“So… on the day of the murder, where were you between five and seven p.m.?” she asked, flicking to a new page in her notebook.
Meg pursed her lips, thinking as she mended one of the veins on the underside of the cock. “I was here until about one in the afternoon. Dave at the ticket desk saw me leave. I went shopping down in Covent Garden and then took the ghost train home around five. Mom and I went out for a curry at seven.”
Daffi nodded and then looked up from her notes. “And your mom can confirm this?”
Meg eyed her. “Of course. You want me to call her?”
Daffi closed her book with a snap. Out of the corner of her eye Oberon was nodding. Meg was telling the truth. “Nope, we’re all good. Last question. Did you notice anything off, at all, on the day of the murder?”
Meg leaned against the cock, cleaning porridge off her fingers absently. “Not on the day of the murder, but Whippy was down here the other day,” she said. “It was odd because she’s not down here usually.”
“Oh?” Daffi’s ears picked up.
That was unusual. Whipsnide rarely did anything that could be counted as actual manual labor, so walking all the way down here into the archives… “Any idea why she was down here?”
Meg shook her head.
“She was over in the Medieval artefacts area. Florentine section. That’s all I know. I got my ass out of here before she could see me and make me stay late.”
“Good call,” Daffi murmured. Everyone who worked here knew to avoid Whipsnide before clocking out time, or she’d find you a hundred and one extra tasks to be done before you left. “Okay, I have everything I need. Just… watch your back, okay?” she said in concern. “Real weird shit going on at the moment.”
Meg grinned and two snakes wriggled free to poke out from under her cap at the back. “No worries. I got built-in security.”
The three of them left her to the cock repairs as they headed over to the Florentine section. This was an area of the archives she’d never really spent any time in. Medieval magical history wasn’t really her forte.
“There’s cold-iron here,” Oberon said suddenly, his brows snapping together. She heard a strange buzzing and realized his wings were fluttering in agitation under his t-shirt.
“There is?” she asked, motioning for Oberon to go first, like some sort of fae cold-iron seeking bloodhound. He led them directly to the back of the section and a large glass case. It held a dagger, the weapon supported in an upright position. Even though Daffi wasn’t fae, she felt the malevolence pouring off the blade.
“This was used to kill someone.”
The knowledge came from the part of her deep down that she was ignoring, the part that remembered. Three babies in a crib… She cut the memory off and concentrated on the dagger in the case.
“Cold-iron,” she read from the card on the glass. “Mid- to late-sixteenth century, suspected to have been forged by Da Vinci or one of his students. Shit…”
There was magical ordinance and there was scorched earth. A Da Vinci forged cold-iron blade? That was magical apocalypse.
“Jack never stood a chance,” she breathed and then something on the latch caught her eye. Leaning down, she squinted like a mole caught in the sunlight and reached out. There, caught in the latch of the case were two long, white strands.
“Fuck me…” she breathed. White hairs. According to Jack, the killer had worn a white wig. If they could get a location off these babies, they’d cracked it. They could identify the killer!
“Gladly,” Oberon said immediately.
Garlick sighed. “Please don’t. I’m already scarred for life. When you’re queen, you’re going to be getting some very expensive therapy bills, I assure you.”
She waved a hand. “If I’m queen, I’ll be able to afford it. Won’t I? Or, alternatively, I can just throw you in the dungeons.” She shot a look up at Oberon. “We do have dungeons. Right?”
He grinned. “We do… more than one type.”
“Oh?”
“Well, the bad kind and…” His eyes darkened with heat. “The really wicked kind.”
“Mind bleach!” the cat warbled, clapping his paws over his ears. “Lalalalalalala!”
Oberon snickered and nodded toward the strands of hair Daffi pulled free from the case lock. “From our killer?”
She nodded. “I’m assuming so.”
She held the strands out to him and then froze as it hit her. “Shit. They’re not real. They’re from a wig.”
She groaned as he took them from her, studying them. If the strands weren’t real, a location spell wouldn’t lead them to the killer like she’d hoped. Another groan escaped her as she scrubbed at her face with her hands. This was… crap, they had nothing.
He smiled slowly as he rubbed them between his fingers. “This is excellent news!”
She looked through her fingers at him. “Have you lost your moons-damned mind? It’s a wig. We can’t identify the killer!”
He took a step toward her, crowding her against a cabinet.
“Yeah… but we can track where it is? We might get lucky and it’s somewhere we can identify the killer. And we can prove the killer wasn’t really white-haired now. Can’t we?” he murmured, lips quirking as he lifted a strand of her bubblegum pink hair. “Which is somewhat pertinent. Isn’t it, my love?”
Her eyes widened. He knew. He knew her hair was white.
“Not many mortal witches have white hair,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t wait to see it in it’s true glory, without this… artifice muddying its true magnificence. I will have a crown made specially for you to match its beauty.”
Her breathing hitched, her feminine instincts dragging all common sense down a dark alley and hitting it over the head. She softened against him, her lips lifted for a kiss.
“Oh, for crone’s sake. Can you two keep your hands off each other for a moment or do I have to do everything myself?” Garlick hissed, jumping up onto the display case next to them. The carnivorous zombie butterflies inside fluttered madly on their pins as the case was rocked slightly.
“Yes… right,” she managed, sliding from Oberon’s embrace. “Right, let’s see where these hairs lead us.”
She held out her hand for the strands, holding them in her palm as she chanted,
“Maiden’s patience and mother’s might,
Lend me your eyes, lend me your sight,
Track these hairs to their fellows,
Their location revealed, for us to follows.”
If Garlick had had eyebrows he would have raised one.
“You try making up rhymes off the top of your head,” she hissed to him as her magic curled around the strands, lifting them in the air. They formed an arrow above her palm. No… more like the needle of a compass. She grinned as they pointed to the door.
“Come on, boys. Looks like the game has begun.”
“That’s it! Just a little more. To the left!” Garlick called out, suspended about twenty feet above Daffi and Oberon’s heads in a spell bubble. The location spell on the strands from the wig had led them to the side alley just around the corner from the hotel’s main entrance.