Neville dropped me off at my front door, and I was happy he didn’t try to invite himself in for tea and a chat. I had a long night of solitary thinking planned.
I went upstairs, missing Hemlock’s usual greeting at the door—a soft meow to say hello but careful not to let on how much he had missed me. I ran a bath and went into the bedroom.
What possible plan could anyone, especially an old woman like Edie Jacques, have for a maze like that? I didn’t know much about horticulture, but I still knew there had to be witchcraft involved for it to grow as quickly as it had. But was there a connection between Edie and Kenny? Might Jackfort be part of this maze too? He had always liked big showy spells.
I pulled the already-closed curtains tighter before getting undressed.
You’re being ridiculous, I thought. Rowan Jackfort is not a stick-to-the-shadows kind of guy.
He needed to be seen, so if he was watching me, he would want me to know. It would be a part of his sick game. This whole maze thing could, rationally, be a coincidence. Jackfort had probably looked me up and found my details through the business directory; most likely he wasn’t actually in town. In typical Jackfort style, he was only trying to scare me. I hated that it was working.
I sank into the tub and tried, with little success, to relax. What I really needed right then was a moon cleanse, a forest bathing ritual I had invented myself. It wasn’t magic, just a mind-clearing meditation I found worked best in a natural place in the light of the full moon. But with a few days until the full moon, a hot bath in a quiet house and lots of wine would have to suffice.
The night without Hemlock was a lonely one. Without his little body on my bed, where he had cuddled into me since the night I had first brought him into my life, I could not sleep.
Around two a.m., I padded into the living room and selected a well-worn volume from the overstuffed bookshelf.
A Secret History of the Labyrinth.
I sank into the armchair. Hemlock would always come to snuggle in beside me whenever I sat in this chair. Here I was, warm and cozy in his favorite seat while he was in some cold hard cage in a strange place, sicker than sick, and probably terrified.
“You’re not helping anyone by getting so upset,” I said aloud. “He’s going to be fine, and he’s in the best place for that to happen.”
I tried to push Hemlock to the back of my thoughts with the increasingly colossal muddle of things I couldn’t fix at that moment and focus on the task at hand.
I thumbed through pages, a pool of golden lamplight the only light in the house. I read through legends of the Minotaur, stories of the hidden depths of the Chartres labyrinth, and the real history of the Hampton Court maze, until I came across the image I had half remembered while standing above Blackthorn’s newest and most deadly tourist attraction. A medieval woodcut of a maze with a string of ghosts and ghouls rising from its middle. I had been right about the way the path twisted into the curved teardrop. Edie Jacques had definitely designed a talisman. A ghost maze.
But why?
Laying the book aside, I opened my laptop and searched for anything and everything on silver blood yew. As I already knew, yew, and in particular the silver blood yew, was one of the oldest magical plants around. But what I hadn’t realized until then was it had been used for centuries in spells particularly concerning the dead and passage to the other world after this life. A ghost maze planted in silver blood yew? No wonder it had felt so potent.
When I did eventually fall into a light sleep in the small hours of the cold night, still sitting in the armchair, I dreamed I was running through a maze. Conri O’Farrell ran after me. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his footfalls, the huff of his breath. Whenever I turned around to see if he was still there, I found I had rounded another corner and was blind to anything behind or in front of me.
“You look terrible,” Lila said. The fairy was waiting for me outside the shop before opening, a rare and mysterious event in itself.
“I hardly slept. Again. But that’s not important,” I said. “Do you know Edie Jacques?”
“She’s owned the nursery on Alba Road for about a hundred years, I think,” she said. She handed me a very welcome coffee. I noted it was a cup from Tom Jenkins’s diner.
“This is the only place to get a takeout caffeine hit now that BrewHaHa has closed,” she explained. “Until Bar Armadillo or the tea house start serving coffee.”
Tom’s coffee was drinkable—nowhere near as good as Kenny’s, but on this little sleep, I would have found any muddy brew to be the finest blend in the world.
“Edie’s a witch?” I asked, unlocking the door.
Lila shrugged. “I’ve got no idea. I guess it would make sense, all those plants and everything. If she were, she’d be well into herb lore, I guess.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m suspecting,” I said. I filled Lila in about everything I had seen at the hedge maze the day before.
“You’re serious? That’s serious.”
“I know. But the question is why? What does she want it for? And what does this have to do with the rest of it?”
“Why does it all need to be connected?” Lila said.
I stopped and sipped my coffee. “Because…” I started. There wasn’t much of a link save a dark hex and a dark spell maze. I would have to talk to Edie to find out that part. “It seems a bit out of the ordinary, don’t you think? I don’t really believe in coincidence, as much as I’d like to sometimes.”
“I keep telling you, Adela is the one you need to be talking to, not me,” Lila said.
“I don’t want to get anyone else involved.”
“Trust me, Adela knows pretty much everything about everything, and not just what happens in this town.”
“That’s what worries me. With the way gossip works in this place…”
“She’s no busybody, she’s just wise. Go and talk to her. Trust me, you’ll see.”
“Are you going to come with me?” I said, hopeful.
“Gee, Belinda, she’s not going to bite you. I know she’s working today. I saw her this morning. I’ll watch the shop, do the dusting and stuff.”
“So, this Adela is a Naarin demon, did you say?”
Lila nodded.
“Then how can we not put her on the list of murder suspects?”
“Naarin. Do you really not know anything about Naarins? They couldn’t kill anyone, even if they wanted, unless it were another of their kind. It’s just the way things are with them. She’s probably the only person in town you can safely assume isn’t the killer.”
The store telephone rang.
“Thank you for calling Blackthorn Book Nook, Lila speaking,” Lila said in her professional voice she only ever used when she answered the shop line. “Oh, yes, she’s right here.” Lila passed me the phone.
