by Kyle Shultz
Rilla’s lip quivered ominously, and Gregory whimpered again.
“But don’t worry,” I hastened to add. “We have a skilled enchantress on staff who will certainly be able to fix your little problem.”
The door to the broom closet rattled.
“Ah, and here she comes now.” I was relieved to finally hand this case off to somebody more qualified. I could take care of whoever had changed Gregory, while Cordelia got the poor bloke back to normal. “Miss Blenkinsop, Mr. Duville, may I present the one and only Lady Cordelia Beaumont!”
Crispin popped out of the closet, alone.
I frowned at him. “Where’s Cordelia?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t find her anywhere.”
“Did you check her room?”
“I knocked, but she didn’t answer. She must be somewhere else.” He held up a large snail shell attached to a dog collar. “However, I did find this. Molly’s been working on it for a while now.”
“What’s that?” asked Rilla.
“An Undine translation shell,” Crispin explained. “Used by merfolk to let them speak and understand any language they choose, even if they’ve never learned it. My girlfriend Molly modified it so it can translate what humans in animal form are saying.”
“Where’s Molly?” I demanded. “You could have just brought her instead of bothering with that collar. She can probably change Gregory back herself.”
“She’s taking a bath.”
“Still? Wasn’t she taking a bath three hours ago?”
“She’s a mermaid. What do you expect? And besides, the way this Office is, sometimes you step into the bathroom and end up in the hat shop across the street. Which is pretty embarrassing, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Then try changing him back yourself,” I said.
He cringed. “Not sure about that idea. You know my command of the runes hasn’t been so good since all that stuff happened last year. I mean, I can still use them, but they don’t always behave for me.”
“Just take a look at his magical aura. You can at least manage that.”
Reluctantly, Crispin held out his hands over Gregory. A cloud of runes appeared in the air around him, spinning and orbiting in an intricate network. Gregory flinched in surprise, and Rilla gave a startled gasp.
“It’s all right. Not going to hurt you; I only want to look.” Crispin peered at the runes for a long moment, then lowered his hands. “Nope. Can’t fix it, sorry.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I know you’re better at that other, weird, portals-and-time-twisting magic these days, but surely you can still twiddle a few old-fashioned runes around.”
Crispin glared at me. “With practice, yes, quite possibly. But that’s not the point. This particular spell doesn’t have any easy solutions. There’s no way to unlock it aside from disenchanting the source, and I don’t know where or what that source is.”
I sighed. “Same old story. We’ll have to do some legwork, then.” I pointed to the collar looped over Crispin’s wrist. “Go ahead and put that on him. Maybe he can give us a few more clues.”
Crispin fastened the collar around Gregory’s neck. “Righty-ho, then, Mr. Duville,” he said. “Speak.”
Gregory barked, but we didn’t hear it. The orb on the collar glowed brightly, and words blared from it in a man’s voice.
“IF YOU ARE DYING, PIE.”
I blinked. “What?”
“JUST SLEEP BECAUSE YOU THINK TIME IS ANNOYING.”
Crispin shrugged. “That…almost makes sense?”
“GRADUALLY WATERMELON GRADUALLY WATERMELON GRADUALLY WATERME—”
I reached out and unbuckled the collar, and the garbled words finally stopped. “Okay. That didn’t work.”
“It should have!” Crispin protested. He snatched the collar from me and frowned at it. “I even took it down to the stables and tested it on Edmund!”
“Your unicorn?” I exclaimed. “You actually made him talk?”
“Yeah. It was great, except that he discusses politics a little too much.” Crispin shoved the collar in his pocket. “Back to the drawing board, I suppose. I can’t think what could have gone wrong.”
“So what am I supposed to do about Gregory?” Rilla demanded.
I winced. “Er…well, I’m afraid he’ll have to remain the way he is for the moment.”
Rilla bristled. “What? You’re sending him home in this…condition?”
“There’s nothing else we can do for the present,” I said. “I’m sure once Cordelia returns from wherever she’s gone, she’ll be able to—”
“Oh, naturally.” Rilla jumped to her feet. “Because she’s actually the only useful person in Beaumont and Beasley, isn’t she? You’re just the muscle, tagging along after her while she does all the clever things and solves all the mysteries! What’s the point of you?”
Gregory barked in agreement.
“Now, see here,” I retorted. “There’s no need for you to become offensive. Everyone who works here has an important role to play, and we’re very good at what we do.”
“Oh, really? Then why are you still a Beast? You can’t even change yourself back; how can you be expected to help people with similar problems?”
“That’ll be quite enough,” said Crispin. “I’ll show you out, Miss Blenkinsop.”
“Arf!”
“And Mr. Duville.”
“Our wedding was going to be the social event of the season!” Rilla protested. “If we have to delay it because Gregory’s still on all fours, I’ll sue each and every one of—”
“Bye-bye.” Crispin snapped his fingers, and both Miss Blenkinsop and Mr. Duville vanished into a rabbit hole.
“Crispin!” I thundered, clenching my fists. “How many times have I told you not to use your powers on the clients?”
