Fatal fog, p.8
Fatal Fog, page 8
‘If he wasn’t the one who killed him’ Maggie couldn’t help but think.
“No, I just heard Rodney saying that what had been given to him was his and he wasn’t giving it back,” Dan said. “Rodney had no heart. He’d take anything someone was willing to give him, whether it was valuable or sentimental. The town is better off without him.”
Maggie understood his feeling, but Dan was just digging himself in deeper and deeper. Even Evelyn looked shocked at what he had said and anger seemed to be her default. Maggie’s nerves were running rampant as she felt the second-hand embarrassment of the public scene playing out in the tavern. She always hated television shows where someone was publicly humiliated and now she was the unwilling participant in a scene just like that.
“I’m afraid we are going to have to take you in,” Esmeralda said calmly, standing up from the table.
“What? But I didn’t do it,” Dan said.
He started backing toward the kitchen, looking toward his sister for help. For the first time, Evelyn looked speechless. There was a pained expression on her face that showed she wanted to help, but she didn’t know what to do.
“Maybe you didn’t, but we need to investigate you further,” Esmeralda said. “As it stands, you admit to being one of the last people to be around Rodney before he died. You threatened him the day before his murder. And the murder weapon was from here at the pub. It doesn’t look good, Dan.”
Dan kept backing up as Esmeralda started advancing toward him. She wasn’t threatening, but she certainly looked like she didn’t want to be toyed with. Maggie sat frozen with fear as she tried to figure out how she was supposed to help. She couldn't really do magic yet and she certainly couldn't help physically take down an ogre. Tears pricked her eyes as she helplessly watched her mother.
“Dan, I’m not saying you are definitely the one who did it,” Esmeralda said, putting her hand up to show she didn’t mean him any harm. “I’m just saying you are the prime suspect. I’d like you to come with me to the police station and we can talk some more and get this all figured out. If it is just a big mistake, we will untangle it in no time.”
The big ogre looked at the floor as his shoulders slumped forward. He sniffled a few times and Maggie wondered if he really could have killed anyone. Dan looked like a pitiful creature, even if he was large, scary, and imposing. Looking up, Maggie could see the tears still streaming down his face, faster and harder now. Reality was hitting him now. He looked to his sister for help.
Evelyn was still fluttering in place, but whereas before she had been fluttering up and down in a tizzy, now she was almost levitating. Her anger was dissipating and her thoughts seemed to be turning toward Dan. Hopefully, Evelyn had realized that there was no use in trying to fight with Esmeralda. It wasn’t her fault that everything pointed toward Dan.
“I think you need to go with them,” Evelyn said. Her voice was barely audible above the sound of her wings fluttering. “Esmeralda has a point. You are the main suspect. Even if I think you didn’t do it, you still need to cooperate until we can prove you weren’t the murderer.”
The mountain of an ogre man collapsed down onto his knees, the entire tavern shuddering as he hit the ground. His tears were now turning into a sob. Dan threw himself forward so that he was on all fours, pounding his great fists on the ground as everyone in the tavern looked on.
Maggie grabbed the salt shaker as it danced to the edge of the table, managing to save it from shattering on the wood floor. A few glasses here and there around the tavern weren’t as lucky as Maggie could hear a few shatter on the ground, one after the other. No one else seemed to notice. It was hard to look away from the giant, green man who was sobbing in the middle of the floor.
Even Evelyn, who before had been softening toward her brother and had been moving to comfort him, now seemed totally lost. Her round eyes were unblinking as she watched her brother pound the floor over and over. Evelyn slowly lowered to the ground and her wings stopped beating, folding themselves neatly behind her back.
At first, Maggie thought that she was going to comfort her brother, but Evelyn just stood there. She stared at Dan, taking in the scene. Earlier, her face had worn a very clear expression of anger, but now the pixie seemed conflicted. Her eyebrows were knit together and she was biting her lip.
