“It’s not lost on you, is it?” Aiden asked. “That this seems tailored a little bit?”
“Chloe? My father?” Bailey asked archly. “Yes. I noticed.”
“They’re trying to get to you,” he said. “It’s what they do. Just don’t take anything to heart here, okay?”
She almost snapped at him that she knew that, but the truth was that she already felt off balance. Seeing Cleo there, looking so like Chloe, when she was so obviously meant to look like Chloe, had upset her and the sting of it was still there, pumping venomous anger into her veins. “Keep reminding me of that, and I will.”
The hotel in question was, of course, in the same place as the single hotel in Coven Grove was. The front desk clerk was remarkably helpful, pointing them to the second floor, and immediately adjacent to the room that, in the real world, Professor Turner had been murdered in.
Bailey stared at that door for a long moment before Aiden took her hand and squeezed it. She nodded to him, and knocked on Nackolas’ door.
Ara, Fran, and Cleo only looked roughly like their real-world counterparts, so there was no telling how close a facsimile to his counterpart Nackolas actually was, but he had red hair. It was the first thing she noticed about him. Then his green eyes, and the general shape of him. He was tall, well over six feet, square shoulders and a strong jawline, though it was tainted with fae sharpness, like his nose and ears were. It probably didn’t look anything like Bailey’s real father—it was possible he looked nothing like him at all, and this was all just part of the game.
Still, Bailey opened her mouth to introduce herself and couldn’t.
Aiden, again, came to her rescue. He extended a hand. “Hello. I’m Aiden Faire, this is my... friend, Bailey Robinson. You must be Nackolas?”
The man looked from one to the other of them and then nodded nervously. “I am. Should I... know you?”
“No,” Bailey said. “We came to introduce ourselves and talk a little. Heard you were in town. Um... were you at the fair?”
“I wasn’t,” Nackolas said cautiously. “I was here. In my room. I have been all day, I didn’t have anything going on until tonight... May I ask what this is about?”
“You haven’t heard then, I take it.” Aiden said.
Nackolas shook his head, “Nothing so significant that I know what you mean. Heard what?”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Bailey said softly. “But I’m afraid we just came from the fair. Cleo, the woman from the bakery, she...”
“She’s passed away,” Aiden finished. “Not more than an hour ago. It looks as though it might have been murder.”
It took half an hour to help Nackolas calm down from the news. He’d been inconsolable from just seconds after hearing it until he finally paused to take a deep breath—and that only after a great deal of gentle urging from Bailey and Aiden both. Mostly, it was Aiden’s doing.
Bailey only lasted a few minutes before she felt herself start to slip. It was too real, all of this. Even if she knew it wasn’t, there was some part of it that felt that way, and the longer they were here the more real it seemed.
It had been a subtle, slow change. Now that she recognized it, though, the world did have a more solid feeling than before. Not just a memory of a dream, but a very convincing dream. The kind she couldn’t just wake up from. She was very aware of Rita and Anita’s story about their former coven sister, Esme. How long had it taken for her to go mad in Faerie? Weeks? Days? Hours?
At length, Nackolas was able to talk. He went from inconsolable, to distraught, and finally to numb. By the time he was staring and speaking dully, she was pretty sure he’d had nothing to do with the murder. Still, he might have had something else useful to say.
“I came back just a week ago,” He said quietly. “I wanted to reconnect. I’ve been traveling for twenty years looking for... well, I’m sort of an archaeologist, you see. But it never fulfilled me—not like being with Cleo did. I should never have left her. I was just so wrapped up in my own dreams that I thought it was best if I let her live her own life.”
“And, did you get the chance?” Bailey asked.
He smiled at her, the first time she’d seen the expression on him, and nodded quickly. “I saw her a few days after I got into town. I had to work up the nerve. That’s when she told me.”
“Told you what?” Aiden asked.
“That he has a daughter,” Bailey said.
Nackolas nodded, though he shot her a warning frown. “Yes,” he said. “Braley. She has red hair... just like mine. All these years, and I had no idea. If I’d know, I would have come back. Would have been here for her. Cleo didn’t tell me. I guess she probably couldn’t have... it wasn’t like I was taking letters where I was. But, oh... she’s so beautiful. She looks just like her grandmother. I never imagined I would have a daughter...”
He was staring at Bailey, and she shifted her feet a bit, folding her arms over her chest. “Congratulations,” she said. “At least you found out while you had the chance.”
“I suppose that is something,” Nackolas said.
“I’m sure there will be a service of some sort,” Aiden said gently as he stood. “And I expect that we’ll see you there when that happens. In the meantime, I’m afraid Bailey and I must beg your leave. We have some... other people here to visit.”
“Oh, certainly,” Nackolas said. “Thank you for coming by, for letting me know. No one else has come... they might not even know about me, I suppose, so it makes sense. If you hadn’t told me, well... I would have heard about it in the paper, or when I went to see her. It’s better to be told these things when you have company with you, you know?”
“We do,” Bailey said. She shook Nackolas’ hand when he offered it, and Aiden did the same, before they left him there.
