The Hearth Witch's Guide to Magic & Murder, page 14
Saga blinked at the ambiguity of that statement, and Avery could see her trying to work out something in her head before she considered the phone in her hand. “So a mobile phone is…em…” Saga surveyed the room for something to aid her, then gave up. “You know, how about I explain it later and just get a few more angles so we have a full picture of it all?”
Avery stepped back to allow Saga to move past her toward the bed. “It doesn’t need to be perfect. The images will help me re-create the scene in my mind’s eye.”
A few more snapshots. “Think I got a good view of it. As much as I can, anyway.”
“Excellent.” Avery felt as if she’d been holding her breath the entire time. “Then I can clear the room.” She merely snapped again and the smoke outlines dispersed, leaving the room a little hazy but otherwise unmarked by the magic that had whirled within it just a few moments prior. “Let’s go.”
“We’re leaving?”
“Depending on Miss Walker’s answer to some simple questions, yes, we will be leaving.” Avery opened the door for Saga, gesturing for her to exit first.
Bewildered, Saga slid past her but waited for the taller woman to take the lead before starting down the hallway.
“Miss Walker,” Avery called ahead of them, and as they stepped into the main sitting room once more, Rachel was exiting the kitchen to meet them.
“Is something wrong?” By the smell coming from the kitchen and the way she was drying her hands on a towel, it seemed she had started cooking after their initial interview. Not really the action of a guilty party.
“You mentioned Valentina had sounded inebriated the night she called you. Could it have been for any other reason beyond substance abuse?” asked Avery.
Her brow knitted. “Like what?”
“Brain swelling, a concussion, an injury or illness that could potentially cause disorientation,” Saga suggested helpfully. “Did her family have any history of brain disease?”
“Uh…no. I mean, Val and I didn’t really talk a lot about medical stuff—but I don’t think anything like that runs in her family.” Her attention bounced between the two women, and her confusion was beginning to melt into concern. “Was she injured? Did you find something that suggests…” Her eyes grew wide, and she raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh God. Did she hit her head? Is that why she was talking like that? Oh my God, I am an idiot, I should have called an ambulance. I should have… I thought she was drunk, I swear, I thought she was drunk.”
“Miss Walker,” Avery coaxed again. “Are you familiar with the cerebral hemisphere?”
The question felt so out of left field, it shocked Rachel into the present. “Is that like the Bermuda Triangle?”
Avery could see Saga out of the corner of her eye, pressing her lips together in order to stifle amusement. She shook her head. “No, not at all.” She nodded respectfully. “We’ll take our leave, Miss Walker. Some officers will be by later today to collect the boxes of Valentina’s things. Unless you have any objection, in which case they will be by after they have acquired a warrant.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, by all means. I wasn’t sure what to do with it all anyway.”
“If we have any follow-up questions, we’ll be sure to reach out to you. Pleasant day to you.”
The two left without further word, leaving Rachel standing in the middle of her living room, bewildered, and a pan of sautéed vegetables momentarily forgotten in her kitchen.
“You think whoever did this had to have intimate knowledge of the human brain,” Saga concluded as they reached the elevator and she was confident they were out of earshot.
“They would have had to if they wanted to get it out intact,” Avery answered simply. “You gave me an idea back there… All this time, I’d been thinking that there were no marks on the body because they’d been glamoured, but what if there were no marks on the body because the brain and the fake brain were switched…magically?”
Saga stared at Avery as the doors opened again to the ground floor. “You would have more knowledge in the magical capabilities department there than I would.”
“Right…” Avery led them out, giving a polite nod to Sanderson Fitz as they passed by before she spoke again, lower but still audible. “Alchemy, possibly? They may have thought they could exchange the brain for something that magically was meant to hold similar properties.”
“Kind of like those adventure films where the hero tries to trick a booby trap by switching out the treasure with something of equal weight?”
Avery stopped walking, and Saga realized her mistake.
