Witch's Bell Book One (28 page)

On one street corner, while she
had silently been walking past
– her pink polo shirt, and Christmas red
and green slacks making her stick out like a nude in a nunnery – a
couple had burst out from the restaurant just behind her. They
proceeded to take up either side of Ebony, as they all waited for
the lights to change, and continue their incredibly loud domestic
tiff.

“
Well what do you want?!” the
woman in tights and a puffy chiffon top screamed at the man. “You
don't know, do you?”

The man, who was wearing a
fairly well-cut suit, but whose breath smelt like cheap and nasty
alcohol, just scoffed very loudly
– practically hacking up all over Ebony in
his obvious attempt to show just how disdainful he was of Miss
Chiffon right now. “Sorry?” he snapped, hand patting at his chest
like a one-armed gorilla asserting dominance. “I don't know what I
want? Are you for real?”

Ebony just stood there, giving
a quiet little sniff, and concentrating very hard on the set of
traffic lights
– hoping that they'd just hurry up and change.

“
Of course I'm for real, you
idiot,” the woman spat back, her large hoop-earrings dangling
around her neck like insects around the light.

Which was a good point, Ebony
thought, face becoming stiffer with her friendly, but not
interested expression
– most people are real. But that didn't answer why
these people having a useless lovers-tiff on either side of her,
like some kind of angry romantic hamburger – with Ebony as the
pickle in the middle that no one even wanted.

“
You're not hearing me,” the man
said, louder than a fog horn. If he honestly thought Miss Chiffon
couldn't hear him, then Miss Chiffon must have complete and total
hearing loss – because Ebony fancied that everyone for blocks
around would be able to pick up his drunken slurs. “You don't know
what you want,” he repeated.

The woman just rolled her eyes,
crossing her arms with such a labored expression that it half
seemed as if she was dragging shut giant cast-iron gates.
“Mark, you've never
known what you want.”

And with that, the lights had changed,
and Ebony had shot forward like a horse at the races. Must beat
them, her hind brain thought with a primal urgency. She didn't want
to be dragged into this hilariously uncomfortable fight.

So Ebony had powered on, thinking the
worst was behind her, when she'd finally managed to get to the
police department. But before she'd even been able to get through
the doors, she'd been dragged into another pointless dispute that
had nothing to do with her.

A homeless woman, with a wild crop of
perennially unkempt hair, rushed up to Ebony and put a hand on her
sleeve.

But before Ebony could look around and
ask what she wanted, a uniformed officer marched up, expression as
pained as a man that has just lost his house, his dog, and his
leg.

“
Look,” he shook his head, “you
need to start behaving.”

“
Behaving!” the woman snapped
around with a wide-eyed gaze that looked like the tracking lock of
a homing missile. “Don't you tell me how to act – I haven't broken
the law!”

The officer took off his hat,
scratching his head with a quick, tired move.
“Yet. But you've got to calm
down. If you want this case looked into, you've got to cooperate,”
the man sighed heavily, “ma'am,” he added as a hasty
afterthought.

“
They stole my stuff!” the
woman's wild hair matched each wild dip and turn of her head, as
she emphasized her points with the body language of a
snake.

“
I know, and we're looking into
it, we really are. But the way you are behaving now, you have to
ask yourself – what do you want?” the man took a peculiar pause.
“Is this what you want? Do you want to be arrested for being a
public nuisance, or harassing a police officer? Or do you want us
to do our best, and contact you when we know anything? It's your
choice.”

Somehow, inexplicably, the
woman's hand had remained on Ebony's arm throughout the entire
conversation
– as if Ebony was a still, silent, and steady rock that
could easily be used as an anchor. And even though Ebony couldn't
have helped but hear their entire talk, maybe being tied to the
conversation by the woman's gnarled hand served to make her pay
even more attention than what she would ordinarily have.

What did the woman want? That was a
peculiar way to put it. Surely it would have just been better to
directly point out that she was walking the fine line between
public tanty and public nuisance. Why ask her what she
wanted?

The situation had quickly
resolved itself or, rather, Ebony had quickly extricated herself
and finally managed to make it to work
– only a tiny ten minutes
late.

But then her odd day, well it just
kept getting odder.

She was stopped on the stairs by
Frank. It was Ebony's father's birthday coming up, and Frank wanted
to know what to get him.

“
What does he want?” Frank said
to her, his frail frame somehow managing to lithely stand on two
steps without the strain crumpling him in two. “What does he really
want, Ebony Bell? I've known your father for some time, but I can't
keep getting him pens for his birthday,” Frank had laughed in a way
that summed him up perfectly – through his nose in rounded hiccups,
that pulled at his aged skin like rain hitting plastic
wrap.

Ebony had shrugged.
“Get him ... a
book, or a watch, or a pen – he likes pens.”

“
Come on, Ebony Bell,” Frank
shook his head, “you can do better than that. There must be
something he really wants?”

Ebony just shrugged.
“I guess, but I
don't know what it is. I always just give him a basket of random
books so he can pick and choose, or find something he didn't know
he wanted.”

The conversation had quickly petered
out, and finally Ebony had been allowed to ascend the stairs to her
new peaceful lair. She really was starting to think of it as a home
away from home. The equivalent of a comfy jacket she could climb
into to escape the weird, cold world around her.

She'd dusted on Tuesday
sometime
–
going down to the cleaning closet and dragging a broom (even though
she hated them), a mop, and various other cleaning implements up to
her new office. Even though she was technically meant to be reading
the files, and not cleaning them, she'd justified it by pointing
out to Ben that there was enough dust in the room to kill an entire
convention of asthmatics. Ben had grumbled, but she'd done it
anyway.

