Chapter 17

“Aaachhoo!” Thyme sneezed loudly. “How long is this going to take?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, throwing another handful of reversing powder over the pavement. “As long as it takes, I guess.”

“You’re just putting off our other job,” Thyme astutely observed. She was right. I had to collect hair from Detectives Greene and Jones, as well as from Sergeant Tinsdell and Constable Dawson. I’d rather stick to throwing powder around the city, as it seemed considerably less dangerous. I had already thrown the powder all over the house.

“You could probably just ask them,” Thyme suggested.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “Just walk up and ask for some of their hair? Do you know how bizarre that sounds?”

“Well, they’re still under the influence of the happiness spell, so there’s a good chance they’ll just give it to you,” Thyme said with a shrug. “I think it’s worth a shot. If not, what’s your plan?”

“Well, I was going to throw this powder about for the next several hours and hope my problems solved themselves in their own time,” I admitted. “Saying it loud, I suppose it isn’t the best idea. I don’t know, Thyme, it just seems unlikely. Just because they’re nice doesn’t mean they’re stupid, and they’re going to ask what I need their hair for. What could I say to that?”

“Say it’s for a shrine,” Thyme suggested.

“That’s insane,” I said flatly, imagining that Thyme might actually have a Dawson shrine ferreted away somewhere.

She pouted. “Well, what’s your idea?”

“I was thinking that one of us could distract them while the other collected their hair somehow. That, or we could try something like pick pocketing.”

“Pick pocketing? You think they’ll have hair samples just sitting in their pocket?” Thyme was bewildered.

“No,” I sighed. “I mean something that works the same way. When pick pocketing, thieves will bump into you so you don’t notice your stuff being stolen. We’d just need a big distraction so they don’t notice us stealing their hair,” I explained, not the least oblivious to how bizarre it all sounded.

“Any ideas on that front?” Thyme asked. It was a fair question, but I couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed by it. Mostly because no, I didn’t have any ideas. At all.

“We could, um.” I thought for a moment. “Throw this powder in their face?”

“Amelia, I’m fairly sure they’ll still arrest us for that, regardless of how happy they are,” Thyme rightly pointed out.

I sighed, wondering what to do. I threw another handful of powder into the wind, trying to come up with a solution. “Maybe we’ll just have to wing it and hope for the best,” I suggested half-heartedly.

“Well, that’s the best plan yet,” Thyme admitted. “There’s some time to think during the walk there, I guess. Let’s hope we have a more concrete plan by the time we arrive at the police station.”

By the time we arrived at the police station, our plan was no more concrete. If anything, we’d both started to lose our nerve. “Come up with anything?” Thyme asked desperately.

I shook my head sadly. “We’re just going to have to talk to them and hope an opportunity appears.” Thyme and I were both armed with a pair of scissors, though smuggling scissors into a police station just made me feel that much more uneasy. I was still hoping that we’d be able to talk them into simply giving us some hair.

Thyme and I steeled ourselves and walked through the front door, approaching the desk sergeant and trying our best to act casual.

“Hello,” I said stiffly. “We would like to please speak to Detectives Greene and Jones please, thank you.” I spoke so quickly that the desk sergeant appeared to take a few seconds to register what I said. After a moment, he nodded and called them on the intercom. Thyme and I sat down and waited, my heart in my throat. We needed to think of something and quickly.

In the past, Greene and Jones had typically kept us waiting for several minutes, which I thought would be ample time to come up with a plan. However, probably due to the spell, they arrived in almost no time at all. They greeted us both warmly and ushered us into an interrogation room for some privacy.

Detective Greene beamed at us. “How can we help?”

“Well,” I began, unsure of how to proceed.

“We need your hair,” Thyme said flatly.

Greene and Jones looked about as shocked at the revelation as anybody could be expected to. That is to say, very shocked.

“Whatever for?” Jones asked. It was a fair question, to which I had no reasonable answer.

“Um,” I stammered. Thyme looked as lost for words as I was. “For a wig, a wig for children,” I said.

“For children?” Greene didn’t seem to understand.

“Yes. We’re collecting hair for wigs for children who are born bald, who need wigs. You know how most babies are born bald? We need wigs, made from hair. Your hair,” I explained, hoping the spell would influence them to buy the bizarre story.

“For bald babies?” Jones chimed in.

“Oh, yes,” Thyme said, nodding fiercely. “Baby baldness isn’t good, because they’re babies and need hair.” She looked at me desperately.

