by Sarina Dorie
I strode into the shadows and fumbled for Brogan’s hand. He shifted away from Vega’s embrace and stepped into the light with me.
Khaba’s eyes went wide. He fell to his knees, speaking in Arabic. Tears filled his eyes. He switched back to English. “You’re alive. How is this possible. I saw your body. Was it a hex? You only looked dead?”
Brogan knelt beside Khaba, embracing him. I fumbled to stay in contact with him as he helped Khaba to his feet.
Khaba drew back from Brogan. He waved a hand at me. “Clarissa, you’re crowding us. Can you take a step back so I can—”
“She can’t,” Brogan said. “It’s part of her spell.”
Khaba eyed me with a frown. “What have you done? Have you been dabbling in the dark arts? Necromancy?” He put up a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I’ll have to report you if you do. I don’t want to know.”
“It’s a little too late to claim ignorance, isn’t it?” Vega asked.
“I had to do this. You wouldn’t have listened otherwise,” I said.
Brogan squeezed Khaba’s shoulder. “I need to tell you what happened so no one else gets hurt. I came to warn you.” Brogan glanced at me, hesitating. “I just want to make sure you can handle this.”
Khaba invited us into his room. I hadn’t ever been in his quarters before. The Oriental rugs, low seating of the lounges and tables, and intricate geometric designs decorating the windows, walls, and furnishings were tastefully old-fashioned and Middle Eastern. Pink was a dominant color in the décor, but it didn’t look like a Barbie doll had puked all over the furniture in the same way it did in his office. It wasn’t nearly as flamboyant as his wardrobe.
“I’m surprised there isn’t more pink in here,” I said.
Khaba and Brogan both laughed.
“Tell her how that happened!” Brogan insisted.
Khaba grinned. “Shortly after I started here, I asked Alouette Loraline if we could do something about my office. The furniture was broken, the paint was peeling, and it probably contained lead—not a safe environment when you never knew if a kid was going to chew on the walls—believe me, Trevor is not the first teen with unusual eating habits. Your mother was the principal at the time. She said she’d see what she could do.” He grinned. “One day I walked in, and it looked like an office for a fairy princess. I thought Ally was hazing me.”
I had never heard anyone call my biological mother that nickname before.
Brogan slapped him on the shoulder, finishing for him. “But it hadn’t been Principal Loraline. It was the students. They were playing a prank!”
Khaba waved a hand at his pajamas. “They noticed my wardrobe tended toward the pink side. They probably thought I would be mortified, but I told them I loved it to disappoint them. I intended to paint over it, but after a while it grew on me. I started wearing pink every day, and it was a conversation starter with the kids. Pretty soon everyone started bringing me pink everything. One year, Grandmother Bluehorse gave me a pink necktie. Lisa Singer, our previous art teacher, made me a pink mosaic table.” He pointed at a table in the corner. Various shades of pink tile were grouted onto the surface of the table. It was well done.
“Tell them who gave you the unicorn stickers!” Brogan said, his eyes lighting up.
“Balthasar Llewelyn,” Vega said. “Can we get on to the murder and the reason we resurrected Brogan? I could be sleeping right now. Instead I’m being forced to listen to insipid stories that make me want to vomit.” She sniffed at the air, leaning toward me. “Like Clarissa did earlier.” That brought her a little chuckle at least.
The exultation of reminiscing faded as Vega reminded us of the seriousness of the situation.
Brogan sat beside Khaba, one ankle crossed over the other knee, his leg resting on Khaba’s. His boyfriend held his hand, his eyes full of adoration and wonder. I already felt like a third wheel, but I couldn’t leave. I had to remain close. I seated myself on the floor, my hand holding on to Brogan’s ankle. Vega sat farther away from us, eyes closed as she leaned her head back against a wall.
Brogan’s voice turned serious. “What I’m going to say will be difficult for some people in this room to hear.” He glanced at me again. “I wish I could spare you the details. It isn’t easy to hear bad news about someone you care about.”