“I take it they didn’t have the cinema where you were,” Saga concluded quietly.
“There is so much of what you just said that I don’t understand.” Avery cast a glance at the Bowery. “But the long and short of it, even if we don’t know what kind of magic they used, I’d be willing to bet, we’re looking for someone with working medical knowledge of physiology. Possibly even a doctor.”
“We?” Saga echoed, surprised.
“We,” Avery affirmed, and for a while she strode by herself.
“Wait!” Saga called after her. Jogging to catch up, she caught the crook of Avery’s elbow.
Touch-starved did not begin to describe the last two hundred years for Avery Hemlock. She had felt plenty—but it had all been pain. Nightmares took many forms in the sleeping curse, each brutal in their own unique way. No longer accustomed to gentleness, any touch felt like violence. The instant Saga’s hand made contact, Avery twisted out of her grasp and put several steps between them. Her heart pounded as her hands rose instinctively to defend herself for an incoming onslaught.
But it never came.
The two stared at each other in surprised silence.
Saga didn’t move, hands at her sides. The sepia of her skin appeared a little more ruddy around her eyes and cheeks. “Please,” she said.
Avery slowly lowered her own hands and swallowed.
“I need to know what this all means,” pleaded Saga.
“Is this a personal or existential question?”
Saga laughed, but she didn’t appear to actually find it funny—it was a strange, stressed little sound. She licked her lips nervously and swallowed. “I don’t know. Probably both.” It was strange seeing someone who had been so incredibly capable look so lost. “I just found out my world isn’t what I thought it was.”
Avery took this in thoughtfully before she spoke—each word deliberately chosen. “It means… I meant what I said. I could use someone with your skill set. Finding out you’re not quite who I thought initially…was surprising, that I will admit. However, all in all, it doesn’t change my opinion. I have been out of London, and it has become almost completely unfamiliar to me. I am struggling to acclimate. After today, I suspect you are now standing on the other side of this scenario with a similar dilemma.” Avery allowed herself a moment of naked vulnerability and struggled to find the courage for her next words. “Perhaps we could help each other.”
Saga considered this. “I help you navigate what the mortal world has become in your absence, and you help me understand…fey?”
“I help you understand magic,” Avery clarified. “How it exists in this and the Otherworld. Those innately born with it, those who have learned to harness it, and everything in between. Unless you’d prefer to forget this ever happened.” A sick feeling churned in Avery’s stomach. “I wouldn’t begrudge you that.” Though she knew she would feel disappointed, she could not fully explain why.
Saga took a step back as if suddenly concerned Avery might cast some sort of forgetting spell on her right then and there. “I’ve never been very good at just letting things go.”
“That’s a bad habit,” Avery remarked, but she knew she felt nothing but admiration for it. “You should perhaps check that curious look about you, it has the occasion of getting one into a lot of trouble. On my honor, you’d be safer without it.”
“Would I?” Saga asked. “Or does it just seem safer because I wouldn’t know what might be out there?”
“Ah, there’s the rub.”
A comfortable silence fell between them. They could hear the cars on the nearby road, birds chattering faintly, and even the wind rustling through the leaves. Avery couldn’t remember the last time she’d found a comfortable silence with anyone, at least not while still very actively engaged in conversation.
Perhaps that’s why it had been so easy to believe that Saga could not have been human. Whether of this world or the next, there was an air of magic about her. It set one strangely at ease almost instantaneously. Her energy was content—not to be confused with complacent. It felt strangely nostalgic to Avery. Like she was coming home to a place she’d never been.
“I should talk with my family,” said Saga at last.
Of course. “I imagine there is much to say.” And Avery didn’t envy that she would not be present to hear any of it said.
“But…” There was a restraint about Saga’s demeanor, though whether she was resisting saying “no” or “yes” in that moment wasn’t clear. “I’ll let you know?”