By Wednesday, when Ebony had
actually sat down to start reading the files, as her actual job
specified
–
she'd found them quite interesting. She wasn't a history buff, and
she hated paperwork – but these spoke to her in a different
language – the language of stories. Each and every cold case was
like an unfinished novel, crying out for a poignant resolution that
usually left Ebony completely invested in it by the end. How did
they all fit together, who had been responsible for the crime, what
had happened to the victim afterwards?

Ebony pulled file after file
out from their homes in the shelves. Tenderly opening each, and
leafing through the case-summaries, reports, and photos inside.
Once upon a time, as a witch, Ebony would have been able to sense
the magic coming off them, and she would have read it like you
would the files themselves. The magic would give an added layer of
meaning to the situation
– revealing previously hidden details, motives,
and themes – as if the person were able to actually step into each
photo and search the scene on their hands and knees with a looking
glass in hand.

But now, without a drop of
magic at her disposal, all Ebony had was her memory, her intuition,
and her imagination. She looked at the pictures in each case,
looked at the suspects, and victims
– and tried to see if she could remember
any of them. She tried to draw patterns between the crime she'd
experienced in her own tenure, and the crime she was reading about
now. Perhaps there was an underlying cause, maybe the same family
was responsible for the lot, or maybe the same people were selling
illegal magical wares, or maybe it was even the same person (or
creature) who was the true culprit.

She started to make three piles on her
desk. One for cases she simply had no clue about; one for cases
that seemed to fan her interest, but that she didn't really have
any leads on; and one for cases she had a strong feeling about.
There were only two cases so far that she was sure she could give
worthwhile information on. But, that being said, she'd only managed
to sort through a single file on the cold cases shelf, so
far.

The day was beginning to wear on, once
again, even though it took Ebony some time to notice it. It wasn't
until the long beams of light struck her desk, illuminating her
glass with a soft sparkle, that Ebony realized the sun was setting.
She looked up to the windows before her desk, and watched for
several minutes as the dusk seemed to seep down from the mountains,
as if the dark were a liquid pooling into the city from above. It
was beautiful, haunting, and silent.

It was an odd but true fact: Ebony
hadn't always had time to just look and wonder at the world. It was
part of being a witch. She didn't have a great deal of time because
the swirling possibilities of magic would always hint at something
else further into the future. You became heady with what might
happen, rather than what was happening at the moment. But now,
without any magic to speak of, Ebony was still enough to just sit
and watch. She couldn't change the situation in any real way, save
for shifting slightly on her desk and cupping her chin in her hands
as she watched in silence. And as she wasn't so caught up in what
she could do with the situation, all that was left was to either
watch it, or turn away.

Even though a witch was meant to
watch, she had never watched like this.

So there Ebony sat for several minutes
or maybe more, watching the sun sink behind the mountains, and the
stars start to blink from beyond.

Slowly it became too hard to see, and
Ebony was either going to have to march all the way across the room
to turn the lights on, or go home like she should. She'd still have
to see Harry tonight, she reminded herself, and she really didn't
want to be in bed after midnight. Midnight, or the witching hour,
wasn't something Ebony really cared for at the moment.

With a sigh, Ebony stood up, grabbing
at her bag and turning from the beautiful windows at the last
moment. But the combination of the move, and the last dregs of
light, managed to draw Ebony's eyes to one of the boxes of files on
the shelves. The last light of day seemed to be striking the box
all at once, maybe bouncing off the reflective surface of the
floor, or something. How it was happening didn't really matter, all
that mattered was Ebony got a curious sensation in her gut, and
walked up to the box, bag still on her arm. She leaned down so she
could see the name written across the cardboard haphazardly in a
big black marker.

Grimshore.

Ebony frowned, getting closer to the
box and running a hand over the name, as if giving the letters a
chance to reassemble.

Grimshore. That's what it
said.

But before Ebony could pull the box
out and find out what was inside, she heard the sound of feet
pattering up the stairs, and then a muffled curse as someone ran
into something.

“
Ebony,” Ben called from across
the room, “are you in here? And if you are, why on Earth aren't the
lights on?”

Ebony stood up.
“Ben? What do you
want?”

She heard Ben fumbling around
in the dark until he finally hit a switch. The great big lights
that were strung along two perfectly straight, parallel lines
across the ceiling, all turned on with a buzz and a click.
“I'm here to take
you home, kid.”

“
Oh,” Ebony turned her gaze back
to the curious box, “I was going to stay a little longer; there's
more to do.”

Ben gave a gruff laugh.
“I don't think so.
It's 8:30 already.”

“
It is?” Ebony was surprised.
Even though she academically knew that the sun went down at about
eight these days, she hadn't put the two together. For some reason
she was still operating on the belief that it was about five
o'clock, and that she could comfortably afford several more hours
here until she made the trip to Harry's.

“
Yeah, so you're going home,”
Ben said with finality.

Ebony didn't shift her eyes from the
box. She desperately wanted to know what was inside. Why would
there be an entire box sitting in the cold cases section, with the
name Grimshore written across it? Was it referring to the family,
or something else?

What with all the things that
had been happening to Ebony this past week, she'd almost forgotten
about her fiery conversation with her father. She'd told him she'd
been dead sure that Miss Cecilia Grimshore, the cowering woman from
the crypt, had been up to something. Her father had encouraged her
to investigate it, as best and as legally, as she could. But
... well ... Ebony
had kind of forgotten. She'd been harassed on the bus, her wardrobe
had somehow been taken over by an ‘80s musical, and she'd eaten
nothing but pizza all week.