Potion Sickness

by Samantha Silver

  “Had it been made public?” I asked. “The speakers at the Symposium, I mean.” After all, maybe that opened up a whole new range of suspects.

  “Oh, no,” George said, shaking his head. “I only found out about it because one of vampires of the selection committee is a good friend of mine. Luca was the only person who knew, and he was supposed to keep it a secret until the day he would speak. No one else was to know about it.”

  Well, there went that theory. On the bright side, at least I no longer had to add ‘literally all of the vampires in the paranormal world who thought turning humans was a bad idea’ to my suspect list.

  “So who do you think killed him?” I asked, and George shrugged.

  “Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t think the paranormal who did it did so because of his political positions, though. Vampires have had political disagreements for thousands of years. We sort them out through vigorous debate and discussion. Murder is beneath us. It is the sort of thing that would happen if we began to allow the turning of humans again. It is only one reason why we must continue with the laws the way they are.”

  “So you don’t think Anastasia would have killed him?” I asked. “After all, she was arrested for assaulting him a few weeks ago. And I’ve met her; she’s got a little bit of a temper.”

  “A woman?” George scoffed. “No woman would have killed Luca.”

  “Because it takes power to drive a stake through the body like that?”

  “No. No, the wooden stakes are quite easily driven through a vampire’s heart. A woman could do it easily, from a physical point of view. But women do not kill. It is not in their nature. They are the ones who give life, not the ones who take it away.”

  I was tempted to show this misogynistic piece of crap just how much taking life away was absolutely in my nature, but then I’d probably get arrested. What a surprise that the vampire with old-fashioned ideas about turning humans so that vampires could keep their culture of old turned out to have old-fashioned ideas about the role of women, too.

  We could totally be murderers. In fact, I’d almost been murdered by female paranormals in the past.

  “So basically I have to take your word for it that you didn’t kill Luca.”

  George shrugged. “I have no way of proving that I was not there. But I am telling you, as a vampire who simply wants justice for a fallen comrade, even one I did not agree with, I did not kill him. And I do hope you find the person who did.”

  “Great. Thanks,” I said, feeling a little bit bummed. To be honest, I had hoped George would have been a little bit more confrontational. But he seemed genuinely sorry that Luca was dead. Didn’t he realize that wasn’t at all helpful? I needed someone to freak out at my interview and confess to the murder. Or I needed to catch someone in a lie. But Anastasia had the perfect alibi. She had crossed the portal at nine, which meant she wasn’t in town when Luca was killed.

  Ugh. This was all too much.

  I realized just then that I was super late for my meeting at the grocery store, and I rushed over to find the doors open. I made my way to the back, where Mrs. Sadoveanu was sitting on the chair in the office, staring into space.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late!” I exclaimed. “I was following up on another lead.”

  “It is no bother,” Mrs. Sadoveanu said with a sad smile. “I enjoy being here. I have so many happy memories of Luca here. He practically grew up in the shop; he was just a little vampire when the town was founded and we opened up. I remember him running through the aisles, knocking boxes of cereal onto the ground and laughing. He used to try and steal cheese when his father and I weren’t looking. He loved cheese more than anything. So no, do not apologize for being late. I probably would have stayed here all the same. Now, what can I bring up for you?”

  “I’d just like to look at your financial documents, please. Anything having to do with that. Invoices, that sort of thing. I promise, nothing I see will become gossip fodder for the town’s rumor mill.”

  “I trust you,” Mrs. Sadoveanu said, turning the chair and moving to the computer. “It is all here. I will open the files for you. Is it easier for you if I leave you be?”

  “Probably, yes,” I replied. Mrs. Sadoveanu nodded and stood up, motioning for me to take the chair.

  “I will be in the main part of the shop. Please let me know when you are finished.”

  “Will do,” I replied. I turned to look at the files, and quickly realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with these. Accounting wasn’t a thing we were taught at the Academy, since it fell under the purview of the elves. I made a quick phone call, and had a solution.

  For the next fifteen minutes, I took pictures of everything I could think of with my phone. When I was finished, I went and saw Mrs. Sadoveanu and thanked her for her time.

  “Do you have an idea as to who killed my boy?” she asked me, and I paused.

  “I have a few promising leads. I’m just trying to narrow it down,” I replied.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You have no idea what this means to me. I know he’s gone, and that nothing can bring him back, but the idea that you might be able to help give me some closure…” Her voice trailed off, and I patted her arm awkwardly before heading off into the night.

  There was another trip to New Fang in my future.

  Chapter 19

  Twenty minutes later I was back at Eldromir’s office.

  “Thanks for making room in his schedule to see me on such notice,” I said to the vampire at the reception.

  “Of course. Frankly, you’re trying to solve a murder, whereas all these other vampires are just trying to make sure they get their filings done a month early. Vampires tend to be neurotic about paperwork. Plus, between you and me, the client who had your spot has a habit of being rather on the testy side, so it was a pleasure to be able to call him up and tell him his appointment had been moved to next week.”

