Daffi nodded. “Makes sense. Are her movements accounted for on the day of the murder?”
She had to ask the question. She hadn’t thought anything of it, but she hadn’t had a chance to catch up with Meg yet. But no… not Meg surely? She was a gorgon, yes, but she wasn’t a killer. No way, no how.
Abberline shook his head. “Not as yet. She’s on my list of suspects to question, but I haven’t been able to track her down yet.”
Shit. That was not good. So not good. Rather than say anything that might incriminate Meg, she simply nodded. “I’ll let you know if I manage to find her.”
Abberline smiled. “Excellent. I must say, I rather like this level of cooperation. It’s most enlightening, even in this day and age. Although…” he leaned in and gave her a stern look. “Don’t think you’re off my suspect list yet, Miss McGee. You might be an investigator yourself, but you’re still officially the last person to see the first victim alive.”
She nodded, a cold chill rolling down her spine as she realized that might hold true for the second as well. Jack was fae. He could control if people saw him or not. She knew that for a fact from the many times she’d seen his fish appear in mid-air and smack someone upside the ear.
“I wouldn’t expect any different,” she added with a smile she didn’t feel and turned to go. As she did, she caught the eye of Jack’s ghost and then jerked her head to indicate Jack should follow her.
She didn’t slow down until she’d turned the corner, Oberon and Garlick hot on her tail. With a wave, she moved them to the side.
“Remember,” the street sign rearranged its letters to announce. “Remember who you were before you forgot.”
“Alright,” she hissed at it. “I’m doing it so STFU, okay?”
Oberon leaned down to Garlick. “STFU?”
“Slap the Fae Unconscious,” Garlick replied immediately, which got a blink of surprise from Oberon.
Daffi sighed. One day she was so going to turn him into a fur muff. “It stands for ‘shut the fuck up.’”
A smile crossed her face as the ghost edged his way around the corner and looked at her.
“You can see me. Can’t you?” he asked in a small voice.
She nodded. “Clear as a bell, Jack.”
He grinned, waving his fish excitedly. It went through Garlick’s ear, making him flick it furiously.
“Who is she talking to?” Oberon asked, obviously still not over the stupidity of asking the obnoxious familiar questions, especially when he was in this mood.
“The queen,” the cat said promptly, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. For a moment he looked like he had way more teeth than any feline had any right to.
“Cousin!” Oberon declared, looking right through Jack. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Jack blinked at him and then whispered to Daffi. “He’s… he does know the queen doesn’t have the power of invisibility. Right?”
“At this point,” Daffi said, ignoring both the cat and the big fae, “your guess is as good as mine. So, whatcha got for me? Oh, and condolences on your death,” she added, watching as Jack leaned forward and smacked Garlick through the head with his fish again. The cat sneezed three times. Jack grinned, looking up at her. Without looking, he hit Garlick again.
“Was a witch wot killed me,” he said, his expression twisted with distaste at the thought.
“Weren’t a nice thing to happen. Cold-iron…” he shuddered, his eyes sliding out of focus and his form becoming more indistinct and see-through.
“Stay with me, Jack,” she ordered, reaching out a hand to put on his arm. At first, her fingers closed on nothing, but she reached down inside herself, to that part her momma had always told her to ignore… the part that remembered… and pulled.
Jack popped back into high relief, a tight smile on his face as he looked up at her. “I’m ’ere. I’m good thanks… just easier with you holdin’ on. What with you being… well, wot you are.”
She arched an eyebrow. “What I am? I’m a witch investigator, Jack. Nothing special.”
“Nothing special? Nothing special?” Utter surprise crossed his face and he almost dropped his fish, fumbling with it before it hit the ground. “Girlie, if you ain’t nothing special, why is someone wearing a white wig and trying to do you for murder?”
12
“Why didn’t you tell me, Meg?”
Daffi tried to keep the confusion and hurt out of her voice as she faced the other woman. She’d been difficult to track down, a location spell from a fragment of a shed snakeskin leading the intrepid little team down into the depths of the archives to find her renovating a fourth-century fertility statue.
It was a giant cock. With balls, which was why it wasn’t on display in the main museum anymore. A bunch of mothers a couple of years ago had petitioned to have it removed on the grounds of it might give poor little Timmy the wrong idea.
Personally, Daffi thought poor little Timmy had more chance of being corrupted in the playground or online rather than by a random look at a ten-foot cock in a museum. But who was she to argue?
Meg shrugged. “Would you admit to being related to Sybil Bulcock?”
“Well… no, but that’s not the point. She was murdered and it looks bad!”
Meg snorted, smoothing a handful of porridge against the shaft of the big cock. It was from the café, so absolutely inedible, but made excellent concrete, especially when Meg glanced at it through her hand mirror.
“So should I tell everyone I’m related to a stuck-up bitch with a stick up her ass, just in case someone murders her?”
Meg folded her arms, ignoring the fact that the two males in the room were still sniggering over the ten-foot cock.
“Well, no… but you could have told me. I’m your friend.”
Meg looked over her shoulder. “You are. But… well, I just didn’t think of it. Never had anything to do with the Bulcocks and never wanted to. I hadn’t met any of them until the day Sybil started here.”
“Did she know? That you were her sister?”
Meg shrugged. “Dunno. Doubt it. I think she’d have been way shittier to me if she had. I mean. All this?” She patted her hair, the tiny snakes half-hidden under her cap writhing and hissing happily at the touch. “She’s not… wasn’t gorgon. Was she? Any witch would be jealous. And besides, she’s got an older sister… I wouldn’t get anything from my sperm donor’s estate even if I had killed her.”
A smile pulled at the corners of Daffi’s lips. Put like that, it was far more likely for Sybil to bump Meg off, not the other way around. And besides, there had been no evidence of Sybil being turned to stone. A gorgon’s glance wouldn’t be fatal for a witch, just give them a dead leg or arm. Which while annoying and embarrassing, it would have held her for a while so Meg could finish the job with the machete…
But Meg was clever. If she had killed Sybil, she wouldn’t have done it in a way that would have led suspicion right to her door. Would she? Daffi bit back her growl. This investigation lark gave her a headache.