They were quiet until they reached the parking lot, where Bailey turned and looked back up at the closed door to the man’s room. “How much do you suppose they know?” She asked.
“It’s impossible to say,” Aiden told her firmly. “And we can’t operate on unknowns just now. We have to play the game, and not think too much about how true any of this is, alright?”
“Right,” Bailey said. She forced her shoulders to relax. “Well... if this were a real murder, and we didn’t think it was the former lover then... the next thing to do is follow the money, right?”
“I believe that’s a good course of action,” Aiden said. “We know Carson wanted to buy the place.”
“Yes,” Bailey said. “But killing Cleo for it seems a bit extreme. You heard what Fran said—he could have just waited for it to go out of business. At that point, he could have bought it for a steal. So why rush things and risk getting caught?”
“Good point,” Aiden admitted. “So, who next?”
“Only one of the bakery ladies wanted to sell. She had something to lose if it went under. Who knows how things have changed with Cleo being gone.” Bailey sighed, certain that Fran was going to be every bit as pleasant to interrogate as her real-world counterpart would have been. Still, it had to be done. It was a lead, and that was the game.
At least, she hoped. If it wasn’t, they were going to be wasting a lot of time playing the wrong game—and who knew how long they had to win the real one.
Chapter 16
AVERY RUBBED HIS BLEARY eyes and pushed the papers away from him. For a brief moment, he laid his forehead on the table before he tapped his phone on—it was nearly dead—and looked at the time. It had gotten dark hours ago, but he didn’t realize just how late it was. Well past midnight.
The coven ladies were still up with him; they’d merely closed the bakery around him, careful not to distract or disturb him. Now, they gathered upstairs, leaving him to his puzzles while they presumably made their own efforts.
He’d gotten as far as seeing a connection between the thirteen parts of the music the children were humming—his papers were now littered with his painstaking attempts to chart some section of
the music in order to compare the differences in tones and the lengths of them, but if there was some arcane math to discover he couldn’t tell what it was. Until he did, applying the equations he’s managed to parse out was a pointless affair—the music probably represented some variable that was left open in them, the ‘x’ to solve for; but without knowing what the music meant, he couldn’t begin to guess.
Meanwhile, across town, there were children languishing and parents terrified of what would come next.
He lifted his head from the table, and sipped his cold coffee. The formulas wouldn’t make sense when he went back to them, though, so instead he tried giving Thomas a call. It rang five times and then went to voicemail. He supposed it was possible Thomas was already asleep.
“Hey Thomas,” he said when the tone chimed, “I’m just checking in. I know you don’t want to know... anything but I’m having some trouble here and I normally get my pep talks from Bailey but, well, she’s not around so I thought maybe...” he sighed, and then ended the call. “I don’t know what I thought.”
“Any progress?” Frances asked from nearby.
If he’d had more energy, he might have been physically startled. As it stood, he only gave a slight tremble and his heart quickly settled again. He waved a hand over the paper. “Progress? Yes. In the direction we need? I have no idea.”
“Keep working at it,” she said. “We aren’t having much luck either, though there is definitely an enchantment in place. Can’t tell where it’s coming from or what it’s supposed to do, but every bit of information helps.”
“I wish I could say I’d gotten even that far,” he muttered. He stared at the papers, and sipped the coffee again.
Frances took the mug from him. “I’ll get you a fresh cup. I came down to make more.”
“Thank you,” he told her.
She left him, and rounded the far end of the counter to start working on that. After the coffee was in the machine, and the drip had started, she leaned on the edge of the counter nearest his table. “What do you have so far?”
He shrugged. “I’ve charted some of the music—I think, it’s been a long time since I was in band, but I found an app to help me identify the notes—and I know what all the main equation forms represent. As to how they're related, though, I haven’t the faintest clue.”
“And you think they are?”
“This work is all theoretical, unproven, and based on the mystical equivalent of hearsay. So it would be more accurate to say that I hope they’re connected.” He rubbed his forehead, and stared at the tip of his blunted pencil. “I’m starting to think that I’m not cut out for magic.”
Frances gave a rueful chuckle as she straightened, and came around the counter to sit across from him. “Magic isn’t something you get to be cut out for or not, kiddo. You have it, or you don’t. If you do... well, it doesn’t go away. You get what you get. At least you have enough in you to learn. Some people aren’t so lucky.”
“Aiden’s talked about this,” Avery said. “What wizards call athos. The... extent of a person’s magical potential, like the intensity of it.”
“We just call it potential,” Frances said dryly. “Wizards do love their fancy words.”
“I suppose it means the same thing,” he said. “I’ve done magic. I can do a few cantrips. Simple hand spells.”
“Others fail even at that,” she told him. “If they’re lucky, they simply move on with life. Oh, they always seem a bit charmed—their magic finds ways to expressing itself in art, or vivid dreams, or even some mild psychic ability. Others, though... aren’t so lucky. They’ve got enough to feel it, but not enough to use it and they invariably become obsessed with how to get to it. They make deals. Warlocks, enchantresses, sorcerers—they all have to find allies, or masters, to help them awaken that spark and put it to use.”
“Are you... suggesting I should do that?” Avery asked cautiously.
