Sleigh Bells and Sleuthing, page 18
About the Author
Morgana Best
After surviving a childhood of deadly spiders and
venomous snakes in the Australian outback, bestselling
author Morgana Best writes cozy mysteries and enjoys
thinking of delightful new ways to murder her victims.
https://www.morganabest.com
FAMILIAR HIJINKS
Reluctant Familiar Mysteries
Sam Cheever
A Message From Sam Cheever
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Chapter One
Wake up, LeeAnn!
My grandmama’s face appeared in front of mine; her blue-green eyes narrowed with irritation. She reached up and tapped me hard on the nose. Wake up! You’ve got things to do.
I snorted awake, opening my eyes to find myself surrounded by white; a pristine glow emanating from beyond the window in my bedroom.
I sniffled, shoving a fire-colored rats-nest out of my face and sitting up. I’d asked my grandmama to make sure I woke up early because, she was right, it was Christmas Eve and I was woefully behind on my shopping. Using one’s dead grandmama as an alarm clock was admittedly strange, but Celeste was bored in the Elysian Fields and she didn’t mind.
“Thanks, Celeste!” I muttered around a yawn.
A soft voice danced through the impossible brightness of my room. You’re welcome, child.
Sighing expansively, I shoved the covers back. I sat on the edge of my bed and looked out at the unrelieved white beyond my window.
“Ugh.”
Snowing again. It seemed as though it had done nothing but drop snow and ice on our heads for weeks. The ground outside the shabby, careworn brownstone I called home was thick with the stuff. It covered all but a narrow ribbon of the sidewalks and roads, people and cars fighting for that limited space as we tried to go about our business, preparing for the holidays.
Which reminded me. I shoved to my feet, groaning as the last several days of training with Deg, a.k.a. Deggart Kincaide, my Witch, came back to bite me on the butt. Literally. My cheeks were killing me.
I yawned, heading to the bathroom to pee and brush the cotton from my teeth.
I spotted the clock on my dresser as I passed, groaning. I was late. I’d promised my friends I’d meet them at our favorite downtown diner for breakfast before we did our Christmas shopping. I needed to be there in fifteen minutes.
That’s what I got for using a ghost as an alarm clock. They had horrible time perception on the Earthly plane.
My friends and I had decided to do our shopping together so we’d be sure to get something each of us wanted. We’d exchanged names in our own version of Secret Santa…only it wasn’t so secret.
I did my thing in the bathroom, adding a quick, hot shower to the “to do” list while there. Hopefully, the hot water would ease some of the achiness from my overused muscles. Then I headed to the kitchen for coffee.
Firing up the small TV on my kitchen counter, I watched the news while my coffee brewed. I stared blankly at the usual reports of endless snow, grimacing and complaining aloud to a weather lady, who was dressed as if she lived on the beach. I was sipping the first cup of hot sweet and creamy coffee, thinking about heading into my cat sanctuary to feed my current residents…of which there were legions thanks to the never-ending snow…when the first news report of spilled magic hit the airwaves and filtered through my half-asleep brain cells.
The images flashed from ambulances and police cars to a pair of EMTs crouched in the snow, bent over someone on a stretcher.
The emergency medical responders tugged the stretcher upward, engaging its wheels so they could roll it to the waiting ambulance. A meaty hand, the fingers black with some kind of soot, fell off one side of the stretcher as it bounced over snow and ice.
I started to leave the kitchen but stopped in the door as a deep voice came on and spoke the words everyone in the magic world has dreaded since merging our fates with those in the human realm.
“I don’t know what happened. It was like lightning flew out of his fingertips,” the voice said. “He must have been holding one of those laser things in his hand. It’s the only explanation.”
I turned to the worried-sounding man on the television screen. He had dark skin and thick black brows that were lowered over chocolate brown eyes. “The lightning seared a woman’s bag right off at the handles and burned a streak in her arm.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I forgot the mug in my hand and the chores on my list. Patting my jeans for my phone, I realized I hadn’t grabbed it from my bedside table.
As I was rushing back to get the phone, it started ringing.
I didn’t bother with pleasantries when I recognized Deg’s name on the screen. “You saw?”
“Yes. I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”
If I hurried, I’d just have time to throw some food into the cats’ bowls before he got there.
The offices of Familiar, Inc. were unusually busy when Deg and I hit the lobby. Magical creatures of every kind moved from office to office with urgent steps, wearing identical looks of concern on their faces.
A small group of people I didn’t know clustered near the elevator, their voices buzzing over some kind of news.
I figured I knew what the news was. I wasn’t wrong.
“That makes the tenth event this month,” a dark-haired woman whose petite stature and slightly pointed ears put her firmly in the elf column. I had to sense her aura though to determine whether she was of the light variety or the dark.
Despite human fables and lore, dark fairies and elves weren’t inherently more evil than light. Though those whose bloodlines originated on the darker side of the spectrum seemed slightly more inclined to make bad choices.
