Murder Most Fowl

  Murder Most Fowl

  A Wildwood Witch Mystery

  Elle Adams

  This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.

  Copyright © 2021 Elle Adams

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Murder Most Fowl

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Thank you for reading!

  About the Author

  Murder Most Fowl

  Against everyone's expectations - including her own - Robin Wildwood has gained the coveted title of Head Witch. But not everyone is thrilled at that outcome…

  With her squirrel familiar, Tansy, at her side, Robin determines to make the best of her unexpected position, but the Wildwood Coven isn't inclined to let the family's black sheep barge in and shake everything up. Even grandmother's ghost and her cantankerous cat familiar have their own opinions on how things should be run, while her scheming aunt is less than thrilled at losing out to the family screw-up.

  Helping to judge the local familiar contest ought to be a welcome relief, but when one of the contenders drops dead, Robin finds herself tasked with looking after a traumatised chicken familiar as well as preventing herself from becoming the killer's next target.

  Can Robin solve the mystery before her new title ends up etched on her tombstone?

  1

  My first day as Head Witch began with my new “co-worker” hacking up a hair ball on my desk.

  “Thanks for that, Carmilla.” I shooed my late grandmother’s ancient cat off the desk before she made a mess of the considerable number of papers stacked on top of the wooden surface. I’d already had to move them away from my squirrel familiar, Tansy, as she ran up and down the room, inspecting the various shelves and cabinets.

  “You’re welcome,” Carmilla said. “I thought I’d make you feel at home in your new office.”

  At least she was acknowledging it was mine, which was an improvement, but I hadn’t quite dared to start rearranging the office to my liking. Mostly because the previous owner wasn’t quite gone yet. Grandma’s ghost hovered in the corner, casting a critical eye over the dusty cloak I’d had to dig out of the back of my wardrobe and the pair of Gryffindor socks I wore underneath.

  I expected a lecture on inappropriate office attire, but instead, Grandma asked, “What have you done with that sceptre?”

  “You said to keep it within reach.” I indicated the long polished instrument, which I’d rested against the back of the desk next to my knees. Part of my new job as Head Witch involved carrying the sceptre wherever I went, but it was difficult to fit a long pointed stick in my pocket or up my sleeve like my wand.

  “The disrespect.” She huffed. “Have you even tried using it to cast a spell yet?”

  “I haven’t had time.” I’d been given a grand total of one day to prepare for my new job, and I’d spent most of it tying up loose ends with my former employer. Telling the head of the magical courier company I worked for that I’d be taking a year-long hiatus because I’d unexpectedly been chosen as the regional Head Witch had gone over like a lead broomstick. I had an inkling there wouldn’t be a job for me to return to once my time as Head Witch came to an end, but that was assuming I survived the first day. Carmilla, for one, seemed convinced that I wouldn’t last a week.

  “Well, make time,” said the ancient cat. “You can’t protect yourself from assassins if you don’t learn to use the sceptre.”

  “What assassins?” My own Aunt Shannon had tried to claim the sceptre as her own, and in trying to keep her hands off it, I’d accidentally claimed it as my own in the process. Or rather, the other way around, since the sceptre chose its wielder using a kind of magic which was mystifying to everyone. Even my grandmother, who’d held the title for several decades until her untimely death a couple of weeks ago, hadn’t known that I’d be expected to step directly into her shoes without a clue as to why the sceptre had picked the family screwup as its wielder.

  “Do you have any idea how many assassination attempts I fought off over the years?” Grandma’s ghost asked me. “Always be on your guard.”

  “I would if I knew what I was supposed to be on my guard for. Except collapsing piles of paperwork maybe.”

  Grandma hadn’t been exactly untidy, but her office contained far more cabinets full of papers than one would reasonably expect to fit into such a small space. I’d better hope I never needed to access anything from the very back of the room because I couldn’t even see the wall behind the mass of filing cabinets and bookshelves, including the large store of ingredients for spells and potions. Meanwhile, my desk had drawers hidden in every nook and cranny, for most of which I had no idea where to find the keys.

  “Don’t be flippant,” Carmilla chastised me. “And do keep that familiar of yours under control.”

  Tansy leapt down from the top of a cabinet in a rustle of papers, scampering over to the desk.

  “I’m not being flippant. I’m being practical,” I said. “Doesn’t the sceptre automatically shoot bolts of purple light at people who threaten me? I think that’d be enough to deter most assassins.”

