Rocking Out Read online

  Gretel and I shared a look. ‘We’ll need your roadie’s name, Mack,’ she said.

  3. Unfamiliar Ground

  By the time Gretel and I left my house, we knew a little more about the murder victim. She had an identification card in her purse, telling us that her name was Caitlyn Daly, and she had just turned eighteen a few days earlier. She lived in Easterly Crescent, on the other side of Luna Park from me.

  We also had Dennis’s and Shane’s preliminary findings: that the young girl had been strangled to death with the microphone cable.

  The bite mark we’d seen on her neck wasn’t the only bite on her body. There were three more bite marks, two on her arms and one on her stomach. Dennis and Shane thought that the strangling might have taken place before the biting – which would throw any theories of a turning gone wrong out the window – but they needed to run some tests to be absolutely sure. They’d taken impressions of Mack’s teeth, and Jasper’s. I prayed to the goddess that neither were a match.

  Mack told us that all of the roadies were due to pack up the tour bus at eleven, so we decided to hold off speaking to them until then. For one thing, I wanted to take them by surprise. For another, there was something else that we needed to do beforehand.

  Talking to relatives of murder victims wasn’t exactly my favourite part of the job. Caitlyn’s mother looked just like her, with the same blonde hair and blue eyes. She didn’t fall to pieces – I was sure that part would come after we left. Instead she listened to the terrible news, held back her tears, and said she’d be happy to answer any questions we had. She even insisted on making us some tea. I would have refused, but I got the feeling she needed something to concentrate on.

  ‘Were you expecting Caitlyn home last night?’ I asked, watching as she poured our drinks with shaky hands.

  ‘No. I didn’t expect her home tonight, either. Caitlyn told me she’d be staying with friends after the gig at Swanks last night, and that she’d be with them all day today as well. I mean, it’s the Call of the Wild tour, so how could I say no? She’s crazy about those boys.’ She grimaced. ‘Oh, I know what you’re going to say – they’re not boys. They’re grown men. Werewolves at that. Her father hated her being a fan of that band, but I told him he was being ridiculous.’ She sniffed back some tears. ‘Maybe I should have listened to him. Put my foot down. That’s what I was thinking all morning.’

  ‘All morning?’ I questioned, puzzled. We’d kept the news quiet, so far. ‘Did someone else tell you about Caitlyn’s death before us?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. This is the first I’ve heard of it. But I was expecting someone to call,’ she said. ‘Maybe not to tell me she’d been murdered, but to tell me she was dead, anyway. I knew it as soon as I saw poor Pebbles this morning.’

  ‘Pebbles?’ asked Gretel.

  ‘Caitlyn’s familiar,’ she replied as she passed me a cup of tea. ‘A gorgeous Persian cat. Caitlyn loved him so much. They were together since Caitlyn was five and Pebbles was a kitten.’ Mrs Daly sniffed back another sob. ‘That’s how I knew Caitlyn was dead. Because I found Pebbles on her bed this morning, cold as stone.’

  ≈

  By now, most of you know me. But for those of you who’ve just been introduced, I guess I should probably explain why I dropped my teacup on a grieving mother’s kitchen floor.

  I have a gift, you see. But it’s not one of those gifts you can’t wait to unwrap. It’s more like that gift from your Great Auntie Eileen, lurking beneath the rest of your Winter Solstice presents. The one that’s probably pottery. Or a scratchy sweater. Or a sweater with pottery-themed embellishments and shoulder-pads to boot.

  There’s a natural course to things, when it comes to witches and their familiars. They live together, and they die together. Presumably they spend the afterlife together, too, if there is one. If there is, then I pray it has mangoes, because if not, Dizzy is going to make eternity feel like a very long time.

  But that’s the natural course. That’s what happens when a witch dies of old age or illness. When a witch is murdered, though, that’s where my not-so-wonderful gift comes in. Their familiars tend to stick around for a while – just long enough to annoy me into solving the murder. It had been that way for months, and I’d been expecting Caitlyn’s familiar to track me down sometime soon.