I held my breath, hoping he wasn’t going to say Thatch. Not that I thought he was. I was just afraid somehow evidence would point to him like when he had been transporting Rudy’s body to his room.
“Just get it over with,” Vega said.
Brogan fidgeted with his kilt. Whatever he was about to say he was uncomfortable with. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. He was always so professional. And friendly. We were friends with Invismo.”
Khaba’s brows furrowed. “Derrick Winslow. That was his real name.”
My momentary relief was blotted out by unexpected pain. I knew Derrick had been used—possessed by the curse the Raven Queen had cast on him. But it was worse hearing someone else speak of Derrick’s guilt, even if I had known—and hoped—it had been coming.
“I was on my way to see you. It was . . . well, after I’d encountered a siren in the forest. One of the teachers who works here.”
“Gertrude Periwinkle,” Khaba said. “She’s a librarian, not a teacher.”
Brogan avoided Khaba’s gaze. “Aye.” His embarrassment was so palpable from the way he uncrossed his legs and looked away, I didn’t need psychic skills to tell me the emotions he wore on his body.
I knew what he was ashamed about too. I’d been there spying on him. I looked away.
Khaba slipped an arm around Brogan’s shoulder. “Did she seduce you too, honey?”
Brogan nearly flinched out of my grip. “How did you know?”
Khaba looked to me. “A little bird told me. You weren’t alone in the forest that night. Though, it’s quite possible Clarissa wasn’t the only one wandering around the forest when she shouldn’t have been.”
“I did sense a presence out in the forest. Someone malicious.” Brogan’s gaze flickered from me to Khaba.
I had thought I was the one out there he’d sensed. I’d been indignant he thought my mind had mean-spirited thoughts toward Gertrude, though I sort of had. But maybe he had sensed Derrick or someone from the Raven Court.
I had told Khaba about what I’d witnessed after the fact. If I had known Brogan and Khaba had been in a committed relationship sooner and something seriously was amiss, I would have gone to him right away. Instead I had waited, because I convinced myself it wasn’t my business who Khaba’s lover slept with. If I had been more diligent, if I had trusted Khaba, maybe he would have found Brogan sooner, and I could have used real resuscitation instead of a temporary magic that would deliver him back to his grave.
A mixture of emotions passed between them unspoken. Khaba’s face showed amusement as he took in Brogan’s confusion. Brogan’s expression shifted from embarrassment to anger to surprise.
A second later, he burst out laughing. “Wait a minute. Who else did she seduce? You? Is that what you’re saying?”
Khaba shrugged.
“A pure-blooded Fae?” Brogan’s eyebrows rose. “A man with no interest in women?”
Khaba smiled. “Sex magic is a powerful thing.”
Didn’t I know it?
Khaba hugged Brogan closer so that the other man’s head rested on his shoulder. “I can forgive you if you forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. It was magic.” Brogan kissed Khaba’s cheek, his smile shy.
My heart swelled with happiness for them.
Brogan glanced at Vega. Her eyes were closed. I quickly looked away, trying not to intrude. If only I could have granted wishes with my touch and given them time alone. But I couldn’t.
And I had a mission.
“How do you know it was Derrick—Invismo—who killed you?” I asked. I needed Brogan to dispel any doubt in Khaba�
�s mind.
Khaba ran a hand through Brogan’s red hair. “That’s a fair question. You’d never seen Invismo before. And he was visible, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right. It was his voice I recognized.” Brogan’s hand rested on the knee of Khaba’s pink pajamas. “I knew right away there was something off about him. Usually when I sensed him, he felt happy.” He turned toward me. “I’m an empath. Or I was when I was alive. Everything is hazy now. I can’t feel my affinity anymore. I suppose that’s one disadvantage of being dead.” A mischievous smile quirked his mouth upward. “The other disadvantage of being dead is being dead.”
Khaba didn’t laugh at his attempt at a joke.
“I could tell this was Derrick from his voice. I had never expected he would have blue hair, but that was less of a shock than what I was feeling inside him. He was so full of turmoil. He was conflicted and scared, but there was something else there too. It wasn’t quite anger. It wasn’t quite horror. I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. He said he needed my help.
“‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you need.’ He held his arms out to me. I didn’t hesitate. I embraced him. I just thought he was hurting about something and needed a hug.
“Touching him intensified the feelings threefold. It isn’t that I read his thoughts, but I could tell what he was going through wasn’t grief. I felt the curse in his body tearing him apart. As I analyzed what I was sensing in him, evaluating in my mind how I would go about healing him—”
“You’ve always had such a good heart. Always trying to help people.” Khaba’s eyes filled with tears.
I suspected this was harder for him to hear than it was for Brogan to tell. I again thought back to Brogan’s fear of what this might do to Khaba.
Brogan rubbed at a smear of dirt on his kilt. “I figured out too late what he was doing. He was draining me of my magic. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. I was too weak to fight him by that point. I tried to reason with him, to remind him we were friends. We’d only enjoyed our third monthly pun-isher battle at the Devil’s Pint with you weeks before. He didn’t need to do this. If he needed magic, there were other ways.”
My mouth was dry. It was hard to swallow.
“I felt my life slipping away. Blackness closed in on me. The next thing I remember is waking up in a coffin in the graveyard.”
Khaba stroked Brogan’s back. “Are you sure it was Derrick’s essence you felt, not someone pretending to be him. Like . . . Felix Thatch?”
“What? Professor Thatch?” Brogan sat up. “Why would he want to kill me? True, I wasn’t his best student when I went here, but I wasn’t his worst. And if he did want to kill me, why would he disguise himself as someone I’d never seen not invisible?”
“I second that,” I said.
Khaba chewed on his lip, thinking it over.
“Why would Thatch want to kill anyone in the first place?”
“He doesn’t want to kill anyone,” I said. “He didn’t kill Rudy or anyone else. You said it was because of a jealous rage, but it wasn’t. He’s not dating Gertrude anymore. He knows about her relationships with Pro Ro and trying to seduce me—which I might add, did not happen—and probably other staff members. He doesn’t kill everyone she has a relationship with.”
I realized I was probably damning her for siren-magic sex crimes. “Not that she does that anymore. Her magic just went out of whack for a while after she regained her youth. She’s better now and doesn’t use her magic to seduce people. Thatch was just moving the body from Gertrude’s room so you wouldn’t think she had killed him. She was afraid she would lose her job and everyone would think she had used siren magic or killed him with magic because she’d had difficulty controlling herself in the past. Rudy was the one who came to her. He was the one trying to manipulate her into sleeping with him by taking away her library books.”
“Who would have sex with a man to get a library book?” Khaba asked doubtfully.
“She’s a librarian and a Celestor.” I didn’t need to add that she was siren.
Brogan nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“If Thatch didn’t kill Rudy, who did?” Khaba asked.
“No one. He died of a heart attack. I told you, I could feel it.”
“Have you examined the body to corroborate this?” Brogan asked. “There are only certain hexes and curses that can cause heart attacks or mimic the symptoms of them. If you can eliminate these spells, but you see he did have an actual heart attack, there’s a good chance he truly did have one.”
Khaba shook his head. “We can’t. Rudy McDougal was an invisible security guard. We have to wait another three days until Nurse Hilda is finished brewing a special potion to reverse the invisibility. She said something about collecting feverfew under a waxing moon or some such herbal requirement.”
“Oh?” Brogan asked with interest. “This Rudy is classified as a natural transparent, then? The effects of invisibility don’t revert to visibility on his death because this is his natural form? The healer and I had to operate on some of those folks before. Did you try reversing a transparency spell and combining it with a glamour to add pigment to his body?”
Khaba stared at him wonder. “I don’t think anyone thought to try that one yet.”
Brogan chuckled. “No, it wouldn’t be a . . . transparent solution.”
Khaba stroked his beard. “Even if we do find someone to use these spells, we still need a competent medical examiner to confirm the cause of death before handing this evidence over to the Witchkin Council.”
