Silent Doll

by Sonnet O'Dell

  “I’m not going to insist on plastering this,” she said, “as that would just get irritating for you when you’re not going to need it that long, but I’m going to insist you keep it bound for a few weeks or however quick you heal.”

  “How long would this normally take to heal, on a regular person?”

  “At least six weeks,” she said, studying me as I thought about that. “You haven’t told anyone, have you? You’ve not come out as a supe.”

  “You make it sound like I’m in some sort of preternatural closet.”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve told people, but it’s on a need to know basis, and some people just don’t need to know.”

  She nodded, piercing the tub with the needle and sucking up the insides.

  “I’m assuming, as all I can do is guess, that you’re probably going to burn this morphine off pretty quick, like a were would, so I’ve doubled the dose. Should last at least until you get home.”

  I turned my head away from the needle and closed my eyes, taking deep breaths.

  “I hear you had a half a building fall on you after a fight to the death with a black arts practitioner and didn’t want any attention, but a needle scares you.”

  “Just do it quick,” I pleaded.

  She tried to stifle a chuckle. “I’ll have the nurse get you some clothes, too,” she remarked. “Those are barely hanging on. Now you’ll feel a short sharp scratch and then, hopefully, nothing more.”

  Nothing felt very, very good.

  When I finally got back to my apartment, I was amused to find the door was pushed back into place in the frame. I slapped my good hand on the door, watching with a bright grin as it fell inwards against the floor with a tiny poof of dust. I walked across the wood.

  “Honey, I’m home.”

  Incarra and Trinket came out of my spare room. Incarra put her hands on her hips and shook her head at me.

  “We just fixed that,” she said. I giggled.

  “I’m sorry I broked it again.” I put the prescription pain pills I’d gotten at the hospital pharmacy on the coffee table. Trinket and Incarra pushed the door back into place, using the catch to hold it still.

  “I’m going to go to bed,” I declared.

  “But Trinket had some questions.”

  I spun around and pressed the index finger of my good hand to her nose. “Bzzt. Wrong! The correct reply was, ‘sleep well, Cassandra’.”

  She arched a brow.

  “Is Miss Cassandra all right? She’s acting odd,” Trinket whispered anxiously.

  I smiled widely at them.

  “I think they gave her something.”

  I reached for the door to my room, looking at my knocked over TV and the smear of my blood on the wall from where I had hit my head. I had a fleeting thought that I should probably clear them up.

  “Cassandra,” Trinket said, “can we…”

  “Shhh, be quiet,” I said.

  Incarra looked alarmed. “Why? Can you hear something?”

  “No, I just want you to be quiet. I am going to bed and you can both work out who sleeps where,” I said around a very large yawn. “Remind me in the morning when I’m not so loopy to be mad at you.”

  I walked into my room, pulling the door shut behind me, and I heard their murmurs but I didn’t care. The morphine had this wonderful effect on me and I just wanted to pass out and enjoy it.

  Chapter Thirty

  A few days later I sat in Hamilton’s office, staring at his ceiling tiles and waiting for him to show up. I found myself messing about with the sling, moving the knot about on my shoulder so that it didn’t itch; but no matter how many times I adjusted and re-adjusted it, it itched. I hated the damn thing, but I had to wear it.

  I’d slept right through that night after the hospital after the morphine they’d given me. It didn’t burn out of me quite as quick as it would have for a lycanthrope. When it had worn off, I’d been grumpy and sore—and Incarra hadn’t waited around for me to finish my sleeping beauty routine. She’d left me a note in which she promised to call soon and wished me a speedy recovery. She obviously had absolutely no remorse about shunting me to the hospital—even though she knows how I feel about them.

  Grumbling about how I couldn’t trust anyone in this world, I’d dragged myself from my bed, still dressed in the scrubs I’d fallen asleep in, to find Trinket had cleaned again. My TV was in the right place; she’d cleaned the blood off the wall and, she told me—as she brought over a huge stack of pancakes, juice, and my pain pills, she’d called a man about fixing the door.

  I was relieved to have some of the work taken off me. I hated calling around trying to get workmen. The carpenter arrived while I was eating, and we discussed a new door. I wanted something more solid, with a peephole, and he estimated how much it would cost. I would have to rely upon the good graces of Visa until I could get enough money to pay for it. He was back with the door in an hour and had it installed within a couple of hours after that. He left, promising me an invoice in the post.

  The door opened behind me and I leaned my head back to look as Hamilton entered. He looked refreshed and was clean shaven in a freshly pressed shirt and dark brown slacks.

  “Cassandra! How you doing? How’s the arm?”

  “It’s still broke,” I said cheerily, and watched his face as he tried not to show his surprise.

  “Really? I’m surprised they didn’t put your arm in a cast, then.” He took a seat, and spread his hands flat on his desk.

  “I insisted against it. Not only would it be far too convenient to clunk some idiot over the head with, but everyone would get mushy and want to sign it.”

  Hamilton laughed. “What makes you think they can’t just sign your sling?”

  “Sheer force of will,” I beamed at him, and tucked my hair behind my ear with my right hand. “Now, you wanted to see me.”

