“Why are you following me, you bitch?”
I took a short step back, not because of the words, but because of the not-insubstantial blade being waved around in my face. Unfortunately, I wasn’t Crocodile Dundee and so didn’t have a gigantic This Is A Knife of my own to whip out. So I just took a step back to avoid my precious mug getting cut.
My lack of response did not seem to make Mack The Knife there happy. He took a threatening step forward and held his weapon higher to make the edge gleam on the dim lamplight gleam.
“I asked, why the hell are you following me, you fat dyke?”
Now, I admit to being a dyke – I don’t wear makeup, am crew-cut, and favour masculine clothing, nobody looking at me has reason to doubt my sexual orientation for one femtosecond – but I am not fat. All right, I’m big, not tall but broad, but most of that is bone and muscle. Calling me fat is one of the few ways absolutely guaranteed to annoy me.
But he had the knife, and though he didn’t look all that competent with it, I didn’t want any, make that any more, scars on my precious skin. So I just looked him up and down.
“Following you? I don’t know what you’re going on about, sir. I’ve never seen you before.”
“Don’t you ‘sir’ me, you whore. I’ve been aware of you trailing me from the bus stop tonight, and I’m almost sure I saw you yesterday and the day before as well. Answer me!”
I took a moment to decide if and how I should answer him. Should I tell him, “You’re right, I’m following you, because I was hired by your wife to find out if you’re cheating on her”? That would be the actual literal truth, but would not exactly calm him down. Even though my observations over the last few days had conclusively established that he wasn’t quite cheating on her, just spending the time he pretended to be at work in illegal gambling dens.
In my experience, honesty tends to be the worst policy.
I looked around the street for a moment, looking for inspiration. The only thing that came to mind was that I should’ve anticipated that a tall skinny businessman type with big crooked teeth and spectacles, wearing a suit, might not necessarily be the gormless clot he appeared to be. And I should have at least entertained the possibility that a man who went to illegal casinos in buildings opening on to seedy alleyways might take the basic precaution of carrying some kind of weapon.
Well, I didn’t, and so here we were.
“I think you should put the knife down, sir,” I told him. “It won’t do you any good to keep threatening me with it. Please believe me when I’m speaking in your own best interests when I say this.”
“I’ll decide what’s in my best interests, you obese trollop. I’ll ask you one last time: why are you following me?” He drew his knife back to strike.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I told him, raising my hands to parry. I’d have to get those scars after all.
Then there was the whoosh of wind on feathers, and something very, very fast slalomed past me at shoulder level, parkoured off the wall to my right, slammed into him, and knocked him down. The next moment I was picking up the knife from the cobbles and looking up at the hooked talons, feathered arms, toothy snout, and wolfish eyes staring back at me from their perch atop his chest.
“Don’t eat him, Jack,” I said. “Let’s just get away from here.”
Sometimes it comes in handy to have a Velociraptor as a partner. Yes, it does.
_______________________________
“I could have handled it, you know,” I said. “You didn’t have to rescue me. Hell, you didn’t even have to follow me.”
“Good thing I did, wasn’t it?” Trotting along at my side, Jack snorted. The translator he wore around his throat managed to express his disgust. “Yes, I really wanted a partner with cut up hands who needs a few days off to recover.” I don’t know how, but he managed to programme his translator to speak with a Mongolian accent, even though he’s lived here since he was a fledgling. I suppose that he’s just proud of his heritage. “But you cocked that up right proper.”
“How do you mean?” If I wanted to, I could’ve reached out to trail my fingers along his feathered head and neck. I didn’t, because I value my fingers. People underestimate Jack because he’s small. He’s bigger than a pit bull terrier and has talons besides. Do you want to take on a pit bull? No? How about a taloned, feathered, sentient pit bull with an attitude, able to leap off walls to slam into you at neck level? Also no? There you are, then. “How have I cocked it up?”
“His wife engaged us for a week. This is only the third day.” He snorted again. “You really think she’s going to pay us for the remaining days, since we can’t follow him anymore?”
“…I suppose….no?”
“Brilliant! You mammals never cease to impress me with your intellect.” We waited for a Psittacosaurus to pass us on the pavement, not forgetting to throw us a sour look. We were on the main street now, and there were a number of dinosaurs around, many of whom were as bigoted against humans as many humans were against them. “Just a few more million years, and you might even achieve some level of sentience.”
“Oh, dear. Our finances aren’t that good, are they?”
“Let me put it this way. Unless we find another client by the end of the week, we won’t be able to pay rent this month. Clear?”
I swallowed. “Adequately clear, thank you.”
_______________________________
Let me introduce myself and explain a few things. I probably should’ve done so at the beginning of this tale, but I’m not a literary woman. My name’s Gillian Bell, or Jill to everyone except my father. My father insists that the name my mum and he bestowed on me is far too good to shorten.
And I’m a private detective or, as we call ourselves, a private inquiry agent.
I spend my time inquiring, you see.
Jack, he’s my partner, though of course not in a sexual sense. We’re business associates, and, if the term is applicable for two…persons…who are so different, close, albeit sarcastic, friends. We’d met at one of the Dinosaur Rights protests back when the government were still pretending that dinosaurs didn’t deserve equal treatment, though after the scientists had brought them back they’d immediately discovered that dinosaurs had human-level intellects and at least human-equivalent ethical standards. We’d bonded over ales at pubs where the owners weren’t bigots and served dinosaurs, and very soon we both decided that we wanted to work together. Once the regime, faced with popular discontent and defeat in the next elections, caved in, we quickly set up our agency.
His name is Borjigin Munkhchuluun, so you can understand why he prefers to be called ‘Jack’. I only discovered his real name when we were signing the documents to set up our agency. He threatened me with slow disembowelment if I gave out his real name, so please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to be disembowelled. Think of all the intestines spilling out and the mess it would make. A lot of people have told me that I have guts. I don’t need to see them for myself.
And, so, this is what we are. The Jack And Jill Private Inquiry Agency, as is stencilled on the frosted glass pane on our office door.
Please laugh now and get it out of your systems.
I do not have a great deal of patience for this kind of thing.
Are you done?
_______________________________
The next day came around, like a wastrel prodigal son skulking home.
