Toil & Trouble

by Emery Belle

  Glenn let out a long, deep sigh, then leaned forward and took my hand. “I didn’t know; I suspected, though not at first. Elevia Macon, your mother, was rumored to have run off with a human man, that is true, and after that, she was never heard from again. Months later, I was assigned as your guide. I didn’t make the connection until a few weeks after you were sent to the orphanage; from then on, Lord Macon personally requested that I send regular updates about your progress.”

  Glenn stared out the window toward the shimmering blue sea beyond. “I never questioned him about it—no one in their right mind would bring up Elevia, much less insinuate that he had allowed the child of this forbidden union to live—and so we settled into a slightly uncomfortable don’t ask, don’t tell routine, which continued all the way until the eve of your thirtieth birthday. When the clock was nearing midnight and you hadn’t shown signs of magic… well, let’s just say that Lord Macon was in a particularly buoyant mood that evening. Until…” Glenn winced. “You know the rest.”

  “Until my magic showed itself,” I supplied, sinking into the couch cushions and running a hand through my hair. All of this new information was making my head spin, and it painted the chief justice of the High Court in an entirely different light. Never had it occurred to me that he might have spared my life… but why? Why send his daughter to her death but spare her child? I didn’t know what to think.

  Glenn fell silent for several long minutes, fiddling with the bandages on his wrists, and when he finally spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Now that you know the truth, Wren, you should forget about it.” He looked up at me, his face more troubled than I’d ever seen it.

  “Lord Macon went to great lengths to conceal your birth, violating every law our community has put in place about human-magical unions—some of which, I might add, he wrote himself. You are here, and you are safe, and”—he squeezed my hand fervently, almost painfully—“you are wonderful. You belong among us, and no one needs to be any the wiser.” His eyes were suddenly very bright. “I urge you—no, I beg you—please, let it go.”

  He stared at me, earnest and scrutinizing, and I knew he wanted me to agree. And I almost didn’t—part of me was determined not to stop, not to rest, until I’d heard the truth from Lord Macon’s own lips, until I’d forced him to tell me, in excruciating detail, exactly what he’d done to my parents. But the other part of me was tired. So, so tired.

  I bowed my head and gave a slight nod, and Glenn sighed with relief and pulled me into a tight hug that seemed to go on forever. When he finally released me, he wiped his eyes and said, in a voice cracking with emotion, “That’s my girl.”

  He smoothed my sweaty hair back from my forehead and cupped my face in his hands. “Now what are you still doing here? If rumors around the island are true, you still have a murder to solve, and an innocent gnome to set free.” He pulled me to my feet and steered me toward the door. “Go, Wren. Go and save the world.”

  Despite Glenn’s flattery, I felt like I was no closer to solving Auggie’s murder than I had been when I started my investigation. Everywhere I turned, I seemed to hit nothing but roadblocks, and Gerald’s trial date marched ever closer. I visited him in jail on two more occasions, and both times he’d been so dejected, so utterly devoid of all hope that he’d ever be free, that I had to stop going there, for the sake of my own sanity.

  At work, at home, at school—I spent every day poring over my list of suspects, trying to figure out who had the strongest motive for killing Auggie. There was Meryl, his ex-girlfriend, who was furious with Auggie over the death of Ollie, her beaver familiar, during a proposal gone wrong. And not only that, but according to Tanner, Auggie’s turkey-shifter brother, Meryl had filed a claim against Auggie’s life insurance policy to collect a significant sum of money for Ollie’s death. One witch, two motives—Meryl seemed like my strongest candidate, but Tanner was convinced that she had nothing to do with his brother’s death, and that counted for something.

  Then we had Harold, the werewolf who had gone rogue after stealing meat from Auggie’s butcher shop to feed a litter of abandoned wolf cubs. On the surface, Harold seemed happy to be running free in the gloomy forest occupied by other creatures of the night, but how much of his hippie-inspired let’s-all-live-our-best-life act was just that… an act? Thanks to Auggie, Harold was blacklisted from ever working on the island again, and he had no choice but to detach himself from the rest of society. Out there in the forest, angry and alone, had Harold devised a plan to murder the man he believed was responsible for his shunning?