“Hello?” I said, cringing as I expected to hear Neville Norton’s voice on the other end.
“Belinda, er… Ms. Drake. It’s Conri. Doctor O’Farrell. The vet.”
He sounded strange, too polite, too nervous to be the tempest I had encountered the day before. It must be bad news.
“We’ve got Hemlock’s tests back. I’ll explain the results when you come to pick him up today.”
“He can come home? Today?” I was ecstatic. For such a small little being, Hemlock’s absence had left a mountain-sized hole in my home, and I couldn’t wait to see him again. Even Lila said she missed him, even though she was always yelling at him to stop tickling her with his tail. I’d always suspected he was doing it on purpose.
“He’s fine,” the vet said. “Or at least he will be after he finishes the medication. We can discuss the details when we see each other. I mean, when you come in. Today. For the cat.”
“Sure, thanks,” I said, thinking this vet might have worse conversational skills than I did. I hung up, picked up my bag and headed to the door.
“Naarin demons will have to wait until later,” I said.
“You want me to come with you to, you know…?”
A couple, newlyweds judging by the sheen on their golden rings, entered the store.
“You’re open, right?” the woman said. “I’ve seen your shop online, and I’m just so excited to be in the actual, real-life Blackthorn Book Nook.”
I smiled, genuinely complimented, but not sure what the fuss was all about.
“Yes. Please, look around and take your time,” I said. I leaned in close to Lila.
“Maybe next time. For now, I just need to get my cat home.”
As I hurried out of the store, eager to get my familiar back by my side, I noticed a sleek black SUV parked outside the shop. With blacked-out windows making it look like a sci-fi space shuttle, the vehicle stood out in a place like Blackthorn Springs that was full of nice sensible cars for a nice sensible town.
It was likely nothing. There were plenty of tourists with all kinds of vehicles in these parts, though not that many this time of year. Still, something niggled at me, and I eyed it with cold suspicion.
It’s not Jackfort, I thought, reminding myself of all of the justifications I’d already reasoned a million times over. He’s not here; he was just trying to scare you.
It certainly didn’t look like the kind of car any of the Bloodfire would drive, but I made a note of the license plate, just in case.
Maureen greeted me with an icy nod and told me to go straight through. I waited in the brightly lit room, oddly nervous. I had experienced two sides of the vet so far, and I didn’t much care to see that first one again.
Conri came into the room cradling Hemlock in his arms like a baby. I immediately thought of his placidness as a terrible sign. But Hemlock was purring, simply enjoying being held against the vet’s broad chest.
Can that cat be bought by anyone? I wondered.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Conri said. A strange curl flickered at the edge of his mouth. Was that a smile?
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“It’s good and bad news,” the vet said. He lowered Hemlock toward me, and the cat happily left his arms for mine with a contented meow.
The vet was different. He stood differently, more erect. He had shaved off the messy beard, and it even looked like he had done his hair with gel. Underneath his white coat, I could see his clothes were freshly pressed. It seemed like he was making an effort to look nice. And it was sort of working. With his deep eyes and square jaw, he was even kind of hot, now that he wasn’t scowling or yelling.
“The blood tests showed toxicity. Has your cat been in contact with lily flowers lately?”
“Lilies?” I said. My heart clenched.
“It’s all too common to see cats poisoned by lilies. Those things are deadly to felines.”
“Oh dear,” I said.
“Most cat owners know this and manage to keep their pets safe.”
I bristled. “What are you implying?”
“I’m saying having a pet is a privilege. Keeping them out of harm’s way, keeping them away from star lilies in this case, is one cost of that.”
“For your information, someone sent me a bunch of flowers,” I said. My voice quivered around the giant lump stuck in my throat. “I knew the danger they presented and threw them straight into the trash.” It was true enough, even though the danger I’d known they presented had nothing to do with floral toxicity, and Hemlock had taken a big noseful of them before that.
“Not soon enough, evidently,” he said. “With a name like Hemlock, maybe whoever it was that sent you those flowers did it on purpose.”
I fumed. Was he trying to be funny or clever? Or was he having a go at something about me personally? Who would’ve thought I could go from hating someone to thinking he might be tolerable after all, even kind of sexy, and then right back to hating him again so quickly?
“So, he looks okay,” I said, trying to keep my cool. “Is he okay?”
“He’s been administered drugs, and you’ll have to give him these.” He handed me three small vials of tablets in a Ziplock bag.
“Something so serious, I thought he would be in a lot longer,” I said.
“Often with cats and lily poisoning, that would be correct. But we’ve got some tricks up our sleeve,” he said.
Magic tricks?
“A tablet of each a day until they’re all finished,” he said. “You don’t look like an irresponsible woman, Ms. Drake, but you never can tell with cat owners. Just keep him inside. Away from any new flowers.”
“For your information, Doctor O’Farrell, I look after my cat probably better than anyone in this town looks after their pets,” I said, standing, still cradling the contently purring cat in my arms.
“Everyone says something like that,” he said. “But if you saw the things I’d seen, you’d know where I’m coming from.”
“Well, why don’t you just try to stop projecting other people’s crimes onto everyone in town and treat each case as it comes? You might make some friends that way.”
“I’ve got enough friends,” he said and turned to move out of the door. The brown leather thong around his neck was jutting out of the top of his collar.
“Dr. O’Farrell,” I said. “I noticed your necklace. A very interesting design. I would love to know where you had it made.”
The vet’s hand went straight to his chest. He glowered. There was guilt in Conri O’Farrell’s eyes. Whether that guilt had anything or not to do with him being a murderer, I was now determined to find out.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Drake,” he said, the nice guy act now well and truly gone. He slammed the door behind him.