Winging It Read online

  Sandra blinked again. I was beginning to fear for the safety of her eyelashes. Even with a decent coat of mascara, I wasn’t sure that they could withstand quite so much blinking. ‘But ... the Wayfairs have done amazing work recently. And your nephew – Finn – has been lauded as the best thing to happen to the Peacemakers since the inception of the force. Without Finn and the Wayfairs working together, we would never have uncovered the corruption in the ranks. Not to mention that the Wayfairs have been taking on the lion’s share of the Peacemakers’ work recently. Surely–’

  The Minister shook her head, cutting Sandra off. ‘Sandra dear, have you ever heard of the Leadership Clause?’

  Sandra gulped. ‘Yes. I’ve heard of it.’

  I could understand why Sandra was gulping. I gulped a few times myself, and felt my blood run cold.

  I’d been reading a lot about Magical Law since becoming empowered. The thing about Irish witches is that ... well, let’s just say we have authority issues. Because of that, we had no Taoiseach, Prime Minister, President or equivalent ruler. We had various ministerial positions, of course. But because even stubborn, authority-flouting witches realised there was a need for some laws, the post of Minister for Magical Law had become the most important role. It was a role, however, which came with some caveats. Justine Plimpton didn’t have the right to enact or change laws – that was done by agreement of the entire Wyrd Court. Unless the Leadership Clause came into play.

  I gulped again, and blinked a few times. All I needed was some shoulder pads, and I’d be doing a pretty good impression of Sandra. I pictured the words I had read in one of my many Magical Law books:

  The Leadership Clause can only come into play in times of national emergency.

  Was the worst about to happen?

  ‘The Leadership Clause,’ the Minister went on, ‘is by far the most sensible part of Irish Magical Law. In times of national emergency, the Minister for Magical Law shall take on the leadership of all Irish Enclaves, including, but not limited to ... well, everything.’

  Sandra’s shoulder pads were beginning to droop. ‘What are you saying, exactly, Minister? We’re hardly in a national emergency.’

  The Minister smirked. ‘Luckily, that is not up to you to decide. It is my decision, and my decision alone, as to when a national emergency is declared. What with all of the recent riots, murders, and spikes in crime, how could I not declare a national emergency?’

  ‘So ... effectively, you’ve made yourself the boss of everything.’

  She turned to the camera, smiling. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  I was almost positive that, somewhere beneath her make-up, Sandra turned pale. She fixed another uber-bright smile upon her face and said, ‘I think it’s time for another commercial break.’

  A group of attractive young people appeared on-screen, all flying over Warren Lane on brooms, and looking like they were having the time of their lives. A jingle began to play:

  ‘Plimpton’s Brooms, Plimpton’s Brooms, now you’re really flying

  Plimpton’s Brooms, Plimpton’s Brooms, it’s time to get a-buying.’

  As the jingle repeated, Benny and his friends stood up, and walked to the pool table.

  ‘Can’t say I blame them,’ said Max. ‘Better off playing pool. That news was a joke.’

  I watched the threesome, feeling a tingle creeping up and down my spine. Benny and the Jeffs seemed a little out of it, to say the least. The news had been dire, so I guess they could have been shocked – I certainly was. But this didn’t seem like shock. The three guys almost seemed like they were sleepwalking. Benny picked up his cue first, and his two friends soon followed.

  Just as I was jumping down off my stool, they broke their cues off the edge of the pool table, and plunged them into their chests.

  4. Good Gretel

  I checked desperately for pulses with one hand, and called my mother with the other. As I was speaking to her, Rover rushed in from the back room.

  ‘I smell blood,’ he said. ‘What the hell ... happened?’ His voice trailed off as his eyes fell on Benny and the Jeffs, lying together on the floor.

  ‘They stabbed themselves with the pool cues,’ I said, straightening up.

  ‘Like some weird suicide pact?’ wondered Rover.

  ‘I’m not so sure. I mean, three minutes ago Benny was all ready to tell me something. You heard him, Max. He wanted to chat with me straight after the news.’

  Max was about to confirm, when one of the Jeffs sat up.

