3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
A thousand questions ran through my head. Where did elves live? Why weren’t there any in Witchlight Cove? What magical powers did they have? It wasn’t just nosiness: I wanted to know so that I could assess the level of threat I might face if she turned on me.
Some fae folk, like sprites, had a nasty toxic bite though they rarely used it. This girl might not have looked like she could poison me with a nip, but that was the point: innocent looks did a great job of luring people into a false sense of security – and she looked as innocent as the Disney Snow White. Not the real Snow White, of course, because she was reputed to be a real scary bitch.
I knew next to nothing about elves, and my parents would certainly have warned me if they had been perceived as a potential threat to the Eternal Flame that we guarded, so I probably didn’t need to be too worried. Besides, Orla was clearly distressed and the last thing I wanted to do was to make that worse. My questions could wait – but finding out about her situation couldn’t.
I started gently. ‘Do you have a picture of your parents?’
She reached into a pocket and pulled out a folded, well-thumbed photograph of three beautiful blonde elves. I took it from her and studied them. They all had matching green eyes and pale skin. The male, Barrie, had broad shoulders but an athletic build, and Simone had the same waif-like form as her daughter. They were peas in a pod.
I handed the precious picture back after snapping a copy of it with my phone. ‘A beautiful family,’ I murmured. ‘Tell me what happened to your parents, Orla. When did they go missing?’
‘It’s been over a week now,’ she said. ‘Nine days.’
‘Nine days?’ I tried to keep my voice and my posture neutral. My clients didn’t usually have magical skills, but most people could read at least a little body language. I had learned that if I showed the slightest hint that their case might not be smooth sailing, they would start to worry. Still, nine days was a long time. Her parents could already be on the other side of the planet.
‘And where were they when they went missing?’ I asked. ‘Did they go missing from home?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘They went away for the weekend for their anniversary to the Rollright Stones. They’re in Oxfordshire. Do you know them?’
It was my turn to shake my head. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s like a mini-Stonehenge,’ she explained. ‘A very mini one.’
The facts were mounting up so I picked up a pad and started making notes. ‘Excuse my lack of knowledge, but are they important to you? The stones,’ I hastened to add, in case she thought I meant her parents. Obviously her parents were important to her. ‘I mean, are the stones powerful or symbolic for elves?’
She smiled sadly. ‘They’re important to my parents because it’s where they first met. That’s why they go back each year. But no, they’re not important to most elves. Of course, there’s magic there and we do visit, but no more than any other supernatural sect. Wherever there are trees, that’s where magic is for us.’
Elves + trees = magic, I scribbled, not the most in-depth description, but it would do as an aide memoire. I briefly wondered if I could get Orla to use the sad potted fern I kept on the windowsill as some sort of magical protection. My flat was woefully thin on wards.
I looked up from my notepad. ‘Okay. When were you expecting them back?’
‘The following day. They always spend one night there and I stay with my aunt. They’ve had the same routine every year since I was born. Usually they come back around midday, but this time they didn’t. When they hadn’t returned by nightfall, I knew something was wrong.’
Her bottom lip was back to trembling again. Poor kid, she was doing her best to hold it together and I ached for her, but I kept my emotions from my face. She needed my professionalism, not my sympathy. Still, the not knowing was the worst.
I placed my notepad on my lap as I looked at her. ‘You said you always stay with your aunt. Was she not worried that they hadn’t come back?’
A flash of anger flickered in her eyes. ‘Yes, of course she was,’ she spat. ‘We went to the village elders that night, but they didn’t want to do anything!’ Outrage coloured her tone. ‘They said we’d probably got muddled. Then two days later, when my parents still hadn’t returned, they said we should just focus on living our lives.’
‘ What ?’ The word exploded out of me before I could contain it. There went my carefully fostered neutrality. I’d heard a lot of batshit crazy things in this job, but expecting someone to focus on living their lives when their parents were missing had to be up there at the top, right next to ‘I’m sure the vampire who bit me was just playing.’
‘Why would they say that? Do you think they’re involved?’ I probed.
‘No.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘They were scared, terrified that if something had happened to Mum and Dad it could happen to them, too – that it could happen to all of us. They thought it was safer to do nothing.’
Ah, the age-old philosophy: ‘If I ignore the problem, maybe it’ll ignore me back.’ I’d found it worked brilliantly for unpaid bills and diet plans.
Orla continued. ‘They want us to remain hidden.’ She hesitated. ‘Elves are taught to keep themselves to themselves, to live in strictly elven societies.’ I guessed that explained why I hadn’t seen any in Witchlight Cove. ‘But I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t just go on with my life like everything was fine. You understand that, right?’