  “I did?” he asked, scratching his chin.

  “You know very well you did. The message was, and I quote: ‘come see me when you’re better.’ I’m better, so here I am.”

  Hamilton directed a pointed look at my arm.

  “All right, I’m enough better to handle whatever it is you want.”

  “And if I wanted a hug?” he asked, holding out both arms to demonstrate that two were needed. I flipped him the bird with my unencumbered hand. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with your right arm.”

  “Get to the point, Hamilton, my arm hurts constantly so I’m generally irritable—which is why I’ve stopped answering my phone myself.”

  “I noticed. You’ve got that Trinket working for you as some kind of secretary.”

  “Something like that.”

  Trinket had hired herself as my maid, my cook, my receptionist. In the last couple of days I’d been eating better, my clothes were ironed, and she was managing to work out some kind of schedule for me from post—its and things I’d tacked to the refrigerator. She wouldn’t take a salary—what little I could give her–until she’d paid off my new front door. Her mother had broken it to get to her, she said, and she felt responsible.

  Not that I was monopolizing all her time; she was working some day shifts at Grimoires. Truth was delighted with what she called Trinket’s “eccentricities”, and as Trinket didn’t sleep, she didn’t mind that I often made her stay down in the office at night—that way there were very few chances of crossovers. She wanted to save some money, though, so she could travel and see the world, as she had no idea how long she had left and I could only estimate.

  I had to sit her down for that talk first thing. I explained to her that I’d converted the life energy from her mother’s youth potion into another kind of life energy, then implanted it in her chest to replace the bond. Once the vial was in place I’d bespelled her body, much like I’d seen once upon a dusty dark cellar in the Soul Market. I’d tied that spell to the energy so that when it was depleted, the spell holding her in would dissolve. I’d told her I cou
ld look for a way to renew the spell, but she’d refused. She didn’t want to risk being bound to another person who might force her to do their will.

  I’d estimated that she probably got a year from each heart, so she probably had five or six years left, depending on how much juice had been taken before I’d flambéed one to distract mommy dearest. Trinket had started a bucket list of places she wanted to go and things she wanted to do. I admired her for making the best of a bad situation.

  “I didn’t force her,” I told Hamilton now. “She just started doing stuff for me. Grateful, I guess.”

  “More than likely. You did go above and beyond for her. Speaking of, that’s why I called you here—I wanted to tell you what’s happening.”

  I nodded and rested my right arm on the chair, waiting for him to continue. He paused, watching the minute twitches of my fingers at the edge of my sling.

  “So, what happened?” I said, verbally prodding him.

  “Well, the knife came back with the blood of the last two victims on it and her prints all over the handle. How did you get her to touch it? She was careful to use her dolls to commit her crimes.”

  “I pissed her off and made her want to stab me herself.”

  He nodded his head with a wry smile, as if he saw me doing that. “We also found the hearts of five out of six of the girls. DNA matched each to one victim and one to the blood stain on the Prada bag. The personal effects of one of the victims were found in a drawer. With your friend’s statement on top of that—and yours, of course—we’ve got her on kidnapping charges too.”

  “When does she go before a judge?”

  “Next month. I hear her lawyer is working on an insanity defense, but I don’t think it will wash. That woman knew what she was doing.”

  “I’ll testify to that.”

  “You might have to, you and your friend. I didn’t see any of the damage to your home.”

  “You won’t. It’s been fixed. The new door is in, now it’s just paying for the bastard.” I made a sour face.

  “Well, I just cleared your consultancy fee with our budget people, so a nice check is on its way.” I leaned back in my chair and relaxed at the thought that I was getting paid. I let a smile pull my lips up.

  “I take it money is tight?” Hamilton asked.

  “No more or less than it usually is. I just need people to stop destroying my property for a little while. I can’t budget for surprise expenses.”

  “Whatever happened to expect the unexpected?”

  “It became a cliché. If you expect it, it’s really not that unexpected.”

  “True. Was the door the only damage to your place?”

  “Yeah. My TV survived the crash to the floor, and Trinket sponged the blood off the wall. Don’t think I’ll have to repaint.”

  Hamilton blinked at me. “Blood?”

  “Yeah, I hit my head on the wall, lost consciousness. How did you think I got tied up in a converted warehouse?”

  “Did the doctor take a look at it?”

  “Sure,” I said with a shrug. There had actually been no need to get the doctor to look at it; the cut had healed almost to nothing by the time I was at the hospital.

  He eyed me speculatively.

  “Do you need anything else? Or did you just want to tell me that Trinket’s mom is going down.”

  “Pretty much. I like to give good news in person, and I wanted to see that you were doing okay, with your injuries.”

  I stood, smoothing my hand down the material of the sling.

  “I’ll be fine, thank you for the concern.”

  He pushed off from his desk and walked me out.

  “You can give me a call, if you need any help while you’re all banged up,” he said with one of his most dazzling smiles.

  “I’ll add you to the list.”

  “Is it a long one?”

  “Gets longer every day,” I said with a martyred sigh.

