So Very Unfae Read online

  ‘Seemed like a nice chap,’ Mossy informed the detective. ‘He was telling us how he’d only just arrived in town.’

  ‘He did,’ said Pru, swallowing. ‘About an hour and a half ago.’ She looked at me. ‘You were at work at the time, Ash. He was our newest guest at the Vander Inn. Stanley Martin.’

  While people milled around, Pru moved closer to me so that she could lower her voice. ‘He smelled like an unempowered witch, from what I could tell.’

  I was just wondering if it would be impolite to ask her how exactly an unempowered witch smelled, when her face turned red and she looked at the ground. Ah. The Greg effect. I gave my favourite wizard a wave and a smile, and then watched with amazement as he somehow managed to eat a turkey and stuffing sandwich, take pictures of the scene, and wave his scanner around to test for magical traces. When he tossed back his head to slurp down some coffee at the same time as he changed his camera filter, I was even more astounded. That wizard had skills.

  ‘He said he was hoping to run into an old acquaintance of his,’ Mossy went on, drawing my attention away from Greg. ‘We were enjoying some mince pies together, chatting away, so we were. Then all of a sudden, he started clutching at his throat, and he said, “Oh no, my sesame seed allergy!”’ Mossy held up an EpiPen. ‘So I went to fetch this from the tavern. Might be a bit too late for it now, mind you.’

  ‘I think so,’ Dylan agreed darkly. His eyes met mine, and I knew what he was thinking. A sesame seed allergy, Mossy had said. In a town like Riddler’s Edge, death by allergy was never really death by allergy. It was usually code for death by supernatural and suspicious means.

  With that in mind, I took a good look at the body, and at the people and even the air around us. The fae side of my power meant that I could see magic, and I was growing better at it by the day. I could tell what sort of power someone had with the briefest look. I could tell what kinds of spells had been performed recently. I could even recognise the greenish hue of dark magic.

  Right now, I could see nothing except some extra golden magic, shimmering in the air. Beautiful as it was, it was only the same as I’d been seeing for days now, as the holidays approached. Like Halloween, the Winter Solstice was a special time, and it liked to show off its magic just to prove its worth. Show-off seasons aside, though, I really didn’t think that there was any magic involved in this death. I glanced at Greg, and he gave me a little shake of the head. Clearly, his scanners and filters were telling him the same.

  I sidled over to Dylan and said, ‘I don’t think this is one for us. Maybe we should call a human ambulance?’

  Shane nodded his agreement. ‘She’s right, from what I can see. Nothing suspicious here, Dylan. Just a sneaky sesame seed.’

  Dylan grunted. ‘Sure. Whatever.’ He was staring down at the body once more, frowning a little, almost like he was trying to puzzle something out. If I had to guess, I’d say that he recognised that poor man.

  As Shane pulled out his phone, Marley, the new co-owner of the Fisherman’s Friend, ran outside. He stopped a few feet from the body and shook his head in shock and sorrow. And what a head it was. He had huge sideburns and curling auburn hair. Today, that hair was wrapped in tinsel. His wife, Lola, ran over to join him at the scene, her golden poodle perm flying behind her. Mossy and Marius quickly filled them in on what had happened.

  ‘I swear to Santa Claus,’ Marley said. ‘There were no sesame seeds in those mince pies. I made them with my own two hands.’

  Lola nodded, panting a little. ‘He did. We make everything from scratch, and we never use sesame seeds or nuts in anything. I’m extra careful about that, and Marley is too.’

  Dylan gave Marley and Lola a strained smile. ‘We’ll sort it out, guys. He could have eaten anything anywhere.’

  Pru frowned. ‘Except he didn’t,’ she whispered to me. ‘When he arrived he told us he was famished. Mam asked him if he wanted her to make him a sandwich, but he said he’d rather head over to the tavern instead. He said he was in town to see if he could catch up with someone he knew.’

  I glanced at Dylan. He certainly seemed to recognise this Stanley Martin. Perhaps he was the one Stanley was hoping to see.

  I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder, and looked round to find Greg giving me a rueful grin. He held up his camera. ‘All finished. I came to take some photos of the market for the paper while I was on my lunch,’ he said. ‘But I guess we might be running a very different article than the one we expected.’