  The receptionist winked at me as I laughed.

  “Oh, Eldromir is ready to see you now.” The vampire led me back into the elf’s office.

  “Welcome back,” Eldromir said to me. “What can I do for you today?”

  “I have a bunch of financial documents,” I replied. “But as a witch, I have no idea what they mean. I was hoping you might be able to look them over and tell me if there’s anything about them that stands out to you as being out of the ordinary.”

  Eldromir’s eyebrows rose. “You suspect some wrongdoing of some sort?”

  I shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not really sure what I suspect. But I think these might be the documents Luca wanted to show you.”

  “Ok, let me see them.”

  I handed Eldromir my phone and he began scrolling through the photos. “There is a lot here. Would it be alright with you if I emailed these files to myself, and I could look them over when I get a chance? I think there’s too much here to digest in a single appointment.”

  “Sure, help yourself,” I said, waiting as Eldromir tapped away and sent himself the pictures I’d taken.

  “Thanks for coming in. I’ll try and have a look at these in more detail later this morning. Leave your details with Flavius at the front desk and I’ll give you a call as soon as I get anything.”

  “Will do, thanks,” I said, standing up. Hey, it looked like tonight I was even going to be done with everything before midnight. I might even be starting to get back on a normal sleep schedule, and hopefully in a few hours I would have a bit more insight into why Luca might have been killed.

  I walked back to the portal when something in my brain clicked. The portal. When Gloria had been on the phone with Livinia, she had told her to come to Mt. Rheanier in secret. She told her to take the portal that was unguarded. I had completely forgotten about that portal. It was hard to find; deep in the woods, and most witches took brooms to fly there. It was left unguarded because frankly, this was Mt. Rheanier, we normally didn’t have so much crime that we needed to guard a low-use portal that had only be
en an original entryway into the town years and years ago.

  But Anastasia, being a vampire who had lived here for hundreds of years, would have known about it. She could have easily left her office, taken the secret portal, killed Luca, come back to the office, and then headed back home via the regular portal at nine, when she knew she would have an alibi.

  I had gotten this all wrong.

  I made my way back to the graphic design company where Anastasia worked. The receptionist looked at me with that same bored expression when I walked in.

  “She’s in her office if you want to speak to her,” the vampire said as soon as I walked in.

  “Actually, I was hoping to ask you a few questions,” I replied.

  “Shoot. And for the record, I didn’t kill that vampire over in Mt. Rheanier.”

  “I don’t think you did. But the morning he was killed, Anastasia was working here, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you see her leave by any chance? Maybe around five?”

  “Nah. I finish work at six, and I’m pretty sure she was still here. No guarantees, though, since there’s a back door.”

  Darn. There went that theory. “Ok, thanks. I am going to go in and see her, if you don’t mind.”

  Ok, so there were probably smarter ways to deal with things than confronting someone I thought might have been a murderer. But Anastasia was a vampire, and I was a witch with a wand. There was nothing she could do to attack me.

  I made my way into her office, knocked, then walked in.

  “Oh, hello again,” Anastasia said casually, looking up from her screen when I entered. “I hope you’re not here to accuse me of murder again.”

  “That’s actually exactly what I’m here for,” I replied.

  “I thought I gave you my alibi. Didn’t you check with Simba?”

  “I did,” I replied. “But that’s not the only way to get back into Mt. Rheanier. You’d know about the other portal, the one that isn’t watched.”

  Anastasia laughed, but there was no good humor behind it. “So that alibi wasn’t good enough.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, how about this?” She turned the screen toward me, showing me the history from her web browser. “You can see I was constantly looking at different websites that morning until just before nine.”

  Sure enough, the history showed that every couple of minutes that morning until ten to nine a new webpage had been opened. I figured that was as good as I was going to get, alibi-wise.

  “See?” Anastasia said smugly, crossing her arms. “You’re right, I could have gone across through the unknown portal. But I didn’t, because I don’t go around murdering vampires.”

  “Well, you can’t blame me for trying,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

  “I guess not. I guess this means you’re no further in solving the case.”

  “I have other leads.”

  “Well, I definitely didn’t take Luca as the sort to be interesting enough to have multiple people want him dead. That’s got to make your job harder.”

  “Any idea who those other people might be?” I asked, and Anastasia shrugged.

  “Of course not. Luca was on the wrong side of this argument, but apart from that he was a saint. He worked at the blood bank on his days off, for goddness’ sake. No one who donates their time like that is going around doing stuff that will get them killed.”

  “Well, he did something,” I replied.

  “I genuinely haven’t got a clue who it might have been. I’d help you out if I could, but I just don’t know.”

  “Alright, thanks,” I said, feeling a little bit down.

  “You might want to try talking to his girlfriend, Sorina,” Anastasia said. “That is, if you haven’t already.”