We were at the office. I was tilted back in my chair, feet un-ladylikely on my battered desk, nursing a glass of cheap whiskey. Rain trickled its way down the grimy windowpanes, reflecting my mood. As predicted, our client had neither been happy with my giving myself away nor with my report that her husband was not with another woman, just blowing his money on the baccarat tables. And it wasn’t as though we had any other case on hand, either.
“What does it look like?” I called over my shoulder.
Crouching on the cushioned platform we’d got him in lieu of the chair his anatomy wouldn’t let him use, Jack tapped at his laptop with the two styluses he held between the fingers of both hands. Unable to turn his wrists downwards to type like a human being, he’d long ago become expert at using the styluses, and, in fact, was more adept at typing with them than I was with my fingers. Quite apart from that, he was much more comfortable with spreadsheets.
“I told you last night,” he said. “We’ll have to take on any case we’re offered. Anything at all.”
I sighed. “Inclusive of missing pets or strange noises in the night?”
“Even if it’s a haunted house that needs checking, we’ll need to take it.” Jack began putting on the preachy tone he did whenever he was about to get on his favourite hobby horse. “I’ve told you over and over that we need to approach the insurance companies to offer our services to investigate fraud, but…”
“Uh-huh.” Still not looking back at him, I swallowed a gulp of the whiskey. It was horrible. “If I’ve told you before, I’ve told you a thousand times, we aren’t going to work for those bloodsuckers. I…” A shadow fell over the frosted glass pane in the door an instant before a sharp knock. I snapped my mouth closed, got my feet off the desk, slid open the larger bottom drawer, slipped the glass of whiskey into it, and pulled up my tie, all in one motion. I’ve acquired a lot of practice at this kind of thing over the years; someday we’ll make enough to hire a receptionist, and I won’t have to react like a startled rabbit; someday, but not yet. The knock sounded again, sharp and impatient. “Come in.”
My lower jaw didn’t actually fall open, but it sagged a few millimetres. The woman in the doorway was…a looker. Tall, slim, with a heart-shaped face framed by curls spilling over her shoulders in all the colours of the rainbow and some more. Her eyes, on either side of a nose I’d have called patrician if I’d known what the word meant, were blue as sapphires. Her mouth was a rosebud clad in blood-orange. Legs as slim and strong as a gazelle’s appeared above her shoes and disappeared into the bottom of her knee-length cream overcoat. She screamed trouble in every molecule of her being.
I desperately wanted to be troubled by her.
“I assume you are the detectives?” Her voice was like something I’d been waiting to hear all my life. “Jack and Jill. I assume you’re Jill.”
“She is,” Jack declared from behind me, when the silence began stretching out because I couldn’t make myself speak. “I am Jack. Would you please sit down, ma’am?”
She did, opposite me, since there were no client chairs at Jack’s desk. He’s the administration person, while I deal with clients. She looked at me and plonked a handbag on the table. “You have been…recommended. I assume that you can help me.”
I finally found my voice. “We do our best to provide satisfaction, ma’am. May I ask who recommended us?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugged her dainty, overcoat-clad shoulders. “What matters is that I wish to retain your services on a delicate matter.”
“Which is?”
She stared at me with those sapphire eyes. “I am a witch. Someone stole a precious grimoire from me. You have to discover the person responsible.”
I blinked at her. She stared back unblinkingly.
“Ma’am,” I said, after it became obvious she wasn’t going to say anything more. “I’m afraid you’ll have to give us a little more detail than that.”
She heaved an exasperated sigh. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, first of all…you say you’re a witch?”
“I do. I am a very famous and well-known witch.” She looked at me as though daring me to contradict her. “Everyone knows the name of Dusk Malgorzata.”
“Dusk Malgorzata? Is that your real name?”
“It’s my witch name. It’s the name under which I’m known in the witch world.”
“The witch world, OK.” I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Jack was taking notes. He was, styluses flying over his keyboard. “And is, um, Dusk Malgorzata the name you use in this world?”
“Uh, no, to ordinary people I use my birth name.”
“Which is?”
She muttered it so quietly that I had to ask her to repeat it. “Mary Smith.”
“Ms Smith. You say you had a…grimoire…stolen? What is a grimoire?”
“I see you know nothing about witchcraft.” She did not look particularly put out at this realisation. “A grimoire is a book of magical spells and incantations. This one’s a compilation of all my work and others that I have collected through my…existence.”
“Your existence?” I frowned. “Is that different from your life?”
“Yes, my existence as a witch. It began when I was thirty years old.”
She looked little more than thirty, so she couldn’t have been a ‘witch’ long, but I didn’t say anything about that. Jack would kill me if I antagonised a client. “Ah, all right. So this grimoire was stolen from you in the witch world? How is it separate from this world?”
She looked at me pityingly. “You don’t understand, do you? The witch world is in this world. It’s like a bubble inside this world, the surface membrane of which you can’t see, but inside which we live.”
I blinked and reminded myself that we needed the money. “We, do you mean yourself and other, ah, witches?”
“That’s right, like those bitches Angelina and Dawn Ralitsa. Dawn Magdalena, too, but she’s disappeared for a long time now so I don’t think she’s directly involved. In any case, I’m sure that one of their lot stole my grimoire, or they know who did it.”
“I think we need to back up a little. Who are they, these people you’ve just mentioned?”
“Witches and bitches. Evil bitches. They hate me and are always plotting to do me down.” Her lovely mouth twisted. “They’re part of a…gang, I should call it. I wouldn’t dignify it with the name of a coven.”
“Um, OK. And this gang would want your grimoire, why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m far more powerful than they.” She preened a little, tossing her rainbow hair over her shoulder. “I’m far more adept than they are. They are jealous, and they also want my power.”
I nodded. “I see.” I didn’t, not at all. “So where was this grimoire stolen from?”
“My home.” Her mouth twisted. “I’d thought it would be safe at my home, but obviously not.”
“All right.” I frowned slightly. “You’re certain that you didn’t just lose it?”
She stared at me. “Would you just lose your…detective handbook?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have one, but if I did, I don’t think I’d have to refer to it every day, so I suppose I might misplace it. But it’s probably different for witches, is it?”
She nodded curtly. “Powerful witches like me…” she stroked her rainbow hair as though she’d grown it magically. “…we need our grimoires all the time. I keep referring to it when I’m doing my spells, and note my results. It wouldn’t be safe otherwise.”
“I see. And…” I tried to make myself not stare at her lovely face. “And, when did you see this grimoire of yours last?”
