Felicia opened the gallery, thankful to have a normal business day but dreading the wedding tomorrow. Harold’s bookshop upstairs was already open and she had no more than put her briefcase down in her office when the internal phone began to ring.
“Hi.” Julie switched the phone to speaker mode and dropped into her seat. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, trying to massage normality back in.
“I saw you come in on the internal cameras.” Julie’s voice was peppered with the sounds of crunching. “Fancy coming up for coffee?”
“I’ve only just got in…” Felicia shook her head silently. “Could you come down, instead? At least I can deal with the post while we talk.”
“Sure. Got room for a friend?”
“As long as it’s not Harold. He threw away my pot of coffee at the house this morning. Three weeks I’ve been brewing it until it was like treacle. It was perfect.”
“It was also mouldy.” Harold’s voice came over the speaker. “Good morning to you too, Felicia. Why can’t you drink tea like a sane person?”
“Sorry Harold. I haven’t been able to drink tea since Mother forced it upon us every night when we were kids. I swore when we moved out, I’d never touch the stuff again.”
“To be fair, she used to make it with Holy Water,” said Julie. “It stopped you becoming something other than human until you moved out.”
“There you go,” said Harold. “Tea keeps you human.”
“I’ll be right down,” said Julie.
Felicia just caught “Harold, that was a private…” before the phone went dead. She grinned. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Harold, it was the way he treated the Manor as if he owned it. Yes, he owned it, but he didn’t have to treat the rest of them the way he did. It wasn’t like they didn’t clean up after themselves.
She spent the time until Julie appeared going through the e-mails of the last two days. When Julie appeared a few minutes later, armed with a pair of lattes from the coffee shop, she turned away from the computer.
“Oh,” she said as her second visitor appeared. “What happened to you?”
“I fell down the stairs at my flat,” said Pennie, perching on the edge of the photocopier. “Then I went through the stained glass in the door and got guillotined. Then I watched Chase break into my apartment and steal the papers Steve trusted to me. Then I followed Winston and watched him have a mini-breakdown over my death, then he made jokes at my expense. Why do people do that?”
“She’s not having a good day,” said Julie, passing over one of the coffee cups.
“See?” Pennie waved two hands at her.
“People make jokes to cover their embarrassment,” said Felicia. “What are we supposed to do? Wail and beat our chests in a manner befitting our irreconcilable loss of your friendship? Or mention casually that you can’t lie to us because we’ll see right through you?”
“Funny, very funny.” Pennie folded her arms. “I should have put a contract out on him too.”
“Why?” Felicia frowned. “What have you done?”
“I talked to that lovely girl, Valerie, who was so helpful yesterday. I wondered how a nun was so good with computers. Turns out she moonlights as a contract killer. Handy that. Handy that I had a big wad of cash stashed in a safe deposit box too. I put a contract out on Jim Hunt.”
“That was…enterprising. Why? Because he was spying on your flat or because he’s possessed by a demon?”
Pennie frowned. “Neither, actually. I didn’t know about the demon thing, though it makes a sick kind of sense that my husband was working for a demon. I want him dead because he killed me.”
Felicia looked at Julie. “You know all this already, don’t you? Why couldn’t you have emailed me?”
“Because I get to see your face this way. Jim’s made a life-size homunculus out of metallic resin in the image of her husband. It’s like being attacked by an Action Man.”
“The one that’s missing, presumed dead?”
“That’s the one.”
“And it attacked you, did it?”
“Sort of,” said Pennie. “It came toward me and I fell backwards down the stairs. It was trying to touch me.”
“Which would rather indicate it was trying to communicate.” Felicia frowned. “Harold knows more about this stuff than I do, but isn’t it likely that the Homunculus is Steve and he was trying to tell you a message from beyond the grave. He was probably desperate to tell you that he still loved you and would wait for you beyond the veil or something.”
Pennie frowned, considering the idea. Felicia took advantage of the lull in conversation to take three rapid swigs of her coffee, regretting it instantly.
“It’s still hot,” said Julie helpfully, as Felicia sprayed it over her trousers.
“If Steven still loves me, even though his spirit is tied up in that…thing…why did he go haring off after Chase?”
Julie started. “Did it? You didn’t mention that before.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.” Pennie shrugged, making a ripple in the air before the poster of Ophelia. It made her breasts wobble. “I was so annoyed with Chase I just thought ‘good riddance’.”
“We have to save him,” said Julie, looking at Felicia.
“Must we?” Felicia looked at the pile of unopened post and said. “Why? I have too much to do here.”
“Day jobs are for superheroes,” said Felicia.
“Ones that have to pay rent, like us.”
“Let him get pushed down some stairs too,” said Pennie. “He deserves it. I was falling in love with him and all he wanted was the stupid papers.”
“I doubt that,” said Julie. “You said you didn’t tell him about them until after your house was burgled. He stole them after that, probably at the instigation of a third party.”
“Oh God.” Pennie stood, covering her open mouth with her hands. “We have to save him.”
“Come on then.” Julie swigged the last of her coffee, raising an eyebrow at Felicia’s astonishment. “It beats working.”