  Pru gave Greg an awkward smile. ‘Oh, hey there, I didn’t see you arrive,’ she lied. ‘Well … I’d love to stay and chat but I was just off, so I was. Things to see, people to do. I meant that the other way around, didn’t I? Crap. Anyway, I’ll see you later, Greg.’

  His eyebrows shot up, lending the wizard’s face the most lovelorn expression I’d ever seen. ‘Will you? See me later, I mean?’

  Pru didn’t answer that one. Instead, she moved away as quickly as her vampire powers would allow.

  3. Spring’s Blooms in Winter

  The afternoon dragged by at the Daily Riddler. Roarke was about the only employee who didn’t seem to mind being at the newspaper office that day. He was having far too much fun putting the holiday puzzles together.

  ‘“The mother of the weredog leader likes to sing,”’ said Roarke, reading a clue aloud. ‘Is that too easy, Ash?’

  ‘Easy? Are you serious? That’s just about the most cryptic of all your cryptic clues I’ve ever heard.’

  Edward paused as he was emptying the nearby bins and said, ‘Carol is the answer. Yeah, it’s way too easy.’

  ‘Huh.’ I continued typing up my latest article – a very exciting piece on the nativity play at the local school – and shrugged my shoulders. ‘I guess it wasn’t that cryptic after all. Hey Ed, you okay? I’m worried about you, taking on all of this extra work.’

  Edward let out a sigh and sank into a chair across the room. ‘Yeah, I’m okay. Extra work is all part of Christmas, so it is. I mean, how else am I going to buy all the new snow globes I want?’ He gave me a weak smile. ‘But if I’m honest, I am feeling a bit down. I’m worried about Lola, so I am. She’s devastated. She says that Stanley Martin specifically asked her if there were sesame seeds in any of their food, and she assured him there weren’t.’

  I’d overheard that myself, just before I’d left the Fisherman’s Friend. Lola felt so bad about the whole thing. She’d shut the place down for the afternoon so that she could go through all of the food on the premises.

  ‘I mean, it makes no sense,’ Edward went on. ‘Lola’s allergic to sesame seeds herself. She’d never cook with them, and Marley wouldn’t either.’

  I left my desk and walked over to him, patting him on the back. Sure, it wasn’t a very imaginative move on my part, but I was still quite new to the whole having friends thing. I sometimes felt like I was out of my depth, but if I was, then I was just going to flounder on through. Because even if I did feel like a socially-awkward weirdo sometimes, there was a lovely warm glow that came along with that awkwardness, and it was a glow I hoped I’d get to feel for the rest of my days.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘It was just one of those unfortunate things. The business won’t be affected. Everyone loves the new Fisherman’s Friend menu. It’s a lot more exciting than when Bod and Biddy ran it. There were like … three things to choose from back then. On a good day.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. The tavern’ll be fine,’ he said, sounding slightly mollified. ‘This’ll be something else, I bet. Something more than a simple allergy. I heard Marius and Mossy say that the dead guy was coming here to meet up with someone. I’ll bet that it was something mysterious and intriguing and stuff. Like … someone injected sesame oil into his mince pie while he wasn’t looking.’ Edward stood up. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’ll be something like that. Something you and Dylan and Greg can investigate together. Not Lola’s fault at all.’

  He went off, continuing to empty the bins, while I
slumped my shoulders. I was happy I’d made Edward feel better, but in the process I’d made myself feel a whole lot worse. A small part of me hoped Edward was wrong, even if poor Lola did feel bad about it. Because as sad as it was to think that Stanley Martin died because of nothing more than some sneaky sesame seeds … I would much rather it was that, than anything mysterious.

  Sure, I normally liked to get to the bottom of things, but not now. Now would be a thoroughly inconvenient time for mystery and intrigue. It was Christmas. And Solstice. And … that weird vampire mourning festival, too. It was time for tinsel, bright lights and overindulging. It was time to bring my parents back, and make up for all the years we’d spent apart.

  Basically, it was time to do absolutely anything other than stick my nose into places it didn’t belong. And the fact that my witchy and fae senses told me Dylan recognised the dead guy … well, I was just going to push that thought right out of my mind.

  ≈

  When home time came, I walked down the street with Greg, enjoying the chill in the air. The sky looked laden, I thought with dizzy delight – laden enough to send some white, fluffy stuff our way.

