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“Don’t you think you’re going too hard on this one?” I asked as I sat beside Officer Thorn on the Hut’s front stoop.
She sighed, her massive shoulders rising and falling and still inches above mine. “I’m worried about him.”
Ahhh. Now that makes sense. I smiled faintly to myself as we looked out across the town together. The sun had risen, but under the heavy cloud cover the peaked rooftops still looked dull and damp. As did Trent’s garden, which smelled like sage and moss under the morning dew.
“He says I’m stubborn, but he’s the one who’s trouble,” Thorn added petulantly.
“You’re peas in a pod, honestly,” I said with some humor. “And I’m feeling left out. Want to explain everything to me? Luca and William and I went to the tavern last night for news, but you can imagine what that was like.”
“Even worse than reading Leo’s paper.” Officer Thorn seemed cheered by the opportunity to make a scornful remark about Leo, our local reporter—another very colorful and determined character. “You know about the note? I did have you look at it,” she reminded herself.
“Not to mention the whole town knows about that already, or thinks that they do,” I supplied. “So what’s happened since?”
“Olivia reached out to the local stations, and Daisy helped me search the mountain. But none of us came up with a thing. I was about to let the whole thing go as a Samhain prank yesterday when this new trouble rolls in.” She jerked one manicured thumb over her shoulder, indicating Trent’s patient.
I wrinkled my nose. “Has he really been trouble? Aside from town gossip.”
“He’s not right, Red,” Officer Thorn said heavily. “There’s something off about him.”
“Well,” I said, trying to think reasonably and impartially about my own experience with the stranger so far, “it seems like he might think the same of us.”
Officer Thorn let out one startled bark of a laugh, surprising several nearby crows into flight. “Have you been talking to Maggie? She’s always telling me I should be more kind.”
The mention of Maggie made me smile. Officer Thorn had been head over heels for the ex-acrobat for over a year, and just this past spring, they’d started dating. Maggie was short, slight, often a little nervous, and absolutely perfect for Thorn, in my opinion. They brought out the best in each other. “I’ve barely seen anyone lately,” I admitted lightly, “so no. But you should bring her over more often. Not to mention listen to her.”
“Oh, I know it.” Thorn tugged at one long ear, a fond expression on her face. “It’s just—it’s an odd case, you have to admit.”
“Do you actually know that this new man is related to your kidnapping note?” I asked.
She answered thoughtfully, her eyes on a pair of distant figures that could be seen on the road leading out of town. “The timing is too coincidental. I can’t rule it out. And before you say anything, yes, I know that Trent is right and we should give this newcomer the benefit of the doubt. But if he is tied up in a kidnapping case, and for some reason he decided to come into town to gather information or even another victim, I don’t want Trent to be the one at hand. I don’t want anyone to be at hand. Maybe I wouldn’t be so worried if he hadn’t rambled on about the mountain and murder before taking one look at my uniform and gluing his lips shut.”
I could see how it was a complicated and frustrating situation, but the image still made me chuckle a little. “Gluing, huh? Well, he didn’t use any potion of mine. Why’d you want all those antiseptic potions, by the way?”
“For Trent’s stores,” Thorn answered, still watching the two figures. They were clearly coming up the dirt path that led to Trent’s place. “I promised him I’d get him something for his trouble.”
“You’re paying the local Witch for his cooperation using my merchandise?” I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s how any of this is supposed to work. And if you think I’m going to be party to bribery, then you—”
“Red,” Thorn interrupted, “who do you think that is, coming here?”
I glanced at the figures, distracted. The hill was misty, but they were quite close now. One looked like Olivia—her dark ears were clearly visible, as were her shiny uniform buttons and polished knee-high boots. But I couldn’t make sense of the other. It was a large figure, dressed in light colors and carrying a white umbrella, moving slowly but gracefully up the path . . .
“No way,” I said, as the image finally clicked into place in my head. “Did Lavender really leave her tavern to come see us?”
* * *
It was perhaps the first time that I had seen Officer Thorn not be wholly distracted by the arrival of pastries. She took a handful of croissants and mini quiches from Olivia, passed some to me, and then waved her assistant through the door to deal with Trent. Meanwhile, Lavender lingered in the garden, clearly anxious about something.
“I looked for you at the station, but you weren’t there,” she said.
To me, this made the encounter even stranger. I’d never seen Lavender outside of her tavern. Now suddenly she had been to the police station and the Hut? She might as well have flown to the moon and back.
“Is there an emergency?” Thorn asked, clearly thinking along the same lines as me.
“No, nothing so urgent.” Lavender looked through the dark doorway, then at Thorn, then at me. “I believe there is something I need to tell you, dears. I thought it best to do so sooner than later.”
I exchanged a glance with Officer Thorn, still confused. “Want me to leave? I can catch up with Trent and Olivia. Or, honestly, get back to my shop.”
“You should stay,” Lavender said firmly, before Thorn could respond. “If the officer has no objections, of course.”
“None yet,” said Thorn, cautiously. Swallowing half a croissant, she added, “Do you want to talk here or back at the station?”
