Murder, Magic, and Moggies

by Pearl Goodfellow

  Waving a hand at the entire ward, he added, “Not so great for the poor addicts who wind up overdoing it, though.”

  I shook my head. “Not everybody who does this stuff gets Stranded, though. I’m sure you’ve got more than a few Strand addicts in prison who aren’t in this … this … mess.” I gestured at Orville’s twisting sweaty frame.

  “Sure, but that’s a separate issue,” David conceded with a shrug. “The administration here tells me that, at the rate in which new Stranded victims are showing up, they are eventually going to run out of space at the end of this year.”

  My eyes widened. “No…”

  “Yes,” David said, pushing off the wall. “I don’t need to tell you what kind of a problem that could be if we ever get to that point, do I?”

  I uncrossed my arms and did some thinking of my own. “This can’t be the only facility affected by the Stranded flood.”

  “It’s not,” David confirmed, steering us back towards the stairs. “Prisons, medical wards, facilities like this, holding cells all over the Isles…it’s getting out of hand pretty much everywhere I’ve checked. Steeltrap Penitentiary is reopening its solitary confinement ward so that they can provide space for more beds.”

  I took one last look at poor Orville before I followed David from the ward. “So where do I come in, exactly?” I asked as the guard opened the door for us to go back downstairs. “I’m just a small town herbalist. Surely you’ve got—“

  “—people who keep telling me that breaking through the psychosis of the Stranded is an impossible task? Yep, got plenty of them.” David said, his irritation showing in counterpoint to his steps. “The Talisman suits have declared that an unacceptable answer and are pressuring us to double down on finding a solution. So…I got to thinking about this cute little apothecary owner I know who might know some herbal remedies that none of my people would have even thought of.”

  I squeezed my lips together. “Orville had just stepped into the full arena of alchemy…did you know that?”

  “Sure. I’m aware that his father is very proud of him too,” David replied while the second cage mesh door swung open.

  “Aurel had secured Orville a modest paying apprenticeship in the metallurgy lab in Coven’s Cauldrons R&D department,” I added, reciting Millie’s update of local gossip while we were tidying the shelves in the apothecary last week. “Apparently, Orville had come up with some kind of new and improved alloy that was to be used extensively in Coven’s new line: Futura. The finish on Futura is so advanced that you can apparently wipe the slime from the Godmarsh Toad from the surface with just a damp cloth. Now…”

  I let that last word hang a bit as we walked towards the blessed front door that none of the wretches on either side of us were likely to see anytime soon.

  “Let me dig through Grandma Chimera’s old journal and books to see what I can find,” I finally said just before we got back to the front desk. “Meet me at the library tomorrow to see if we can supplement whatever I might find?”

  “Sounds good to me,” David said. “I appreciate this, Hat…really.”

  I gave him a wan smile and a shrug. But inside, my head was already running through the location of every book on herbs and spells that Grandma had left me. I really hoped I could find a solution to this sad epidemic.

  Chapter 2

  If I hadn’t lost my temper at the library, I wonder if what happened next would have played out differently.

  The library we have on Glessie is officially called the Keziah Mason Memorial Library by the suits in Talisman. Unofficially, most of the locals just call it “The Mason.” Anyone who calls it by the full name is either from out of town or they haven't lived here that long.

  It’s not a particularly large or grand building. No one would mistake it for, say, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. It’s just a single floor building; art gallery and restrooms to the right after you get past the first set of doors, the library proper ahead after the second round of doors.

  All the books are on the left with various reading areas in the center part of the back end of the building. On the right is the help desk with its book return slot facing the doors, the library offices are just beyond, and a central archive for certain sensitive magic tomes that cannot leave the library. There are persistent rumors that the real Necronomicon is stored in these files, but…well, let’s just say some stories aren’t worth looking into too deeply.