  ‘I think it’ll snow. Do you think it’ll snow?’

  Greg looked curiously at me. ‘You sound like you want it to snow. Snow in Ireland is cold, and wet, and mostly made up of slush. And in a tiny town like this, it takes a very long time for anyone to think of doing something as crazy as scraping the road or laying down grit.’

  ‘But … it has to snow. It won’t be a perfect Christmas unless it snows. Ooh, look!’ I pointed to an alleyway across the street. There was a shimmer in the air – a shimmer about the size and shape of your average witch. A witch who was most likely keeping an eye on a little shop called Spring’s Blooms. ‘Someone is cloaked over there. Under an invisibility spell. The Wayfarers are still spying on Hilda, then.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ Greg said. ‘Thanks to you, we’re now almost certain that there’s a witch hunter gene, and that Hilda carries it. The Wayfarers need to keep an eye on her, unless we want another Dean Danger on our hands.’

  ‘Don’t remind me about him,’ I said, pushing all thoughts of that witch hunter slash choirmaster from my mind. ‘He made me believe I could sing like an angel, and it was all a cruel farce.’

  ‘Yeah. That and he killed two women, and almost killed you and Dylan, too.’

  ‘True. But it was nice to be part of the choir. They always had tea and biscuits after their practice. Good biscuits, too. Which reminds me – I need to get some of those big tins of biscuits. People on TV are always buying loads of those this time of year.’

  ‘That’s what I love about you,’ said Greg, nudging me and grinning. ‘You lived in the human world your whole life, and yet you’re almost as clueless about their holiday customs as the average witch.’

  ‘Oh, so now you’re slagging off the foster kid who never had a proper Christmas? Classy.’

  He pulled me into a quick hug. ‘Not slagging you off, dummy. Just telling you that only someone as wonderfully weird as you could have fit in to the supernatural world so quickly.’

  I smiled up at him. ‘I knew you were being nothing but a sweetie pie, Greg the Gallant. I was just pretending to be offended. For comedic effect.’

  We drew closer to Spring’s Blooms, where the owner, Hilda Spring, was standing on a ladder, a tin of paint in her hands. Below where her shop’s sign said Spring’s Blooms, she was painting the words In Winter.

  ‘Hello there, Hilda!’ I said. ‘That’s very funny, so it is. Spring’s Blooms In Winter. Are you going to change your sign for all the seasons, then? That’d be great, so it would.’

  Hilda paused in her work to give Greg and I dirty look – a look that was proof alone that she could sense our supernatural abilities. There was absolutely no other reason for her to dislike us. We were an adorable duo. ‘Are you being sarcastic, Miss Smith? Listen, if you don’t want to buy any holiday arrangements, then get lost – the pair of ye!’ she said.

  Never one to under-stay our welcome, Greg and I stood firm and peered at the displays in her windows. It was irritating to admit it, but everything was beautiful. There were Christmassy wreaths and garlands, and amazing bouquets filled with seasonal colours. And I hadn’t been sarcastic about the new addition to her sign, either. I thought it was just about the cutest thing I’d seen all day.

  ‘The shop’s looking lovely, Hilda,’ said Greg. ‘So … do you actually like Christmas?’

  I could understand his puzzlement. Hilda seemed to hate anything that promised even the merest hint of enjoyment. She’d been a top suspect for some murders at Halloween because of that very same begrudging nature.

  ‘Of course I like Christmas. Who wouldn’t like Christmas?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Probably the two of you, now that I think of it.’

  ‘Huh? We love Christmas,’ said Greg.

  ‘We do,’ I said, adding a nod of confirmation. ‘We really, really do.’ I was about to say something more – maybe something to prove our Christmas-loving credentials and stop this potential witch hunter from sussing us out, when I noticed her dirty look turn into a sly smirk. I followed her eyes as she stared malevolently down the road.

  ‘Hello, Margaret!’ she called out, greeting another woman from the town. ‘I have some lovely poinsettia for sale. Isn’t that what your Mossy bought for Heather Flynn last year?’