She frowned. “That would be yesterday evening, about ten. I remember checking something in it, after which I put it inside my bedside table drawer and went out for…a few drinks.”
“Alone?”
She nodded.
“Wasn’t this slightly risky, leaving it in your drawer? For an object as important as this I’d have imagined you’d use a…a strongbox or something.”
She grimaced. “I see you don’t understand. My home is quite thief-proof. My bedroom, especially.”
“I will probably have to come and take a look.” The thought of being in her bedroom made my nipples tingle. “You live alone, of course?”
“Of course.”
“And you locked up before leaving?”
“Naturally.”
“When did you return home?”
She tilted her head, considering. “It must have been close to midnight.”
“The door was locked and everything was as you left them? There weren’t any signs of disturbance?”
“No, there weren’t.” She shifted impatiently on the chair. “When are you going to stop asking questions and go find my grimoire?”
“As soon as I’ve gathered the information I need, Ms Smith. As Sherlock Holmes said…” I assumed my best ‘toff’ accent. “It is a capital mistake to theorise without data, my dear Watson.”
She blinked, as though she found it surprising that I’d read Holmes. “All right. What more do you want to know?”
“Well, what do you do for a living?”
“I just told you.” She sighed and tapped her elegant, red-painted fingernails on the armrest. “I’m a witch.”
“And that earns you money? How?”
She shrugged. “People have problems, so they come to me with their problems. I mean, they contact me through my website, they tell me what they need, I cast spells, and they pay me.”
“And your spells solve their problems?”
“Would they keep coming if they didn’t? Anything else?”
“I’ll need your address, of course, and the names of people you interact with regularly. Also of these people…” I glanced at my notes. “Dawn Ralitsa?”
“She calls herself Anna Whitmore most of the time.” She made a face. “Don’t get taken in by her elfin looks, she’s poison through and through.”
“Uh-huh. And this other person, Angelina?”
For some reason Mary Smith looked a little uncomfortable. “To be honest, nobody knows who she is, really. She comes and goes. Mostly goes.”
“I see. Ms Smith, if I may ask, why did you come to us?”
“What? What kind of question is that?”
“Surely you could have gone to the police?”
She snorted. “Come on…Jill. Suppose I went to the police, said that I’m a witch, my magic book is missing, and I want the thief caught and it to be returned to me. What do you think the reaction would be?”
She stared at me and I sighed. “How large was this grimoire? What does it look like?”
“It’s a notebook, bound in grey and black faux leather. About this wide.” She held her hands about twenty centimetres apart. “Maybe this thick.” She held her fingertips about two centimetres apart.
“And how many people knew of its existence?”
“Nobody, apart from myself. Witches don’t expose their grimoires.”
“They don’t? Then how is it that these two women you mentioned knew of it?”
She shrugged. “Because they’re witches, obviously. Is that even a question?”
I sighed. We were talking in circles by this point. “All right, Jack will let you know our fee structures and draw up your contract.” I paused in the act of closing my notebook. “Wait, just one more thing.” Something had just occurred to me. “When you returned home last night…were you alone?”
She blushed a little. “Um, no.”
“And this person was someone known to you?”
“I met her at the pub I went to.” She stared at me defiantly. There was a definite emphasis on the ‘her’. “I invited her back to my place.”
“She spent the night, did she?” My mind was going overboard on thoughts of her with another woman, squirming naked on a bed. I ordered it to behave.
“Yes, she did. She left after breakfast, just before eight.”
“You found the book, the grimoire, missing after she left, then?”
“Not right away. I only opened the drawer at eleven, to prepare for my noon spells.”
“Your noon spells. This is a daily thing?”
“It is. The grimoire wasn’t there.”
“And you’re sure your…guest…didn’t purloin it?”
“I’m sure.”
“How? Your magic?”
She snorted. “I didn’t have to use any magic. She wasn’t wearing enough to hide a cigarette packet without it showing, let alone the grimoire.”
“You didn’t ever meet her before yesterday?”
She frowned, considering. “Well, I’ve seen her around, once or twice. We didn’t actually talk until last night.”
I wanted to ask if she made a habit of bringing casual acquaintances home to her bed, but, again, the money. Also, I was suddenly very interested in discovering for myself if she did take acquaintances to her bed. “Do you have her contact details? I may need to talk to her.”
“Why?”
“Ma’am…Ms Smith. She has to be investigated as a suspect. You must understand this.”
“Well, I don’t have her address or phone number.”
“You do have her name?”
“Yes, it’s Sally Jane.”
“No surname?”
“Just Sally Jane.”
“And which pub was this?”
She gave me the name. I’d never been there, but I’d heard it was a lesbian hangout. “The previous times you saw her, it was also at this place, was it?”
“Right. When are you going to start actually looking for my grimoire?”
“As soon as you’ve fixed up the formalities with Jack,” I said, and indicated my partner.
“And paid our retainer fee, of course,” Jack said.
I nodded. “Of course.”
While Jack and she were talking I checked her website. Slick, professionally designed, and with a lot of testimonials by allegedly satisfied clients.
Whatever those were good for.
_______________________________
“I’m looking for someone called Sally Jane,” I said.
The pub was all old centuries-old stone walls and smoke-darkened wooden beams. The seats were ancient oaken benches that looked as heavy as cars. The lights were dim enough to allow plenty of privacy and shadow. At this time, seven in the evening, it was still mostly empty.
The woman behind the bar looked me up and down. “And who might you be?”
“Does it matter who I am?”
“It might.” She bit her lip. It was lipsticked black, to go with her heavy mascara and side-shaved, obviously dyed, black flip hair. She couldn’t have been more different from the décor if she’d tried. That probably was the idea. “Are you police?”
“No.” I tilted my head while frowning slightly at her, a gesture I’ve practiced in the mirror. It makes me look as though I know a lot more than I’m saying. “Why did you immediately assume that I’m from the police? Is there any reason you think the police could come here asking for Sally Jane?”
She blinked. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. You already gave it away when you immediately knew whom I’m asking about even though I didn’t give you a last name. So, where is she?”
“She’s not here, won’t come in until much later, if she comes in at all.” But her eyes flicked over my right shoulder. I turned to look.
The two women at the corner table hadn’t noticed me come in. They probably wouldn’t have noticed Sappho herself if she’d come in. They were leaning so far over the table looking into each other’s eyes that they were either closing in at glacier speed for a kiss or giving each other retinal scans. I didn’t have that many hours to waste.