“You know where to find me.” Avery gave Saga the same respectful nod she had the porter and Rachel, and turned on her heel to depart. She was surprised to find that she was hopeful Saga would say yes. Perhaps it was sentimentality—a longing to re-create the camaraderie she’d once felt before she’d been locked away. Perhaps—
“Wait, hang on, we both have to get back to the tube!” Saga called after her.
Ah. That was right. Concealing a smile, Avery merely walked faster. “No, I’m afraid we’ve said our parting words. The only sensible and polite thing to do now is to pretend we’re complete strangers.”
“You’re gonna navigate back to Baker Street on your own?”
Damn it.
Chapter 8
Saga
It was to both Saga’s amusement and annoyance that Avery absolutely kept to her word. Mostly. She noticed the way Avery kept her in her periphery the entire time while she pretended to study the map, then slunk after her.
She lost sight of her after they both boarded the train, Avery slipping into a different car entirely. As the train lurched forward, she saw the wisdom in her new friend’s decision for space. Riding public transportation had a strange way of triggering introspection.
Her aunt was the current owner of Hudson’s; thus it was reasonable that she had been the one to broker the deal for Avery’s stay, so she had to have at least some knowledge (and knowing Leigh, it was likely far more than she’d ever let on) of the society of fey living among them. She would also, logically, have intimate knowledge about their family line and that being a bloodline of witches meant something a great deal more than Saga had been led to believe all her life. Then of course there was Reza. How did he figure into it? Obviously, he worked with Avery—perhaps as some kind of police contact, but the way Avery had said he was a policeman for their side needled at her. Yet Avery had then adamantly denied that there were sides—though that had been one of those “complicated” subjects she wasn’t quite ready to get into. If she took Avery up on her offer—and she wasn’t certain that she was going to—that was something she would want clarified first. Sides implied conflict, and if she was about to enter into some sort of secret war zone, she wanted to know everything she could about it first.
Then there was her grandmother. While she was not directly involved with the current business of Hudson’s, she had to have known. She’d married a Hudson, after all. Had this all been a surprise to her to back then? How had her grandfather told her? Was it before or after they married? Saoirse had always said there was magic in the bones of the café… Knowing what Saga knew now, what did that truly mean? Her family line was one of the longest unbroken bloodlines of witches in England. Avery’s use of “the Hudsons” implied that her family, for either longevity or some other reason, had some sort of status or even infamy within this magical community.
Did her mother know?
Saga dismissed this thought with a scoff the moment she thought it. It was possible Audrey had been told and merely dismissed it as nonsense. There was a litany of mental instability epithets the woman kept on hand that she employed whenever referring to her mother and sister. If she had known about the other side, she could be trusted to denounce it immediately, and therefore anything she hadn’t told Saga was not out of secrecy but simply because she’d deemed it not worth knowing.
This left the other two Hudson women. Leigh, who had almost been more an older sister than an aunt, and Saoirse, who had raised her after her mother surrendered guardianship—the only real maternal figure Saga had ever known. Both liars.
It was a simultaneously sobering and disorienting thought. She nearly missed the call for Baker Street.
She stepped out, and her eyes scanned the crowd. It was nearly 6:00 p.m. Avery was nowhere to be seen. She hoped the other woman hadn’t missed the stop herself, but resolved ultimately that a grown being—a possibly immortal being at that—would manage just fine without her, however out of time or place she might have been.
Saga’s evening proceeded with the kind of mundane activity that belied her afternoon. She did get groceries, order takeout from Amritsari Kitchen, and do her laundry, but inside her mind was racing. She strained to remember anything that might have been out of the ordinary, things she could have overlooked that would have even given her a hint about her heritage.
But there was nothing. And the more she thought about it, the more she began to doubt what she saw.
What if Avery was lying after all?
She pondered at the ceiling, peering hard as if she might be able to see through the old wood to the apartment above.