  Last, and maybe not least, there was Pete, Auggie’s roommate, the paranoid brownie who was in the apartment during Auggie’s murder and, by his own admission during the self-defense class I’d attended, had done nothing to stop it. Brownies possessed powerful magic of their own—surely he could have done something to try and save Auggie? But I couldn’t answer that question until I’d had a chance to speak with Pete one-on-one, and so, after spellcasting class one day, I set out for the first time to the scene of the crime.

  Pete lived in a nondescript beige building not far from the center of town, and after checking the names on the row of mailboxes nailed to the outside wall, I climbed the steps to an apartment on the second floor. Even though weeks had passed since Auggie’s death, bits of crime scene tape were still attached to the door, the ends fluttering in the wind. A few potted plants were drooping and brown, their leaves disintegrating under my touch, and a quick glance at the soil told me they hadn’t been watered in weeks.

  Shoes were piled up in front of the door—the larger ones presumably belonging to Auggie, the tiny ones to Pete—and several advertisements for takeout food and broomstick-washing services were taped to the wall. Overall, the place had a sad, neglected air about it, and I wondered if Pete had packed up and moved out in the wake of his roommate’s murder—I know I certainly wouldn’t have stuck around to scrape the blood from the carpet.

  Pressing my ear against the door, I thought I detected the faint sound of voices, and so I rapped my knuckles sharply on the wood and stepped back, listening for footsteps. The voices cut off abruptly, and after a brief scraping sound, the apartment fell silent.

  “Pete?” I called, knocking on the door again. “My name is Wren Winters, and I’m investigating the death of your roommate, Auggie. Can you please open up? You’re not in any kind of trouble, I’d just like to speak with you for a few minutes…”

  I trailed off, listening hard, but other than a bird twittering somewhere nearby, I heard nothing but the sound of my own breathing.

  Glancing around, I spotted an outdoor walkway that led around the side of the apartment. After one last look at the door, still closed tight with no signs of life inside, I followed the path until I came to a window covered by thick blinds. I cupped my hands around my eyes to block off the sun and squatted down, trying to see inside, but the view of the apartment was completely obscured. I poked my head around the corner and spotted another window, smaller and higher and covered with the same blinds… but these ones were hitched up in the corner.

  I stood on my tiptoes and peeked inside, raising my eyebrows in surprise as I took in the state of the apartment: empty pizza boxes on the floor, with half-eaten crusts spilling onto the carpet; dirty clothes twisted around furniture legs and piled into every corner; a sink clogged with gray water that was threatening to slosh over the sides. How could a brownie, a creature born to clean his little heart out, let his own home fall into such disrepair?

  I continued squinting around the apartment, shaking my head, until my eyes landed on something even more unexpected—a tiny pair of wrinkly brown feet poking out from beneath a television stand.

  My breath caught, and my heart dropped as I stared at the feet—had the killer returned to the scene of the crime to take care of Pete, the only witness to Auggie’s murder? I banged on the window—stupid, really, since the killer could still be inside—and the feet jerked upright, then began trembling with f
ear. I saw a tiny hand poke out from beneath the television stand and begin feeling around blindly for the dagger that lay a few inches out of reach; when he finally located it, the brownie clutched onto it for dear life, the blade glinting dully in the dim room.

  I tapped on the window, much softer this time. “Pete?” I called again. “Open the door, please. I just want to talk to you. I won’t hurt you, I’m trying to help.” I hesitated, then added, “Do it for Auggie.”

  After a pause, the feet retracted, but I saw no other movement coming from inside. I was just about to walk away in defeat when I saw a tiny, knobbly head poking out from under the television stand. Pete’s yellow eyes were round with terror as he extracted the rest of himself and walked shakily to the door. I hurried back around to the front of the apartment and waited while he slid back bolt after bolt before opening the door the tiniest of cracks and poking out one long, wrinkled finger.