  Some people spend all their days here, but not me. Most days, I’m tied up with running the Angel Apothecary, a family business which specializes in all natural (with the occasional bit of supernatural) cures for my many clients. I’ll never get rich running it, but I’ll never starve either. But, this day, I was in the library on business…well, civic duty mixed with a bit of business.

  I love the place I’ve called home all my life, enough to help out when the local constabulary ask me to help combat the fallout of a major drug epidemic. Of course, Millie would add that when the request comes from one David Trew, I’m twice as inclined to be helpful.

  Whatever the reason, I was quick to offer my services as mentioned above. And so here I was, poring over the shelves of the public magical section, enjoying the rich texture of the leather bound volumes as I pulled them from their slots. There were any number of Unawakened people who came to peruse this section as well as Awakened witches like me. But the contents of these shelves were deemed fairly harmless by the library staff, so that anyone could check out these volumes. Still, what I was looking at turned out to be anything but what I was looking for.

  The leader of my cat-pack, Onyx, was by my knees as I crouched down to pull a hefty tome from the lower shelf, and jumped a little as I slammed the third of four books on Egyptian magic shut. I have another seven of these furry creatures back at the Angel Apothecary, where I work. You’ll find out more about the other cats and The Angel in due course, of course!

  “I take it that one was less than sufficient?” Onyx asked, taking a break from his earnest face washing.

  "You missed a spot," I noted, pointing to a smudgy bit of grime at the top of his left ear. Onyx didn't hesitate to give his ear another once-over with a freshly licked paw.

  FUN FACT: When cats speak, they tend to use about sixteen “cat words” to talk. All the Unawakened ever hear are various meows from my cats. But I can hear them talking just like I would any other human out there.

  “Not only is this one less than sufficient,” I said of the Egyptian Lore book Onyx was referring to. "They all are!"

  I shoved the volume back into its place on the shelf. “Egypt was one of the greatest civilizations on the planet, had a magical tradition that stretched across four thousand years and the most this library has is four lousy books on its lore?!”

  “Careful,” Onyx said, his bright eyes shifting to the right. A woman in her mid-twenties and her little girl were staring at me as if I’d grown another head.

  “I talk to my cat sometimes when I’m frustrated,” I explained. It was the truth. But they didn’t need to know about the part where the cat talked back.

  The alarmed look on the woman’s face remained as the pair of them walked away. The little girl giggled -- maybe because Onyx's ear was inside out from his vigorous cleaning efforts.

  “This library allows for the presence of familiar creatures like myself, Hattie,” Onyx patiently reminded me, one ear in, one ear out. “But we need to be more cautious about certain laws. In particular, the ones about not revealing what we truly are to the Unawakened public.”

  I nodded at the sage advice from my head kitty. Onyx was always right and this was a bitter-sweet arrangement for me. Sometimes I wanted to be right, you know? His infinite wisdom was why he was the unofficial Captain of his brother and sister cats under my roof.

  Their official name was The Lemniscate, but I preferred to call them The Infiniti. It seemed a lot less archaic and took a lot less explaining to inquiring minds. Onyx, of course, still upheld the honorabl
e Lemniscate label, and I admit it did sound cute when he used it, usually when introducing himself and his brothers (and sister) to an Awakened person. He would often take a regal bow as he uttered the ancient word to an impressed audience. The Infiniti were a family heirloom, passed down the generations from time immemorial on my mother’s side. The Infiniti were immortal, in case you hadn’t clued in on that yet. The Lemniscate symbol -- a horizontal “8” -- is the symbol for infinity.

  I was looking over the last book (and finding nothing useful) when someone else walked into view. I, thankfully, could afford to be a little less discreet with David Trew. Not for the first time, it struck me that he could hide behind those John Lennon glasses all he wanted. It would never mask the romance cover model good looks hiding underneath his garb. But that was something you noticed second. The first thing that got your attention was the way he carried himself. David moved with authoritative ease, an attractive certainty in his every step and gesture.