She didn’t really know Avery, yet the idea that she had been the one to lie wasn’t something Saga could accept as a possibility. First, there was no conceivable motive, nothing to be gained from such an illusion. Additionally, the address had been listed in the file Reza had provided. There was little chance any sort of setup required for a premeditated prank would have been possible for the stunt with the bay leaf—unless Reza was also in on the joke.
No. Saga was confident she could eliminate this idea as completely impossible.
Which left a startling alternative: it was real. However improbable it might have seemed that morning, she could not deny the truth that presented itself: magic was real.
This in itself was not hard to swallow. As a practitioner, she believed in the power of magic and the energy she put into the world, but this was different. This went beyond setting an intention and doing the inner work that came with spell work and praying to Brigid.
Didn’t it?
She’d fallen asleep asking herself these kinds of questions. It kept her mind racing even through her dreams so that when she opened her eyes, it felt like she’d no more than blinked. If dim light wasn’t leaking in through her curtains, if the clock on her bedside table wasn’t claiming it was a few minutes after 8:00 a.m., or if the rain had not started up again, she would have sworn no time had passed at all.
Her eyes locked on the familiar white and gray of a cloudy London morning. She couldn’t see the rain, but she could hear it pelting her windows. London rain had a funny way of never falling straight down but always at a diagonal.
It was the kind of banal thought she clung to when her mind had been turning over far more complicated and unpleasant ones with no satisfying results.
At least the weather gave her extra reason to dress for comfort. An oversized mint angora sweater hung off one shoulder, draping over black denim pants that she’d tucked into lemon-yellow lace-up galoshes. Cozy armor. The same sort that armed children against shadows on their wall or a woman about to confront her former guardian about a family secret. She’d been mindful in her color choice. Green invoked growth in magic, and the shade she’d chosen promoted a sense of calm and emotional harmony. She wore black for protection, to ward away negativity, and yellow for abundance…also yellow because she only owned one pair of galoshes.
Her hair merely thrown into a messy bun, she was ready far too early to call upon her grandmother. She knew she’d be awake, of course, but it just didn’t feel civilized to show up uninvited prior to 9:00 a.m. Even if she was family.
She’d decided she would confront her grandmother for two reasons. The first was that the woman was simply across the street, whereas Leigh would likely not be leaving Primrose Hill on a Sunday. The second was that she suspected if she confronted Leigh, she would be instructed to ask her cascade of questions to Saoirse regardless.
Saga skimmed her cabinets and fridge and, despite having gone shopping the night prior, found nothing appetizing. Well, except for caffeine. She reached for a can of Spectral Energy in the enigmatically named Wraith flavor. Saga wasn’t entirely sure why she felt such affection for this particular drink. Maybe it was the nostalgia associated with late-night study groups, that it barely passed food safety inspections, or that it inexplicably smacked of precisely how you’d expect the color neon blue to taste, but it had remained a guilty pleasure whenever Saga needed an extra kick.
It was with this can and a handful of scroggin that she wandered back into the living room, looking suspiciously at the statue of Brigid. She awkwardly shoved the granola, nuts, and raisins into her mouth, sacrificing any dignity in the action for making sure she didn’t drop any pieces. If magic was more than an intention sent to the universe—if magic could be active… Did that mean Brigid also was more tangible than she first believed?
She took a long swig, never breaking eye contact with the statue. It was almost as if she was waiting for Brigid to break the silence.
Finally, she cleared her throat. “So…it occurs to me… I possibly should have been a great deal more specific when I said I needed a change.”
Brigid, as usual, said nothing.
“Also if you…are a magical being that is actually listening to these conversations, would you mind…letting me know? It’s one thing to think you’re this all-knowing, all-loving entity that I can picture in my head, it’s another if you have a physical form and can…I don’t know, see through these things or something?” She frowned. “The placement of one in my bedroom, for instance, I might have to rethink…” She flinched at the implications of this possibility.