  I gasped, watching as Margaret strode in our direction. It was no secret that her husband had once been in love with her now-dead friend. Nothing had happened between them, because Heather was a lovely, wannabe witch who would never do a thing like that. Ever since Heather’s death, Margaret and Mossy had been working to improve their relationship. At Halloween I’d seen them look happier together than ever before.

  Margaret stopped outside the shop and looked up at Hilda, a smile on her face. ‘It was poinsettia Mossy bought for Heather last year. Thank you so much for reminding me. Sure, Mossy and me were only just saying how we should lay some flowers on Heather’s grave for the holidays, and you’ve just given me the idea for the perfect plant. I’ll buy some now, if you’re still open.’

  Margaret’s smile widened, and I resisted the urge to give her a fist bump. ‘It’s a nice thing for us to do together, don’t you think?’ she went on. ‘My husband and me, saying Merry Christmas to someone we both loved? And saying thank you to the universe, too. Because honestly? We might have had a shaky few months, but Mossy and me … we’ve come out the other side stronger than ever.’

  Hilda’s nose wrinkled, and her upper lip pulled up into a snarl. ‘The universe? You are not using my flowers to visit a dead hippy’s grave and say thank you to some woo-woo universe. I won’t allow that sort of thing.’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘Fine, then. I’ll buy some from Norman’s. They’re cheaper there, anyway.’ She gave Greg and me a friendly wave, and went on her way.

  ‘That,’ I said to Greg as we continued our walk to the Vander Inn, ‘is what I want to be when I grow up.’

  ‘And another plus?’ Greg linked his arm with mine. ‘I think we can safely say that Hilda is far too busy being an all-round hater to ever concentrate those witch hunter talents in our direction.’

  He was probably right about that, I thought, looking up into the sky. But he was definitely wrong about snow. I wanted it to fall so badly, and I didn’t care if it was cold, and wet, and would be mostly made up of slush. All I cared about was that it would make the perfect backdrop to what was hopefully going to be the best Christmas ever.

  4. How to Handle an OAP

  I heaved another chair into my room. Yes, I’d gotten to the stage where I could have used magic to bring it there (yay!) but I was conserving my energy for the lesson. Although it must be said, it’s difficult to conserve energy when you’re shaking with childlike excitement.

  Fuzz, who was snoozing on my bed next to the broom, looked up at me. ‘Keep it down, will you? We’re trying to sleep.’

>   I glanced at the broom – well, I glanced at my mother. With only a few days to go until Solstice, I was hoping she would have taken off by now. What if she didn’t go? That would mean that the cane – i.e. my father – hadn’t gone either. And that would mean I’d have to find some way to steal it from Arnold Albright so that I could bring my entrapped parents together in time for the spell. Sure, if it came down to it, then that was precisely what I’d do – but I’d really rather not have to deal with my evil grandfather just yet. I planned on saving that displeasure until my parents were free.

  I approached the bed, and gently picked her up. ‘Any em … you know … urges to set off towards that special tree in the Wandering Wood just yet?’ I asked.

  The broom rose into the air, then flopped down onto the bed. I was sensing a definite air of despondency. That wasn’t good. If it – if she – was feeling gloomy about things, then maybe there was a reason to worry.

  No. No, that sort of thinking just wouldn’t do. I touched her again and said, ‘It’ll happen, Mam. You’ll feel the call, and you and Dad will go off to the Wandering Wood in plenty of time for Solstice. Everything will go swimmingly. But … maybe don’t pay too much attention to how much I mess up in tonight’s lesson. In fact, go back to sleep and just think positive thoughts.’ I patted the broom, then moved around the room, fluffing pillows and cushions and arranging everything just so – yes, I realised that the décor made little difference to how well this lesson would go, but it gave me something to do other than panic.

  I was straightening up one of my lampshades when Greg peered up at me from the computer screen. ‘Any snacks?’

  I headed for the stash of chocolate bars I kept in my bedside table, and threw one at him, quickly closing the drawer so he wouldn’t get any ideas about the rest of the snacks inside. ‘Here. But we just had dinner in the dining room. And you had dessert, too.’ Greg’s appetite would forever be a wonder to me. Despite the fact that he was constantly eating, he was thin and wiry. He tried to tell me that sitting at a computer all day burned far more calories than people gave it credit for. Personally, I thought he was thin because he was constantly fidgeting – that, or he was infested with a parasite.