  “Identification?” he squeaked.

  “Uh.” I patted my pockets, automatically searching for my driver’s license, then remembered I hadn’t seen it in months. “Sorry, I don’t have—”

  The door slammed in my face, almost clipping my nose, and I jumped back. “Pete, please,” I begged, banging on the wood once more and trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Like I told you, my name is Wren Winters, and I’m investigating Auggie’s death. I have reason to believe the wrong person has been accused of his—”

  Somewhere in the sky, a magi-cab backfired, and on the other side of the door, I heard Pete squeal with fright and scamper away. After a few seconds, another door, more distant this time, slammed shut, and though I hammered and shouted, he refused to come back out.

  “What’s all this racket?” An elderly dwarf with a fuzzy gray beard, pockmarked cheeks, and a wart the size of Texas on his forehead poked his head out of the apartment next door and gave me a filthy look. “Can’t you see I’m trying to get my beauty sleep?”

  He padded outside, and I saw that he was wearing a frilly nightgown and pig slippers—once again, I’d mistaken a bearded lady dwarf for her slightly-less-unattractive male counterpart.

  “Sorry,” I said to the dwarf, then smacked my palm against Pete’s closed door one last time for good measure. “I was trying to interview him about the night of Auggie’s death, but he won’t even let me get a single question in.”

  The dwarf snorted, then closed her own door and leaned against it before fishing around in the front pocket of her nightgown for a flask. Opening it with her teeth and spitting the cap onto the ground, she took a long swallow of whatever was inside, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and belched richly. “You’re wasting your time. Pete’s as crazy as they come.”

  “But why?” I asked, frowning at the dwarf. “What happened to him to make him like this?”

  Removing a sack of unicorn jerky from her other pocket, the dwarf tore off a piece with her teeth, watching me thoughtfully for a few moments as she chewed. “No one knows for sure,” she said, “but rumor has it that he had a nasty encounter with an alligator shifter a few decades back and hasn’t been the same since. Always looking over his shoulder, always thinkin’ someone’s out to get him.”

  The dwarf used her thumbnail to pry a nugget of unicorn jerky from between her front teeth. “You should see the collection of weapons he’s got in there, all specially made for someone his size. Never seen anything like it.”

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper, beckoning me to move closer; I did, angling my head away slightly to avoid her unicorn breath. “In fact, one of those weapons—an antique dagger—was the murder weapon.” She puffed out her chest importantly. “Saw the paramedics carrying Auggie out of the apartment with it still stuck in his chest.”

  My cheeks reddened, and I balled my hands into tight fists. “So how could Kellen pin the crime on Gerald when Auggie’s own roommate supplied the dagger that killed him? That seems like sort of an important detail that went overlooked,” I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

  The dwarf shrugged. “Because Auggie kept repeating Gerald’s name before he died. At least, I think that’s what he was saying… hard to tell, really, when he had blood spurting out of his mouth.”

  I gave the dwarf a suspicious look. “How do you know all of this?”

  She grinned at me. “Because I had my ear pressed against the wall, why else? Nothing good ever happens around here, so I wasn’t going to pass up the chance for some good old-fashioned entertainment.”

  She kicked off one of her pig slippers and began idly scratching one curling, yellowed toenail up the side of her opposite leg. “Besides, I knew this was going to happen, sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before those two came to blows; I just figured, given Auggie’s size and strength, he’d be the one to off the little twerp. But I guess those self-defense classes Pete is always going on about really paid off.”

  I had been staring at the dwarf’s gnarled feet with distaste, but at those words, my head whipped up. “What do you mean? Were Pete and Auggie fighting about something before the murder?”

