It also meant that I could hear all of the conversations between patrons, and there was only one thing on everybody’s lips this morning: Florin the vampire’s murder.
“Frankly, I’m not surprised coming from that lot,” an old witch who had to be four feet tall on a good day said with a disapproving sniff. “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead and all, but that whole vampire family was bad news. He must have done something to deserve it.”
“Come now, Brenda, you don’t know that for sure,” the wizard next to her said. “After all, Florin’s cousins might have gotten in trouble here and there, but we don’t know anything about Florin himself. He grew up in Spokurse.”
“When the whole family is trouble like that, you have to expect that the cousin that grew up nearby is the same. Besides, respectable paranormals generally don’t go about getting themselves murdered.”
“Respectable paranormals don’t have a run in with that fairy Aquaria,” another wizard interrupted ominously. “I heard that just a couple of hours before he was killed, Florin had an argument with her.”
“That’s right,” a nearby shifter chimed in, inserting himself into the conversation. “I heard the vampire was being rude to her, and Aquaria managed to curse him so he burned himself on his coffee. She’s not a fairy I would like to cross. After all, we all know what she’s capable of.”
“That’s right,” the old witch said. “I don’t care what amount of work you’ve done with Healers, once you’re a murderer, it’s in your blood. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that she simply snapped.”
“If you ask me, someone like that should be locked up. It was only a matter of time before she did it again, this time to someone innocent,” a voice chimed up from elsewhere in the shop, too far away for me to pick out who it was. I shook my head sadly.
“We don’t know that it was Aquaria who killed him,” I piped up, my voice sounding small and squeaky even to my own ears. Why couldn’t I be more like Ellie, whose presence always commanded a room?
Every pair of eyes in the shop turned to me. The wizard next to old witch spoke up. “You’re that new witch in town, aren’t you? It’s alright; you’re not expected to understand what happened all those years ago. But Aquaria has proven that she’s a dangerous fairy, and there are those of us in town who would rather something be done now before she kills somebody again.”
A murmur of assent rose from the crowd and I lowered my eyes as I realized that was definitely in the minority here.
“Something needs to be done about that fairy before she hurts someone else,” someone said.
“She should be put in prison on principle alone,” chimed in another.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. Aquaria wasn’t a friend of mine, or anything like that, but she did seem like a nice fairy, and even though I knew what she had done when she was a child, that didn’t make her guilty of this crime. Everyone in the shop was acting as though it was a foregone conclusion that she was the killer.
I pushed through the crowd and made my way to the front counter. I didn’t even care that I was cutting past everyone. I placed my order, grabbed a couple of loaves of bread, paid for them, and got out of that shop as quickly as I possibly could.
It had suddenly felt absolutely stifling.
I rushed back home and made my way into the kitchen, where Sara was opening and closing cupboards, obviously going through the same process I had only a few minutes earlier.
“Oh good, you got some food,” she said, making her way to the bag with a couple of loaves of bread, grabbing one of them, and sticking a couple of slices in the toaster. “We still had some butter and jam, but no toast to put it on. Hey, what’s wrong?” Sara stopped, suddenly realizing that I wasn’t exactly in a good mood anymore.
“You should have heard the people at the bakery,” I explained, shaking my head sadly. “Every single one of them thinks that Aquaria killed Florin, and that she needs to be locked up. Heck, half of them think that even if she didn’t kill him she should be locked up, just to be safe.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” Sara said. “Aquaria is a good fairy. She had a rough start to life, but I don’t think she would have killed that vampire, and anyway, you can’t lock somebody up and just because they might commit a crime in the future.”
“I agree,” I said. “Do you know if she has any family somewhere? I imagine living here for the next little while isn’t going to be too pleasant for her.”
Sara shook her head. “It was just her, I think. Her mother’s family live elsewhere, but I’m not entirely sure where. I’m not sure even Aquaria knows. Her mother moved here before Aquaria was born, and as far as I know, she never told anybody about her family or her origins.”
I sighed. “All right, well, let’s try and get Ellie to make her some food then. She’s probably not going to want to go into town for a few days.”
“Who’s not going to want to go into town?” a voice asked from behind us, and Ellie appeared, still dressed in her pajamas, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. I told my story again, and Ellie raged.
“How awful! Aquaria hasn’t even been arrested and people are already labelling her as a murderer? That’s just not right.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But people’s minds aren’t going to change overnight. It’s been years since she killed her mother, so these people have obviously believed this for all that time.”
“Well, there’s one thing we can do to try and stop it. If we can solve the crime, help Chief Enforcer King find out who did it, then all of those people will have to shut up about Aquaria since it will have turned out that she had nothing to do with it.”
I looked at Ellie skeptically. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? After all, Chief Enforcer King does know what she’s doing, and I should mention that she warned me that she didn’t want us to get involved when I spoke to her.”
“Things are different now,” Ellie said, waving away my worries with a hand gesture. “The more people get together and try and solve this, the sooner we can clear Aquaria’s name. Because frankly, if people have been holding those opinions for that long, they’re not going to stop thinking she’s a murderer until somebody else is in prison for committing the crime.”