  ‘Wanda,’ he croaked. ‘The glitch. Look out for the glitch.’ He let out a rattling breath, before his head fell back to the floor, and he was gone.

  ‘Which one was he?’ I asked Max. ‘Jeff the witch or Jeff the wizard?’

  ‘Wizard. But what did he mean about a glitch?’

  As he spoke, the room filled up with Wayfairs and Peacemakers. There was no sign of Finn. So it was true then. His aunt really had fired him.

  ‘I don’t know what the glitch is,’ I whispered to Max. ‘And I don’t think we should mention it to anyone other than my coven.’

  As Max nodded, Gabriel approached me, all dressed up in a tuxedo. ‘You got here quickly,’ he said.

  I bit my lip. Could I lie? ‘Yeah. Yeah I did.’ I groaned as I heard the untruth spilling from my mouth. ‘Actually, Gabriel, I was already here. I was hanging out with Max.’

  ‘But ... you told me you couldn’t come to dinner with me,’ he said, looking adorably confused. ‘You said you were going to be questioning someone all night.’

  ‘Well ... originally I was going to, but there were no interrogation rooms. I should have told you about the change in plans but ... well, I didn’t know how to tell you the truth. The thing is, I just didn’t want to go to dinner tonight.’

  His expression switched from confused to upset. ‘I don’t get it. I thought things were going really well with us. I mean fine, we don’t get to spend as much time together as we’d like. And we tend to get interrupted by one emergency or another every time we’re about to ... y’know. But other than that, this is the best relationship I’ve ever had. Or at least I thought so.’

  ‘It is,’ I insisted. ‘It really is. For me, too. But tonight ...’ I looked him up and down. He was close to full-on TV Gabriel, with his product-soaked hair and his shiny teeth. ‘I just ... I couldn’t do it. Last time I spent time with your TV buddies, I overheard ... I overheard one of them say, “Gabriel’s really going for a different sort these days, isn’t he?” And the woman he was with, she guffawed. Full-on guffawed like a snobby mare. She even looked like a horse, with her giant teeth and her long neck and her ... and her ... anyway, then she said, “I’ll say this for her. Her bottom could probably quash the country’s crime problem all by itself.”’

  I swallowed, eyes darting everywhere, while Gabriel looked close to exploding. ‘Now, don’t feel sorry for me,’ I told him. ‘I’m not upset because some skinny witch said my bum is big. I happen to like my big bum. It’s just that ... I kind of had an urge to turn her into a dung-beetle. I’m not like your TV friends, Gabriel. I’m not like them, and I don’t like them. And I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve let you down, but ... it would have been a lot worse if I’d gone. And, well, I don’t want to spend time with them again.’

  He pulled me close, kissed the top of my head and said, ‘Then you don’t have to. But as a matter-of-fact, Lindsey Berry – the skinny horse-witch who slagged you off? She’s in the minority, Wanda. The rest of my TV friends think you’re so amazing. They really hoped you’d be there tonight.’

  I snorted. ‘Yeah, sure they did. It doesn’t really matter, either way. This is a crime scene. Let’s get to solving it.’

  He laughed softly as we moved back into the fray. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But just so you know? Your bottom is a work of art.’

  ≈

  Without Finn on the scene, I’d feared that we were going to go back to our usual unpleasant relationship with the Peac
emakers. But thankfully Gretel – another ally of ours – seemed to be taking control.

  She took off her helmet, revealing her long, black, plaited hair. ‘We all saw the news a few minutes ago,’ she said to her team. ‘But for now, we carry on the way Finn would have wanted to. Because the Minister didn’t say Wayfairs were over and done with. She said that eventually we’ll be taking over from them. That’s an eventuality that I hope never actually comes to pass. So tonight, we work together with the Wayfairs. Anyone have any problems with that?’

  It was an admirable speech – or it would have been if she hadn’t caught her truncheon in her hair halfway through, and spent the rest of the speech trying to untangle it.

  There were a few shuffling feet, but no words of dissent. They just got on with it – and no one so much as laughed at Gretel’s latest clumsy predicament. To be fair, Finn had managed to weed out the worst of the force and hire some new blood before he was fired. Now that he was gone, I had no doubt that his aunt would return things to their former disharmony. In the meantime, I was going to be happy for small miracles.

