Chapter Six

Chapter Six

To my great and everlasting disappointment, Taliyah didn't peel out of the driveway, her lights and sirens blaring.

I mean, escaping the coven house might have been an emergency to me, but she just sat there, giving me a look with one eyebrow raised. A look that I was ignoring, I might add. Instead, I sat up straight and tried to look like the serious, hard-working Council member I was—one who was very, very concerned with whatever was happening in Haven Hollow. Certainly not someone who'd just about sprinted to her car.

"You want to tell me what's going on?" Taliyah finally asked, when it was clear I wasn't going to crumple under the weight of her stare.

"Nope!" I gave her a bright smile. "I am not planning to do anything of the sort."

"Wanda," she started on a sigh.

"How about you tell me what brings you to the coven house at this time of night? I know you know Maverick is out with Sibyl tonight."

Taliyah's face softened, either at the mention of Maverick, or of Sybil, or possibly both. But the soft look was there and gone in a second, like a peek of warm winter sun from behind storm clouds. It only took a heartbeat for her face to go all closed and serious again, and a little ripple of unease traveled up my spine.

"Wait, everyone's okay, right? Nothing bad has happened, has it?" I double-checked.

Hollows were formed to give the supernatural folk a safe place to live, without having to worry about constantly being discovered or hunted by humans. The Council kept the secret, and people went about their lives. In theory, any kind of fighting or outside attack was forbidden in a Hollow, and people took a dim view of anyone who threatened anyone else while inside the confines of such ‘safe' locations.

Haven Hollow, sadly, was the most picked on Hollow of the history of towns—as far as I could tell, anyway. The last couple of years had been a never-ending stream of all kinds of misfortune, to the point where residents had started moving away to some of the newly built Hollows.

As much as it pained me to realize the truth in the matter (because I liked to consider myself a loner), there were definitely people in this town that I cared about. What was more, I'd be furious if something happened to them. Truth continue to be told, it was actually more people that I cared about than I was comfortable with, really. More than I could count on both hands, anyway. Absurd what had become of me. But anyhoo…

"There's been an incident, but everyone is okay," Taliyah answered.

My breath came out in a rush. As long as no one was hurt, then I guessed all was okay. Now, if we could just vacate the coven house before Olga decided to ‘regale' me with another of her bad love stories…

"You know, we could have just talked inside."

"Nah." I leaned back into the freakishly clean upholstery of Taliyah's cruiser and turned far enough to look her in the face. "Tell me what's going on."

I could see the struggle in Taliyah's face as she wrestled with herself. It wasn't in her nature to back down and let things go—not when she had a case to solve. She had to ask, had to press, had to drag out every ounce of information available to her. But she also knew when to pick her battles, so after a tense moment, I saw her rein herself in and move on.

"This is a two-fold situation," she started hesitantly.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I need to ask you some questions, as both a witness, and as a member of the Haven Hollow Council."

How mysterious. I nodded, so she knew I was paying attention. "So ask."

She nodded. "I want to talk to you about Jenny Carrel."

I drew a blank, frowning. "Who?"

Taliyah gave me a look, like she thought I was yanking her chain, but I honestly had no idea who she was talking about. Carrel? The name didn't ring a bell.

Sighing, Taliyah reached for the notebook she carried with her constantly. "She says she bought a dress from you yesterday?"

"Oh, shoe girl," I answered, nodding. "ThatJenny Carrel. Yes, I remember her." I barely remembered the last name she'd given me and had to wonder if she actually had. "Is she okay?"

Taliyah, whose eyes had narrowed when I mentioned the shoes, nodded slowly. "She will be."

If that wasn't an ominous response, I didn't know what was. "Did something happen to her? Something that requires hexing someone else?" I had to wonder if her date had gone bad. If there was one thing I couldn't deal with, it was a man who took something from a woman he had no right taking and if that was the case, the man in question would rue the day he was born.

A tiny smile twitched at the corner of Taliyah's mouth before she forced her expression back into serious cop mode. "No, it's nothing like that."

"Oh." I wasn't disappointed—no, that would have been all kinds of wrong. It was just… well, I hadn't gotten to hex anyone for a long while and I was worried I was going to get rusty. Maybe another opportunity would make itself known in the foreseeable future…

"So, what do you remember about Miss Carrel?"

