The Hearth Witch's Guide to Magic & Murder, page 19
Esteri cackled and slapped her own leg. “Mortals are safe in Hygge. We are like any other café33 and promise to not attempt to trap you.” Esteri’s eyes lit up. “To that point, however, a familiar is one of the few fey-mortal contracts that has never relied on imprisoning one or the other. A caster is host to their familiar, and they are both bound by the laws of hospitality.”
Saga perked up. “What are the laws of hospitality?”
“In your world it is simply politeness,” said Esteri. “In magic, it is a binding contract—a geas34 levied on both parties. A guest cannot willingly bring harm to their host and a host cannot injure anyone under their care—these tenets must be obeyed or risk dire consequences.”
Saga cleared her throat. “What sort of dire consequences?”
“For a familiar, it would mean instantaneous banishment back to the Twilight. For someone like you or me? It would grant the person we knowingly harmed power over us. In the before days, humans were often tricked into violating these laws in small but unforgivable ways to trap them into servitude. So you see, it would be nigh impossible for a familiar to merely refuse to help a ward in need, so unless he has mysteriously disappeared, we must then ask another question: What prevented him from protecting her?”
Saga remembered the other day with her grandmother in a new light. “Mamó did say he hadn’t been feeling well.”
“Could he have eaten something he shouldn’t have?” Avery asked, absently scratching her hand again.
“He won’t chew on nonfood items, but he’ll sometimes steal stuff off your plate if you’re not careful.” Saga shrugged.
“So if someone drugged Saoirse’s food, it is possible he could have also ingested some of it?”
Saga stared at Avery. “I suppose, but why would anyone drug her?”
“Saoirse was strong,” Esteri commented. “One of the best witches I’ve ever known. It would have taken a great deal of power to break through her wards, let alone attack her person. Weakening her physically would have given them an advantage. The real question is how anyone would drug her.”
Saga’s heart sank. She remembered the packages littering her grandmother’s living room. “Since Eira’s death, she’s been receiving a lot of condolence packages. Cards, flowers, baked goods… If someone knew, they could have easily taken advantage of—what happened to your hand?” She pointed to Avery’s right hand, which now in the full light of the window looked red and irritated.
Avery raised it so it was level with her face and pushed up her jacket sleeve to see a rash snaked all the way to her elbow. The pattern reminded Saga of a time she accidentally waded through poison ivy as a child. It didn’t look too severe, but the scratching had definitely irritated it further. All in all, Avery appeared thoughtful but unbothered. “Curious… Perhaps I shook hands with our unidentified poison. That must have been what was in the bin that Riddle was attempting to draw to my attention.” She looked to Saga. “How are your hands?”
Saga gave them a close look. “They feel fine, but I didn’t touch the garbage can.”
“No, but I touched your hands, and if I didn’t wash thoroughly enough, there might have been transference.” Avery compared her left next to her right, and saw her own left hand remained unaffected—enough time had passed that if she’d transferred it to her other hand it should have been visible. “You should be fine.” She propped her right elbow on her knee, suspending the affected hand as if it might be contagious, and continued on, undeterred. “Aconite and belladonna both have additional medical purposes and can cause skin irritation.”
“If someone is using the old ways to subdue a witch, they would need to be either very precise or very stupid,” Esteri protested.
“People are sloppy, Es,” said Avery.
“When there are more modern methods to sedate someone—safer ways?”
Saga had been mulling over the phrase “the old ways” and at last spoke up. “Aconite is another name for wolfsbane, right? Wasn’t wolfsbane used against witches, werewolves, and vampires back in the day?”
“Not just to sedate, but magically charged to bind or subdue.” Esteri pointed to Saga. “Which is an excellent reason to use aconite over something safer.”
“We don’t know for certain it was aconite, just that I have a rash,” grumbled Avery.
The two shorter women sat back in their seats, conceding this unfortunate sticking point in their breakthrough theory.