  Dennis, the department healer, was examining the bodies. I say healer, even though Dennis was the one who arrived when there was nothing left to heal. He was working along with Ronnie – a Wayfair and Potions’ expert. Some of the Peacemakers were bagging up the pool cues, while Christine and Gabriel set about talking to the witnesses – and by witnesses, I mean me and Max.

  ‘So ... they were watching Wyrd News and then they just killed themselves?’ asked Christine. ‘There was no other indication of what they were about to do?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head sadly. ‘None at all. In fact, Benny asked me if he and the Jeffs could have a chat with me after the news. He said that it was vitally important. I got the impression he wanted to tell me something about Justine or her broom factory. Oh, and Wyrd News wasn’t yet over when he and the Jeffs went to the pool table. It was the second ad break when they did it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Max began humming the Plimpton’s Brooms tune. ‘It was the ad for the Minister’s brooms that was playing. And they looked kind of out of it, all three of them.’

  ‘Could they have been drunk?’ Christine suggested. ‘Could that have been why they looked unfocused?’

  ‘No,’ Max said with certainty. ‘They’d just started on their second pint. Those boys only ever had two. There was definitely more to the whole thing. They weren’t drunk, and they weren’t suicidal, either. If I had to guess, I’d say they were hypnotised.’

  ‘Often people who have suicidal pacts or intentions can look sort of out of it, though,’ Gabriel pointed out. ‘It’s just because they have a set idea in mind. It doesn’t mean they were influenced by anything other than their own single-mindedness.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I agree with Max. This wasn’t single-mindedness or whatever you want to call it. This was weird is what it was.’

  Gabriel smiled sadly at me. ‘You haven’t seen suicidal, Wanda. I have.’

  Gabriel’s words were a surprising revelation. I had no idea he knew someone who died that way, and a shared look with Max told me that the news was just as new to him.

  ‘Sorry about that, mate,’ said Max. ‘We’ve all seen some sad things in our lives. But Wanda is right about this, I’m telling you. I know Benny and the Jeffs. They’re clever. They’re a bunch of determined lads. Brilliant lads.’

  ‘And you’re saying suicidal people can’t be clever?’ Gabriel glared at Max. ‘And as for knowing them, you can’t ever know a person. You don’t know what these guys had in their heads. In their hearts. How could you possibly know that?’

  Christine and I stood between the men. The anger coming off Gabriel was unusual – especially since it was directed at Max. The two of them had become best friends in recent months.

  I put a hand on Gabriel’s, and made him meet my eyes. ‘Max wasn’t insulting anyone,’ I said softly. ‘Neither was I. Okay?’

  Christine gave him a worried smile. ‘There’s nothing more for us to ask Wanda and Max anyway, Gabe. And there are no other witnesses, so why don’t we all go and help gather up the evidence?’

  Gabriel gritted his teeth and marched across to the pool table. As much as I wanted to comfort him, now wasn’t the time, so I approached Gretel instead. She was waving a magic scanner around – it was a long, rectangular device that reminded me of the hand-held metal detectors in airports.

  ‘You picking anything up?’ I asked her.

  ‘Nothing we can use. Witches carrying out crimes have a pesky habit of hiding their own magical signatures, and any trace of the spells they’re carrying out. The only time this stupid stick ever picks a clear signature up is when I’ve caught some witch kid using their power to shoplift.’ She frowned. ‘But tonight ... I don’t think it’s a case of anyone hiding anything. That makes the scanner glow red. It gets so hot with trying to sort through all of the obfuscations that I can barely hold the thing. Now ... it’s picking up things normally. I can pick up on Jeff the witch’s power, but he wasn’t doing any spells. I don’t think anyone was tonight.’ She looked around the bar. ‘It’s a nice place. I was here once before when we raided it, but ... it was a lot messier then. Our fault, obviously.’ She turned off the scanner and looked at me. ‘Wanda ... I have an idea about all of this, but I think it might be dumb.’