“It was convenient,” he protested. “I’d like to have seen you get rid of her with as little fuss and bother as that.”
“Fuss and bother are part of the job! You can’t keep taking shortcuts!”
“Technically, I didn’t. Miss Blenkinsop and her new dog did. I sent them straight to Duville Manor. But if you’re that peeved about it, I can always bring them back and show them out the ordinary way.”
“No!”
“How about this, then.” He sat down on my desk again. “I could—”
“OFF.”
“Fine, whatever.” His feet hit the floor with a thud. “I could go back in time to this morning, when she and dog-boy are in the tea shop, and see if I can figure out what changed him and who did it to him.”
The fur on the back of my neck stood up. “Absolutely not!”
“Don’t get excited,” he pleaded. “It’s nothing to worry about, only a short hop. No pun intended. I’m not going to actually change the past. I’ll watch it for a little while, try to get some information. That’s all.”
I bared my fangs at him. “The answer is no, Crispin. You use your powers too much as it is; all this flitting about the city through rabbit holes. I don’t want you using them to time-travel under any circumstances, no matter how short the hop might be or how little you intend to alter history. Is that clear?”
He folded his arms. “No. It’s not clear. And you want to know why? Because you’ve never told me what happened the last time we got mixed up with time travel. Maybe, if you explained to me what went on in the Palace of Basile, I’d actually have a good reason to not use my powers, but as it stands, all I know is that they come in very handy.”
“Crispin,” I began, but he cut me off.
“I think I deserve to know the truth about Basile. And so does Molly. We remember bits and pieces—something to do with the Unqueen, and the White Rabbit, and so forth. An alternate timeline; a possible future. But we don’t know what any of those glimpses mean.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “Because it’s not a possible future. It’s completely impossible, now that Cordelia and I are back. None of it ever happened, or ever
will.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re so confident, but don’t you think it would be better for us to know everything about that future so that we can be sure it never happens?”
“No,” I snapped. “I don’t think that. And you’ll have to respect my decision, whether you like it or not.” I stood up from the desk so abruptly that I nearly knocked my chair over, and headed for the window.
“Where are you going?” Crispin demanded.
“Out.” I lifted the sash and jumped through.
Chapter 2
Rooftops Make Me Introspective
I tried to pretend not to notice Crispin when he joined me, but unfortunately, the fact that he stumbled out of the rabbit hole and nearly knocked me off the roof rendered this impossible.
“Watch it,” I warned, digging my claws into the tiles. I hoped this wouldn’t cause Office any pain and make him shake me off his roof or something. (The Office was, apparently, a ‘he.’ We’d referred to it as ‘her’ a few times in the early days, when Sylvia the dryad first endowed the wood of the building with sentience. He kept randomly locking us in closets until we finally got his gender right.)
“Sorry,” said Crispin. He shifted into his White Rabbit form to give himself better balance, then crouched on the roof beside me. “I still can’t find Cordelia. Can’t imagine where she’s got to.”
“Hmm.” I traced a crack in one of the tiles with my claw.
“Are you still cross with me?”
I turned to look at his hairy, whiskered face. “I never was.”
“Well, you did a pretty good imitation of it, then.”
“It’s not you,” I insisted, “it’s…”
“What?” He narrowed his eyes, and his nose twitched of its own accord. “Who are you really angry with, then?”
I’m angry with the evil entity from the future who’s apparently going to take you over if you use your powers too much, and turn you into the worst monster the world has ever seen.
I’m angry with the Unqueen for lurking in Molly’s mind even after everything we went through to get rid of her, just waiting for her chance to destroy Molly’s soul and hurt you in the cruelest way possible.
I’m angry with myself for not telling you that you have a daughter out there somewhere, lost in time.
“I’m angry with Rilla,” I said aloud. Better a half-truth than the whole story.
Crispin frowned. “Don’t tell me she got to you with all that nonsense she was spouting.”
“Yes. No. I’m not sure.” I glared down at the street, where motorcars purred to and fro and street-lamps glistened in the fog.
He clapped a furry hand on my shoulder. “You’re not useless, Nick. You know that.”
“In a way, though, I am. I’m not a detective anymore; not really. I’ve been out of my depth ever since…this happened.” I waved my claws in the air. “Living in a world I don’t understand, and just barely getting by.”
“I think you’ve adjusted pretty well over the last year and a half,” said Crispin. “You know your way around all the weird stuff now. And you help people all the time.”
I snorted. “Yeah. By growling and roaring and punching and clawing. Sitting around and listening while Cordelia explains all the magic things. Let’s face it: she’s the brains and I’m the brawn. But I used to be the brain, before all this.”
“Are you saying you’re jealous of Cordelia?”
“No, of course not. It’s not like I’d want magical powers; I’ve already been saddled with enough magic-related problems to last me a lifetime. It’s just…I miss being a detective. After all, when was the last time I actually did proper detective work?”
“Well,” said Crispin, “to be fair, since you exposed magic to the world and took down the Council of Scions, there hasn’t been much call for more run-of-the-mill detective stuff. People tend to have the magical sort of problems more often now that enchanters and magical creatures aren’t trying to hide.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Which is another issue that’s bothering me. I’m not sure that I did the right thing.”
