To my surprise, however, it was my sister, Leda. She immediately walked in, pacing around the room.
“Sorry for interrupting,” she said. “I just… I need advice.”
“You know, I’m probably not the best person to give that to you.”
Leda looked at me. “You’re a lot wiser than you think you are.”
“No, you only think that because I’m not like you at all. You’re the smart one in the family. Whatever your instincts are, they’re probably correct.”
“That’s the problem; I don’t have any instincts. I don’t know how to manage anyone. All I know how to do is magic. I was good at the Academy. I could follow instructions. That’s what made me so good as a worker at Smells and Spells. But management is like this whole different kettle of fish. I don’t know what I’m doing. People come to me asking for advice, and it’s not stuff I learned in a book. You’re way better at that sort of thing than I am.”
“Leda, I’m an unemployed witch who’s taking on jobs hunting down murderers in my spare time,” I replied. “You seriously are underestimating your own skills, here.”
“Am I, though? I didn’t even earn this job properly. You earned it for me.”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. I might have taken the final few steps over the finish line, but you’re the one who ran the rest of the marathon. You never would have been considered for the management job if the owner didn’t think you were good enough. Now come on. Sit down, have a cup of coffee, and tell me everything. I will do what I can to help.”
“Thanks, Ali,” Leda said. She just continued pacing, though, until Vinnie came over to her and began herding her toward the chair, finally headbutting her until she sat down.
“Thanks, Vinnie,” Leda said with a laugh. “You always know how to make me feel better.”
“That’s because goats are superior animals,” my familiar replied. “We’re ideal pets; much better than cats and dogs.”
I poured out a cup of coffee and placed it in front of her, then did the same myself and sat across from Leda at the table.
“Alright, tell me what’s going on,” I said.
“I just feel like I don’t know what to do,” Leda said. “There’s a witch who works for the company, I think you know her. Portia Greenspan.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said with a nod. “I don’t know her well, but enough to say hi to.”
“Well, she’s been coming in late a lot, lately. And she’s been distracted. I thought that it was just a temporary thing, and so I let it go the first few times, but it’s been almost two weeks. And now I’m getting pressured to fire her, and I don’t know how to fire someone, Ali. How do I do it? This is her livelihood. And it’s not like she’s a bad worker. She’s just not showing up on time. I know there are grumblings from other people as well. I just don’t know what to do.”
Tears streamed down Leda’s cheeks and my heart went out to my sister. She had always worked so hard, and I knew that more than anything she wanted to be fair to people.
“Have you spoken to Portia about things?”
“No,” Leda admitted. “Honestly, I’ve been too scared to. I thought that if I left things alone she would get everything organized.”
“Alright,” I said. “Well, I think the main thing involved in management is communication. Right now, it sounds like there’s a lack of it. Have you been told that you need to fire her?”
“Well, it’s been implied. Sandromira told me that if she doesn’t shape up by the end of the week then I’m going to have to take action.”
“Action doesn’t necessarily mean firing someone,” I said. “Handling people is the same as handling any other problem. The first step is to find out exactly what the problem is. You’re going to have to speak to Portia about it, and find out why she’s late. You never know what people have going on until you ask them. When you find that out, then you know what the problem is, and you can find a solution from there, the same as you would any other problem.”
Leda gaped at me. “You know, this is why I came to you, Ali. You’re so smart. I know you don’t think so, because your marks were terrible in school, but you are smart.”
“Hey, my marks weren’t terrible.”
“They were terrible by my standards,” Leda said, managing a giggle, and I kicked her lightly from under the table.
“Yeah, well, you were always the smart one in the family.”
Leda shook her head. “No. Don’t discount yourself like that. I might have been better with books, but you were always better at figuring out people and at dealing with problems as they came up. It’s why you’re going to be a good Magical Fixer one day. It’s why you’re going to solve that murder. You understand people, and how they work. And you’ve seriously helped me right now. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Pizza and chocolate are always welcome additions to my home,” I said with a wink. “But seriously, I’m glad I was able to help.”
“Can I come back to you when I know what’s wrong? I feel like you’re going to be the best person to walk me through this.”
“I could never say no to my little sister,” I replied. “Come by anytime.”
“You’re the best,” Leda told me, getting up. “This is my day off, but I know Portia is working, so I think I might go in and have a chat with her.”
“Keep me in the loop,” I said as Leda left. “And good luck.”
Leda waved as she headed back off. There was thick, purple smoke rising from one of the windows in the cottage next door, and I wondered what on earth Grandma Rosie was up to, before deciding I was way too tired to deal with her pie competition issues right now, and went right back to bed, the cup of coffee not doing nearly enough to keep me awake.
When I woke up a few hours later, Vinnie was curled up next to me.
“I vote you should take more mid-day naps,” he murmured when he realized I was awake. “This is very nice.”
“As much as I agree with you, I have to work hard to be able to afford your pears,” I replied, forcing myself out of bed. “I still need to figure out who killed Luca.”
