by Emery Belle
Nope. Not a joke, as I found out an hour later, after oohing and aahing over the spoons, which looked like very old, very tarnished, well, spoons. “God, Mom, this is delicious,” Garnet said, her cheeks stuffed with unicorn meat and baked potatoes. She took a long swallow of elderberry wine to wash it down before forking another heaping portion into her mouth.
I stared down at my own plate; I hadn’t touched my roast, instead doing my best to shred the meat and push it around my plate so it looked like I was making progress. The only person who seemed to notice was Garnet’s father, a plump, red-faced man with a soft voice and a friendly smile. He gave me a knowing wink and passed me the plate of rolls.
“So, dear.” Opie turned to her daughter. “How are things going with Calvin?” I noticed her voice stiffen slightly on the name, and I looked from her to Garnet, my ears perking up. Could there be trouble in paradise? For Hunter’s sake, I certainly hoped so. He may have given up, but I was still rooting for him.
“Wonderful.” Garnet let out a dreamy sigh, and her father winced, his already red face now resembling an extra ripe tomato. “He’s so hot… those muscles are just—” She stopped speaking abruptly as she remembered who her audience was. “I mean, he’s always the perfect gentleman.”
“Hmm.” Opie crossed her arms. “I have to say I’m not thrilled that my daughter is dating one of her teachers. Shouldn’t there be some kind of rule in the books about that?”
“He’s not a teacher,” Garnet snapped. “Just a familiar trainer who happens to work at the academy once a week.”
“What about you, Wren?” Opie smiled at me, ignoring her daughter’s furious gaze. “Anyone special in your life right now?”
“Er, yes.” I swallowed a hunk of roll. “Sebastian. Sebastian Blackwater? I don’t know if you’ve heard of him…”
There was a very pregnant pause. Finally, Opie said delicately, “Hasn’t everybody?”
Ouch.
Garnet choked on her unicorn meat, and Mr. Moon shot his wife an exasperated look. “What?” She looked around the table. “Shouldn’t Wren know what she’s up against? She’s new here, after all.” Her eyes landed on me. “I’m just looking out for you, dear. Someone should.”
“I can take care of myself fine, thanks,” I said quietly. “I always have.”
That seemed to shut her up, and the meal ended rather quickly after that. “I’m so sorry,” Garnet said, looking mortified as she escorted me to the front door. “Honestly, Wren, I have no idea what’s gotten into her tonight. She never acts like this.” She pulled me in for a hug, giving me an extra squeeze before releasing me. “Please don’t hate me.”
I laughed. “I don’t hate you. Besides, isn’t that what mothers are for? Driving us crazy? It’s… sort of nice. She was just showing me she cared.”
Garnet rolled her eyes. “Want to borrow her for a few weeks, then? If I hear her say one more negative thing about Calvin…” She shook both fists in the air, then stepped outside into the cool evening air with me. “Speaking of Sebastian.” Her voice was hesitant as she peered at me through the moonlight. “Have you had a talk with him about Remy?”
“More or less,” I said, remembering my promise to him that I’d leave well enough alone. But ever since running into Remy at the casino, that nagging feeling in my gut had started up again and I was regretting ever making that promise. She seemed the opposite of crazy; in fact, she seemed… sort of cool. Like someone I wouldn’t mind being friends with. If she stopped trying to flood my dorm room with mutilated animals, that is.
Sensing my unwillingness to talk about it, Garnet wished me goodnight and closed the door softly behind her, leaving me with the sounds of the waves crashing gently against the shore and the seagulls cawing overhead. Not wanting to walk home in the dark, I counted my coins and then hailed a magi-cab. Once it arrived, I slipped into the backseat and pressed my forehead against the cool window, watching the cab’s leathery black wings spread wide as it soared up into the darkening sky.
The island’s twinkling lights looked mesmerizing from above, and as I watched them, imagining what was happening in each of the homes below me, I let out a soft sigh and wondered where, exactly, I fit into this strange new world.