I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. We only need a bit of your hair. Just a snip. I brought scissors,” I said, as I handed the scissors to Jones.

He shared a confused look with Detective Greene. “Only a bit? But surely that won’t be enough to give to babies,” he said.

“Well, we collect a little from a lot of people,” Thyme explained sheepishly. “That way nobody loses too much hair, and, um, the wigs get made. It’s new technology.”

“This is all very strange,” Greene protested. “But very well. We can’t have babies wandering about all bald. I’ll give you some of my hair.”

Jones shrugged. “Certainly. How can we refuse bald babies?” They both cut off small locks of their hair and handed them to us.

“Thank you so much!” Thyme squealed. I sighed with relief, hardly believing that it worked. “Um, do you know where Sergeant Tinsdell and Constable Dawson could be?” she asked.

They nodded in unison and pointed us to a room down the hallway. I assumed they were both at their respective desks, and the detectives were more than happy to let us wander the station freely. We happened upon Tinsdell’s desk first, and he was furiously working away at an absolute mountain of paperwork. I considered that we could probably just take some hair from him as he was working and he wouldn’t even notice, but decided it was probably too risky.

Thyme whispered that she would press on to find Dawson while I tried to get some hair from Tinsdell.

“Hello.” I smiled warmly as I sat opposite him.

“Ah, Amelia! How can I help?” Tinsdell pushed his paperwork aside and smiled broadly. I considered telling him the same story that worked on the detectives, but dismissed it. They barely bought it, and if something had gone wrong. I wouldn’t have any idea how to explain it away. I had to try something entirely different.

“What do you think about donating hair?” I asked, realizing that my new plan was remarkably similar to my old one.

“I think it’s a worthwhile cause and a strange question,” he said, stroking his chin. “Is this a police matter?”

“Oh, um, yes. Of course,” I lied. “I’m having, um, a hair party!” I blurted it out before I noticed what an awful idea it was.

“Oh,” was all Tinsdell had to say.

“Yes.”

“A hair party?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. “Amelia?”

“Yes?”

“What is a hair party?”

I didn’t have an answer. I swallowed and thought as quickly as I could. “We put a lot of hair in a bag,” I said. “Someone draws some hair out of the bag and then they have to give a present to the owner of the hair.”

Tinsdell was deep in thought, which worried me greatly. I still wasn’t exactly sure how the spell would influence his thinking, but it was clear that my ridiculous story was giving him some pause.

“So if I give you some hair, I might receive a gift?” he asked.

“Absolutely. A nice one. But there’s a chance nobody will pick your hair,” I pointed out. I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be disappointed or curious if he never received anything.

“Yes, of course. A hair party.” He bit his lip. “But however do you know who the hair belongs to?”

“Oh,” I cleared my throat. “I label it,” I explained. I was hoping he wouldn’t realize that it made the hair entirely redundant, since we could just put names on paper, but to my relief he nodded slowly.

“Of course. I’d be happy to help.”

I passed him the scissors, nearly crying from relief. The hair safely bagged, I bid him farewell and left to find Thyme. Luckily, I ran into her in the hallway.

“Did you get his hair?” Thyme asked.

“Yes, though barely. How did you go with Dawson?” I didn’t want to press too much when it came to Thyme and Dawson, but I did need to find out the bare minimum. Thyme’s blushing was all I needed to know. “Okay, say no more. We’ve got it all, then. Let’s get ourselves to Ruprecht’s place.”

Thyme questioned me as we traveled, asking about how I got Tinsdell’s hair. I reluctantly told her the truth, and she was even more shocked than I was that it worked.

“Do you think he’ll be disappointed when he doesn’t get a gift?” she asked.

“Maybe we’ll have to send him something nice,” I shrugged. “Something small. And cheap. But nice.”

We arrived at Ruprecht’s without any hassle. He was waiting for us, and quickly ushered us inside.

“Did you get the hair?” Ruprecht asked as he threw some of the reversing powder around his store.

“Yes, somehow,” I sighed. “This will work, right Ruprecht?”

“Of course, yes, of course.” He nodded. “Most probably, I think. There’s only one way to find out, at any rate, so let’s get started.”

The spell was pretty much like the one I had devised to reverse the spell on my friends, and that gave me a measure of confidence. The only difference was a lengthy incantation.

As soon as I finished the spell, I turned on my phone. It rang immediately.

“Alder?” I said urgently.

I heard woman’s voice behind him. “Let me tell her.”

Alder responded with a sharp, “No.”

The next voice to speak was a woman’s. “Amelia?”