Chapter 12
In the dark, the ring of yurts was somehow more intimidating.
The night lent an air of mystery to the witchy decor and fragrant blooms. Arthur was grateful for his vampiric powers that allowed him extrasensory awareness.
Even with somewhat unsettling surroundings, he felt much more confident he would be able to handle whatever came his way, as long as it wasn’t a moody teenager with an axe to grind.
The confrontation with Brody had quite shaken him—more than anything that went bump in the night possibly could.
A gentle, warm breeze swirled past Arthur and Sal as they stepped over the mushroom ring that Hailey had claimed was a ward.
Again, there was no stir of magic that he could detect, though he felt inexplicably watched, reminding Arthur of the eerie sensation he’d experienced earlier that day when Ambrosia attempted to communicate with Lola’s spirit.
He’d already decided it hadn’t been Lola.
In fact, Arthur doubted it had been anything of an occult nature.
Despite Ambrosia’s claims, she had yet to display any real affinity for speaking with the dead (as long as one discounted the undead).
No, the feeling of being watched had to have come from this earthly plane. If Other Arthur Miller was here creeping around, seemingly knowledgeable about the camp’s location already, perhaps it had been him before as well.
They’d been too far behind Other Arthur to see which yurt he’d gone into. The ring of them was silent and still, with no lights shining from any. The shadows, a comforting presence now that Arthur could peer into them and see what they held, didn’t jump or move at all.
“Where did he go?” Sal whispered, a touch of mischief creeping into his voice. “Do you think he’s here doing crime? Should we join him? Just think, we’d be like a band—Salvatore and the Arthurs Miller.”
Arthur ignored that last comment. While Sal could—and did at every opportunity—carry a tune, Arthur was not at all musically inclined. Instead, he focused on the skills he did have, like investigating. “I’m not sure why he’s here. As for crime, I doubt he’s engaging in the sort I’d approve of.”
“Isn’t that the rub?” Sal sighed wistfully. “It’s all ‘be gay, do crime’ until you disagree with the crime in question.”
“Yes, well, he might be a murderer, Sal!”
“The men’s wrongs activists are going to cancel you.”
Sal began to laugh uncontrollably at his own joke and Arthur held a finger to his lips.
They had a suspect to find, and Arthur wasn’t about to let him get away with whatever nefarious activities he’d come here for.
Other Arthur probably hadn’t skulked all the way out here just to use the porta-potty.
If he’d killed Lola, maybe he was here covering his tracks.
All those potions in the yurt they’d seen that morning…
Other Arthur could be here to plant a poisoned potion to direct more suspicion on Ambrosia and her coven.
“This way,” Arthur whispered to Sal, more quietly than any human would be able to hear. They crept to the tent where the potion stores and ingredients were, careful to make as little noise as possible. Salvatore hovered a few inches off the ground beside him.
As Arthur pushed aside the heavy velvet curtain, he braced himself. Other Arthur could be a killer, and if so, Arthur would need to be ready to fend him off. But all his tensed muscles and bared fangs were for naught. The yurt was empty.
Arthur almost moved on, but hesitated. Moonlight spilled through the door to illuminate the collection of glass vials, glitter dancing in each potion like little stars.
Arthur beckoned Sal toward the shelf of bottles.
Earlier, he hadn’t had a chance to properly inspect the potions.
If one was poisoned, it could hurt someone in the future.
“Are we going to steal them all?” Sal asked eagerly. “You know how I love a heist!”
“Only if any seem out of place or odd.” Arthur flipped open his notebook and checked the list of things Lore had found in the victim’s stomach. The chamomile had likely been the tea she drank, and the oleander had killed her. The rest had to be the base potion.
Arthur picked up one of the vials on top—a glittering blue concoction.
Taped to the back was a bit of parchment that listed ingredients: blackberry basil syrup and butterfly pea flower tea.
He hurried to look at the others, scanning until he found the ones that matched the ingredients in Lola’s stomach lined up in a row, waiting to be dispensed to unwitting customers.
A calming brew. Lola Lataurelle might’ve added the potion to the cup herself, judging from the properties of the tea she’d made. After her spat with Sal, he could hardly blame her.
“I think this is it,” Arthur said to Sal, who’d wandered off to poke through the potion-brewing books. “Here, put a few of these in your pockets.”