“So, making any progress on your investigation?” Dale asked as he skimmed the blowtorch over my skin until it took on the familiar purple glow. “Orion’s death is still the talk of ward twelve. Everyone’s dying to know what happened to him—no pun intended—since whoever killed him managed to do it right under our noses. Don’t worry,” he added hastily when I shot him a look of alarm, “I didn’t tell anyone what you were up to. I have a feeling Kellen wouldn’t be too thrilled to hear he’s got competition.”
He winked at me, then turned off the blowtorch and examined my skin. “Okay, you’re good to go. I gave you an extra layer of protection today because you’ll be sweeping out Mildred Applegate’s room. She’s got a nasty case of the boiling blood vessels, and trust me, that’s the last thing you want to catch.”
“Sounds positively horrifying,” I said, then grinned. “But if catching it will get me out of housekeeping duty, I might just take my chances.”
“You’ll be singing a different tune once you start cleaning out her bedpan.” Dale tucked the blowtorch under his arm, and we walked together into the highly infectious diseases ward. A fairy sitting behind the nurses’ station straightened up when she saw him, her cheeks flushing prettily. He immediately headed toward her, propping his hip against the large wraparound desk and leaning over to talk to her, his blond hair sweeping into his eyes. Her high-pitched giggling followed me down the hall and into Mildred’s room, which happened to be next door to the room where Orion had taken his last gasping breaths.
I teetered in the doorway to Mildred’s room, horrified by the sight that greeted me. A very old, very shriveled woman lay on the bed, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her face sunken and her eyes closed. And her skin… every last inch of her skin was a dull, swollen purple color, as though she’d been pummeled repeatedly by a troll’s club.
“You can come in,” she croaked, peeling open one eye with difficulty. The whites of her eyes were no longer white, but a deep crimson, and they seemed to be bulging out of her head. I swallowed hard and took a tiny step into the room, keeping my hand on the doorframe.
“I can’t blame you.” She let out a husky laugh and then closed her eyes again, as if keeping them open exerted too much energy. “You haven’t met me on my best day. Come back in a few weeks, when I’m able to hold my wand again, and I’ll show you I can still keep up with the young coven members.” She sighed, long and deep, and seemed to be drifting off to sleep.
I tiptoed into the room with my bucket of cleaning potion and mop, and began scrubbing the droplets of blood off the floor. As I scrubbed, more kept appearing, and when I looked around for the source, I realized, with a swoop of nausea, that patches of blood covered the ceiling and were dripping steadily down the walls. At the sound of my soft gasp, Mildred peeled her eye open again.
“Sorry,” she said. “I had an episode last night. If you think that’s bad, you should have seen the doctor.” She coughed, and I heard phlegm rattling in her chest. “Now if you don’t mind, I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since I got here six months ago, what with all the howling and the screaming and the exploding limbs. I’m just going to take a little catnap.”
Six months… that meant Mildred had arrived at the hospital before Orion, who’d only been there for four. Was it possible she’d seen or heard anything useful that could lead me to his killer? The centaur’s crossword puzzle book hadn’t been imbued with the cullenberry poison until after he’d been admitted to ward twelve with the weasel pox, meaning that whoever had done it had slipped into his room, unnoticed by either Orion or the hospital staff.
Although…
My stomach twisted into knots. The centaur I’d met on my way to meet with Vega and Lyra, the man who’d called himself O
rion’s brother, said that Orion had once confided to him that he knew both the day and the hour of his death. Did that mean that Orion witnessed the beginning of his own poisoning and did nothing to stop it? And, if so, why?
The questions in this case were beginning to pile up, and so far I had few answers. Barak and Finn both had the motive, and they both had a connection to the Isle of Caoimhe, but were either of them truly capable of murder? It seemed to me that Barak had too much to lose to bother getting his hands dirty, and Finn… well, Finn mostly seemed to be all talk, no action. And I had a hard time imagining him actually riding that manticore when he could barely stay upright on his barstool.
“You’re thinking so loud I can’t sleep,” Mildred admonished, struggling to sit up in bed. She pulled the covers around her thin frame, then unfolded a pair of spectacles from the pocket of her nightgown and put them on. “What’s on your mind, young witch?” She frowned at my mop. “And why in the name of the ancient grimoire aren’t you using your wand to clean up this mess.”