“Good evening, ladies,” I said. “Which of you is Sally Jane?”
They started, looked up at me, and one, the brown one with long black hair, glanced at the blonde. “Sally? What…?”
The blonde hissed and sat back. “Who the hell are you and what do you want?”
“My name is of no consequence. I just need a few words with you.”
“Do I need to be here?” the brown one said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Chandra, wait…” the blonde began, but the other woman had already disappeared. It was like a magic trick. “Bitch,” she muttered.
“This won’t take long,” I assured her. I had no idea whether it would take long or not. “Then you can go and look for your friend.”
“She isn’t my…” The blonde huffed and passed her hand over her brow. “I haven’t done anything, anyway.”
“If you haven’t, there’s nothing to worry about.” I…can’t say slipped, not with my figure; I eased my bulk into the seat Chandra had vacated. “So you are Sally Jane?”
“Yeah, Sally Jane Munson. What about it?”
“You are acquainted with Mary Smith, I take it?”
“Who?” From what I could make out of her expression in the awful light she appeared honestly confused. “Who’s that?”
“Tall, pretty woman, blue eyes, rainbow curls? Does that de***********ion mean anything to you?”
“Oh, hell,” she gasped. “That’s Dusk, Dusk something…”
“Dusk Malgorzata?” I suggested. I’d had to repeat the name a few times before I’d got it into my memory.
“Yes, that. Are you, are you her girlfriend or something?”
“What?” I blinked. “No, I’m not. Why did you ask that?”
“Because when she…forget it.”
“I already know you spent last night in bed together. So just tell me.”
She bit her lip. What was it with women in this pub biting their lips? Did the drinks here make their lips extra chewable? “Then you know I was there till breakfast this morning.”
“And…?”
“I thought I’d like to see her again. She’s not just lush, she’s great in bed, and she makes great bacon and eggs.” Her tongue tip slipped out a moment to trace the line of her lips as she thought of how good Mary had been in bed. I felt myself beginning to get moist and told myself to keep my mind on the job. “But then she said we’d better not, because she’s got a very jealous girlfriend who can get violent.”
“You believed that?” I forced down a snort. “So, did you pick her up, or did she you?”
“I, er…” she looked at me, away, and back. “I went up to talk to her at first.”
“And that’s it? You met up here, you went back to her place, you had sex, you ate breakfast, and you left? Nothing else happened?”
She blinked at me. “Like what?”
“Did you see her with any…odd books…or doing anything strange?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. How do you mean, strange?”
“Did she chant or, uh, read things aloud from books or anything?”
“What? No. Do you think I’d have stayed back with a crazy person for breakfast?”
“I suppose not.” I searched my mind for inspiration. “Last night, when she was here; did you approach her first, or did she?”
“She did.” She squinted at me. “Why are you asking me all this? Who are you, anyway?”
“Never mind.” I eased out of my seat again. “Thank you for your time. You can go back to talking to your friend again.”
“I told you, she isn’t my friend. I just met her fifteen minutes before you showed up.” Fifteen minutes? My word, she was a fast worker. “…and, anyway, she’s gone.” Sally Jane glared at me. “Thanks for ruining my evening.”
“Is this person bothering you?” a voice asked behind me. Even without turning around, I could recognise the tone of a dinosaur translator.
It was the bouncer, of course. Bouncers were almost always dinosaurs, since they had the musculature and the ability to intimidate almost everyone, no matter how drunk. This one was a member of one of the smaller hadrosaur species, but big and strong enough and to spare. She stared at me over her duckbilled snout.
“Yes, she is, so if you could make her…” Sally Jane began.
“Never mind, I’m leaving.” I got up, and pushed past the bouncer, before looking over my shoulder. “Other fish in this sea soon enough,” I said, and left Sally Jane sitting there, wondering who I was and what was going on.
_______________________________
“So,” I said, as I felt the warmth of the whisky burning down my throat. “What do you think?”
Jack chittered and squawked to himself, his usual mode of thinking aloud before turning on his translator.
“First,” he said, “I think you should stop swallowing so much booze. It won’t wash the rainbow out of her hair.”
“Shut up,” I said. I felt myself blushing. “What do you think about the case?”
He just looked at me.
I sighed. “All right, you can talk. What about the case?”
“Obviously, the first question is, do you believe in this…grimoire? Spells?”
I snorted. “Of course not. Witchcraft is rubbish. But, to rephrase your question; do the so-called witches believe witchcraft is real, or rubbish?”
“I have been doing some research, and I believe that they think it is real.”
“I thought I’d asked you to research Sally Jane Munson.” A moth flapped at the window. Rain fell outside into the night. “Did you do that?”
“Of course. I contacted my person at the police department.” I did not know who this person was and Jack never told me, saying it was confidential. I’d long ago decided that it wasn’t my business if they were lovers or partners in some side business or whatever. “She has a history of petty shoplifting, vandalism, and one citation for public indecency.”
“Public indecency?”
“She stripped naked and jumped into a fountain.” Jack waited for me to stop laughing. “Nothing in the last year and a half, though.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“She’s got a saleswoman’s job at an electronics store. She started there, ah, eighteen months ago.”
“Right when she stopped getting into trouble with the law?” I rubbed my face. “So she’s keeping to the straight and narrow, is that it?”
“Looks like it. I am aware that this is probably not the response you were looking for.”
“Twitter rejected one of your reports again, did it?” I glared at him. “Is that where you got that phraseology from?”
“Yes, well, apparently people making death threats against dinosaurs aren’t against Twitter’s rules. Though you know what would happen if any dinosaur responded in kind.”
“Yeah, I know. So, what do you suggest we do next?”
“Well, you’re obviously going to have to get your feelings for our client under control enough to go and visit the scene of the crime.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I swallowed the rest of the whisky and reached for my phone.
_______________________________
“Thank you for letting me see you so late,” I said.
“I wasn’t asleep.” Mary Smith looked as gorgeous at this hour as she had when she’d been at the office earlier, even in a dressing gown and fluffy slippers. She leaned against her door and stared at me. “So, have you found my grimoire?”
“We’re making inquiries. May I have a look around inside, so I can have a better idea of how it could have been stolen?”
“Do you have to? I just want you to get it back, not to poke around in my flat.”
“Just trust me on this, ma’am. If I can find out how your grimoire was stolen, I can get closer to finding out who stole it.” I was impressed at my own ability to say all this without staring at her cleavage.