  He had been about to open the door, to release me into the wild, but he stopped. “I read doctor Soltaire’s report. What were the chocolates actually laced with?”

  I didn’t look at him as I answered. I couldn’t. For some strange reason I felt ashamed to have a stalker. “A homemade paralysis potion. Whoever made it wanted me unable to fight or escape.”

  “He sounds serious.”

  “Well, now that I know about him I’ll be on my guard. If he really wanted a chance at taking me out, he shouldn’t have warned me first. Now I’m prepared, so I can handle it.”

  “Any idea who it might be?”

  “None. I mean, I don’t know anyone like that, or at least I hope I don’t know anyone like that. I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would attract a deviant stalker.”

  He gripped my chin and tilted my head up so I had to look in his eyes. I hadn’t realized how bright a shade of blue they were.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong or shameful,” he said. “It’s not about you; it’s about this person’s perception of you. You can’t make them view you as you view yourself.”

  I grinned. “Because if people could, no woman would ever turn you down and your ego would suffocate us all.”

  He blinked. I waited for my joke to register; after a few moments his serious face cracked into a grin. “I would be a king,” he said.

  “You’ll just have to settle for being named after a prince.”

  “You know the origin of my name?”

  “Sure. It’s the same family as mine, right? My mom was very into old myths.”

  “Sounds like she was a very smart lady.”

  “In some ways she was.” I didn’t need to add that she was dumb in others, in some things that had really counted, really mattered. Why did some people think that to protect someone they had to be ignorant of the danger they were in? If my mother had been alive at that moment I would have asked her.

  “I’ve got to go. People to see, places to go.”

  “Lives to save?” he asked, opening the door for me.

  “Hopefully not tonight.”

  He waved to me when I made it to the outer door. I waved back, then used my right hand to wedge the door open, pushing through into the corridor. I felt happier when I got outside and could smell fresh—well, fresh-ish-air again. I pulled out my phone, slid through the options, and called the office.

  “Farbanks Investigations office. How may we help you tonight?”

  “Trinket, it’s me.”

  “Miss Cassandra!” Trinket always sounded very pleased to hear from me. I was trying, without success, to get her to stop calling me Miss.

  “I feel like doing something. Any calls or cases?”

  “You’re the first call all night. If you want something to do, you had an invite tacked to your fridge for some kind of party at the Full Moon bar.”

  “Oh, crap, right—thanks for reminding me!” Thinking about that invitation for a moment, I wondered: did I really want to expose myself to the possibility of drunken, fur flying, fights to the death bouts? Well, it beat staying home and watching Tevo-ed episodes of Thirst—which was an other side slightly pornographic Melrose Place with fangs. It didn’t matter what side you were on, vampires made for good TV.

  “I think I’ll head on over to that,” I said. “Why don’t you call it a night and do something off your list?”

  Trinket’s list, once she’d grasped the concept, would take forever to get through. She kept adding new things.

  “I’ve added a couple more things,” she said thoughtfully. “Some of them might be doable in an evening. Thank you, Miss Cassandra, I’ll get right on that.”

  “Trink, you really can just call me Cassandra,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. I just choose not to.”

  I could imagine her sticking out that little tongue out at the phone. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why she and Incarra didn’t get on better. They both had the ability to annoy the hell out of me at any given moment. Thinking of that brought Incarra to mind.
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  “Did Incarra call?”

  “I don’t know,” Trinket said, “I haven’t checked the house phone. If she has, do you want me to call you back?”

  “No, it’s okay, it’s not important. I’ll see you later.”

  I would, as Trinket for the most part was living with me or in premises I owned. She had moved things about in the office to make a little nook for herself—a chair with a small table and an extra phone on it. A pile of books by the side. One item on her list had been to read all the classics, and as she didn’t sleep she was a good way through them. I wondered fleetingly why Incarra hadn’t called. I didn’t stay mad for long. She should have known after two days she’d be fine. Perhaps she was still freaking out about the whole seeing ghosts thing. Or maybe she was freaked out by seeing me being flung across a room and nearly buried alive under a ton of bricks. I hadn’t even thought to get her reaction to everything that had gone on.

  I almost called her but I decided against it—I didn’t want to push. She’d contact me when she felt she was ready to. We were still friends, after all. At least, I was hoping we were. I put my phone into my jeans pocket and started a slow walk toward the community, not really sure if I was as in a party mood as I should be.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Full Moon bar wasn’t exactly a high class establishment, but it gave off a good vibe. The bright blue awning and a small painted sign by the door advertised that it was a bar. The door in the wall was a simple wooden thing with a porthole window that looked completely innocuous. The door was unguarded, no bouncer to keep out any stupid drunk humans. I guess they worked on the principle that anyone who’d enter into a werewolf bar would be too scared to cause trouble or too drunk to inflict anything of a worrying scale. I’d chosen to use the bar’s street entrance, because I didn’t want to go through the main gate security—well liked and well known in the community or not—they would require that I state my business. I pushed open the door and stepped into a paneled corridor. To either side of the inside of the door were two baying wolves carved in white stone which were pretty impressive.