  The dwarf snorted again and crossed her arms over her bosom, clearly enjoying the attention. “When were they not fighting? Because of Pete’s paranoia, he can’t hold down a job, and he’s always behind on the rent. I can’t tell you how many times I heard Auggie threatening to throw him out on his scrawny behind, but he never actually followed through on it—that shifter had a heart of gold. Shame he isn’t here anymore.”

  For the first time, a look of sadness crossed the dwarf’s face. But it was gone in a flash, and then she shrugged. “Maybe Auggie finally made good on his threats, and little Petey snapped and shoved a dagger into the big bad shifter’s heart.”

  “I can’t believe this is the first I’m hearing about this.” I dropped to my knees to retrieve my notebook from my bag, which I’d left on the ground outside Pete’s apartment. “If I take this story to the police, there’s no way they can keep Gerald locked up any longer… Kellen will have no choice but to investigate this lead, at the very least.”

  The dwarf slid her flask and pouch of unicorn jerky back into her pockets, then elbowed open her door. “Everyone on the island knows that Kellen has a mind of his own and doesn’t take kindly to criticism. Good luck, witch. You’re going to need it.”

  Chapter 14

  It had been an unspeakably awful week. Between Homer Vale telling me I needed to leave the island, narrowly avoiding being attacked by a savage mannequin, and my unpleasant encounter with Pete, it was a wonder I was still standing. So, grateful that evening was drawing near, I headed back to my dorm, my mind on my soft, warm bed and the platter of brownies Garnet’s mother had dropped off for us to share. I was just rounding the last corner when I heard a breathless voice calling my name and turned to find Sebastian galloping toward me, red-faced and sweaty.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said, doubling over to catch his breath.

  I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was doing here; things had been rather frosty between us since the incident that was really a non-incident with Andrei at the hospital, and frankly, I’d been too busy to give it much more than a cursory thought. Despite agreeing to give him a second chance, in my heart, our relationship status was still in limbo—I’d never fully recovered my respect for him since finding out that he’d left Remy standing at the altar in the worst possible way.

  “What’s going on?” I asked when he’d straightened back up. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know…” He paused to collect himself. “It’s about Gerald.”

  My blood froze. The last time I’d visited him in jail, he’d been so beside himself that he could barely speak. Had he…?

  No. Don’t go there.

  I inhaled sharply. “What happened to him?” I winced, dreading the response.

  “I found out from Karen, The Islander’s crime reporter, that the High Court moved up the date of his first trial. Kel
len’s been trying to keep it hush-hush, probably because he didn’t want you to find out about it.”

  “Oh.” I breathed a long sigh of relief. I wasn’t prepared to publicly point the finger at someone else for Auggie’s murder, but the new information I’d received about Pete certainly tipped the scales in his direction. I could probably pull together a more convincing case in the next couple of days. Of course, I’d need to figure out a way to interview him, and then…

  “Wren? Are you listening to me at all?” Sebastian was waving his hand in front of my face energetically.

  “Sorry,” I said, pulling myself out of my thoughts. “Thanks for letting me know. Did you happen to get the date and time for the trial? I definitely want to be there.”

  Sebastian stared at me, nonplussed. “Today, Wren. The trial is today. In fact…” He glanced at his watch. “It’s happening right now.”

  “Faster! Faster!” I shouted to the cabbie, leaning forward to tap him on the shoulder. “A gnome’s life is on the line here!”

  “Ma’am,” he said irritably, turning around in his seat to scowl at me. “For the dozenth time, these wings can only beat so fast. You want to get there quicker? Sprout your own pair. Until that happens, leave me be so I can focus on the sky. You want me to clip a dragon? Then we’ll really be in a pickle.”

  I sat back in my seat, indignant, though mostly because he’d called me “ma’am.” Wasn’t thirty still young enough to warrant a “miss” or two? Especially in supernatural years?

  After glowering at him for a few more seconds, I turned to the window and pressed my nose against the glass, watching the cab’s leathery wings beating furiously against the wind. In the distance, the black marble walls of the courthouse glittered in the last golden rays of the sun, and I felt a knot of anxiety building in my stomach.