“Good lords of old, no,” Frances snapped. “I’m giving you perspective. No, those people wreck themselves in the end. There’s no good at the end of a road like that, giving up control to some other force.”
“Right,” Avery sighed. He fidgeted with his phone under her hard gaze, finding that he hadn’t, in fact, somehow managed to miss a call from Thomas. He shifted in his chair and turned the phone off to conserve what little was left of it’s battery power, just in case he needed it.
Frances was still watching him. The coffee gurgled and dripped behind the counter. For a moment, he wanted to open up to her. She seemed, for the moment, to be at least a little friendly toward him. More so than ever before. His problems weren’t the sort he could talk with his own parents about.
That, however, seemed like it might push the envelop a little too far. He didn’t want to test the limits of her patience or compassion.
Frances, though, sat back and gave him a sad smile. “I understand how tough it can be,” she said.
“What’s that?” He asked.
“Things like you and Thomas.” She snorted when Avery started to shake his head. “Don’t be silly. I was almost married once. To a non magical man. Years and years ago.”
To Avery’s knowledge, Frances wasn’t involved with anyone. Bailey probably wouldn’t have known. Then again, though, maybe she wouldn’t. Frances tended to be all business. That she wasn’t, at the moment, made him a little uncomfortable. “What happened?” He asked. It seemed like the polite thing to do.
“We’d been together two years,” she said softly. “I was training under Anita, mostly, and had been for a while. It was getting harder to hide who I was, what I could do. Not as hard as it must be for you kids, what with everything going on; but hard anyway. I wanted to show him all of me, see?”
“Yeah,” Avery whispered.
“So I took the leap. I told him. He didn’t believe me, of course.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “So, naturally, I showed him. He believed me then. Oh yes. And... he threatened to expose me, and all of us.”
Avery sucked in a breath, aghast. “But... why?”
“He was terrified,” Fran said, sad but resigned. As if it were the natural response to magic. “Once people start really thinking about magic, what it is and what it can do, they start imagining all the things that are possible. All the things they can’t protect themselves from. Fear takes over, eventually.”
“Did he?”
“Turn us all in?” Frances shook her head slowly. “No. He didn’t. He didn’t get the chance.”
Avery felt a chill creep up his spine. “What... happened, then?”
Frances sighed, and stared at the coffee machine behind the counter as it sputtered out the last bit of coffee it planned to make. “Chloe and the Crones made him forget.”
“Just like that? They just made him forget you’d told him?” It didn’t seem so awful, though in theory memory magic was pretty risky stuff—you never knew what else you might tamper with.
But Frances frowned, and touched the simple copper bracelet on her wrist. “No,” she said quietly. “They made him forget about me.”
Avery’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He couldn’t imagine. His condolences probably wouldn’t amount to much, so instead he held his tongue.
She cleared her throat and stood to get coffee for both of them. When she came back, she set his mug down within reach but away from the papers he was working on. “Better get back to work. The sooner we solve this mess, the better.”
“Of course,” Avery rasped.
She stood for another long moment though, as if she might say something more. Instead, she only clapped him on the shoulder encouragingly, and left him to his work, disappearing into the back room and, presumably, up into the attic.
Avery watched her go, and wondered if there wasn’t a very good reason that Frances often seemed so hard nosed and bitter about life.
The breakthrough came at around three in the morning. He’d permuted the equations every way he could think of, and was looking at the
values he’d assigned each note of the music, deciding that it was possible they were simply wrong. When he pulled the sheet of compiled notes and scales to him, he realized that it was probably because he’d inverted them; these values made more sense if... but no... no, he was simply looking at it upside down.
That was it.
“It’s inverted,” he whispered. A thrill of premature excitement tickled his stomach and almost made him laugh out loud before he got a handle on himself and began scratching out the new values into their respective parts of Aiden’s equations. Bit by bit, it all fell together until he was smiling, scribbling furiously, and tapping out a new rhythm with his fingertips on the table.
When it was done, everything filled out, all sides of a thirteen dimensional equation balanced perfectly, he let out a long breath that turned into laughter and then, finally, into a sob of relief. He could almost feel neurons in his skull untangling themselves, relaxing, melting into the ecstasy of triumph.
His body had been as heavy as a sack of stones before, but now it was light, and he dashed behind the counter, through the store room and up the stairs. At the top, he had the momentary good sense not to barge into the witch’s sanctum unannounced, and instead pounded on the door.
Chloe answered it, confused, alarmed, and possibly a bit irritated—until she saw Avery’s expression, and the tears on his cheeks.
“I did it,” he breathed, laughing again. “I have it. I know what we need to do!”
Chapter 17
BAILEY AND AIDEN AGREED that it would be prudent to approach Fran carefully and, if at all possible, while she was alone. So they returned to the heart of Coven Grove, to the bakery, and watched for a while from a bench across the street as Ara and Fran seemed to be sharing a moment of mourning together inside. If the bakery here worked anything like the bakery in the real world, Ara would leave first and leave Fran to finish closing. Frances, back in the real world, always seemed to be the one most content with spending the last hours of the day alone with the place.
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