  Today, he was wearing his usual worse-for-wear suit that had been washed one too many times, complete with faded red tie. In his hands, he had a book of his own. I recognized it from a quick glance at the cover, a “lost” treatise on foreign chemical substances by Paracelsus.

  “Having any more luck than I am?” David asked as he knelt down to mine and Onyx’s level.

  “Put it this way,” I said with a weary sigh. “There are only three books on Egyptian magical lore -- four if you count the Book of the Dead -- in the whole library, and the last one is in my hand.”

  David scanned the shelves before us. “I don’t get it. The Romani lore is well represented here—“

  “That’s an understatement,” I muttered, contemplating the entire row of bulging shelves on the subject.

  “But everything else is given short shrift,” David finished. “Egyptian lore, Babylonian, Norse, Greek…these are not the sort of things that would be left out by anyone who is genuinely interested in representing the ancient arts.”

  “My customers complain about this all the time,” I said, tapping my finger on the hardcover of the book I was holding. “But it wasn’t until today that I now know what everyone's getting so heated about. I had no idea it was this bad. What is Druida up to, exactly?"

  I wondered about our zany librarian's behavior of late. She seemed to have taken on an unhealthy leaning toward Romani lore and nothing else. Strange, for someone who allegedly hailed from the Celtic Shores.

  "The irony is that I’m not even looking for the magical practices here. I just wanted to see if there were any promising substances that could help us counteract the Strand psychosis.”

  “You’re sure that you went over everything your grandma left you?” David asked, his tone unconsciously switching to the one he used in interrogation.

  “Twice,” I replied. “I’ve even combed through the Book of Shadows section of Grandma’s journal, which is something I usually refuse to do…but, no, nothing.”

  David gave me a sympathetic look. He knew the reasons I refused to practice magic. He had a few of his own for not dabbling in the arts himself. But the way things had worked out over the last little while, I was doing a heck of a lot more magic than I was comfortable with and not always voluntarily, I might add.

  “Alchemy section is slightly better stocked,” David said, holding up his book. “Not sure there’s anything in here that might help. Paracelsus, from all the accounts I've read so far, was an egomaniac who refused to believe there was an alchemist out there better than him.”

  “He is where we get the word ‘bombastic’ from,” I said, feeling a smile come on my face as I remember how that word had been derived from Paracelsus’ last name: Bombast.

  “Sure, but he did know a lot about strange substances,” David said. “I figured even he would have heard of the Strands of Araby, being as they were blowing across the sand-lands, even in his day.”

  I shrugged. It was a reasonable hypothesis.

  “Just the same, acknowledging, let alone battling, drug addiction, didn’t really get started until the early 20th Century, even in our circles,” I pointed out. “Are you sure—”

  “Not really,” David admitted with a sigh. “But alchemists are usually pretty good when it comes to finding antidotes to lethal substances, and the Strands are just that, in large enough or frequent enough doses.”

  I grunted in frustration. "What about old Aurel Nugget? Can we ask him?

  I thought back to poor Orville sinking into Stranded oblivion at Midnight Hill as I added, "Surely he'd be more than invested in finding a cure for his boy?"

  Onyx grunted himself and said, “Good thinking, Hattie.”

  “Aurel Nugget is exactly the man we need, it's true,” David admitted. “The only snag is that he has already jumped in on this one. Being the faithful and thorough scientist he is, he dabbled in the Strands himself to determine their effects. He wanted to save Orville, so he thought he could find a cure by making himself the test subject. Poor guy is now in a padded cell in the Shadowlands Institution on Nanker. No room at Midnight Hill, as you can imagine from our last visit, or he would have been there with Orville. In any case, he is about as capable as his son right now. ”

  My shoulders slumped at the news. So the father-son duo of esteemed alchemists were out of the picture.

  David exhaled a weary breath. "But, I swear to the Lady, Hat, if I find anything promising, anything that might be able to help, you'll be the first to know."

  ‘The Lady’ David was talking about is Lady Justitia; spiritual patron of the Coven Isles various constabularies. To swear by her was as solemn an oath as any law enforcement officer could make.