“Oh, so we are doing crime! How delightful.” Sal eagerly accepted the bottles and stowed them each in separate pockets, so they wouldn’t clink together.
Arthur could always rely on Sal to know how to best discreetly pilfer things.
“This reminds me of the time I joined a band of master thieves. We stole the Mona Lisa—”
“You stole the most famous painting in the world?” Arthur paused in putting a bottle in his own jacket.
“Don’t be silly. It wasn’t famous when we took it. The original was dreadful, you see, and the subject of the painting wanted to swap it out with a better version, one that didn’t have her grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Not that the Cheshire Cat had been invented yet, of course.”
By the time Sal finished his outlandish story—one involving a rather unbelievable series of events that culminated in Salvatore himself posing for the replacement painting (So the forger could get the smile just right.
I’m sure you see the resemblance, my dear)—they’d gathered all the calming potions they could find in the tent.
Arthur would take them to Lore first thing tomorrow so she could test them for poison.
“Come on,” Arthur said under his breath, “let’s keep searching for the other Arthur Miller.”
“What if he’s not here anymore?” Sal asked, not bothering to whisper. He hung back, eyes following a fractal of moonlight cast by one of the glass vials protruding from his own pocket as he moved like a cat tracking a laser pointer.
“He’s a guest at the Dead & Breakfast.” Arthur pushed the curtain aside and ushered Sal through it. “We can confront him there if need be.”
Outside, the platinum pavilion looked deserted as it had before, but something put Arthur on edge. A rustling sound came from the yurt directly across from the entrance to the pavilion. It was Ambrosia’s.
Placing a finger over his lips to make sure Sal stayed silent, Arthur crept across the campsite, Sal beside him.
Ambrosia had been at the memorial service when they’d left, so unless she’d crept into the campsite shortly after they’d arrived, it was unlikely to be her.
No, this had Other Arthur Miller written all over it.
They flanked the entrance, ready. Arthur glanced to Sal. Their eyes met. Arthur nodded, then hesitated, feeling compelled to speak in a soft whisper.
“Just to check that you understand—we’re not going to pants him.” Such a misunderstanding had created quite an awkward moment the last time they’d tracked down a killer. Arthur hoped to never repeat the mistake.
Sal pouted. “But it’s our signature move.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It could be.”
“We don’t have a signature move, Sal. And if we did, it certainly wouldn’t be pantsing.”
“You never let me have any fun.”
Arthur didn’t bother pointing out that Sal had just finished leading the memorial guests in a group dance before they’d left. If that wasn’t Sal’s idea of fun, then Arthur didn’t know his husband.
“We will restrain whoever is inside, and question them about the murder. And we will all remain clothed while we do so,” Arthur said with the air of a preschool teacher counseling a group of toddlers.
“But what if a rogue crow flies through the yurt and unbuttons my shirt?”
“That won’t happen.”
“What if a deer comes along and eats the leg of my pants.”
“Unlikely.”
“What if a Tyrannosaurus rex—”
“Sal!”
After a moment, Sal nodded sullenly. “All right, we’ll do it your way.”
Taking a moment to steel his nerves, Arthur whipped the curtain aside and charged in.
Sal gamely did as well—or he tried to, but got caught in the fabric and twisted up in it somehow.
He took to the air, but floating seemed only to make it worse.
There was a sweet irony to the fact that now Sal was wearing even more clothes than he’d started with.
His husband could handle himself, so Arthur focused on the inside of the yurt.
It was dark, but that didn’t hinder his undead vision.
Half the space was a bedroom, with a bed sporting a plush comforter and a rustic-looking nightstand, though it had USB ports for charging electronic devices.
The other half was a surprisingly robust office setup for a witch on the go, with a wide desk strewn with papers, a slim laptop, and a mug with a few pens.
Off to the side were a few notebooks and a white goose-feather quill.
Behind the desk lurked the other Arthur Miller, who wasn’t making much effort to tidy up after his aggressive snooping.
They stared at each other over the mess of strewn papers for a drawn-out moment.
One Arthur Miller facing off against another.
Arthur (the original, thank you very much) could see when his opponent decided to run.
His muscles tensed, and his eyes darted for the entrance, where Sal still struggled against velvety restraints.
Though Sal wouldn’t be much help when it came to stopping Other Arthur, Original Arthur was more than a match for him. Arthur easily stepped into his path, blocking his escape route.