  So to hear that Pebbles had passed away was more than a shock. But there he was – just as Mrs Daly said – a beautiful Persian cat, cold as a stone atop Caitlyn’s bed.

  I felt my legs go weak as I looked at the cat. This was the first murder case where I would have to work without a familiar’s help – and without a familiar, I was on unfamiliar ground.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do with him,’ said Mrs Daly. ‘I should bury him with Caitlyn, really. When will … when will I be able to do that?’

  I forced back waves of sorrow and fear and squeezed her hand. ‘Just as soon as we can get her to you, Mrs Daly. We’ll be as quick as we can, but it could take a while.’

  ≈

  We didn’t just need to speak with the roadie who had parked Mack’s car – we also needed to confiscate all of their equipment and catalogue it, so we could determine if the murder weapon belonged to the band. So we clicked our fingers, and sent ourselves to the carpark of Swanks.

  Swanks was a witch hotel in Dublin City. Because most witches don’t drive, the hotel’s underground carpark was small. It was also far less glamorous than the hotel above. There were mushrooms growing in corners, and large parts of the ground were little better than a muddy mess.

  The Call of the Wild tour bus seemed to be the only vehicle in the place, and a few werewolves were walking to and from it, packing up the last of the equipment from the night before.

  ‘Well hello there, lovelies.’ The werewolf who was winking at us was at least fifty, with a paunch and a red face. There was an incredibly classy tattoo on his forearm, featuring a topless mermaid with long blue hair. He matched Mack’s description of Murphy – the roadie who had parked his car – to a T. ‘What can I do for you? You looking for backstage passes? I might have a couple – if you’ve got a couple of kisses for me.’

  I glanced at Gretel. We were both wearing casual clothes today. I preferred to wear a uniform, but they were all in the washing machine. One had chocolate stains. Another had ice cream stains. The third wasn’t stained, but it was drenched with the stench of my misery, so I’d decided it ought to have a wash.

  A right little ray of sunshine these days, aren’t I? But I’m trying, really I am. Take that very moment, for example. Instead of kneeing Sir Gawain in the groin, I smiled widely and said, ‘You’d like a few kisses? Really? Shouldn’t you go and put your dentures in first, though? I do hate a sloppy kisser.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Now that’s not a very nice way to talk to the senior roadie of the most famous werewolf rock band in the world, is it little lady?’

  Gretel sidled closer to him. ‘Oh, I dunno. I hear Alpha are giving your boys a run for their money these days. So, Murphy, did you make a similar offer to Caitlyn Daly?’

  Murphy’s face fell. His eyes darted all over the place, then finally settled back on us. ‘How did you know my name? You’re from that stupid new Wayfarer force, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We are. And we’d like you to come with us for a DNA test.’ Gretel gazed around the room. ‘You all need to come in with us for questioning. And we’ll be confiscating the tour bus and all of the equipment, too.’

  While the others looked relaxed about that, Murphy’s face fell. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Caitlyn!’ he cried.

  Gretel gave him a cold smirk. ‘But you do seem to know that something happened to her. How very interesting.’

  ≈

  Until our new headquarters were ready, everything was a little bit disorganised. The Major Crimes department was working out of an abandoned call centre on Eile Street, but most Wayfarer offices, as well as our holding cells and our morgue, were still at t
he Wyrd Court. And seeing as Dennis’s office was right next to the morgue, that was where we brought the band’s roadies.

  As we were walking towards Dennis’s office, Finn was leading Jasper and Mack out.

  ‘All right lads,’ said Jasper. ‘They got you in for Cutie, too? As if any of us’d ever kill someone that gorgeous, eh?’

  I waited for Gretel to lead the roadies into Dennis’s office, then I glared at Jasper. ‘You know perfectly well by now that her name was Caitlyn Daly, so stop calling her by one of your dumb nicknames. Now. Because if you don’t, I might have reason to wonder about how much respect you have for women.’ I looked at Finn. ‘So what happens now? Are you arresting them?’