Maggie glanced at her mother, wondering if they should step in and do anything. How long was Dan planning on putting on this show? If he kept it up much longer, the tavern would be totally out of glassware, at least judging by the sound of shattering glass that kept exploding in the background.
But Esmeralda shook her head, just enough for Maggie to see her and understand. They were supposed to let this play out. Maggie sat back and watched a little longer, hoping that someone would step in for Dan’s sake. Maggie was feeling secondhand embarrassment from just being an observer of Dan’s emotions. She was doing everything she could to not immediately dash out the door and away from this scene. The pit of her stomach was heaving like she was about to be sick as the bell above the door dinged that someone was entering.
Maggie couldn’t look away, especially not to look behind her. Glancing around the room, neither could anyone else. It seemed like everyone’s attention was glued to the ogre having a nervous breakdown. Besides, whoever it was would probably back away slowly at the scene they had just walked in on. Besides the giant ogre who was twitching with sobs on the floor and the pixie standing next to him, the entire clientele of the tavern was staring at them and somehow ignoring the fact that most of the wooden floor seemed to be covered by shards of glass from all of the glassware that had been shaken to the floor.
But something darting past her caught her eye and she looked over just in time to watch her mother wrangle three werewolf pups into a big bear hug to save them from the war scene of broken glassware.
“Geez, why is everyone so quiet in here?” Jill asked as she entered.
Maggie had only one good thought about this situation. She might be a Nervous Nelly who now apparently had to be a secret witch managing the entire town three days a month, but at least she was a bit more perceptive than Jill the awkward werewolf. She just hoped no one would make her babysit again.
Chapter Twelve
Even Esmeralda seemed bit dumbfounded about how to respond to Jill. Any sane person would have walked back out that door and hoped that whatever had happened would be in the daily newspaper or coming down the gossip pipeline soon, although Maggie wasn’t quite sure how that all happened whenever the paranormal fog took over. Another question to ask her mother.
But not Jill. No, Jill strolled right into the scene with her wolf pups running wild and managed to ignore all social cues to ask what was wrong and what had happened. Maggie was cringing so hard that she actually managed to slide down off of her chair a bit and had to stand up casually like she had meant to do that.
“Oh hey Maggie, I almost didn’t see you over there,” Jill started walking toward Maggie with a big smile on her face. She was dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt, which looked a bit comical on top of a furry body with a tail. Quincy, the baby wolf pup, was strapped to the front of her in a carrier. “What happened to Dan? Did someone try to murder him too?”
Jill was talking so loudly that it felt like her voice was echoing off of every corner in the tavern. It might just be that all of the patrons had quieted down when Dan started his scene, but now they seemed determined to hear every word that was spoken, at least until the ogre was taken to the police station.
Maggie’s eyes widened and she tried her hardest to see if she had any telepathic powers. She tried as hard as she could to send a message to JIll to shut her mouth. Of course, Jill picked up no clues of that sort and instead barreled on to the next cringe-worthy question before Maggie could do anything.
“What, did he do it?” Jill asked, her mouth forming a giant O before she slapped her hand over it. “Dan, did you kill Rodney? Why is there glass all over the place? Were you trying to kill someone else too?”
Words just kept falling out of Jill’s mouth and it felt like they were getting worse and worse as they went. Maggie looked at her mother, but Esmeralda was busy trying to wrangle three feisty wolf pups.
“Jill, why don’t you sit down and soon you can probably order some lunch for you and the kids,” Maggie suggested.
“I don’t want to stay if Dan’s trying to murder people,” Jill blurted out, obliviously blinking her big, brown dog eyes.
“Just sit down somewhere,” Maggie said through clenched teeth, trying to make it sound as nice as possible.
By now Esmeralda had gotten the twins to sit down and was just picking up Xavier to put him in his chair also. She turned to look at Maggie and nodded at her, sending her approval for how Maggie was handling Jill. It made Maggie feel better because she had no idea what she was doing, she just knew that Jill needed to shut her big trap.
