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I gave William the afternoon off—he certainly deserved it, after covering for me for several days. And in the wake of my conversation with Rhys, I was feeling guilty. Aside from wishing I could protect everyone, I’d never before thought about the way that me helping with investigations was difficult for my friends. Even if I wasn’t accusing their significant others of murder, I was relying on them to watch the shop or come on hikes or get lost in strange locales.
My trip home over the summer had taught me a lot about myself, and in some ways, I was still trying to take it all in. I thought about this absently as I cleaned up my pumpkin spice novelty display. It made a nice change from pondering murder and mysterious plants, at least.
Naturally, this was when the police found me.
In this case, though, it wasn’t Officer Thorn with more “volunteer” tasks or clues. Instead, Olivia came into the shop, a long blue cloak around her shoulders and a basket over one arm.
“Hello, Olivia,” I called from my corner.
“Hello,” she chirped back. “Trent sent me. He needs more antiseptic potions and he wants to know if you have dried lavender?”
“You’re doing errands for the Witch now, too?” I asked, amused, as I stepped away from my display to help her with her order.
“The duty of the police is to help,” she replied very seriously. “They tell you that every day at the Guild.”
I glanced over my shoulder at her as she followed me to the medicinal shelves near the counter. She’d mentioned before that she didn’t really hear people’s tone, so she often missed out on jokes. But what I found more interesting was that she didn’t seem to mind the fact that she’d spent the last several days cooped up in a Hut with an unruly Witch and an even more unruly patient.
“How’s it been going over there?” I asked, curious.
“Jack is doing really well for someone who’s been through so much,” Olivia told me. “It’s amazing. It’s hard to believe he was living in a tower hidden away for so long.”
“Oh,” I said, a little surprised—this was not quite Officer Thorn’s view of the situation. But, she’d never been one to dictate her opinions to her trainees. (Just orders.)
“We know now that he was,” Olivia went on. “Officer Thorn said it was your idea? Giving him paints?”
“Oh,” I repeated. I’d entirely forgotten that. “Yes, I did suggest it. It’s not that I wanted to trick him, but I just thought, it might take some of the pressure off of getting him to talk.”
“It was wonderful,” Olivia said.
I began piling sparkling potion bottles into her basket, half waiting for her to say stop, half puzzled at her enthusiasm. “Was it?”
“He loves it,” she confirmed. “He told me so. Not with words, but the flower he drew—it was happy. Not all of his paintings are happy, of course, most are very sad. But I think that’s good for him. Each time he shows me one, I can feel his relief, just for a moment. I’m going to the art supplies store next to get him more things.”
“Then you might still want room left, right? Is that enough potions?” I asked finally. She looked down like she hadn’t even noticed them there. She counted them up and handed one back to me, and as she did so, I couldn’t help but add, “Is he sad to be stuck there? In the Hut?”
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Olivia said. “Officer Thorn says we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. She says you’re the one who really taught her that, by the way. So I know that perhaps according to the Guild, I shouldn’t say, but I really don’t think that’s why he’s sad. It feels more like confusion—like great big swirls of dark colors, and things withering away.
“Even in the Guild handbook, it does say that not everyone speaks with words,” she added. “It’s not so unusual. There’s a merfolk clan that swore off them, and some plants might speak using body language. Plus, a lot of speaking animals actually do better when they can make testimony based on other senses or act things out. Courts have to be very open-minded.”
I smiled, thinking of Frank and his reticence. “That’s a beautiful point.”
Though she probably had a decade on me, Olivia blushed, a bit like a schoolchild. “I read that chapter very closely.”
“That’s probably part of why you’ll make such a great officer,” I said. Recalling Trent’s request for lavender, I began sorting through the baskets that held my dried herbs, filling a muslin bag for Olivia to take.
“Ye-es.” For the first time, Olivia seemed hesitant. When I glanced up, her catlike eyes were far away. “I just wonder . . . How does Officer Thorn spend so much time getting to know one case, and then move on to another?”
“Officer Thorn?” I hesitated, a bit lost. “She does set things aside sometimes, like this morning, to focus on the fair. But she’s still thinking everything over and has a plan, I’m sure.”
“Not just her,” Olivia said, with a slight gesture of impatience. “In general. Once you solve a case, it’s gone.”
“Hm, I think I see what you mean now.” And with my face down in my herbs again, I smiled a little. Maybe Sakura was right about a little romance. “I suppose what you say is true. But the people involved with the case will still be around. Especially if they’re your neighbors, or friends, or—more.”
Olivia seemed to be thinking this over. I looked up again to ask, “How much lavender did Trent want?”
“Four bunches,” she said. “I asked him what a bunch is and he just said you would know.”