  Finn sighed. ‘They’re free to go. For now.’

  ‘We are?’ Mack looked surprised.

  ‘Absolutely. We couldn’t have your fans miss out on tonight’s gig, now could we? But you’re both persons of interest, and if you even attempt to leave the country, you’ll be arrested immediately.’

  As they walked off, I stared at Finn. ‘Please tell me you’re at least tracking them.’

  He sank into a chair next to a coffee machine. ‘Of course. And I’ve already assigned a team to follow them, too. But I have to say, I don’t actually suspect either of them. Mack seems like a solid guy, and genuinely cut up about the girl. And Jasper? He has so many groupies begging for him to turn them. Caitlyn included, if her internet history is anything to go by. Why would he need to kill her when she wanted to be a werewolf? And neither of those guys strikes me as stupid enough to try and turn someone outside of the full moon, anyway. I’ve got to say, Wanda, none of this feels right to me. I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole deal.’

  ‘That’s what Dizzy said.’ I went to the coffee machine and poured myself a cup. It was evil stuff, most likely brewed in the pits of Hades. But right now the machine was broken and giving out cups for free, so I’d developed a love-hate relationship with the drink. ‘I’m not getting any of my usual vibes either way. But you’re right about Jasper and Mack. I don’t see them as the groupie-murdering types. I’d say the same for most of their roadies, too. Murphy on the other hand … the man makes my skin crawl.’

  ‘We’ll have a good deep delve into the life of Murphy.’

  I shuddered. ‘Well, if we’re going to do that, then I think we should wear protective clothing.’

  4. The Mysterious Little Elf

  I wanted to question Murphy more thoroughly, but I figured I’d wait until he’d suffered through a bit of prodding and poking (Finn had told Dennis and Shane to take their time gathering whatever evidence they might need from him – just because Murphy seemed like such a lovely guy).

  In the meantime, I clicked my fingers and sent myself over to our temporary headquarters to see how Paul was doing with the car, the tour bus, and the rest of the band’s equipment.

  Paul was our tech guy and all-round wizard genius. He could dig up anything online, he could fix every single machine in the office, and he rescued my phone every time I spilled orange juice on it.

  Right now he was in a sealed room, chewing absentmindedly on some cheesy toast, and doing something wizardly to the band’s vehicles. I watched him on the monitors for a while, realised that I didn’t have a clue what he was doing, and ambled over to my desk instead so I could dig up the names of the She-Wolves.

  I worked right through lunch. Once I was finished compiling my list, I switched to other work – work which was even more unpleasant than solving the latest murder.

  For the first time in, well, ever, we knew exactly who the Dark Team were. Seven of them, of course, were safely behind the magical bars of Witchfield prison, but there were still six members out there, and I was determined to find them before they found me.

  I recalled the face of each and every one of those six monsters because, unfortunately, the most terrifying moments seem to be the ones that remain firmly etched in our minds.

  There was Sven and Ivan Sorenson. Sven the Speedster was famous for excelling at just about every sport in the supernatural world, and his uncle Ivan was often the organiser of sporting events. Unsurprisingly, neither of them had been seen since the evening they kidnapped me, along with my family and friends. Just like the rest of the Dark Team, they were incredibly powerful vampire-witch hybrids. Ivan and Sven had hidden their witch abilities and lived as vampires.

  The others were well-known, too – but only to people who cared about money.

  There was Ignatius and Ella Fairfax, who had headed up one of the biggest witch investment banks in the world. After they escaped from Godbody House, they had disappeared without a trace – and stolen a lot of money when they went.

  Byron and Tiffany Vogel were the final two who had gotten away. Like the Fairfaxes, they had lived as witches, but they made their fortunes in the human world, heading up a major insurance company. You probably won’t be surprised that they, too, took all of their company’s money with them when they scarpered. I mean, who cares if a few humans didn’t get their claims paid out, right?

  Wrong. I cared. I cared about that kind of stuff almost as much as I cared about their Dark Team activities. Because losing money didn’t just mean losing the cash – people had lost their houses, their security. There were humans out there who hadn’t been able to pay for the funerals of loved ones who died.