The term, “bad choices” being magic-speak for actions that harmed the human population we were sworn to protect.
A tall man with spiky black hair shook his head at her words. “Eleven now. We’ve had two incidents this morning.”
Deg and I shared a look.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “There was a second one?”
Several heads nodded. The elf spoke up. “The one on the street downtown, and there was another one at the mall, in the toy store there.” Her expression was so dark I had a moment’s panic.
“Children?”
She shook her head. “No kids were hurt. But one of the clerks is fighting for her life at the hospital right now.”
“Dangit,” I murmured. What in the worlds was going on?
Deg punched the number for the seventeenth floor…the council chambers. We didn’t speak until we’d entered the car and the doors had slid closed. Then I looked at him. “This is bad.”
He nodded. “I’m wondering if we aren’t looking at something from Underworld again.”
I didn’t even want to think about that. But there was still the open issue of the wraiths…or something magical that appeared like wraiths…which had recently followed our friends Brock and Mandy back from Underworld.
“I’m leaning toward it being a troublemaker closer to home. Like an ex-council-member,” I told him.
My mother, the former Queen of the magic users in the human realm, had recently flattened out the council because of some dirty dealings by at least one of its members. She’d brought in new blood, in the form of me and my three friends, Deg, Mandy and Brock, to represent the younger, more open-minded segment of our magical population on Earth. As a sad…or happy depending on your outlook…result of that change, some of the older magic houses had been excused from council service.
It seemed highly likely one of them could be behind the current issues.
The elevator stopped on the seventeenth floor.
Deg nodded as the doors slid open. “That probably makes more sense.” He looked around and lowered his voice before adding, “Or someone who’s still on the council but doesn’t like the direction your mother’s taking it.”
I knew he was thinking of his own leader, Serena. The High Priestess of the coven for the human realm had been very vocal in her opposition to the new order. And she’d already been unhappy because of my family’s role on the council. She believed Familiars belonged on a rung somewhere below the Witches. And she’d been guilty of questionable, if not borderline illegal, tactics in the past to undermine our work.
“Whoever it is,” I murmured back, “we need to figure it out really fast and put a stop to it. The human police aren’t stupid. They’re going to realize pretty quickly that things aren’t adding up.”
Deg opened the door for me, and we slipped through as the stairwell entrance down the hall opened and slammed shut. I glanced that way, finding a recognizable form striding toward us.
Brock did not look happy.
I looked into his dark gaze and lifted my brows as he strode in our direction. He gave his head a quick shake and moved past us. The demon didn’t go directly to his seat behind the council table. Instead, he headed for my mother.
Katherine Mapes was standing at the back of the room, talking to a woman who looked a lot like her and…I’ve been told…like me too.
Aunt Trudy was looking remarkably better than she had when she’d returned from Underworld a few weeks earlier. Her gray-blue gaze locked on us and her narrow shoulders straightened as Brock hurried in their direction. As he stopped before them, Trudy’s eyes found me and, as they had nearly every time since her return to the human realm, filled with speculation.
I wondered at her continued coldness, figuring it was most likely based in uncertainty about my opinion of her return.
A not unreasonable uncertainty, since I didn’t know myself how I felt about it.
Deg and I joined the small group at the back of the room. As we did, I could feel the curious and hostile glances from the other council members searing the back of my head.
“What’s going on?” I asked my mother.
She nodded toward Brock.
He frowned. “The human police are here. They’re downstairs in the lobby.”
Panic clawed my gut at the news. “Already? How’d they track the magic leakage back here so quickly?”
His gaze grew dark. “It’s worse than that. They shouldn’t have been able to trace it to us at all.” He skimmed a quick look to Trudy. “As you requested, I visited the hospital where the victims were taken. I was prepared to intervene before the doctors could examine the magic users…”
I held up a hand. “How were you going to do that without drawing even more attention to us?”
“I gave him a spell,” Mandy said in her snotty tone of voice.
Of course, she had.
“Befuddlement?” Deg asked in typical witch-speak.
She nodded. “I added a thread of diarrhea to the spell.” She grinned. “It’s potent.”
Deg chuckled, “Dang. That’s just mean.”
Mother fixed them with a look that tore the grins right off their faces. But then she said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
We all laughed.
Everyone except for Brock. “As I was saying…” He slid a quelling look over us. “I didn’t use the spell. The magic users were human.”
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Finally, Trudy said. “That’s not possible.”
Brock shrugged. “I examined them myself.” His frown deepened. “It’s bad. Some of them are so weak from expending the foreign energy they look like living wraiths.”
The seriousness of the situation hit me like a barrel filled with rocks. I’d been focusing on the danger to the magic population because of the very public aspect of the attacks. I’d neglected to give a thought to how the human vessels might be faring.
Of course, in my defense, I’d assumed they were sick or renegade magic users. Not humans. The human body is much too frail a vessel for magic.
“How?”