I had to admit, Ellie did have a point.
“All right, fine,” I said.
“I’m in too,” Sara said. “I know what it’s like to not have anybody believe in you. And Aquaria’s situation is like, ten thousand times worse than my mom thinking I was hopeless as a witch.”
Ellie nodded confidently, like she hadn’t expected anything less from us.
“Good. We get started straight away. What’s our first step?”
“Sara suggested that you make some food that we can take over to Aquaria,” I said. “I think that’s a good idea, that way she can stay inside and avoid everybody else if she wants to. When we take the food over to her, maybe we can have a chat with her about the day and see if she knows anything that could help us.”
“Great,” Ellie said. “I’ll get started straight away, and we’ll head over there in a few hours.”
A part of me was a little bit nervous. After all, I was all too aware that we were chasing down somebody who had driven a stake through a vampire’s heart. This wasn’t going to be a hunt for a fluffy cuddly little puppy. But at the same time, it was the right thing to do. Aquaria had already been through a lot in her short life, and I didn’t want to see her made a pariah by ignorant people with nothing better to do than to bother a child abuse victim.
Chapter 7
A couple of hours later Ellie had made a few big trays of lasagna and casseroles, as well as a batch of cinnamon buns. Packing six of them into a box, the three of us headed over to see Aquaria, with Amy begging off as she had to go work at coven headquarters. I had never actually been to a fairy’s house, and to my surprise, it turned out that she lived in a giant mushroom!
“Most of the fairies in town - and in mo
st other paranormal towns - live in mushrooms like these,” Ellie explained as we approached the giant patch of mushrooms on the outskirts of town where I’d been told Aquaria lived. “They carve out the interiors and use them as homes.”
I gawked at the fungi as I realized this was almost like a little fairy suburb. This cluster of mushrooms was at least thirty strong. They were all different sizes, but I estimated that the average mushroom was about 30 feet high, and at least 20 feet around at the bottom. They were definitely stout, with the stems all being off-white and the caps being different colors but all with large white dots on top.
To be completely honest, they kind of reminded me of the mushrooms in super Mario games. Especially the ones with the green caps and white dots.
Most of the inhabited mushrooms had windows carved out of them, which made it easy to tell which ones were occupied. By my count, about half the mushrooms in this cluster were fairy homes, and Ellie led us straight towards one at the back of the cluster. The cap on this mushroom was purple, a deep royal shade. We walked up to the front door, which was made of wood and painted purple to match the cap of the mushroom. Ellie knocked, and a moment later the door opened, Aquaria staring back at us.
She had obviously been crying, and her platinum blonde hair was messy, like she hadn’t brushed it after getting up that morning. She looked up at us, curiosity in her eyes.
“Ellie! And Sara, and Tina. What are you doing here?”
“We have some food we wanted to give you,” Ellie said, holding out a platter she was carrying. “Can we come in?”
“Yes, of course. Oh, how nice of you. You shouldn’t have!”
Aquaria opened the door wide, and the three of us stepped into the mushroom. I couldn’t help but look around curiously, since I had never been inside a fairy mushroom before. It was surprisingly spacious, with the entire lower floor having been carved into a large circle that acted as the kitchen and living room. The kitchen was off to the right, with the counter curving along the wall, and a dining table set with four chairs not far from it. The left side was more of a living area, with a couple of couches and a TV set up. It was very open plan, and directly across from the front door, on the other side of the room, was a set of stairs leading up to a second floor that I assumed housed the bathroom and bedroom.
A number of towels were set up on the floor at the far end towards the stairs; that must have been where the pipe had burst the day before.
Ellie went over to the dining table and placed the food down, with Aquaria rushing over to help her and put it all in the fridge.
“How can I ever repay you for this?” she asked, but Ellie waved away her thanks.
“Don’t worry about it, what are friends for?”
“You have no idea how rough the last few hours have been,” Aquaria said, and she looked like she was about to burst into tears. “I woke up this morning and found somebody had painted ‘murderer’ on my front door. I only just finished washing it off about fifteen minutes ago.”
My heart went out to the poor fairy sitting in front of me. She looked so pale and frightened.
“I’m sorry, Aquaria,” Ellie said. “It sucks that people are treating you that way, and it’s not fair. We decided we want to help Chief Enforcer King find out who killed that vampire, so that your name can be cleared and you can move on with your life without people treating you like a killer.”
“I am a killer, though,” the fairy replied quietly, her eyes staring down at the floor. “I didn’t mean to be, but that’s what I am.”
“You mean your mother?” I asked softly, and Aquaria nodded.
“That’s right. She was a bad woman, and she was going to kill me. I know that I’m not at fault for what happened, but the fact is, I took my mother’s own life. To be completely honest, there were a few times last night when I even asked myself if maybe I did kill that vampire, and I just don’t remember it. What if I did it?”
“I don’t think you did it, Aquaria,” Ellie said gently. “You would remember if you did.”