  Yeah, I cared. But these people were so old and powerful that they could be anywhere by now. And they could be anyone, too. I’d managed to trace most of them back over the decades (and, in some cases, centuries) and discovered just how often, and how well, these people could change their identities. I hadn’t gotten anywhere with trying to trace Tiffany Vogel back any further than her last identity, but maybe that just meant she was cleverer than the others.

  So even though I was one of the only people in the world to have met all of the Dark Team, it didn’t mean squat. Knowing their last names and appearances didn’t help much when you were dealing with six on-the-run villains.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that, wherever they were, it wasn’t anywhere near me. For months before the Dark Team kidnapped me I had felt their presence, felt them watching my every move. Now, that feeling of wigginess was gone.

  Even Paul hadn’t been able to help us track them down. And not knowing where they were was making me more wiggy than when they were watching me.

  I was just drawing a moustache on a picture of Ella Fairfax, when a tall, gorgeous man appeared at my desk, a plate of apple tart in one hand, a glass of orange juice in the other.

  ‘You look like you could use a snack,’ he said.

  I goggled at the gorgeous man. He was almost as tall as Max and had the same brown eyes and light-brown hair. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that his teeth weren’t quite as caveman-like as my housemate’s, I might have thought I was looking at Max.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve met you before,’ I said.

  He extended a hand. ‘I am Sixteen. I believe you have met my previous incarnations. I am equipped with their memories.’

  ‘Ah.’ It all made sense now. As well as being our resident genius, Paul also had a penchant for making robots, each one more lifelike than the last. ‘You’re one of Paul’s.’

  ‘Paul is my maker, yes. May I get you anything else, Wanda Wayfair?’

  Oh, my stars, he even had a voice like Max’s. All deep and warm and friendly. ‘I’m okay for now, Sixteen. Thanks for the apple tart.’

  ‘You are most welcome, Wanda Wayfair,’ he said, before striding away, sitting into a chair, and powering down.

  Gretel strode in a few minutes later, sipping a cup of tea. ‘Hey there. How come you weren’t at the Water Bowl for lunch? Max was working.’

  ‘Oh was he?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t know. Shame. Oh well. I’ve got a decent start on the list of She-Wolves. Want to get going and question them?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘And I bet you weren’t just sitting here all by yourself, worrying about why Caitl
yn’s familiar died.’ She gave me a gentle smile. ‘It might not mean anything, Wanda. Not every familiar comes to you after a murder, do they? When there were all of those murders last summer only one witch’s familiar came to you.’ Her face fell. ‘Not that I think we’re going to have another string of murders on our hands or anything. Hey … it looks like a little elf has been dusting my desk. Again. Oh, and they’ve done my filing, too.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Finn, arriving beside my desk and looking down at me. ‘Some mysterious little elf has been doing lots of your work too, Gretel? That’s funny, because when I came in here yesterday morning, all of my latest reports had been typed up and some of my interviews had been transcribed. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that – would you, Wanda?’

  I tucked into my apple tart. If my mouth was full, they couldn’t expect me to answer. But they were still staring at me, the canny sods. ‘Maybe it was Sixteen.’ I nodded over to the robot. ‘He’s very helpful.’

  Sixteen looked up. ‘It was not me, Wanda Wayfair. Perhaps I can assist in finding the culprit, however. I can easily access the security footage, if you would care to wait a moment.’

  I gritted my teeth. ‘That’s okay, Sixteen. It’s not important. Anyway, I thought you were powered down.’

  ‘I go into power-save mode until I am called upon. You mentioned my name, Wanda Wayfair – so I therefore believed I was being called upon. Is there anything else with which I can assist you?’

  It’s not really fair to have a grudge against a robot. And it’s not easy to hold said grudge for long, either, when said robot happens to look like Max. But I had the feeling that I was just one more helpful favour away from disliking Sixteen.

  ‘I don’t need anything, Sixteen. Thank you.’