I drummed my nails against the dashboard, thinking. "Honestly? Not much. She was blond, I think?" Or was she a brunette? Redhead? Jeez. "I don't tend to remember people once they leave the store."

On the job, Taliyah would never do something as unprofessional as roll her eyes, but she sure looked like she wanted to. "Why don't you just walk me through what happened, in your own words."

"As opposed to someone else's words?" I laughed, because the comment was pretty stupid.

"Wanda," Taliyah sighed.

"Okay, okay." I wasn't sure if Taliyah meant to make me feel like I was being interrogated, or if she even cared, but there it was. The truth was that I hadn't actually done anything to or involving this Jenny Carrel person, so I figured I'd play along. Taliyah had gotten me out of an exasperating situation, after all, even if it was one I'd made for myself.

So, I started my story, running through the basics, gushing a bit about the dress I'd helped Jenny to pick out and how well it had matched her incredible shoes. Taliyah wasn't impressed, if the eyebrow she raised at me was any indication. I was still proud of myself, though. I mean, it had been a perfect pairing, and I was always a little smug when someone dropped a fair amount of cash on my counter.

"Mostly, I remember the shoes," I continued. "She'd just gotten them, and they were gorgeous. They were so blingy too—with all the gemstones."

"Gemstones?" Taliyah asked as she wrote the word down on her pad like it might come in handy later.

"Right," I nodded. "If I were the kind of person to swoon, I might have over those shoes. They were the sort of thing that remind people that fashion is art and they were even in my size, size eight." Then I sighed and shook my head.

"And then what happened?" Taliyah asked in her overly patient voice.

I shrugged. "Nothing. Jenny bought the dress I recommended, and she left."

Taliyah made a note. "And the dress she bought, was it enchanted?"

"Yes," I said slowly, not loving where this line of questions was headed, because I was worried she'd think I'd screwed up the enchantment and that had been the reason for whatever had become of Jenny—information I still didn't have at my disposal.

"It was bespelled?" Taliyah double-checked, looking up at me.

I gave her a cocked brow expression. "Most of my clothing is."

"Right. What was the charm on this particular dress?"

"It wasn't anything extreme that Jenny wanted in the enchantment department—just a little extra confidence. Something to show her in the best light possible." Taliyah continued to give me that suspicious expression. "It wasn't anything that would go and make her do ballet in front of a truck, Taliyah."

She shot me a look, whether for the less-than-sympathetic comment I'd just made, or the fact that she'd been one of the people at ground zero when Maverick and I had brought one of my dress mannequins to life, I wasn't sure. The point was—Taliyah knew my magic and Maverick's magic was strong stuff. If we'd brought a mannequin to life, the list of other things we could do was lengthy. So telling her the dress was charmed was probably bringing up all sorts of things that I didn't want brought up.

Raising the dead was one thing. It was frowned upon, sure. Giving a ghost a new body, that would have the magical community concerned, certainly. But giving life and sentience to something that had never been alive at all? Right—if that information fell into the wrong hands, those with the wrong hands would've been hammering at my door, torches and pitch forks in hand. Fortunately, the people I chose to spend time with were very good at keeping secrets.

I fixed Taliyah with a look of my own. "Now, how about you tell me what happened to Jenny that brought you to my door at this time of night?"

Taliyah took a slow breath, flipped through her notebook to an earlier entry, and started talking. What I learned was that Jenny Carrel did go on her date. And it sounded like it was nice enough, if terribly boring and mundane, but what could I expect from young humans? That didn't stop me from asking for more detail, just in case there was a nugget of inspiration in there somewhere. I let it go when Taliyah gave me a warning look from eyes gone suddenly icy blue.

The point was, the date had been going well, and the two of them had decided to head to Stomper's Creamery for some late-night ice cream, when all at once, Jenny's feet had basically taken on a mind of their own and she'd stood up, then started jogging around the store uncontrollably.

At first, the jogging had been embarrassing. Then it became a bit scary, since not being able to control your limbs was never much fun. But then she'd actually taken off and burst through the store's door, running wildly, until her feet had carried her right out into Main Street, and directly into traffic.