Jill finally looked around and saw that everyone was staring at her. Lifting her furry paw, she waved at everyone with a broad smile on her face. Most of the other patrons stared at her with wide eyes while a few of the nicer ones tentatively returned her wave. Sitting down, Jill finally seemed to understand that she was supposed to stop talking.
“Go back to lunch everyone,” she said, turning to look once more at everyone else. “Nothing to see here.”
By now, Dan had rocked back onto his heels and was staring at Jill. His mouth hung open and he blinked stupidly her way. For a moment, he seemed to be considering whether he should answer Jill’s questions or not, but before he could, Esmeralda spoke up.
“Evelyn, why don’t you help Dan go back to the kitchen and gather his thoughts for a moment,” she said gently. “We will get everything settled out here and then when he is ready, we can walk him to the police station.”
The pixie stared at Esmeralda for a moment before nodding her head and finally walking over to her brother. She gently put her small hand on his large shoulder. Dan looked at his sister’s face and sniffled a few times. As he stood up, Evelyn rose up in the air, staying next to him the entire time, her tiny hand on his massive shoulder.
Dan turned as if he were going to say something, but thought better of it and walked toward the kitchen instead. Evelyn flew next to him, a silent but supportive figure. Maggie just hoped that Dan would be able to get himself together a little.
“He’s gone now, can you tell me what that was all about?” Jill asked.
Maggie scowled at Jill. There was something about the werewolf that was rubbing her the wrong way and Maggie didn’t want to tell her anything at all. But Esmeralda walked up to the table where Jill and her wolf pups were sitting and stood between Maggie and Jill.
“If you’ll excuse us, Jill, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind here,” Esmeralda said gently. “Please give us a little time. I need to clean up this mess first and then maybe we can tell you what happened.”
“As long as I can get some lunch over here,” Jill said with a big smile on her face.
She glanced at Maggie, looking for her reaction. Maggie put a big, fake smile on, not wanting another loud outburst from the awkward werewolf. She even giggled a few times, just enough to put Jill at ease.
Unfortunately, it did not put Maggie at ease. Her stomach didn’t feel sick anymore, but it was still flip-flopping a bit as her mind insisted on replaying the incident that had just happened over and over. Every time she watched Dan’s reaction and his floor-shaking emotional fit in her mind, she felt like she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her right there.
The only thing that helped was that her mother had taken her arm and guided her away from Jill’s table. They walked together, slowly weaving through the tables to another part of the tavern. Maggie glanced over at Jill, who was now busy keeping her children occupied while she threw glances at the kitchen, hoping for some service.
“We need to clean up this mess,” Esmeralda said, gesturing to the floor full of broken glass. “Do you want to try your hand at the magic?”
Maggie whipped her head up to look at her mother’s face. She couldn’t be serious. The last time Maggie tried her magic, she had almost burnt the house down. Did her mother want that to happen to a tavern full of people? But Esmeralda’s face was serious, with a small, pleasant grin.
“I know you are thinking that you can’t do it, but I believe in you,” Esmeralda said. “The only way to get good at your magic is to keep practicing. And don’t worry, during the fog days, we can practice magic openly. Everyone is paranormal and no one will remember once the fog dissipates. So go ahead and try it out. You could use more practice.”
“I’m not going to practice it here in front of everyone!” Maggie said through clenched teeth.
She couldn't stand the thought of doing something wrong and having everyone whisper about her or, even worse, laugh at her. That kind of humiliation would be enough to make Maggie never leave the house again. She had to force herself out into public sometimes as it was. Maggie wasn’t about to make it harder on herself.
“That’s fine dear, I’ll do the cleanup,” Esmeralda said.
Turning toward the kitchen area, she pointed a finger at a large barrel that seemed to be sort of a garbage can. It scooted across the floor by itself, following wherever Esmeralda’s finger pointed. As it traveled around the tavern, the shards of glass in front of it floated up off of the floor and dropped gracefully into the barrel as if it were snowing glass shards. After one circle around the place, Esmeralda had cleaned it all up. The barrel came to rest next to the witches.