Avery flexed the affected hand, resisting the urge to scratch it. “Something that continues to elude me is not merely the means, but the motive. If you wanted to steal organs for a ritual, there must be easier ways. And wouldn’t something like aconite poisoning render the heart and other organs useless?”
“Well, to be fair, it would really depend on the spell,” begrudged Esteri. “Very few require a clean, unblemished organ—otherwise you’d have people being cut open for their livers in the streets…” She trailed off, looking at Saga. “I’m so sorry, how horrible of me to speak so when you just…”
“No, it’s okay,” Saga shivered, understanding how wrong she had been earlier about what little one could do with a human brain. “It just feels too impersonal.”
“I was being too clinical—”
“No, I mean what Avery said. Organ theft? It feels far too impersonal to be the real motive. Why go to all this trouble if you just wanted organs because they were organs? I know Mamó and Valentina didn’t really know each other well, but they were connected, that has to mean something, right?”
Avery’s eyes narrowed. “You said Eira Goff also passed from heart failure?”
“Just a few days prior to Valentina’s death.”
“We need to see that body,” said Avery.
“Funeral is in two days.”
“Would it be possible to arrange for me to accompany you?”
“Ooh, very romantic,” Esteri chimed in at last, which gained her one befuddled look from Saga and a glare from Avery. “I joke,” she explained, but no one laughed. She stood with a forced smile. “I’m going to go get some balm for your hand.”
They both watched her leave before Saga continued. “Two days is too long to wait.”
“We won’t be merely waiting. Valentina’s personal items should be delivered today—I need to look through them. You may be able to ask your aunt about Eira’s family, and then there is another lead we unfortunately need to chase down.”
“What lead?”
Avery leaned back into the couch, took a deep drink of her tea, and sighed. “The Addler.”
Saga raised a quizzical pink eyebrow. “Like a snake?”
“No,” Avery dismissed grimly. “An adder would be less dangerous. This creature…” She took another deep, measured breath. “She gets inside your head, makes you dizzy, and confused; muddles everything until you can’t make sense of any of it. She addles.”
Saga watched Avery, taking in her posture: her averted gaze, her stiff muscles, the way her grip on her teacup tightened. Realization dawned. “Oh.”
Avery’s head snapped back immediately, denial coming far too hastily. “Don’t ‘oh.’ There is no ‘oh.’” She spat her words, and her body twisted away from Saga now.
“Denial, mood swing, a light flush of the cheeks.” Saga inhaled through her teeth and leaned toward the other woman. “I mean, it really feels like there’s an ‘oh.’”
“Well, there isn’t,” said Avery with too much clipped finality.
“Isn’t what?” Esteri asked, returning with a small jar that she held out to Avery before nestling back down in her chair.
“Avery is pretending she doesn’t have a crush,” Saga explained.
Something shifted in Esteri’s eyes, but it wasn’t mischievous. She took a deep breath and relaxed her face, wiping it of emotion. “Is this about Iona?” The tulikettu clearly had strong opinions on this Iona, but neither her expression nor tone were entirely forthcoming on revealing what those were.
“No.” Again, Avery was too quick to answer to look anything but guilty.
“She’s incorporated now, you know.”
The curiosity in Avery’s eyes was undeniable. “Incorporated…what?”
“Revenge. She’s got a whole business. Great big fancy office in Knightsbridge.”
A look passed between Saga and Avery, the office’s location not lost on either of them, though Saga noted the wariness in Avery’s eyes. Did this mean this woman Avery clearly had some sort of complicated feelings toward was not just a lead—but a suspect? “Valentina’s tattoo.”
Avery gave a curt nod, cleared her throat again, and busied herself with applying the balm to her hand. “Have cults gone out of fashion, then?”
Esteri watched her with keen eyes. It was strange how such a bright, unnaturally saturated shade could seem so critical. “The idea is much the same, now they just charge you for it and call it capitalism.” She brushed something off her knee with a casual gesture, but her sharp gaze never faltered. “I don’t think she’ll want to see you though.”