  I put on my poker face. Finn had been right about Gretel. In the past few weeks I’d gotten to know her, and it was clear that she was everything he said: honest, hardworking, and clever in the strangest ways. Sure, I’d seen her pull at a door handle for ten seconds straight before she realised it said Push. And yeah, I’d seen her absentmindedly pour salt instead of sugar into her coffee – on that occasion, before I crossed the room to warn her, she’d already drained the cup and hadn’t noticed any difference in taste.

  But I had also seen her come up with incredibly astute observations, seemingly from nowhere. A murder the week before had almost been pinned on a weredog. But when a witness described the murderer as, ‘Chewing on a beef burger,’ Gretel had been the first of the Peacemakers to point out that most weredogs were vegan. The real murderer, a werewolf, had been tracked down by Gretel the very next day.

  ‘It’s not going to be dumb,’ I assured Gretel. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, tell me.’

  ‘Okay, but not here.’ She pulled me into the ladies’ room. ‘Here’s the thing,’ she said once we were inside. ‘Darren – one of the new hires – he’s searching the guys’ places as we speak.’

  ‘Already?’ I couldn’t hide my surprise. ‘You guys just got here.’

  Gretel sighed. ‘The Minister came into our canteen the second she was done on Wyrd News. She arrived at the very same time we got the call about Benny and the Jeffs. She told Darren to get over to the dead guys’ places while the rest of us came here. She said we’d be more efficient that way. Anyway, Darren’s just been in touch with me. He found this in Jeff the witch’s flat.’ She pulled out her mobile phone and opened up a photo Darren had just sent her. It was, without a doubt, a suicide note. I peered at the screen:

  Me, Benny and the other Jeff have decided to take a stand. We want to do something big, something that’ll get people talking. So tonight, we’re going to kill ourselves. All three of us. We hope that, by doing so, people will see just how tight a friendship between a weredog, a witch and a wizard can be. People will know how stupid all of this separation is. People will come together, and demand that the laws be changed. That’s what we hope, anyway.

  Sorry, Mam. I love you,

  Jeff.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And what about the handwriting?’

  Gretel sighed. ‘Matches everything else in Jeff’s flat, according to Darren. Broom-making notes and designs, his appointment diary ... it’s definitely his handwriting.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘Wait ... you said you had an idea, though.’

  She pulled at her plait, undoing it and re-braiding it thoughtfully. I felt
incredibly short beside her. Gretel might look a little vacant behind the eyes, but she also looked kind of Amazonian. ‘Well, it’s just some dumb idea I can’t get out of my head. I mean, there’s really nothing left to investigate, because this was definitely a suicide pact. The Minister sure isn’t going to let us look into it any further. But ... I overheard you and Max saying they looked kind of hypnotised, and I was thinking ... they had to have been.’

  ‘Had to have been? Hypnotised?’

  ‘Well, yeah. Because snapping a pool cue in two and stabbing yourself right in the heart ... that takes strength. Not to mention accuracy. Benny I could understand. Weredogs are incredibly strong, on par with werewolves. But the two Jeffs? No way. Like I said, no spells were obfuscated, so they didn’t do anything to give themselves super-strength. But there is one thing that can give a person uncommon strength. And that’s if a vamp compels them.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘And a vampire could also have compelled Jeff the witch to write that note. But the problem is, with the three guys being dead ....’

  ‘...we can’t test them to see if they have been compelled.’ Gretel finished off my thought, then kicked the tiled counter beneath the sink. ‘I wish to the goddess that Finn were here. We’re going to lose this investigation, Wanda. You know what the Minister’s like. Once she hears about the suicide note, it’s all over.’

  ‘Is there any way we could maybe ...’

  Gretel shook her head. ‘Lie? No. I thought about that, too. Believe me. I thought: what would Finn do? And the answer was lie through his teeth to his aunt and hide any trace of that note until he was satisfied we’d investigated the case to its fullest.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  Gretel nodded down to her mobile phone. ‘This is the problem. Department issued. Every text we send, every call we make, it gets recorded and goes straight to Justine. Finn and I have taken to using our personal phones when there’s something we don’t want her to see. But Darren used his work phone. So ... there’s no hiding the note. Because the Minister already knows about it.’