“But I told you who stole it. It was those bitches Anna and Angelina, and…” She huffed an annoyed breath. “Oh, all right. Just be quick. I have to do my evening spells in…” she glanced at a tiny wristwatch “…forty three minutes exactly.”
“Of course.” I nodded and squeezed past her, since she made no effort to get out of the way. Her perfume hit me in the sinuses like a soft, flowery blow.
Her living room was larger than my own entire flat. There was a giant television across from a sofa that looked so deep I’d probably sink into it and disappear forever. The wallpaper was pale blue with tiny lilac flowers. A vine climbed from a very large earthenware pot in one corner up a frame and across to the other side of the ceiling.
“See enough?” she asked, still standing at the door.
“You said it was stolen from your bedroom.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s over there. Through that door.” She peeled herself away from her position at the entrance and led me to said door, which was next to the vine pot. I glanced at it. It was porcelain blue with golden scrollwork near the bottom. The soil was moist and clean of clutter.
“I see you take good care of the plant,” I observed. “Is it important for your witch spells?”
She didn’t even glance at it. “No. Here’s the bedroom. I keep…kept…the grimoire in that drawer next to the bed.”
The bed was immense and I had to fight down the thought of her writhing naked on it with Sally Jane. I pulled my mind to the table and the drawer. There were no locks on it and when I pulled it open it was bare except for a thin sheet of yellow newspaper as lining and a ball point pen.
“Anything else?”
I looked around. As in the huge living room, there was not one window or ventilator. The traffic noises from the street one storey down didn’t penetrate these walls even as the slightest of rumbles. “What other rooms are there?”
“A spare bedroom, which I use as my office, the kitchen and bathroom. What more do you need to see?”
“I’ll just have a glance in them, if I may.”
I did. There was nothing I found that would help. The kitchen and bathroom had tiny ventilators high in the wall, guarded by exhaust fans. Neither had windows.
“You see that my grimoire could have been stolen only by magic?”
I made a noncommittal noise. “So where can I find Anna and Angelina?”
“Anna sometimes hangs out at a dance studio. She also drives far too fast, so just look out for small blondes in glasses driving three times over the speed limit. Angelina allegedly shares a flat with that girl Keisha, but she’s never there, so don’t bother with Keisha.” She tilted her head, thinking, as she led me to her front door. “Wait, tonight’s the new moon, isn’t it? I think you can find Anna down at the park.”
“Which park?”
“Some park. Any park. She sneaks in and does her midnight spells naked on the grass.”
“Huh?” But I didn’t get an answer. She’d closed the door behind me so softly I’d not heard a thing.
Jack was already waiting for me down at the corner. “No luck?” I asked.
“No, I couldn’t break in. There’s no way.” He gestured with one feathered arm at the hulking edifice where Mary Smith’s flat occupied most of the first floor. “There’s not even a window or a balcony, and the ventilators…”
“…are too small to get through,” I finished for him, and sighed. “Yes, I know. So how did it get stolen?”
“Assuming we rule out magic?” If a translator could have a tone of irony, Jack’s did at that moment.
I huffed half in amusement and half in annoyance. “The day you see me take magic seriously, you can send me to the loonie bin. Though, of course…”
“Yes?”
“There must be at least enough people who believe in it to pay her enough to afford a huge flat like that.” I turned to point dramatically at the residential building and my hand froze in mid-lift. “Wait! Look at that.”
We both watched the shadowy figure standing near the wall look around quickly and then begin swarming up the heavy drainpipe at the corner. Well, swarming is a bit of a stretch, the person moved upwards in a series of humps and jerks, but compared to anything I could do in that situation it would count as swarming.
“Be ready to catch whoever it is,” Jack said suddenly.
“What?” But there was no answer. He’d vanished from my side like a feathery ghost. I looked around but there was no sign of him, so I turned back to the figure climbing the drainpipe.
Only the person wasn’t climbing anymore, he or she was frozen in terror, looking up at outspread clawed feathered arms, bared teeth, and the predator’s eyes glaring down from the ledge a metre above. How Jack had managed to get up there so fast and so silently, even with his parkour skills, was a mystery.
Then the person let go of the drainpipe, fell to the road in a heap, jumped up and, still looking back in fear, sprinted…right into my arms. The impact of the collision would have been a lot more painful if I hadn’t tilted my head back out of the way. As it was, an unmistakably female body rammed into me, bounced off with a squeak, and began scrambling to turn away, only for me to grab both her arms in my hands.
“Stop,” I said. “If you run, I’ll send my friend up there after you.”
The fight went out of her. Her face was covered by the hood of her sweatshirt. I dropped one of her arms to pull the hood back.
“You!” I exclaimed.
“You!” she replied, blankly.
It was Sally Jane Munson.
_______________________________
“So,” I said, “mind telling me exactly what the hell you thought you were doing?”
We were sitting in my pickup. She was in the back seat. Jack had awkwardly arranged himself crossways in the front seat next to me, his tail sticking out of the pavement side door. Normally he rode in back with his tail on the tray. He’d turned his head to stare Sally Jane in the face, to keep her intimidated. It was working; she was pretty intimidated. I was afraid that she’d get so intimidated that I couldn’t wring answers out of her, so I motioned Jack back slightly.
“What were you doing?” I repeated. “I mean, I know you were trying to break in, but why, and whose flat?”
“You know whose flat,” she whispered. “You asked me about her earlier.”
I had thought as much. “And why were you trying to break into her flat?”
She said nothing for so long that I was about to signal Jack to get in her face again. Then she whispered, “Her jewellery.”
I was baffled. “What jewellery?”
“She has some lovely pieces. She wears them when she’s clubbing.”
“Oh?” I hadn’t seen any jewellery. “What kind?”
“Platinum with stones, emeralds and rubies.” Her own sapphire eyes glinted with avarice at the thought. “I’ve seen her with a couple of different necklaces, rings and bracelets.”
“You’ve seen her…ah. Is that why you went to talk to her in the first place? To let her pick you up? It was all about the jewellery?”
“You can’t ask me questions. Who even…”
“Jack? Care to remind Ms Munson here that we can ask questions?”
She flinched. “All right, yeah, I wanted to get the stuff. You would, too, if you had my money problems.”
“I thought you were employed and had stopped all the petty crime and public nuisance?”
