Daffi sighed and wrapped her napkin over her muffin protectively. Otherwise she’d have to stab Meg, and stabbing your friend just wasn’t on. Besides, she’d have to clean the blood up and wouldn’t get her section cleaned and ready in time for the tyrant-in-chief, Whipsnide’s, little check.
“Bought what?” she asked, in no mood to play guessing games—unless the prize was another cake. She’d do a lot for cake.
“The farm!” Meg’s eyes were wide, her hiss more sibilant than usual.
“Kicked the bucket. Well, someone nailed her, and not in a good way…” She drew her finger over her neck and made a kkkkreeeeeeeuuuugggh sound.
“Sybil’s dead?” Daffi frowned. “She can’t be. I just sa—”
Her mouth closed so quickly she heard the snap. She’d seen Sybil after she was dead. It was happening again.
“She’s dead?”
Meg nodded, shoving her swiped piece of muffin into her mouth and speaking between chews. “Killer got her down Gore Alley.”
“How?”
“Hellfire machete.”
Daffi winced. Witches and Warlocks were seriously hard to kill, but a machete bathed in hellfire would do it.
Then her eyes widened. “Wait… Gore Alley? I usually go home that way.”
Meg nodded. “Yeah. The watch said it was about half-six last night.”
Daffi’s breath caught in her throat. A horrible feeling settled in the pit of her stomach like the after effects of dodgy takeaway. She normally walked home that way between 6 and 7 p.m. Apart from last night.
“Shit.” She ran her hand through her hair. “If we hadn’t gone to Daphne’s I could have seen the killer. I could have been the killee… is that even a word?”
Meg had sidled around to Daffi’s other side while she was distracted and swiped another piece of muffin as she eyed Oberon up.
“We?” she asked pointedly, popping her purloined section of cake in her mouth as she looked Oberon over.
Daffi smiled a smile she didn’t mean and linked her arm with the fae king’s. She didn’t like the predatory gleam in the other woman’s eyes.
“This is Ron, my boyfriend. He’s helping me out while he has time off.”
Meg cocked an eyebrow. “Really now?”
“Really.” Daffi’s voice was harder as tension swelled in the air. Not the tension that would indicate power being called but an older, much more primitive tension when alpha females butted heads. People thought men were bad for competition…
“Fight… fight… fight…” Garlick stage whispered.
Daffi kicked at him and it broke the spell. Meg shuddered and shook her head. “Anyway, Old Whippy’s got a watchman in The Office. Wants to see you.”
Daffi groaned, an automatic reaction to having to go see the tyrant-in-chief, and turned to Garlick.
“Take O… Ron up to get started. I’ll be up soon.”
“You wanted to see me, Ms. Whipsnide?” Daffi called out as she pushed open the door to The Office. It squealed loudly. Malevolently.
“Yes… come on in, Miss McGee. Sergeant Abberline, this is Daffodil McGee,” Ms. Whipsnide said as Daffi edged around the door. Not because she was nervous but because the damn thing had a habit of snapping back and catapulting the unwary back out into the corridor.
Ms. Whipsnide was sitting behind her desk, her teapot hovering in the air as it poured tea for her and the other occupant of the room. A watchman sat beside her with a plate of biscuits in front of him. Daffi cast them a quick look. Custard creams. Whippy had pulled out all the stops.
“Take a seat, Miss McGee,” she ordered. “Daffodil is one of our junior curators here at the museum. She was the last person to see Sybil alive.”
The sergeant took the tea with a murmur of thanks and balanced it on his knee as he looked at Daffi. He was a thin, neat man with an odd gleam in his eyes. A notebook sat perched on the desk in front of him, a pencil next to it. She didn’t need a set square to know it was perfectly aligned, and she was pretty sure that was a bylaw book peeking out of the breast pocket of his uniform jacket.
The sergeant looked at her directly. It was like being stared at by a slightly rabid hamster. “Now, Miss McGee, you were the last person to see the deceased?”
Daffi frowned. “I’m not sure. The last time I saw her was yesterday, during the… uhm… meeting we had.”
She didn’t want to mention it had been a disciplinary meeting, not in front of the watcher anyway. But Whipsnide knew what she’d been about to say, and her smile split like a killer clown’s.
“Yes. We have had some… issues with Miss McGee. Haven’t we?” she asked, her voice sickly sweet.
“Really now?”
If the sergeant had been a dog, his ears would have pricked up. Daffi’s heart sank. A disciplinary combined with her being the last person to see Sybil alive didn’t look good at all.
“There was an incident in my exhibit area,” she explained in a calm and professional voice, getting it out there before Whipsnide could. “A magical creature was inadvertently released, and I took appropriate action to stop members of the public from being harmed.”
The sergeant had his notebook on his lap now, lips pursed as he tried to juggle the tea cup and saucer as well as make notes.
“So, there was an incident at the museum prior to Miss Bulcock’s mur… unfortunate demise?” he corrected himself mid-sentence as though remembering that reminding the coworkers and possible grieving friends of the victim that she had been murdered was actually a bad idea.
“Correct,” Ms. Whipsnide’s voice cut through the air like… a thin leather thing. Prim. Proper. Sharp. “Due to Miss McGee’s negligence with her exhibit, a magical creature of fae origin was released in the museum. Not only that, but Miss McGee then did not follow correct museum procedure for such an incident.”
Daffi kept her face level, neutral, as the sergeant scribbled in his notebook. How this had anything to do with Sybil’s murder she had no idea. The fae didn’t use hellfire, and dragons couldn’t use machetes… if the fae dragon had been responsible, Sybil would have resembled a somewhat charred chew toy, not had her throat cut.
She focused on Wanker’s picture above the fireplace. Her gaze narrowed on a pin. She’d never really spent much time studying it, but she was sure it hadn’t been there before. It looked like a lopsided duck. She frowned, searching her memory. She’d seen that before somewhere. She was sure of it.
Then her expression cleared. Old Wanker had been a Butterknife.
The Order of the Hidden Butterknife (such names were the somewhat unfortunate and inevitable result of a drunken “design by committee” naming process) were a “secret” society set up by Merlin to hunt down the bloodline of Morgan La Fay. Rumor had it that the enmity between the pair was less to do with anything about Arthur Pendragon and far more to do with the fact they’d been a couple once. Merlin had gotten caught shagging a maid and Morgan had thrown him out. When she’d refused to take him back, he’d completely thrown his teddies out of the pram and they’d become mortal enemies.