“Did I miss any?” Esmeralda called to the other patrons in the tavern.
Everyone shook their heads and returned their attention to their tables, picking at the food that had gone cold as they watched the owner of the tavern have an emotional breakdown. A few made rotten faces as they tried to eat cold mush or a lukewarm chicken leg.
“Oh dear, I can help with the food,” Esmeralda said.
Pointing her finger in the air, a small red zap of lightning emerged from her finger and quickly disappeared. Looking around the room, Maggie could see that everyone’s food was now steaming and warm. A few of the patrons even applauded Esmeralda’s work. The witch took it in stride, giving a little wave as her cheeks became pink from the recognition.
“That’s all well and good, but we need some food over here,” Jill called, waving one furry arm from her table as if they had forgotten her.
Maggie’s frustration boiled over. Now that all of the other townspeople were focused on their food, she felt like she could deal a little better with Jill. Stomping over to the table full of werewolves, Maggie tried to come up with something to say in her head before she got there. She managed to come up with one sentence before arriving at the table and Jill’s expectant expression.
“Dan is having a bit of an emotional crisis right now and we’d appreciate it if you could wait patiently,” Maggie said, trying to keep her cool. “We will be bringing him to the police station soon and then you can have your lunch.”
“But he’s the cook!” Jill wailed. “I hope Evelyn can cook. And why are you and your mother going to bring him there? You’re acting like it’s your job. We all know that you don’t have a job, Maggie.”
Jill reached over and patted Maggie’s hand as Maggie started to sputter. She had a tight-lipped smile on her face as she raised her eyebrows a bit at Maggie. She was trying to show Maggie that she pitied her. That was just too much for Maggie. It took everything inside of her to not explode.
“I have a job,” Maggie said, but then paused, unsure how to explain what she and her mother did.
“No you don’t,” Jill said. “And that’s okay for a little while, but soon you’re going to need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and stop being scared all of the time. For a while, I was scared of taking my little monsters out in public because I was scared of what people would think, but one day I decided I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and now here we are.”
Maggie doubted that Jill was ever scared of what people would think. She could feel her face getting warm which meant it was getting red. She hoped no one would look their way. Everyone seemed to be mostly focused on their magically reheated food.
“I think that thirty years old is just a touch too old to be floating aimlessly without direction,” Jill said. “I hope you know that I’m just saying this to help you. After all, who knows? I could’ve been in your shoes if I hadn’t married Jacob. I hope that you’d have the same talk with me that I’m having with you.”
Still sputtering, Maggie’s mind raced as she tried to find the words she wanted. But her mind was blank. Tears started to prick her eyes, but she really did not want to cry in the tavern, not after what had already happened. The other patrons didn’t need to be the audience to a second breakdown today.
“I’m just trying to help,” Jill said.
She reached out and gently put her paw on Maggie’s arm. Maggie tried to avoid looking into Jill’s eyes, but she could tell that Jill was being sincere. She was trying to help, she just didn’t really seem to know how to do that. Maggie wasn’t sure what to do. If she opened her mouth, she felt like she would start blubbering. But it seemed like Jill was waiting for her to do something.
Evelyn and Dan appeared, heading toward the front door of the tavern. Everyone inside looked like they were trying very hard to look like they weren’t watching while still watching everything. Maggie was even more determined not to cry. She clenched her fists, her fingernails digging hard into the palms of her hands.
Then she felt Esmeralda’s arm around her, propelling her toward the door. Jill’s hand dropped away as they followed the hulking, hiccuping ogre and the grumpy pixie.
“It’s alright sweetie,” Esmeralda whispered. “We’re leaving now to take Dan to the police station.”
Maggie nodded and sniffed once, trying with all of her might to push back the tears that were threatening to flow. They reached the front door and Evelyn turned to the witches.