I decided to take another trip down to the Enforcer’s office. Maybe Jack and Andy had found out some more information that I could glean out of them. And if not, well, Andy was always nice to look at. And to speak to.
I was ready to go after about an hour, but before I left the house, I got a text from Willow.
Meet up for coffee?
Sure, ten minutes? I replied. After all, no matter how gorgeous Andy was, friends always came first.
Willow replied that was fine, and I made my way to The Magic Brewmstick instead of the Enforcer’s station. The fairy working the counter was Pyxis, a known gossip, and as soon as I made my way up there she was all over me.
“So I hear you were here the other day when the old witches decided to have a magic fight on the patio,” she said to me in a hushed whisper. “Is that true?”
“It is,” I replied. “Although I wasn’t actually involved in it. I was an innocent bystander, as much as no one believes that story.”
Pyxis laughed. “That’s because you’re the least innocent bystander I’ve ever seen. You’re also investigating Luca’s death, aren’t you? A few Enforcers were in here the other day, complaining about how witches and wizards are impeding on their turf. You know, they’re quite adamant that witches shouldn’t be doing shifter work.”
“Well, maybe if they actually managed to solve the murder themselves the family wouldn’t need to hire me,” I replied.
“That’s just what I think, dear. Frankly, if you want to do something, and someone is willing to pay you for it, then you shouldn’t let society’s expectations stop you. Personally, I’m quite happy here. I get to hear all sorts of stories from people.”
“I bet,” I said with a smile. The thing about Pyxis was that only about a quarter of the gossip she had to share on any given day was actually the truth. But, sometimes, the information could be invalu
able. “What do you know about Luca? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Oh, I have quite a bit of gossip about that young vampire,” she replied. “The things I’ve heard these last few days. Did you know he was seeing someone?”
“Sorina? Yes, I did,” I replied.
“No, no,” Pyxis replied. “He was seeing Anastasia. They had a romantic relationship.”
I smiled to myself. This was exactly the sort of information you would get from Pyxis. Things that seemed plausible on the surface, but deep down were just a little bit insane. Having spoken to Anastasia twice now, I was confident that she was not at all romantically involved with Luca. Plus, there was that whole thing where she had punched him in the face a few weeks ago. That wasn’t exactly a strong sign they were secretly lovers.
Pyxis continued, on a roll now. “I hadn’t heard he was with Sorina as well. Perhaps a love triangle was involved in his death. That wouldn’t surprise me, a young, good-looking vamp such as himself. He was very good-looking, you know. Came in here every evening, before he started work. Even on his days off. He volunteered at the blood bank, you know.”
“I did know that,” I said. “I spoke with Titus.”
“What a wonderful vampire Titus is,” Pyxis said, shaking her head. “You know, I thought Luca might have taken over the running of the blood bank when Titus decided to retire.”
“Well, that would have taken a long time, wouldn’t it? Titus told me he had only been turned a few hundred years ago, so he’s quite young by vampire standards.”
“Oh,” Pyxis said, her expression falling for a split second. She wasn’t used to people knowing things she didn’t, but she recovered a split second later. “Well, all the same, it’s quite pointless to speculate, since Luca will never have that opportunity now. His poor parents. I know they were close to retiring. You don’t know who killed Luca yet, do you dear?”
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
“Well, if you figure it out, do let me know, will you? I’d love to have something to tell everyone. Imagine, me, Pyxis, being able to tell all of my customers who the killer was before the Enforcers got to him.”
“Yes, imagine that,” I said with a smile. Of course, Pyxis hadn’t considered the fact that might lead to the killer running off and going into hiding before the Enforcers could get to them. Or maybe she had, and she just didn’t care. For Pyxis, having gossip to share was the most important thing, regardless of how correct the gossip was, or what the consequences of that gossip were.
“Now, what will you be having?” Pyxis asked.
I placed my order and made my way to a table, waiting for Willow.
Chapter 21
There was one problem, however. As I made my way to the table to sit down, something about the conversation with Pyxis didn’t sit right with me. It was as if deep in the recesses of my brain realized there was something she had said that should have pointed me in the right direction, but I couldn’t quite get the synapses to fire right and figure it out.
A couple of minutes later I was distracted by Willow appearing at my side, as well.
“Hey, thanks for meeting me,” she said. “I just had to do an insane shift at work. I swear, it’s like there’s a full moon out. All the craziest stuff keeps happening.”
“Oh?” I said. “Tell me everything.”
“Well, first of all a young witch came in. She had tried to make a potion that would make her hair more luscious and flowing, but she had messed it up and turned herself into a centaur.”
“Wait, seriously? With the horse of a body and everything?”
“Yeah. She wouldn’t stop crying. She didn’t understand what she’d done wrong, and it took us ages to figure out what she had done and reverse engineer the potion to be able to come up with an antidote. Then, it wasn’t strong enough, so while we managed to turn her mostly back into an entire witch, she still had hooves for feet. She was so upset she kept involuntarily stamping them on the ground, and every time she did that she cried even harder.”