“Technical difficulties,” I said, my hand automatically going to my own pocket, where I’d been stowing my wand, but not before wrapping it up in mounds of duct tape to keep it from performing any unprovoked spells. I had no idea if that would actually work, but I figured it was safer than keeping it in my dorm room within reach of Pierre or, God forbid, Monty. I set down my mop and inched toward the bed, trying not to look directly at the old witch’s crimson eyes.
“Go on, spit it out,” Mildred said. She folded her frail hands over her stomach and watched me with interest. “It’s been a long time since anyone wanted to listen to what I had to say. Other than the doctors, nurses, and other patients, I haven’t spoken to a soul since arriving at this godforsaken place.”
I gave her an incredulous look. “You mean Kellen didn’t stop by to interview you after Orion’s death?” That seemed like an enormous oversight—if I were the police chief, the centaur’s next-door neighbor would have been my first stop. I sighed. Life would be so much easier for me if I were able to spend less time sneaking around and more time conducting proper investigations.
The old woman laughed, then immediately began hacking. I nudged a glass of water her way, careful not to let our fingers touch, and waited until she had regained her composure. “That minotaur is the biggest fraidy-cat I’ve ever met,” she said, wiping off the water that had dribbled down her chin, turning as purple as her skin along the way. “He took one look at me and ran the other way. I’ve learned, in my time, that minotaurs are all brawn and no brain.”
I was beginning to come to the same conclusion. “So did you see anything?” I asked. “Or hear anything? Orion’s killer slipped in right under everyone’s noses, and whoever it is has no qualms about hurting anyone else—I was almost the second victim, and I have no connection to Orion other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The desire for power is a dangerous, seductive thing,” the old woman said. “It is the root of much of the world’s evil, and can cause an otherwise reasonable person to lose themselves completely.”
“Meaning… what?” I stared at her. Did she know something?
“Meaning exactly what I said.” She shrugged. “Now if you’ll excuse me… I really need to get that shut-eye if I don’t want to be here another six months. I can’t think of anything more depressing than celebrating my five hundredth birthday looking like a prune and spraying blood on all my guests. No one would even want to stay for karaoke, and my pet gremlin Gustav and I do a rousing rendition of ‘Monster Mash.’” She sniffed, then waved her hand impatiently at me and settled back in her bed. “Be gone, girl.”
Ignoring her, I leaned in closer. “If you tell me what you know, I might be able to track down Orion’s killer.”
Her eyes popped open and she propped herself up on her spindly arms, teetering slightly from the pressure of holding up her own weight. “Even if I knew something—which I don’t—I certainly wouldn’t be sharing that with you.”
When I opened my mouth to protest, she shot me a fierce look and shook her head stubbornly. “Why would I send you straight into the arms of danger? Take it from someone who knows, girl.” She gestured to herself with a sad smile. “You still have your youth, your beauty, and, most importantly, your health. Don’t squander it by throwing yourself to the wolves in some misguided pursuit of justice. Live your own life and stop worrying so much about everybody else’s.” Then she closed her eyes and, with great difficulty, turned her back to me.
I finished tidying up as quietly as I could, then collected my cleaning products and tiptoed out of the room, shutting the door softly behind me. As I glanced into Orion’s former room, still empty, my mind chewed over the advice the old witch had given me. She hadn’t said anything I hadn’t already heard—from Garnet, from Glenn, from Sebastian, and even from Kellen, though his delivery wasn’t quite so soft—and I had every reason in the world to give up my investigative hat for good, especially after the mental anguish I’d suffered from being forced to leave Hattie, Glenn’s lady love, to die in that crumbling house.
But I also knew what it was like to be abandoned, to be the victim of someone else’s whims and selfish choices, to feel like no one else was in your corner. And if I could bring justice to those who deserved it, be a strong voice for those whose voice had been forever silenced, then I felt like I had no choice but to do just that.