“You’ve no right to judge me when you don’t know a thing about what I’m going through.”
“What are you going through?”
“Never you mind. I just needed money, quickly.”
“You do realise that going to prison won’t help?”
She bit her lip. “Are you arresting me?”
I realised that she didn’t know we weren’t police. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, but might help us. “That depends. If you answer our questions, fully and honestly, and then stay on the straight and narrow path, we’ll let you go. But you need to be open about everything.”
“Yeah what?”
“You went to her home. You slept with her. You looked around for the jewellery?”
“Right, when she was in the bathroom and in the kitchen. Didn’t find a thing.”
“Where did you look?”
“Uh…around the bedroom, in her wardrobe and the table drawer and that. I didn’t have much time.”
“You looked in the table drawer? Did you find a book of any kind there?”
She blinked at me in confusion. “Book? What kind of book? There wasn’t any book.”
I remembered something Mary had said. “You weren’t heavily dressed. If you’d found the jewels, how were you planning to take them with you without her noticing? Stuffed up your vagina?”
She blushed red and shook her head. “No, she might’ve wanted another round, mightn’t she?”
“Oh, so you were planning to swallow them and wait for nature to take its course.” I scoffed. “I suppose the risk of getting torn up inside was worth it?”
Jack made the noise his translator interpreted as a chuckle. To those who didn’t know him it sounded like something he’d say before tearing one’s liver out. Sally Jane’s red face went white like an octopus changing colour at the sight of a shark.
“All right,” I went on. “So, after that, you thought you’d break in tonight and have another go?”
“Yeah, when she didn’t want me back in there, what else alternative did I have?” She sounded aggrieved. “What was I supposed to do?”
“One thing you can do,” I replied, “is to give up the idea of stealing to enrich yourself.”
“I wasn’t trying to…” She bit off what she was going to say and looked at me sullenly.
“Give it up,” I said. “You’re no good at being a burglar. Watching you try to climb that pipe was painful. And if you’d got up there, you couldn’t have broken in anyway.” My ears caught the hum of a powerful car engine. Headlights slashed across the walls and trees as the vehicle came round the far end of the street. I turned to watch it flash past, well above the speed limit. The small bespectacled blonde at the wheel didn’t glance at us.
Small blonde…with glasses…driving too fast.
“Jack,” I snapped, “get out and take Ms Munson here back to wherever she lives. Ask whatever questions you think necessary.”
Jack knew when to do as I said without hesitation. He scrambled out of the front seat as Munson almost fell out of the back. I barely waited long enough for him to slam the doors before I turned on the engine and peeled away after the car.
I am no race car driver, and my pickup isn’t a Formula One racer. It was impossible to keep the car in sight, but at least the street was empty at this hour so I wasn’t held up by traffic. Even so, it was luck that finally showed me the car again, parked by the roadside under the heavy boughs of a tree.
What kind of tree? I’m not a botanist, I can’t name the kind of tree. But there were trees all around it, and behind it.
It was a park. Mary had said Anna did rituals in parks.
I braked slowly to a halt past the next corner and walked back to the car. It was, as I’d expected, unoccupied. There was a low railing between the pavement and the park itself, more as a marker than as a serious fence, and even my bulk could swing a leg over it and get on the other side without too much trouble. One push through some bushes, and I was standing behind a line of flower beds and facing an expanse of grass.
There were two women standing on the grass, facing each other. One was the tiny blonde I’d been following. The starlight glinted off her glasses. The other was very tall, with straight black hair, and looked Native American. They reached out their hands and touched their fingertips to each other’s. They stood looking at each other like that for a minute, talking very softly. I could just hear the murmur of their voices, but not what they were saying. Then the blonde reached up to unbutton her shirt, but the Native American woman raised a hand to stop her and turned her head towards me.
“I’m fully aware that you’re standing there, you know,” she called. “Come out and show yourself.”
Her eyes were pools of shadow, but it almost felt as though there were stars deep inside them, which burned tiny holes in the middle of my brain. I took an involuntary step forward, then another.
“That’s close enough,” the tall woman said when I was halfway across the grass. I stopped.
“I thought someone was following me,” the little blonde said. “Who are you? Were you spying on us?”
“She looks like law enforcement, Ralitsa,” the Native American woman told her, without taking her eyes from me. “Have you been getting into trouble again?”
“What? No, I haven’t, not that I know of, anyway.” The blonde took a few steps towards me. “Who are you? Police?”
“No, I’m a private detective.” My mouth was dry. I had no illusions: these two could be very dangerous. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Ask me?”
“You are Anna Whitmore, aren’t you? You call yourself Dawn Ralitsa?”
“Dawn Ralitsa is my real and ancient name. Anna Whitmore is just the name my body wears.” She must have seen the confusion on my face because she waved a hand. “Never mind.”
I glanced at the Native American woman. “And you must be…” What was the name Mary Smith had given me? “Angelina?”
“I am Angelina. If you know that much about us, I am curious how.”
“I was given that information by a client. She accused you of having stolen her grimoire.”
“Stolen her grimoire?” Anna looked blank. “Why would we need to steal anyone’s grimoire?”
“A witch?” Angelina looked sceptical. “There aren’t many witches, and we know them all. Who is she?”
I could have said something about client confidentiality, but those eyes were still on me. “Her name is Mary Smith.”
The two women exchanged puzzled looks. “There must be a million Mary Smiths in the world.”
“This one calls herself…” I dredged my memory again. “Dusk Malgorzata?”
“Huh? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Can you describe her for us?” Angelina asked.
“She’s about thirty. Tall, slim, blue eyes, rainbow curls.”
“Oh, her.” Angelina sounded dismissive. “I’ve seen her around, but she’s no witch. She only imagines she’s one. If she thinks we’d steal her grimoire, she needs a screw tightening.”
I digested that information, while the two women watched me. “Anything else you’d like to ask?”
“Do you have grimoires?”
Anna and Angelina both snorted, in unison. “Of course not,” the small blonde said. “We’ve been practicing for so long we’ve got everything committed to memory.”
“Real witches don’t need them,” Angelina told me. “They’re an aid when we start out, but we soon grow beyond the need for them. No real witch of any experience keeps one around.”
“But people who imagine they are witches?” I asked.
“Like your Dusk Malgorzata? I think she’d need hers. I think she’d feel her whole witch identity was dependent on it.”
“Oh.” A couple of pieces suddenly fell into place. “May I go?”