Tears welled in her eyes again. ‘I couldn’t do nothing. My parents need me. I know it.’
My heart ached with sympathy. Yes, I understood; if there’d been any chance I could have got my parents back, I’d have taken it. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been an option for me.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I think that’s enough for now. I just have one last question.’ It had been bugging me since I’d let her in. ‘How did you find me? When you said I was meant to help you – did someone tell you about me?’
The only person who came to mind was someone from the magical world: Yanni, my forsaken best-friend’s grandmother, and the local Chief Inspector at the station in Witchlight Cove. Yanni was a formidable bear-shifter and an excellent tracker, but if Orla had gone to her first why wouldn't Yanni have helped her rather than sending her to me?
The way Orla was chewing on the inside of her cheek made me suspect Yanni had nothing to do with it; the elf was worried she wouldn’t be believed. ‘The trees,’ she said, eventually with a shrug. ‘I asked them to help me. I asked them, and I did what they said.’
My eyebrows shot up. ‘The trees?’ I said blankly.
‘Yes.’
‘They speak to you?’
‘It’s more like a feeling. I knew I had to come to London – that was my first step. After that, it was just following the feeling. I was guided to the cedar tree you have outside.’
A smile warmed her face for the first time since she’d entered the room. It was as if, for a moment, she wasn’t thinking about her parents. ‘It knew what type of person you were, that you would help me. And I knew I could trust its judgement.’
I brushed self-consciously at my trousers. Apparently nothing screams ‘trustworthy’ like a woman with coffee-stained jeans and a wilting cactus on her desk.
To a non-magical person, what she was saying would probably have made her sound like a complete weirdo; it even sounded a little outlandish to me. But when you’d seen your mother heal your best friend’s broken nose with a potion, or watched an old woman you trusted transform into a giant bear in front of you, your perception of what was normal shifted dramatically.
Still, her comment had raised more questions than answers. ‘If the trees can guide you like that, why didn’t they guide you straight to your parents?’ I asked.
Her smile dropped. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe they don’t think I can find them on my own. Maybe the elders are right and whatever happened to my parents is a danger to all elves, so the trees didn’t want me to go alone.’
That made sense. Orla was slight, waif-like. I couldn’t imagine her holding her own when she was in a queue for coffee, let alone against some powerful sorcerer or shifter. Just the thought of facing a powerful sorcerer had fear racing through me as harshly as Orla’s fear had done a few moments ago.
‘You will help me, won’t you?’ she asked. ‘My parents… They have money if you—’
I pushed aside my own fear. ‘I’ll help you,’ I promised. The last thing I wanted her to think was that I was taking the job because of money. That wasn’t how I worked. Sure, it helped with rent and everything, but this girl’s situation was bigger than that.
Her relief and gratitude flooded from her body so strongly that it nearly stole my breath. Thankfully it also pushed away the last vestiges of my own crippling fear. Relief and gratitude were far better emotions to be flooded by, and I gratefully let them buoy me up.
‘Thank you. Thank you!’ She beamed at me and surged to her feet. ‘When do we leave? We’ll need to go to Little Rollright, right? Are we going now?’
‘ We don’t go anywhere,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll go on my own. I can’t risk whatever may have happened to your parents happening to you. It may well be an elven issue.’
Her face fell and she slumped back down on the sofa, but she didn’t protest. I respected that about her; too many kids did whatever they wanted, regardless of the consequences. I’d once seen a teen try to out-drink a centaur. The centaur was fine – the teen? Not so much. This time, though, the consequences would be on my head so I wasn’t letting a damned thing happen to Orla, not on my watch.
Unfortunately, hers wasn’t the only case I had on and I didn’t want to let Rowena down. So much for thinking I had nothing interesting to do tonight other than watch hours of mind-numbing CCTV.
‘You’ll have to wait for me to get back. Get some rest, okay?’ I told her. ‘Do you have somewhere you can go?’
Orla chewed on her lip thoughtfully. ‘I saw a lovely park when I was walking here. The trees were beautiful. I could sleep beneath one of those.’
It was against my rules to let clients know where I lived – but she was already right here. What I was about to say went even more against my rules, but there was no way I would let her sleep in a London park. That would be a recipe for disaster; I couldn’t have her go missing as well.
‘You can stay here,’ I said gruffly, before I could change my mind.
‘Really?’ Her eyes lit up.
‘Yes, absolutely.’
As she glanced around, her attention landed on the plants scattered around the room. Most had wilted, several had brown leaves and one was now nothing more than a stick in a pot. ‘Thank you,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m sure there’ll be plenty to keep me busy.’
The way her eyes lit up at the plants, I had a sinking feeling my apartment was about to become the set of Extreme Plant Makeover: Elven Edition .