Chapter 14
After my shift at the hospital, I headed straight to Lyra’s office, which was located in a cozy pink cottage between a dragon groomer and an alchemist. As I walked past the groomer, the flapping of wings caught my attention, and I peered inside the window to see a short, stout man with a white beard and a magnifying monocle carefully scraping the dirt from the stunning emerald green scales of a young dragon.
I watched as the dragon reared back and let out a low, threatening roar, and a few orange sparks spurted out of his nostrils, melting the band of the groomer’s monocle. “Gosh darn it,” he said with a sigh. “That’s the third one today!” He groped around for the box sitting on the desk behind him, plucked out another monocle, and popped it over his eye.
“Steady now,” he murmured to the dragon, resting a calming hand on one of his wings. “You’ll smell a lot better once I’m finished here. That’ll teach you to go rolling around in a pig pen, looking for a snack, won’t it?” The dragon mewed softly, and the man tutted before resuming his work.
Shaking my head in wonder, I continued to the pink cottage, gazing up at the rainbow-colored sign hanging above the front door that read Madame Lyra, Fortune-Teller Extraordinaire: One Silver per Fifteen Minutes. Don’t Leave Fate to Chance!
Frowning, I pushed open the door, which let out a sharp whistle to announce my arrival. Orion had mentioned that his children hadn’t inherited the gift of sight… though perhaps, I thought, looking around at the garish décor and trying not to choke on the heavily perfumed air, he didn’t consider this brand of seeing to be quite up to snuff. Lyra’s office reminded me of what I might find at one of those bogus pay-per-call psychic services.
Hearing that Lyra was with a client, I plunked down on a beanbag chair—the only available place to sit—and scowled at a tiki mask leering at me from the corner. Across from me was a stuffed tiger baring its pointed fangs, and the shelf above its head was lined with crystal balls of varying sizes and colors. Several decks of tarot cards were for sale on a desk near the door, along with informational books with titles such as Horoscopes for Dummies and The Hidden Astrologer in You. I flipped through them for a few minutes, then, hearing Lyra’s voice drifting out from behind the curtain separating the waiting room from the fortune-telling area, set down the book and sidled closer to the curtain to listen.
“You have made many great sacrifices in your life,” she said in a soft, mystical voice that sounded nothing like her. “And those great sacrifices will come back to you ten-fold if you continue down the path you’re on.”
“That sounds wonderful,” a breathless female voice answered. The woman sounded on the verge of tears as she added, “It’s nice to know all the suffering I’ve gone through will be worth it in the end—I can keep going if I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” She hesitated, then said, in a smaller voice, “Tell me, Madame Lyra… do you see a husband in my future?”
There was a very pregnant pause, and I thought I detected the faint shuffling of cards. “I do indeed, my child,” Lyra finally said. “When the moon is in its eighth phase and Mars and Jupiter align, you will find your mate at the intersection of a green mountain and a babbling brook.”
“Oh, that is so wonderful,” the woman said, her voice cracking with emotion. She blew her nose. “Thank you, Madame Lyra, thank you so much. How can I ever repay you?”
Another pause, then, “It looks like we ran over our thirty minutes, so that’ll be another silver coin, my child.” I heard coins clinking, and then footsteps padded toward the curtain. I flung myself back into the beanbag chair just as a middle-aged witch with sad eyes and a round face yanked open the curtain, gave me a radiant smile, and practically danced toward the front door, stopping before she left to peruse the titles on display.
I heard a soft groan and bones cracking in the other room, and I poked my head around the curtain to see Lyra stretching out her four legs in a bizarre yoga pose that would have broken my back if I’d attempted it. She spotted me from upside down, then contorted her body into a standing position and gestured for me to come inside.
“Glad you could make it,” she said, sighing as she settled onto her beanbag. I noticed that the mystical tones had evaporated from her voice.
“I didn’t realize you were a fortune teller,” I said, seating myself across from her and looking around the room, which was decorated much like the waiting area. A dragon-skin carpet that I hoped was fake was stretched out beneath us, and we were seated on opposite sides of a spindly table that held a single crystal ball that was glowing silver.