“I didn’t remember killing my mother,” Aquaria replied. “At least, not at first. It came back eventually, but when they found me in the woods, I had no idea what had happened.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s normal,” I chimed in. I didn’t know a ton about paranormal psychology - okay, I knew literally nothing about it - but in the human world repressing bad memories, especially by children, was definitely a common thing.
“If you look into it, and you find out that I’m the one who killed that vampire, make sure I get locked up this time, okay?” Aquaria asked. “I don’t know that I’d be able to live with myself if it turned out I had killed somebody else, too.”
My heart went out to the poor fairy. I suddenly realized why she had been acting so strangely the night before. It wasn’t simply that she was afraid that she might get accused of a murder she didn’t commit; Aquaria was afraid that she might have actually committed the murder. She had denied it to me at the time, but that was understandable. After all, she did say now that she didn’t remember killing Florin. I was fairly certain she hadn’t done it, but seeing her anguish over not being certain made my heart break.
“I promise you, no matter what we find out, we’ll make sure justice is served,” Ellie said.
Aquaria nodded. “Thank you. I know everybody in town thinks I killed the vampire. Thank you for coming by.”
“We thought bringing a bit of food might give you a little bit of extra privacy for a few days,” Sara said.
“Can you tell us everything you remember from yesterday? After the interaction with Florin?” Ellie asked.
“Everything was pretty normal after that,” Aquaria said with a shrug. “I was almost at the end of my shift at that point, and so I served some people until we closed up – paranormals generally stop buying coffee around three in the afternoon, so it’s not really worth us staying open longer than that - then I grabbed my things, put my apron away, and went out into the market. I had a few things I wanted to buy so I didn’t go straight home. I saw some of the fruit and vegetable sellers, and I bought some mangoes and strawberries. It’s one of my favorite combinations, and I thought I would treat myself for dessert. I put them into my bag, and wandered around for a little while looking at stuff for sale. The next thing I knew, everyone was rushing in the same direction, and I followed the crowd. That was when I saw the body, and I realized it was the vampire that I had spoken to that day.
“Tina here found me a few minutes later, and then Chief Enforcer King came over and wanted to ask me about it. I told her everything I could, everything that I remembered about my interaction with him, and then she let me go. Honestly, I don’t think I know anything that could help you find the vampire’s killer. I didn’t see him at all after he took his coffee and left.”
“Do you know which one of the witches or wizards that was standing around might have hexed his coffee to make it too hot?” I asked.
“That’s what happened, isn’t it? I figured it had to be; nobody else had had any problems with the brewed coffee from that batch. I tried some right after, but the temperature was fine. I thought maybe he had just made it up as an extra way to get me in trouble.”
“I imagine that’s what happened,” I said.
“Unfortunately, I actually can’t think of anybody who was even there at the time. I don’t really pay that much attention to who’s around, you know? All of the faces kind of blend together after a while when you’re serving hundreds of people a day.”
I nodded. “Fair enough, I get that.”
“You could always ask the barista. He might remember. Barry Thormund. He has a better memory for that sort of thing than I do.”
“We will, thanks,” Ellie said. “I’m guessing you have no idea who might have wanted Florin dead?”
Aquaria shrugged. “Sorry, I can’t help you there. Yesterday was the first time I had seen him in my life.”
The three of us continued to ask q
uestions for a couple of minutes, but it quickly became evident that Aquaria didn’t know anything more than she was telling us. We said our goodbyes, wished her well, and headed back out into the winter cold.
I shivered as we left, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. I couldn’t imagine what Aquaria was going through right now, thinking that she might have murdered Florin and simply didn’t remember it.
We had to find out who killed the vampire, if only to give her a little bit of peace.
Chapter 8
“Let’s go and see Barry,” Ellie suggested as we walked away from the mushroom that Aquaria made her home.
“Do you know where he works?” Sara asked, and Ellie nodded.
“Yeah. He works at the roastery. They have a permanent factory, but it’s not in Western Woods. It’s actually in Spokurse, so we’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone if we go over there and chat to some of Florin’s acquaintances.”
“Do you know everybody who lives in Western Woods?” I asked Ellie, and she grinned.
“More or less. Barry used to work at the café, about two years ago. He was nice, and we went out a few times, but nothing serious ever happened between us. He was a barista there, too, but he decided he wanted to get more seriously into his coffee. That was why he started working in Spokurse, since there’s no coffee roasting company in Western Woods. He commutes there every morning, since he still wants to be a part of the coven of Jupiter over here.”
We made our way to the portal, told the shifter guarding it where we were going, and an instant later found ourselves in the middle of a paranormal town that looked a lot bigger than Western Woods.
The portal here was a large circle in the middle of a cobbled street, with tons of paranormals walking around busily, heading here, there and everywhere. In the distance were snow-capped mountains, and thick white snowflakes drifted down onto us where we stood. Old-style gas lamps lined the streets, giving the town the same European look I loved about Western Woods.
Six Ways to Spellday Page 4