Angelina nodded and they turned away from me without another word.
I didn’t stay to watch what they did next. I had things of my own to do.
_______________________________
“Her little brother had cancer,” Jack said. “The treatment was expensive. She had to borrow money, but with her record, of course nobody would lend her any.”
“So she borrowed from some criminal, of course?” I sighed. “It’s the same old story.”
“Yes, I have the name and address. The boss of one of the dockside gangs. You know him, I think. Lucas Kanarek?”
“Oh yeah. Lucky Luke. He’s getting ideas above his station, is he?”
“Probably. She returned the principal already, and tried to pay off the interest with her body, but he wants the money.”
“He loves money a sight too much. What about the brother?”
“He’s recovering, thankfully. He’s just a teenager.” Jack pecked at his keyboard with his styluses. “What about the grimoire? Are we any closer to solving that?”
I took a deep breath. “Oh, I know what happened to it. It’s just a matter of trying to decide how exactly to locate it.”
I could feel Jack’s stare. “That is…interesting. Are you going to tell me?”
“I’m just running over everything in my head, to make sure I’m not missing anything. Then I’ll tell you.”
“All right, maintain your air of mystery, as though this were an Agatha Christie story.” Jack snapped his jaws at me in mock annoyance. “Do you think we should go and have a word with Lucky?”
“It couldn’t hurt. I mean, it couldn’t hurt us. As for him, it’s another matter.” I could already imagine Lucky recoiling in his seat, one of Jack’s talons trapping his arm to the desk, his teeth within touching distance of the thug’s face. Lucky Luke was big and self-important, but if I were any judge, would have the resiliency of wet cardboard if threatened seriously. “You got her to talk quite easily, then?”
“I told her we’d see to it that she’d be free of all obligations to him and never have to steal again.” Jack glanced at me out of the corner of an amber eye. “We are going to do that, right?”
“You and your damn sudden chivalrous examples.” I groaned. “It’s been one hell of a day and all I wanted was to go home after this and go to bed, but I suppose we should stop at the docks first. Lucky should still be at his, uh, office. He’s a night owl.”
“Should you take a knife or something? He could be armed.”
I snorted. “Are you telling me you couldn’t deal with anything he’s carrying?”
“Well, of course I could.” He arranged himself in the back seat of my pickup. “But what if he’s got dinosaurs working for him? I can’t take down a big hadrosaur or ceratopsid and neither can you.”
“No worries about that.” I started the engine and put the pickup in gear. “He doesn’t employ dinosaurs. He says they’re degenerate freaks.”
Jack chuckled. “Oh, this is going to be such fun.”
And it was.
_______________________________
“Come in.” Mary smiled at me and waved me into her flat. The difference between tonight and the previous evening couldn’t be more profound. Her clothing, too: she was in a black evening gown and low-heeled black shoes showing off her shapely legs and ankles. “I’m so glad to see you!”
I blinked at her. “You are?”
“Of course.” She closed the door behind me and stepped on tiptoe past me to the deep sofa. “You’ve found my grimoire. That’s why you asked to meet me. Right?”
“Well, I know where it is, and I know who’s responsible for its disappearance.” Before I could say another word she’d leapt forwards and the next thing I knew was her arms clasped around my neck and her lips pressed to mine.
Her mouth was soft and her tongue tip like a little live animal as it pressed and turned little circles on mine. Her perfume tickled up and down my sinuses. I could feel her breasts press against mine through the thin material of her dress. My brain threatened to freeze as I let my desire take over and desperately kissed her back.
“Don’t you want to know – ” I managed to gasp when her lips finally released mine.
“You can tell me later. Oh, goddesses, I’m so happy!” Her arms moved from around my neck to my front and her hands got busy.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“What does it look like? I’m undressing you, silly. And then I’m taking you to bed.”
“Ma’am…Mary…” I gasped as her hand slipped under my shirt and her fingers pinched my right nipple through my bra. “Are you sure that…?”
“That I want this? Yes, I do.” With her other hand she finished unbuttoning my shirt and pulled it off my shoulders. “Come on, sit down on the couch and let me finish getting your clothes off.”
In a daze, I felt the sofa enfold me as she unclipped and removed my bra, and then knelt to unlace and pull off my shoes and socks. My belt gave her a little trouble, but she got it off eventually. I raised my hips so that she could drag off my trousers, leaving me in only my plain white knickers.
“Oo,” she said, “you’re wet.”
I could feel my fluids soaking my knickers and knew the fabric must be almost transparent. My face heated up with embarrassment.
“And you’re red,” she cooed. “So adorable!”
Desperate energy flooded through me. I reached for her shoulders and pulled her in for a kiss. Our lips crashed into each other, and her eyes widened in surprise.
“I’m taking charge here on,” I murmured against her mouth, and pushed the thin straps of her gown off her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the tops of her creamy white breasts came within reach of my mouth. I gently nipped at the flesh. She shuddered.
My hands slipped down her body until they reached her thighs, and slid upwards under her dress. She was, as I’d already surmised, wearing nothing under it. The skin of her inner thighs was already slick with moisture. I nipped at her other breast and she moaned and pushed herself against me.
“A moment, my darling, a moment.” I fought myself free of the sofa and stood, pulling her dress up over her hips and torso. She raised her arms so I could lift it over her shoulders, and kicked off her low-heeled shoes. I looked down at her naked body, beautiful as a marble statue. Her breasts were small and high, her vulva a hairless pink cleft under the flat snowy plain of her belly. We were of a height, so when she leaned forward again to kiss me, her pointed little pink nipples rubbed against my puffy brown ones. I felt an electric shock radiate from them down to the tips of my toes.
I pressed her to me, our breasts squashed together like our mouths, and her hands slipped down my back and under my knickers to cup my bottom. I felt myself automatically begin to rub myself against her. We both sighed.
“Your knickers,” she whispered. “Let me take them off.”
I stepped back a little so she could roll them down my thighs and pulled my feet free of them as they fell around my ankles. “I’ve wanted this,” she whispered, “ever since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
“You did?” I ran the tip of my tongue along the margin of her lips. She moaned and clutched at my upper arms so tightly that I winced a little. “You didn’t give me that impression,” I continued, between kisses and licks down her jawline.
“I…” she gasped. “I was trying…to…aaah! …to…mmm…not to show…ooooh…how much…you were…turning me on.”