“The feeling is mutual.” Avery growled the words as she worked the balm into her skin so firmly Saga was worried she might bruise herself.
Saga leaned over to try to catch Avery’s expression. “Is it?” Her voice pitched up in doubt.
“It doesn’t matter,” Esteri dismissed. “You’d need an appointment to get in, and the only way you’d be granted one is if you’d been deeply wronged and are karmically due for recompense.”
Avery closed the balm and set it down—Saga could see her right hand had returned to its normal shade, not a sign of irritation or rash in sight. “People like me are literally referred to and treated as an invasive poisonous weed among Otherworld citizens.”
This information stuck with Saga. What made Avery different?
“Ei nimi miestä pahenna, jos ei mies nimeä.35 That’s a systemic issue, not a personal one,” said Esteri. “You know she doesn’t deal in uprisings. What was it she’d say? Revenge not revolution?” She cleared her throat and gave Avery a pointed look that Saga didn’t understand. “And even if she did, I believe you already made your play for retribution in that regard.”
“And yet how little life has truly changed,” the silver woman remarked bitterly, brushing her hair from her eyes. Had her ears always been so obviously pointed? Or was it only obvious now that they were here where so many other creatures did not have to hide?
“We’re safer now,” Esteri spoke softer now, but there was a weight to her words. “That’s thanks to you, Avery. And I know that did not come at a small price.”
Saga didn’t dare speak. She felt like a voyeur, witnessing but not participating in a deeply personal moment.
“I wish I’d had a chance to…” Avery didn’t finish. She shook off the rising tension in her throat. “Were they happy? In the end?”
“Yes,” Esteri assured. “We kept an eye on them for you, Fiore and me.”
A weak smile twitched at Avery’s lips, and her inhalation sounded suspiciously like a sniffle. “How is Fiore?”
“Oh you know, saving the world,” the tulikettu said with a small secretive smile brimming with admiration. “Overseeing multiple businesses, including this one…” Her eyes glittered, and she answered the question Avery was actually asking. “Still a council member.”
“Good.” Avery had not really kept her feelings about the council secret the few times she’d mentioned it to Saga, but she seemed sincere, which made the exchange all the more curious. “I never did get a chance to say ‘thank you.’”
“You didn’t need to.” Esteri glanced toward Saga and her shoulders hunched sheepishly. “I’m so sorry, I’m being such a wretched host! Please forgive us, we didn’t mean to exclude you. It’s just I have not seen this one in nearly two hundred years.”
Saga shook her head sympathetically. “No, it’s okay, I… Two hundred years?”
“Thank the fates for rising crime rates, eh?” Esteri laughed, giving Saga’s knee a playful little slap. “If they weren’t at such a loss without her it might have been five hundred.”
“Five hundred!” Saga echoed in shock.
“Well, it’s understandable. No government takes treason lightly.”
“Perhaps we could talk about this later?” Avery asked through gritted teeth.
Saga felt a pit in her stomach, remembering her grandmother’s referral to Avery as a convict. Her mind and heart began to race, unsure what to do with this information. She swallowed and managed to keep her voice steady. “You were in prison for two hundred years for treason?”
“Treason is a very strong word,” Avery tried to de-escalate.
Esteri, misunderstanding the situation, blithely joked on. “But pretty standard for cases of regicide.”
Saga’s throat dried up. “Regi… You killed a royal?”
“Did you not know?” Esteri blinked, bewildered. “I thought everybody knew.”
Avery’s hands were tight fists resting on her thighs. She took a measured breath before explaining, “Saga only recently learned of her family’s connection to the Otherworld, we haven’t had time to cover all the particulars.”
“Oooh.” Esteri bobbed her head in understanding. Then, as it sank in, she exclaimed, “Oh! Oh, no. This sounds bad.” She turned to Saga and attempted in a flurry to undo any damage. “It’s not bad. I mean, it is, I suppose, in the strictest sense of the word. It wasn’t good, but Avery is not bad. Am I making sense? It’s not what you think!”