  “Like I’d doubt that you would, CPI Trew,” I said with a resigned smile. “By the way, did you hear the news about Milosh Besnick?”

  “Sure,” David confessed as we both got to our feet and I took hold of the kitty leash once again. “We got the news of the ruling before the press did…denied parole and left to rot in Steeltrap Penitentiary for the rest of his natural, rotten life. It’s just what that old Strands kingpin deserved.”

  “For all the good it’s doing our current situation,” I noted, my lips turning into a sour frown. “I guess they still haven’t nailed him for his cruel sideline, then? It might add a few years to his life sentence. No disrespect to the SPCA, but they haven’t really done much on that front.”

  “I know, I know,” David said with a weariness only a career cop could pull off. “I don’t like the idea of Sabretooth tigers getting poached for their teeth any more than the Supernatural Protective Coven Association does. But comparing his animal trade on those Siberian steppes with what's happening here? Well, what we have here is a little more pressing right now.”

  “Didn’t really solve the problem either,” I added, my eyes scanning the shelves in one last desperate attempt to find a potentially valuable edition. “I mean if Milosh's imprisonment had wiped out the trade—”

  “Never going to happen,” David said with a shake of his head. “Crime is like any other business; if there’s a market, there will be suppliers. You can wipe out one cartel and another will pop up in an instant. Still, things didn’t get this bad until that civil war in Yemen I told you about that broke out.”

  I sighed, getting back to my feet. “Hopefully, I’ll eventually find something that will work.”

  “Don’t doubt it for a minute,” David said, giving my shoulder a friendly squeeze.

  The electricity leaped from his hand and into my skin. Concerning the two of us, these charged exchanges tended to happen a lot. But we never talked about it; never acknowledged it. We just usually did what we did right then: ignored it completely.

  “I’ll see you later at the shop, okay?” he asked, a little too quickly.

  “Sure,” I said back with a smile that I hoped didn’t look too forced.

  Onyx looked as though he wanted to say something about this. I just glared at him. Not one word, kitty. He looked back at me, his f
ace serene and wise, his tail circling in a composed dance of restraint. Then his shoulders started shaking, and then his eyes clenched up, and then my main moggie was convulsing in fits of laughter. In fairness to him, he tried to hide his mirth behind both of his paws, To no avail, however. I just rolled my eyes. Not going there. Shaking my head, I walked up to the front desk to speak to Druida Stone, Gless Inlet's head librarian, about the poor book selection.

  Now, if someone were new to Glessie, they’d wonder why I was getting so tense about going to see our head librarian about finding more books than were currently on the shelves. After all, that is what librarians are supposed to help with, among other things.

  Nor, in looking at Druida Stone, would you necessarily conclude that you had anything to worry about. She was somewhere in her mid-forties but could pass herself off as late twenties easily. She wore way too much make-up, but you could still make out a swarthy complexion underneath the face paint. I’d have pegged her for Mediterranean if I hadn’t heard that her heritage was from the Celtic Shores. Even with the thick application of foundation, you would swear she wasn’t a day over twenty-five. Her skin was flawless, and not for the first time, I idly wondered what her skincare regime was.

  While her clothes were professionally cut, they were also professionally crazy. Druida chose some seriously gaudy fashion items that included huge hoop earrings, and a multi-hued vest with all manner of mythical creatures emblazoned on its surface.

  Today she was wearing a boldly colored paisley silk scarf, which, on closer inspection, looked like it was adorned with a hundred different hued snakes. The jeweled tones seemed to coil together and slither across the fabric.

  Glessie's librarian had taken to wearing outlandish hats and shoes too, just recently. Currently, she had a basket of fruit and taxidermied birds on her head. I spotted her banana yellow shoes when I first entered the library. As if the banana color wasn't a bad enough choice for footwear, Druida had opted for a pair that featured plastic bananas on the uppers too.