“You did!” Crispin was emphatic. “The Council was evil. They needed to be torn apart.”
“Malcolm says they kept things in check, and with them gone, it’s nothing but chaos. Sometimes I can’t help but agree with him.”
“You have to give people time to adjust,” said Crispin. “And in some ways, they’re already starting to.” He pointed down at the street. “Look there.”
I followed the line of his finger and spotted a centaur wearing a policeman’s uniform over his human torso. He was standing in the street, holding up his hand to halt the traffic as three children and a woman carrying an armful of packages took the crosswalk to the other side. The kids waved excitedly to the centaur, and the woman smiled at him. He gave them a friendly grin and tipped his hat to them, then motioned the cars past once the little family was safely across.
“That bloke’s got a proper job now,” Crispin pointed out. “He lives in the city; he’s not forced to stay at a place like Warrengate or the Forbidden Forests. He can live like a regular person instead of a creature out of a storybook; he doesn’t have to wear a glamour spell or any other disguise. You broke down the wall between the human and non-human worlds.”
“It hasn’t been completely positive, though. There’s been some fighting. A few humans have tried to harm the non-humans, and vice versa.”
“A few,” Crispin repeated. “Overall, there’s been far less panic and violence than anyone would have expected. Like you said a while back, plenty of people already knew about magic and magical creatures; they just had to be given the opportunity to admit it openly.”
I half-smiled. “Yeah. They weren’t all like me, were they?”
“There’s only one Nick Beasley.” Crispin grinned. “Accept no substitutes.”
Movement on the street below drew my eye, and I caught sight of a dark-suited man with a stocky build headed for the Office at a swift jog. “Isn’t that Constable Oswalt?”
“Inspector Oswalt,” Crispin corrected. “They promoted him after the Revelation.” This was the colloquial name for the dramatic announcement I’d made a year ago. “He’s one of the few coppers who kept his head during the initial hoopla.”
“I suppose having encountered me the day I first changed helped to prepare him for that kind of thing,” I mused, as Oswalt vanished through the front door. “Seems to be in quite a hurry. I wonder what he wants.”
“Let’s find out.” Crispin snapped his fingers.
“Hold on!” I cried. But the rabbit hole had already swallowed us up.
Chapter 3
The Canine Crisis
Inspector Oswalt yelped in alarm as the rabbit hole deposited us in the waiting room of my private office. He was still puffing from his run, and his forehead was beaded with sweat. Technically, there was supposed to be a large foyer between the front door and the waiting room, but the Office had apparently decided to move things along more quickly.
“Erm…hullo, Mr. Beasley,” he said to me, with a quick, nervous nod. “And…Mr. Rabbit,” he added to Crispin.
Crispin changed back to his human form. “Actually, I’m also a Mr. Beasley.” He grabbed the Inspector’s hand and shook it warmly. “We met before, briefly, when you broke down the door of our flat that morning when Nick got all hairy.”
The Inspector looked embarrassed. “Quite frankly, sir, all I really remember from that morning is ‘im.” He jerked his chin in my direction.
Crispin clapped him on the shoulder. “Completely understandable. Nick, why don’t you get our guest some tea?”
“Excuse me?” I shot back. “You’re the secretary—you get it!”
He snorted. “Secretary. After everything we’ve been through, why haven’t I been upgraded from assistant to junior partner or something?”
“We’ll discuss that later.” I gave him a shove. “Hop to it.”
He scowled. “That was
n’t funny.”
“Of course it was. Now, Inspector Oswalt, won’t you step through to my office?”
“Thank you, sir.” He pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his face and followed me out of the waiting room.
“So,” I said, settling myself behind the desk and inviting him to take the chair Miss Blenkinsop had recently vacated, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Oswalt fidgeted with the sleeves of his uniform. “As you know, sir,” he said, in his precise, professional manner of speech, “the Talesend police department has at times taken a dim view of your little…operation here.”
“It’s called ‘Beaumont and Beasley,’” I reminded him. “And it’s a fully licensed and legal private detective agency. Also, as I’ve mentioned to the police before, I enjoyed a friendly relationship with them prior to my…altered circumstances, so I see no reason why that couldn’t have continued.”
“I’m not here to argue about that, Mr. Beasley.” Oswalt wiped his forehead with the handkerchief again. “I know there’s been some bitterness over the Revelation among members of the force, but I, for one, support what you did. I don’t like the idea of bein’ controlled by shadowy sorcerer people. Better to have everything out in the open, I say.”
“Tea!” Crispin emerged from a rabbit hole right next to the Inspector, holding a tea tray. The policeman flinched and nearly fell out of his chair. It took him a few seconds to regain his composure.
“Y-yes,” he stammered, as Crispin set the tray down on my desk and started pouring him a cup. “Much better that we all know about these things—they just take some gettin’ used to, is all.”
“Sugar?” asked Crispin.
“Just milk, thank you.”
Crispin handed him the steaming cup. He tried a sip, then set it down in his lap to wait for it to cool.
