making it. I just…”

  I tensed, angry with myself. Artemus gave me a sympathetic look but was smart enough to wait for me to speak again.

  “I wanted to do everything I could before having to look into a magical solution,” I offered. “Now it seems like I have no choice.”

  “Well, I’d argue that the only options here are: Do something you haven't yet tried. Do something that you've tried but has proven to be only marginally effective. Or do nothing at all. Both of us know that you’re not interested in the latter two offerings.”

  I smirked at my lab partner. “You really would be the perfect boyfriend, you know?”

  “Now, now,” he teased, washing out the acetone from the bulb and beaker. “We both know who the perfect boyfriend would be for you if he ever realized what he had in front of him.”

  “You’re as bad as Millie!” I said, throwing a tea towel at him in mock indignation. “How about we talk about something else, like how we’re going to find a way to connect with these Presences you keep talking about?”

  “Well, it just so happens that I have a friend who could help us.”

  He picked up the tea towel and began drying the glass vessels. “Before you got back, I rang up that friend, and she’ll be more than happy to—“

  “She?”

  Artemus wagged a finger at me. “None of that…a friend is all she is, and she has an inside track on the Presences. She’ll be willing to meet us to help out, but we need to go after dark.”

  “To help out with the magic involved?” I asked, watching the first drops of the second batch fall into the beakers.

  “That's part of the reason,” Artemus admitted. “The other part is—“

  Whatever Artemus was going to say was interrupted by the shop bell. My heart both melted and sank as I spied, through the door curtain, who walked into The Angel. After a morning of being teased about him, I suppose it wasn’t a surprise that Chief Para Inspector David Trew came into my 'field.' With a stern look on his face, no less. As usual, he was doing his best to hide his delectable good looks behind his Lennon spectacles, and his more than toned body under his loose, ill-fitting clothes. He looked good. Like, really, really good.

  “Oh, hey, CPI Trew. What brings you by?” I heard Millie's groggy tones enquire.

  “Mills, is Hattie in?” David asked, his tone all business. Something was wrong.

  “Right here, David,” I said, stepping out from the kitchen. Sixteen glowing eyes followed my movements, as my cats silently watched the potential human love story before them. Every last one of them --Gloom included -- was rooting for a relationship between David and me. Such moments like this got their attention in the hopes that it was finally going to happen. Lucky they were immortal, I guess because this was one slow train ride.

  “I’m going to need you to come with me,” he said in his gentle but firm manner that told me a case was afoot.

  “Honestly, Chief Para Inspector,” Artemus said, coming from the back. “If this is about that incident at Celestial Cakes this morn—“

  “Nothing to do with that, Art,” David assured him with an offhand wave. “Though I have to say that I’m a little surprised to see you here.”

  Did he sound jealous? “Artemus is helping me out with a really big order I got this morning." I clarified.

  Millie yawned and slumped forward onto the counter, only to bolt upright and give a pained squeal. “Shade!”

  “Hey, I’m a kitty of my word,” Shade said from under the counter, retracting his tiny blades. “And you WERE nodding off.”

  David rolled his eyes. “Can we please just get moving? I’m sure
that we all have better things we could be doing right now.”

  “Yeah, like sleeping,” Millie said with another yawn.

  “Preach!” Midnight exclaimed, jumping on the counter to face CPI Trew and me.

  “Can I come along for the ride?”

  “If it means that our headbanger here is taken far away from this establishment I’m all for it,” Gloom called from her perch on the shelves.

  “Fine with me, bud,” David said, scratching under Midnight's chin briefly. “I’ll be waiting out back while you guys get ready. Sound good?”

  Of course, I didn't hear any of this conversation, as I was too busy admiring how the late morning sun shone proudly through his light cotton shirt, affording me a view of his manly contours.

  "Hat?" He leaned in to look at me to see if I was awake. Our faces were so blissfully close. "Earth to Hattie Jenkins. I'll be outside, cool?"

  "Oh. Yeah, right. Of course. We'll be out in a minute, chief." I squeaked.

  David nodded and walked out through the kitchen.

  “I’ll keep mixing the potions while you’re gone,” Artemus said. “Hopefully, the shipment will get here soon enough, and there won’t be any gaps in our production time.”

  “And if there are any gaps,” Millie said, leaning on the counter. “You can help keep me awake.”

  “Thought that was my job,” Shade snickered.

  “Beat it, trouble.” Millie retorted.

  “Ready to go get some info?” Midnight asked, with his undisguised zest for fresh gossip having a temporary upper hand over his exhaustion.

  “I think so,” I said, opening the door with my free hand. I spotted Fraidy's tail coming from the bread bin.

  “Don’t weaken on the home-front, Fraidy. Keep an eye on Millie. She needs you guys right now. Be strong, buddy. Stay calm and be strong.”

  My quivering cat made a despairing moan as I closed the door behind us.

  We were sky bound in seconds, and I had already hooked up my Bluetooth into my ear and dialed up David to chat while we flew.