Saga turned a lost look to Avery. “It’s not?”
“I suppose that depends on what you think,” Avery admitted. Then, far more timidly. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.” It was an unhelpful answer, but an honest one, and Saga was certain that was really the best she could give right now based on how little information she actually had. “You killed someone. You killed royalty. Was it in self-defense?”
“Yes.” The answer came without hesitation or excuse.
Saga believed her, but she wasn’t sure what this further information changed. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay… I don’t feel the need to run,” said Saga. “But I still don’t know how to feel about this. I’m gonna need some time to process.”
“That is perfectly reasonable.” Avery nodded, accepting this. “You’ve endured a lot for one day. I should take you home.”
“No. We still have so many questions.” Saga turned to Esteri. “The first victim’s brain was missing. In its place were a number of herbs, all of which relate to cognitive function, wrapped in straw. Avery’s divination revealed that something similar may have happened to my grandmother’s heart.”
Esteri’s expression clouded over. “Your killer is stealing the organs by switching them out magically?”
“And then trying to stage the deaths as something else,” Saga confirmed.
Avery held up a finger to make an addendum to Saga’s statement. “We don’t know if they’re actively staging it per se.”
“But Valentina was found in her car,” Saga insisted.
“And Saoirse seemed to have a heart attack, but both rituals clearly took place beforehand while the victim was sleeping. The spell appears to have some sort of time delay.”
“Well, there’s your motive for sedation or even binding magic. Perhaps your first victim had also been sedated,” Esteri suggested.
“Coroner didn’t find anything,” said Avery.
“Medicine is not as precise in this day and age as you might hope,” Saga interjected. “I mean, definitely more so than it was two hundred years ago but… A lot of times when looking for foreign substances you have to perform specific tests in order to identify them, and even then you’re usually narrowing it down to the family of alkaloids. I might be able to tell you aconitum was present, but I might not be able to decipher the species it came from—that may narrow it to the genus, but that still leaves hundreds of possible plants used. If the coroner didn’t know to look for it, it might not have shown up. Or, it might have been out of her system at the time of her death. The whole point of giving your spell a trigger for a later time would be to throw off suspicion of foul play, right?”
“Or to keep yourself safe if there was a risk of danger when it went off,” Esteri agreed.
Avery took this in and then posed to Esteri, “Could magical transfer work at a distance?”
The tulikettu bit her lower lip thoughtfully, and Saga imagined that if her vulpine ears had been present, they would have been lying flat to match her expression. “It depends on a few factors—the power of the mage, the precise spell, and if the trigger was dependent on the victim or an external act by the caster.” She shrugged. “They might have had to follow their victim at a certain distance in order for the spell to work. Sympathetic magic can be very tricky on its own, and I’ve never seen it used in such a way. I know that poppets, if bound properly, can be used effectively regardless of the distance between the target and the caster. Perhaps this straw brain acted as a poppet?”
“I’ve never seen a poppet used for literal object transference like this,” said Avery.
“There’s a first for everything.” Despite the warm surroundings, there was something deathly eerie about that acknowledgment.
“Could you look into it?” Avery sounded pleading.
“You want me to try removing someone’s brain or heart from their body?” Esteri scoffed with a laugh. “Are you volunteering?”
“Es, I don’t know that world like you. Could you ask around? Dig something up?”
Esteri waffled silently. “I can. But I don’t think you’re going to find that information through regular channels. It isn’t exactly a council-sanctioned practice.”
Avery gave a resigned nod. “I don’t suppose Bimo Shinwell is still kicking around?”
“I know he’s alive,” the fox-fey said. “But I can’t speak to which side of Blackthorn he’s currently breathing on.”
“Blackthorn? Aren’t they a company that specializes in things like energy conser…” Saga’s voice trailed off as she made the connection. Blackthorn was sponsoring Avery’s stay. Avery had been released from some sort of confinement… “Is it secretly a prison?”