  “Yeah. I have, but I might try again,” I said. It was as good an idea as any. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck,” Anastasia wished me again before I headed back out into the night and made my way back to Mt. Rheanier.

  I was going to try and wait until I got a call back from Eldromir before going to bed, so I decided to try Sorina’s place once more and see if she couldn’t give me some insights. She was home, and invited me in straight away.

  “Do you know who killed Luca yet?” she asked, her eyes full of hope.

  “I don’t have a solid answer yet. I’m following up on some promising leads, though. I should have a better idea by the end of the day.”

  “Good,” Sorina said. “His funeral is in two days. It would be very nice for everyone if the killer were found by then.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best,” I said. “Have you heard anything from the Enforcers?”

  Sorina shook her head. “Two of them, the two wizards came to see me yesterday. They seem nice, but they didn’t act as if they were any closer to an arrest than you are to finding the person responsible.”

  I nodded. “Well, I hope they do. I was hoping you’d be able to help me out with something. Did Luca ever discuss any business with you, maybe stuff at the grocery store?”

  Sorina shook her head. “Not more than usual.”

  “But he would talk to you about his work?”

  “Some of it, yeah. Mostly when he went and worked on the management side of things. Stocking shelves isn’t exactly the sort of job that lends itself to stories you tell your girlfriend. But he would tell me about things he read in his management books, and how he saw his parents putting it into action, or how he got to help a customer, and how he felt about it. Those sorts of things. He was looking forward to eventually getting to take over the business from his parents, and he took his study very seriously.”

  “So he didn’t mention anything about seeing some strange accounting?”

  “Accounting? No, not at all.”

  “Do you know if he was studying accounting at all as part of his business studies?”

  Sorina thought for a second. “Yes, I’m pretty sure he was. I saw a book about accounting at his place, with all his other books. It was called Introduction to Accounting, I think.”

  “Did he ever mention anything strange going on at the grocery store?”

  “No,” Sorina replied immediately. “Though I think I told you, something was bothering him. I just didn’t know what it was.”

  “Ok, thanks,” I said. “That’s all I need to know for now.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  “It’s fine. Seriously. All your answers are helpful, in some way or another,” I said with a smile.

  I headed back out into the night and decided I was too tired to stay up until Eldromir called. I headed home and fell into bed, having just enough forethought to turn the ‘do not disturb’ on my phone off before falling asleep.

  When it buzzed a few hours later, practically right next to my face, I almost jumped out of bed. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t a machine gun going off in the shed but rather just my phone, and I answered, still very groggy.

  “Hello, Ali?”

  “Yeurgh,” I replied, before swallowing hard and trying again. “Sorry, yes, speaking.”

  “I assume you had fallen asleep,” Eldromir said, the tiniest hint of amusement in his voice. “I have had the opportunity to look over the documents you have sent me. A full analysis would take me quite a bit longer, but just doing a basic look at things I’m afraid I don’t see anything out of the ordinary at all. Everything looks to be in order here.”

  I felt like a balloon being slowly deflated. This had been my chance, the big break I had wanted in this case. I supposed in one way, it was a good thing. There was nothing untoward happening at the grocery store, which made it insanely unlikely that either one of Luca’s parents were the ones who had killed him.

  “Ok, thanks,” I said to Eldromir.

  “I could take a deeper look if you wanted me to.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” I replied. “Luca only had very basic accounting skills. If he did spot something out o
f the ordinary, I think it would have been obvious.”

  “Well, I don’t know if these were the documents he wanted me to look at, but there’s nothing strange here. Everything looks completely fine.”

  “Thanks again for the help,” I said.

  “Not a problem. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

  I said goodbye to Eldromir and hung up the phone, but it took a little while before I managed to get back to sleep. I went from having too many suspects to too few suspects. Anastasia probably hadn’t done it; she was telling the truth when she said she was still at work, unless she got someone to use her computer for her at the time of the murder. But that would mean bringing someone in that she trusted implicitly, and no one feels that way about their coworkers, especially not when they’re using them as an alibi to commit a murder.

  George didn’t have an alibi, and I supposed he could still have done it, but I just didn’t have any proof, or any real reason to think he was the killer apart from the fact that he and Luca disagreed about turning humans. Or maybe he was just good at hiding his emotions. Maybe he had found out Luca was speaking at the Symposium and was jealous, or decided he didn’t want Luca spreading his views around, and killed him for that. But I had no proof of that at all.

  Sorina seemed to have genuinely liked Luca, there was no reason at all for him to have been murdered for something he did at the blood bank, and according to Eldromir everything was on the up and up at the grocery store so there was no motive there.

  I just didn’t know who it could have been.

  Chapter 20

  I woke up the next day feeling groggy and grumpy. My sleep schedule was all over the place thanks to the vampires and their nocturnal tendencies, and it was starting to catch up to me.

  The knock on my door a few minutes after I’d put a pot of coffee on, with the intention of drinking the entire thing, made me groan. I didn’t know who it was going to be, but I was not in the mood.