“I suppose Nurse Hilda can take a stab at it in the morning.” Brogan said. “Do you mind if I get a preliminary look at him? For professional curiosity’s sake?”
“I trust your professional opinion more than hers,” Khaba said. “She’d be just as likely to accidentally dissolve the body with acid as she would determine the cause of death.”
Brogan shook his head. “I’ve always wondered why Principal Bumblebub hired her. I put in an application twice and never got the job.”
“Yes, well, Jeb wasn’t exactly the benevolent man we thought he was.” Khaba opened his mouth to go on.
I didn’t want him to get derailed. “Let’s talk about Jeb later. Let’s examine the body now. Is it in the crypt?”
Brogan patted me on the head where I sat at his feet as though I were a clever little dog. “Are you up for this, Clarissa? If I give you directions, do you think you can wrangle up a reverse-transparency spell and combine it with a glamour to add pigment to his body?”
“I have paint. Will that count as pigment?”
Vega barked out. “Don’t you dare! He doesn’t want you to desecrate evidence by slathering it with the joys of painting. We need magic to detect the hexes, an advanced spell to reverse the transparency while simultaneously performing a glamour.” She stood. “This is a matter for a professional.”
“You’re feeling more well-rested I take it?” I asked.
“I will be after Mr. Khaba gives me the keys to Thatch’s supply closet and I gather some restorative ingredients.”
Khaba nodded.
A cunning smile stretched her lips upward. “I’ll also feel more well-rested after I know that I get the position as department head—if Thatch is deemed unsuitable for the position.”
Rudy’s body was being stored in the school crypt, which was where we went after Vega ransacked Thatch’s closet. I suspected the supplies she pillaged were for more than a restorative elixir, but I wasn’t going to tattle on her.
I knew how dangerous Vega could be when pissed off.
It crossed my mind that Vega’s interest in Thatch’s guilt didn’t make her the best person for this job. At the same time, she was far more skilled and competent than Nurse Hilda. Khaba didn’t object to Vega’s terms, but perhaps that was because he wanted someone easy to blame, and that person happened to be Thatch. He might not have completely minded the idea of lett
ing a biased individual execute this plan.
Vega performed the spell to make the invisible man visible with the rest of us present in the crypt. The alcoves carved in the walls no longer housed the ancient bones and mummified remains of staff members. Most had been incinerated. The only two “fresh” bodies were that of Camelia Llewelyn and Rudy McDougal.
Camelia rested on a slab in the wall. Now that she was visible, I could see she was a cute young woman with the same dark hair and freckles as her younger brother. She had graduated twelve years ago, which put her at thirty, but she didn’t look much older than me.
A blanket covered Rudy’s rotund frame, indicating where he was placed on the large table that had been brought into the crypt.
It didn’t take Vega long to conjure a visible man using the spells Brogan walked her through. I had already known that Rudy was severely overweight. I hadn’t known his body was scarred. A long line etched down the side of his face that might have been caused by a hex and couldn’t be repaired—or perhaps he just didn’t care that it hadn’t healed smoothly. It wasn’t like looks were a big concern on an invisible man’s list.
The wide grin on his face was the part that creeped me out the most. It was incongruent with death, like a cute clown holding a knife.
“He had his happy ending,” Khaba said.
Brogan nudged Khaba. “It just didn’t last very long.”
Khaba shook his head. “Probably about six seconds.”
Their banter was natural, as though they had just seen each other the day before and they would keep on seeing each other tomorrow. Dread built in me. I knew it couldn’t last.
“Are you two bozos going to stop stroking each other’s egos, or are you going to have to get yourselves a private room?” Vega asked.
The second step to determining the cause of death was an elimination of hexes that Brogan listed. Having a person with knowledge of illnesses and healing turned out to be pretty handy. Vega was impressed by his knowledge, even if she wasn’t willing to say so. She performed each spell he asked of her with ease. I could see she enjoyed being the competent magician in the room. She needed to be the expert on something, especially after her failed attempts to raise the dead. Occasionally she commented she had never used a particular spell for this purpose before.