"Goddess." I stared through the windshield, being able to picture it all too well. "And you said she's okay, though?"

"I said, she will be," Taliyah corrected me, her face a little grim. "She's hurt, and she's going to be in the hospital a while, but it could have been a whole lot worse."

A whole lot worse? "Were the shoes ruined?" I mean—running in heels was never fun—for your feet or for the shoes.

"The shoes are fine, Wanda," Taliyah muttered, shaking her head. I released a pent of breath of relief.

"Well, I'm sure the whole thing must have been terrifying for Jenny." Especially because she was human, and had no idea what was happening to her. I'd seen a similar curse before. The Spring Fae thought it would be a hilarious prank to curse humans to nonstop dancing. Usually it was just to embarrass them, but some of the darker court members would sometimes push it until the human collapsed from exhaustion, and some even died. Yes, the Fae had a very strange sense of humor.

The seat creaked as I turned to look at Taliyah more closely. Her face was that perfectly neutral police mask she usually wore, but there was a tightness at the corner of her eyes that even her glamour couldn't seem to hide.

"Are you worried that it's like that one summer?" I asked, searching her face, looking for any tell. "This isn't really Winter's style, though. They don't do pranks." Still more silence. "Are you worried Janara is recruiting from the other courts?"

We'd certainly had an interesting time at the hands of the Fae lately, with a rogue Spring Fae spoiling milk and tying people's hair into elf knots. Both had acted as a distraction so Janara, the Usurper, who had killed Taliyah's birth parents could escape her faerie circle prison. We'd managed to keep Janara locked up for a few more months, but she'd finally managed to slip her prison.

I understood Taliyah not wanting Janara to take the throne of winter, even though Taliyah didn't want it either. And even though Taliyah had never even so much as met her birth parents, it didn't change the fact that Janara had murdered them and would have murdered her, too. Plus, Janara was a backstabbing, murderous bitch, and that wasn't the kind of person that should be in charge of an absolute monarchy.

Not to mention the fact that I thought Taliyah might feel a little guilty, a little responsible, for the danger Janara represented to Haven Hollow. Taliyah might have spent almost fifty years as a human, but that didn't mean she wanted to see the little people of winter suffer under a despot.

Besides, no matter what Taliyah said, there was no way that Janara would ever allow her to live. Not when she would still pose a threat, with her claim to the throne. Taliyah was and always would be a rallying point, a representative for the people who didn't like life under Janara's boot.

Taliyah's hands tightened on the steering wheel until the plastic creaked. Faint traces of frost spread over the curve, glittering in the faint light. "I don't count this as a prank. Jenny could have died."

"Well, you're not wrong." My words came out a bit breezier than I'd intended, and Taliyah's jaw went tight. "But unfortunately, it is a prank by Fae standards." I breathed in deeply and then shook my head. "So, the question really should be: what did little Jenny do to piss off a faerie?"

"As far as I can tell? Nothing." Taliyah released the steering wheel to flip a few pages back in her notebook. "From what I've gathered, Jenny's human. Works an office job. The date she was on was the first one she'd had in a while, so it wasn't a jealousy thing on the guy's part, most likely."

I tapped my finger on my lower lip. "Just keep in mind that the Fae's definition of ‘a while' is different from yours or mine."

"What do you mean?"

"Jenny could have insulted someone while she was in grade school, and they've only just gotten around to settling that score."

"Would a faerie really take offense to a child?" Taliyah asked.

I cocked my head to the side. "Stranger things have happened."

She nodded and then breathed in deeply. "Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything useful," she added hastily when I opened my mouth to respond.

"Rude," I sniffed.

"The question still stands."

I gave her a look. "I can't tell you much. Not without examining Jenny, at any rate."

"Examining her?"

I nodded. "I might be able to pick up who cursed her, and possibly why or what triggered it—if she is, in fact, cursed. I could at least recognize what court the curser came from. Especially if we examined her very soon—the signature of magic does have a way of evaporating over time."

"Then time is of the essence?"

I nodded. "It is."

Taliyah sighed and then nodded as she turned her key in the ignition, and we were on our way.