“I would, would I?” I pursed my lips at the lavender I’d bundled up so far. What size of bundle or, better yet, how many stalks would have been helpful, but Trent had never been too interested in details. I tucked what I could into the bag and decided that if he needed more, he could just come over himself. “Alright, I think that’s enough for now, at least. Did he want you to handle payment, too?”
“He said to write him a bill.” Olivia followed me to the register. “You might see him out later today, but it was my turn to get out of the house, he said.”
“At least you aren’t all holed up in there constantly,” I said sympathetically. “What’s Officer Thorn been up to, do you know?”
“She’s getting the Guild to send in a special sorcery consultant,” Olivia replied. “I saw them give a lecture while I was in training, and they are very good with forensic magic. I thought it might be helpful.”
“I’m sure it would,” I agreed, as I finished writing everything out. “Good luck, to all of you.”
Olivia bade me a polite goodbye, but I hardly heard a word of it. In handing her the handwritten note, I’d become distracted.
Studying the magic of this crime was one thing, and certainly something I couldn’t help much with. But studying the paper—I’d forgotten that altogether!
* * *
Half an hour later, I had a fresh cup of earl grey and my microscope set up on the sales counter. It was nearing closing time anyway, and my lab was practically over-run with magical plants. They weren’t everywhere, exactly, but they were still enthusiastically growing and distilling, and I didn’t need any extra magic pollen or sorcified moss interfering with simple science.
Because that’s all a study of Thorn’s two notes would be: pure examination—and comparison. The comparison part would come later. I already knew, from examination with a special microscope lens—a gift from Officer Thorn last Yule—that neither note bore any fingerprints. So that left me with basic material evidence. For now, I was determined to be methodical about laying the groundwork.
I pulled the anonymous notes from my lab coat pocket and set them on the counter in front of me. In all the excitement with the tower, I’d put them away, thinking they wouldn’t be of any more use. But sometimes the tiny, everyday things were more helpful than the big, flashy clues. I laid out a fresh notebook and began to bring my thoughts into order.
Naturally, I focused on the earliest note first. A child has been kidnapped and is being kept on Belville Mountain, it read. I copied down the message, both as a way to identify which note I was observing, and in case anything happened to the original. So far, I was only looking—not burning it up and doing flame or ash comparisons—not that I ever would destroy evidence, of course! But in this case it wouldn’t hurt to be too careful.
Next I made some notes about the handwriting. It was in all caps, but still clearly an old-fashioned cursive, steady—no dashes or wobbles or half-closed letters indicating haste. The ink, I’d already examined; I wrote down a few notes about that, as much as I could remember. It was standard black ink, nothing too noteworthy: the kind Olivia would see bottles and bottles of at the art shop, no doubt.
But the paper. Though ink is essentially a potion, and fun to mess with, I’ve always found that paper is more distinctive. There are so many ways to make it, and so many uses for it, that a careful alchemist can be very specific. This paper was bright white, the kind preferred for writing, as opposed to wrapping or printing. It was thin, and cut into a rectangle no bigger than my hand—most likely it had come from a pad of note paper, then, as opposed to being sold for artistic purposes. But while the bottom and the sides were cut cleanly, the top had been torn away. Like the handwriting, the tear was clean and even, not hasty but purposeful.
With those observations down, I turned to the second note. This one was even more interesting. Check the Lost River Outlook for important information on the case, it read. That was even more direct than the first.
From there, the differences continued. It was in old-fashioned cursive, too, but this time the writing seemed far shakier. Perhaps someone had been trying to copy the first note, or writing in a way that was unfamiliar to them? That suggested they were trying to disguise their own handwriting, which was interesting. I made my notes and moved on.
The ink, as far as I could tell with only my eyes and my lenses, was the same basic black writing ink used for the first note. What was more strange was that the paper, too, seemed similar. In fact when I measured the notes against each other, they matched—as if they’d been torn from the same block. But the second note had been torn farther down on the paper, and much more unevenly, as though the writer was tearing a piece off fast and not totally paying attention.
Why be purposeful with one note and hasty, almost distracted, with the other? I sat back as I looked over my work so far. I couldn’t decide, yet, whether there had been one note writer or two. But it was clear that there had been one source of paper. An unlined notepad like this could be found at the art shop, most likely, or even at some of the businesses around town that wrote out bills and receipts, just like I had. They were common in homes, too. If I wanted to look for the source of the paper, I had a lot of potential comparisons to work against.
I glanced out the windows. Evening had fallen, and the shadows were thick. I smiled to myself.
There was a lot to do, and if I moved fast enough, the cold and dark couldn’t catch me.