She wasn’t hiding it now, the scent of her arousal, and mine, hung in the air around us. I nipped at her earlobe and she went weak in the knees, clutching me for support. I pushed her down on the sofa and knelt among our discarded clothes on the floor, pushing apart her thighs with my hands. Her juices glittered on the puffy pink petals of her labia. I resisted the urge to put my tongue to her cleft, and instead placed my fingers on the skin on either side, rubbing her flesh in opposite directions, up and down. She shuddered and bucked her hips.
“Does that feel good?” I whispered.
“You know it does, you bitch…aaa!…don’t torture me like this. Fuck me!”
I spread apart her labia with my left hand so that the nub of her clitoris popped out, and put my right index fingertip on it, twirling it round and round. She writhed and bucked her hips so hard against my hand that I had trouble keeping my finger in place, so I turned my hand round, put my thumb on her clit, and slid two fingers inside her hot wet tunnel. As my fingertips sought her G-spot, she cried out and pulled frantically at my hair as she came.
As her first orgasm subsided, I pulled out my fingers before putting my mouth to her vulva. Her scent filled my nostrils as her juices coated my tongue. She shivered and clamped her thighs around my head, crossing her ankles behind my back. She cried out and groaned.
I don’t know how many times she came; one orgasm seemed to flow into another. When I tried to pull back for a moment to catch my breath, she squealed and pushed my head back down to her cleft. Her heels drummed on my back as she cried out again and came yet once again.
At last she fell back, breathing heavily, her breasts rising and falling, her head with its rainbow hair thrown back, exposing the gazelle arch of her neck. I could see her pulse throbbing under her skin. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “You make me mindless.”
In response I lifted her leg and ran my fingertip down her sole. Her toes curled. I ran my tongue over her pink-lacquered nails.
“What the hell are you doing to me?” she whispered.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I ran my tongue along the side of the arch of her foot and up to her ankle. She pushed weakly against me with her hands.
“I’ll die if you keep making me come like this,” she whimpered.
“I don’t think you will,” I said. Letting her leg go so that her calf rested on my shoulder, I grasped her hips and pulled her to the edge of the sofa. Kneeling on one knee, I was at the right height to bring my vulva to hers. I only had to push my hips forward a little to bring our weeping neither mouths to each other. Holding her leg to my chest, I began rubbing my cleft up and down against hers. My clitoris throbbed and sang with little electric shocks with every thrust of my hips.
“God,” she moaned, “I can’t take it anymore.” But her own hips began to gyrate to rub her clit against mine.
“You can, my darling,” I said, “just lie back and enjoy yourself.” I couldn’t say much else as I felt the familiar clenching of my entire pelvic floor as my orgasm began to build up. I couldn’t even try to delay it as it struck, and my own conscious mind melted in pleasure as liquid fire exploded in my vagina and I thrust and grinded frantically against her, gasping inarticulate words and her name.
The next thing I knew, we were lying together on the carpet beside the sofa. Her leg was thrown over my hip, her vulva hot and wet on my upper thigh. She leaned towards me to kiss my mouth. Our noses bumped.
“You’re wonderful,” she whispered. “I knew you would be.”
“Really?” I whispered back, and rubbed my nose on hers. “Did you really? Because I’m better than you thought I would be.”
“How’s that?” She ran her fingertips down my ribs. I shivered and bit my lip so as not to lose control.
“Because I found out what happened to the grimoire, remember?”
“Oh, and what happened to it?” She ran a toenail down the sole of my foot. The sensation ran up my leg all the way to my heart.
“Nothing,” I whispered, pressing my breasts on hers. “Nothing happened to it.”
“What does that mean?” She drew her head back and looked at me lazily.
“That means it wasn’t stolen. It’s right here in this flat. And you know it as well as I do.”
I hadn’t known what to expect when I told her, but I hadn’t expected her to laugh. “Wonderful! I knew you’d do it.”
“You…knew?”
“Oh yes.” She pecked at my lips with hers. “You’re really something, Jill. I knew the very first time I laid eyes on you that you were special.”
“You mean yesterday at the office?”
“Oh, no. Long before that. When we were both at the dinosaur rights demo. Only you didn’t even notice I existed.” She rubbed her bare vulva up and down my thigh. “I watched you make that speech about dino rights. You were so beautiful, so fierce. I melted inside just looking at you. I just didn’t know who you were. Until a few weeks ago, when I found an advert online for your agency.”
“So you…decided to get to know me better?”
“Yes.” She giggled. “And you came through, didn’t you? When did you suspect?”
I tilted my head. “Almost from the beginning, really. I didn’t believe in witchcraft, but you clearly did, or at least you did to the extent that it made a living for you. When I visited you last night, you were going to start your evening spells, correct? And yet you’d told me that you’d never do any spells without your grimoire. So, you clearly still had it.” I groaned as she rubbed her nipples on mine. “And since nobody could break in…I checked…it was still here on the premises.”
“Excellent!” She licked the side of my throat. “Now tell me where it is, and I’ll know you’re the best.”
“That’s obvious. It’s not in your bedside table. I never believed you’d keep it in the bedside table. Nor is it in your wardrobe” I pointed in the general direction of the huge flower pot in the corner. “So I assume there’s a secret drawer in the bottom of that. It’s a bit too big for that vine, and the scrollwork is too low on the pot. Shall we see?”
“God, I can’t believe this.” She got up and walked over to the pot. I followed and watched as she bent to hook a fingernail on the golden scrollwork and pull. A section of the pot swung open. Inside were a leather jewel box and the book she’d described.
“Want a look at it?” she asked.
“No,” I told her. “I don’t believe in witchcraft, remember? And this whole thing has just proved to me again why I shouldn’t.”
“Why?” she asked.
I walked back to the sofa and began to pull on my clothes. “If witchcraft were real, you could have just cast some spell to find where your grimoire was, right? You wouldn’t have needed us. Or you could have just cast a spell to make me fall in love with you.”
“Why are you getting dressed?” She came back to me and laid a hand on my arm. “We should go to bed and make love properly, all night. Aren’t we together now?”
“No, we aren’t.” I pulled on my shoes. “We aren’t together.”
For the first time, she looked stricken. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t like people who lie to me and falsely accuse others. Good night, ma’am. Jack will forward our final bill to you in the morning.”
And I closed her front door behind me quietly, leaving her standing naked there, waiting for it to slam.
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