He shook his head. “No idea. Their auras are strictly human. There’s no question. But there was something…”
“Are you going to share with the rest of the council?” A high-pitched, nasally voice said from behind me. I turned to find Serena standing there. She fixed me with a sour look; her narrow, cadaverous face made even more haggard by the disgusted puckering of her thin lips. “I thought we were done with secrets on the council.”
Mother nodded. “You’re right, Serena. I’m afraid we got caught up in the moment. Brock has some distressing news for us.” She nodded toward her sister.
Aunt Trudy gave Serena a long look, her lips compressed into a thin line as the High Priestess met her stare head on.
“Trudy,” Mother said.
My aunt finally shifted her gaze to her sister. “Of course.” She moved to sit down at the table. Her spot was next to Serena’s, a fact that probably had a lot to do with their ongoing animus, and at Mother’s right hand. Though Katherine Mapes had given up her virtual crown in an effort to create a more evenly weighted council, she’d kept her seat at the center of the table.
I figured it was because too much change at one time would have created its own kind of chaos in the room.
When we were all seated, Mother turned to Trudy. “Would you give your report, please?”
Trudy nodded, standing. Her gaze slid around the room and landed on me. Brock, Deg, Mandy and I sat together on one end, an island of common sense in a sea of egos. Mother had been against our sitting together at first, but she relented when she realized how much pushback we were going to be getting from the elders.
We needed to show a united front, or they’d eat us alive.
“I wanted to assure the council that what is going on right now has nothing to do with Underworld. I contacted all of my sources there and the response was unanimous. There are currently no plots to undermine or overwhelm our position here.” As was her way since being offered a seat at the council table, Trudy gave her information in short, unadulterated bursts and then kept her silence. Though her gaze was watchful and speculative at all times.
I knew she kept most of her council private. I’d seen her and my mother with their heads together after every council meeting. And by the way Serena watched the two women at the center of the table, I knew she’d noticed it too.
The arrangement wasn’t exactly conducive to healthy council relations. However, I was willing to give Trudy some time to adjust. She’d never been good at sharing her toys.
“Brock, would you fill the council in on what you learned, please?”
Brock stood and repeated what he’d told us.
Gasps of horror and surprise rose around the table when he revealed that the magic users had been human.
“This is an outrage!” Serena exclaimed in her strident, sinus-heavy tones. “We have to get to the bottom of it immediately.”
I thought my mother showed great restraint. “Yes, we do, Serena. That’s why we’re here.”
Serena’s response was a tightening of her thin, cruel lips as anger flashed in her nearly black gaze.
“You say the human police are downstairs?” the Elven King asked. We all turned toward King Markland, noting the multi-hued sparks dancing on the air around his head. When elves got upset, they tended to shed magic dust.
Fortunately, the human population seemed oblivious to it.
But for us, it was a bit of a nuisance. Magic dust was highly allergenic.
As if reading my thoughts, the man sitting next to Markland sneezed, his chin nearly hitting the table under the violence of it. “Sorry,” he murmured, running a pristine square of white linen under his bulbous nose.
I grinned at the King of the Trolls. His wide, craggy face turned pink as he returned my smile.
“They’re speaking to our first level resistance now. But the Detective in charge concerns me a little. He’s very…” Brock frowned as if searching for the right word. “Determined, is the nicest word I can come up with.”
“First level contains our best people,” King Eglund of the Troll People mused. His nose twitched and he fell into another long series of sneezes that left him groaning. “So sorry.”
Mother gave King Markland a look. “Contain your dust, Markland.”
The Elven king pasted a regal look on his handsome face and reached up to pinch a pointy ear. The cloud of dust disappeared. “Best people or not, I’m concerned they managed to track the problem back to us. It’s the first step on the short road to discovery.”
Heads up and down the table nodded.
Deg sat forward. “If you’d like, Mandy and I can put ourselves in the vicinity and see what we can discover.”
Mother looked at Serena, since, as head of the witches, technically the decision should be hers to make. She looked down her long, pointy nose and nodded. “Use your spells to remain out of sight. Report to me when you’ve completed your mission.”
“Report to the council,” Mother corrected with a quelling gaze toward the High Priestess.
Serena reluctantly dipped her head. “Of course.”
I watched my friends leave the room, filled with jealousy. I wanted to be on the front lines of the investigation. Not sitting on my butt talking about…whatever we were getting ready to talk about.
“Now, we have some current business to discuss.” Mother narrowed her gaze on King Eglund. “We need to discuss the bathrooms on the Troll level.”
He flushed and cleared his throat. “I know they’ve clogged the toilets again…” he began.
Beside me, Brock groaned softly.
And with a whimper and a sigh, my soul died just a little.
Chapter Two
My fun continued later that day as I tackled the repair of the cat door in the sanctuary. The thing had been getting stuck open when used, letting the icy wind and snow permeate the refuge and allowing the heat in the greenhouse-like space to escape.