“Aww, that’s really sad, but also pretty funny,” I said with a giggle.
“Yeah. Can you imagine, at fourteen, thinking you were going to have nice, flowing locks and ending up with hooves?”
“Did you end up fixing it?”
“I did. Luckily one of the older Healers told me about a wizard that used to live here who, um, liked his partners to have hooves. After four of them ended up in the hospital because they couldn’t reverse the spell, this Healer came up with a potion to do it, and he gave me the recipe.”
“Oh Rhea,” I said, laughing like crazy now. “Who was the old wizard?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He said the wizard is long gone, and he wanted to respect his privacy.”
“That’s too bad, because that is some amazing gossip right there,” I said with a laugh. “I bet Grandma Rosie would have known him.”
“You should ask her if she knows who it is, and if she says yes, ask her how she knows,” Willow said with a wink, and I let out a squeal of horror.
“No way! You think she might have been one of the witches who got hooves?”
“You never know. Your grandfather died relatively young, and your grandma seems to me to be the sort who would have gone and had some fun once he was gone.”
“Annnnd that’s the end of this conversation,” I replied.
Willow grinned at me. “Gee, I can’t imagine why you’d want to stop talking about your grandmother’s sex life. Anyway, that’s not the only thing that happened. So the young witch left, finally, with normal witch feet again. Then fifteen minutes later a middle-aged wizard comes in, and his nose is shaped like a lightbulb and blinking red.”
“Please tell me this one has nothing to do with his preferences in the bedroom.”
This time it was Willow’s turn to burst out laughing. “No, not at all. He was getting ready for Christmas. He had learned a spell that was supposed to turn him into Rudolph so he could impress his daughter, but only the nose part worked, and then the reversal spell didn’t do anything, so he came in for help. It took us two hours to figure out how to reverse the spell.”
“Amazing,” I laughed. “But also super wholesome. How nice of the guy to sacrifice his own body to turn himself into Rudolph for his daughter.”
“Agreed,” Willow said. “So yeah. It was a pretty intense day. How about you? How’s the murder investigation going? And has Grandma Rosie come up with a plan to beat Gloria?”
“I don’t know about the second part,” I replied. “I’m going with a bit of a don’t ask, don’t tell approach when it comes to the pie competition.”
“That’s probably smart. It seems like the kind of situation where plausible deniability might come in handy. What about the investigation into Luca’s death?”
“I’ve kind of hit a brick wall there,” I sighed. “I have a few suspects, but none of them are great suspects, and I don’t have any proof. Plus, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing something, you know? It’s like there’s something I should be connecting, but I can’t quite get there.”
“I know what you mean,” Willow said, nodding. “Have you tried plotting it out? Making a diagram of everything you know? That always helps me.”
“I haven’t,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s a good idea, though.”
“I mean, the thing is, you never know what it might be. It could be that you’re on the right track with something, but you’re just on a track parallel to the one you need to be on. Maybe you’ve got the right idea, just the wrong details.”
I gaped at Willow as everything began to click for me. “You’re a genius.”
“Well, I know, but why specifically right now?”
“I know who killed Luca. And I know why. Now come on, let’s go and get some proof. I’ll explain on the way.”
“Is this proof going to involve committing any crimes?”
“Maybe, because we’ll be solving a crime by committing this one it’ll all e
ven out.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not at all how justice works.”
“Fine, you’re welcome to stay here then.”
“Please, like I’d let you do this by yourself. You need me to keep you out of trouble.”
I grinned. “Alright, let’s do this.”
As we made our way out of The Magic Brewmstick and down the street, I explained everything I had figured out to Willow.
“So the thing is, Luca made an appointment to see an accountant in New Fang. Why would he do that, when he could have just seen an accountant here in town? There had to be a reason, and I figured that reason was he had something he didn’t want hitting the rumor mill straight away.”
“You went and asked the elf?”
“That’s right. But he said that while Luca showed up to his appointment, he looked really squirrely and nervous, and didn’t want to tell him why he came after all. I thought he had had cold feet, and that he had found proof that there was something strange going on with the accounting at the grocery store.”
“But that wasn’t it?” Willow asked.
“No. I got the grocery store’s financial records and showed them to Eldromir, and he said everything looked completely fine. I had the right issue, but the wrong institution. And I was right that Luca had gotten cold feet, but it was because of the receptionist.”
“The receptionist? At the accounting firm?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “I’m fairly certain the receptionist is Titus’ cousin. They look alike, and Titus mentioned that he and a few members of his extended family all turned at the same time. My bet is that Luca noticed the same thing, especially since he knew Titus a lot better than I did, and then worried that if he showed Eldromir the financials from the blood bank that word would somehow get back to Titus.”
Willow’s jaw dropped. “So you think Titus killed him?”
“I do,” I replied. “But I need proof. My entire theory hinges on the idea that there’s something funky going on with the accounting at the blood bank.”
“So you’re going to break into it and try and find their files,” Willow said.
Potion Sickness Page 12