“The kitchen garden will suffice.” Lavender moved away, through unruly rows of yarrow and thyme. She still seemed unusual to me, almost unearthly, like she was gliding. Probably because I always see her behind the bar and never actually notice her legs, I thought, reminding myself to calm down. Lavender’s long skirts were definitely touching the ground. Probably. It was a little hard to tell with the mist and the plants . . .
“Eat while you can.” Thorn nudged me as she moved to follow the innkeeper.
I looked down at the pesto quiche in my hands and found that I was hungry. I ate it in rapid bites as I followed along, too.
Lavender settled herself on a large rock that had been rolled up to the fence—no doubt Trent had needed it out of the way, and had never gotten around to actually moving it fully out of the yard. Thorn and I stood in front of her, pastries in hand like children on a snack break. We were ten paces from the back of the Hut, and in the cool misty air, no sound seemed to travel.
For once, though, Lavender looked a little uncertain.
“You know something about the newcomer?” Officer Thorn prompted.
“I . . . do.” Lavender took a deep breath and smiled up at us, though her smile looked distinctly sad. “It’s no use me seeing him; he won’t remember me. Olivia was telling me he has been . . . unhappy. I wouldn’t want to trouble him.”
“But you’re sure you know him?” Thorn asked, all at attention now.
“Yes, I . . . I saw him through the tavern doors as he came into the Square last night. I knew I would one day,” she added wistfully. “But of course, he did not make it all the way back.”
Officer Thorn glanced at me before brushing away the last of her crumbs and pulling her notebook from her breast pocket. “You’d better start at the beginning.”
“The beginning was a very long time ago,” Lavender said, her eyes distant and unfocused as she remembered. “We came here many, many years ago . . . my daughter and I.”
Daughter? I’d never known Lavender had family. My eyes were probably wide as saucers, but no one was paying attention so I didn’t bother to hide it.
“Three hundred years ago,” Lavender continued. “It was only pixies and elves living in the woods then, but we knew Belville could become something special. She knew it—Violetta. She convinced me it was the perfect place to make a home. And so we did—a home for all who came through here; an inn where all would be welcome and the hearth was always burning . . .”
A tear traced Lavender’s cheek as she talked, though she made no notice of it. “Many years later, once her dream had been built, a sorcerer came to stay at our inn. She was in failing health, this sorcerer, and her own magic had deserted her. She was looking for something that would save her life . . . In those days, there were all kinds of rumors about the Tree of Life and Belville Mountain. She said she had come to find a way to heal herself. Instead, she fell in love with my daughter.
“Violetta did not return her affections. She had grown very fond of a local boy, one of the elves. They were so very close . . . It was just over two hundred years ago now that they were married, in the spring. And soon after, their baby boy was born.”
This time she did notice her tears, and broke off her story for a moment. I stepped in, handing her my handkerchief without a word. She nodded and, for a brief second, gripped my hand.
“She was so happy,” Lavender sighed. “So happy here. But before he was a year old, her boy was taken from her. He vanished—and so did the sorcerer, who had stayed on at the inn . . .
“I should never have let her stay.” Her face hardened for a moment, but soon fell. “But Violetta would never stand for me turning someone out. She thought the sorcerer would come around and accept the fact that she was happy with someone else. Instead, she was gone, and the precious little baby with her, and—and Violetta—
“Neither she nor Kieran could bear it very long,” Lavender said quietly. “They spent all their time searching. Like many of the elves who lived here at that time, Kieran had a magical connection to plants, especially the local forest—they hoped that would help them . . . They must have gone over the mountain a million times. But they could never find anything, and in time, it ate them away. Kieran died first, of grief, in the fall. Violetta followed him that winter.
“That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago,” Lavender said, wiping at her face with my handkerchief. “And I . . .”
“You’ve been here ever since,” I concluded, deeply moved, when she could not. “Always in the tavern your daughter built.”
“I promised her I would wait for him,” she agreed, brokenly. “I knew one day I would look up and he would walk through that door . . .”
Officer Thorn sniffed conspicuously before pulling herself together. “You’re saying that, roughly two hundred years ago, your grandchild was kidnapped, presumed hidden somewhere on Belville Mountain?”
“They couldn’t have gone far,” Lavender said, though it was unclear why she thought so. “They wouldn’t have left the mountain.”
I shivered as I looked up at Thorn. “Then the note that you received . . . Do you really think?”
“The man you saw yesterday,” Thorn said, focused on Lavender though her eyes looked much more shiny than usual. “You’re sure it was him?”
Lavender sighed deeply, reaching for my hand again. I held on, surprised by her warmth. “It was like seeing both of them at once,” she said. “Kieran’s height and build, Violetta’s coloring. There is a trace of magic about him, too—forest magic, plant magic. Just like both his parents. I—I just know.”
Officer Thorn’s pencil paused over her notes. “His name?”
“Purslane,” Lavender said, her voice cracking over the unused syllables. “She called him Purslane.”