  Otherwise, it was supposed to work the same as a regular wand, albeit a larger more unwieldy one. At least Grandma seemed to have finally given up on trying to reclaim it for her own, as ghosts found it hard to make contact with any solid objects, and her attempts to pick up the sceptre had ended in failure.

  “Not all of them,” said Grandma. “They’re sneaky. You need to take precautions to check your food for poison or stop eating out altogether.”

  “Oh, come on.” While Mum did employ a cook at home—a necessity, given that none of my family members had any culinary skills to speak of—my occasional evening meals at the Fox’s Den with my best friend, Piper, were one of the only “normal” things I might be able to keep in my life. Also, I’d draw the line at giving up my lattes from Were’s My Coffee?, the shifter-run café above which my cousin Rowan was now living.

  Admittedly, Grandma had been poisoned by her own assistant—by accident—and she had good reason to be paranoid that someone would try to take me out of the picture before my term as Head Witch officially began. Still, hiding away wasn’t my style.

  “Also, you need to keep an eye on that sceptre at all times,” added Carmilla.

  “If I have to carry it everywhere, it’s not like it’ll leave my sight.” Since everyone knew my family, I’d never exactly been anonymous, but I didn’t look forward to the extra attention I’d draw while walking around town carrying a giant pointed instrument with a glowing purple gem on its end. While stealing the Head Witch’s sceptre was a foolish idea at best, it wasn’t unheard of, and certain members of my family had been willing to try anything to win it over. Though I’d definitively beaten them, I doubted they’d entirely given up on their goals yet. For that reason, I’d put up with the stares I’d attract by wielding the sceptre in public.

  “Do you know what happened to my predecessor?” Grandma asked.

  “No.” Even Mum hadn’t been born yet when Grandma had first taken the title of Head Witch. “Was she assassinated?”

  She drifted alongside the desk. “We think so.”

  “That’s not very speci
fic,” I said. “How’d she die?”

  “She choked on a sunflower seed.”

  “That doesn’t sound like an assassination to me, Grandma.”

  “Your risk to take.”

  Carmilla hopped over to the other side of the desk, knocking a container of pens over in the process.

  Honestly. Between her and Grandma, I’d be lucky to get any actual work done before anyone had the chance to threaten my life. Figuring I might as well seize the chance to test the sceptre, I lifted it into the air and cast a levitation charm to move the fallen pens back into the container.

  The pens shot straight up into the air and so did several stacks of papers on the desk. Not to mention Carmilla, who gave an outraged yowl, her paws flailing in midair. “Put me down!”

  “Sorry!” I hastened to undo the spell, causing everything to come crashing back to earth. Carmilla landed in a pile of papers, puncturing them with her claws, and then sprinted over to hide behind Grandma’s ghost.

  “You,” said Grandma, “are a menace.”

  I gave the sceptre a sheepish look. “I didn’t know it’d be that strong.”

  “It’s a sceptre, not a party trick.”

  “You told me it was the same as a wand.” I climbed out of my chair to collect the fallen papers, most of which were written in Grandma’s scrawling, semi-legible handwriting.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Grandma. “You’re welcome to treat it like an ornamental stick if it keeps you out of trouble.”

  I opted not to dignify that with a response, instead getting down on hands and knees to retrieve all the pens and papers which had fallen onto the floor. Didn’t she have digital copies of anything? Given my family’s proclivity for living in the past, I guessed not. Not all covens had upgraded to the modern age, and I didn’t even see a computer anywhere amid the stacked cabinets.

  This is going to be trickier than I thought.

  I hadn’t exactly come into the position of Head Witch expecting an easy ride. I’d already been braced for the naysayers who believed the nonsense that the Blue Moon tabloid printed about my family on a daily basis. I made a point of ignoring the headlines, but that didn’t stop the weight of my family’s expectations from resting heavily on my shoulders—both the living family members and the dead ones.

  I laid the last paper on top of the heap on the desk. “What’s on the agenda for today? I’m meeting with the council representatives of the Wildwood Coven, aren’t I?”

  “In an hour,” said Grandma. “Also, you are a council representative, technically speaking.”

  “More of a ceremonial one.”

  As the new leader of the Wildwood Coven, my mother was the driving force behind the witches who ran the town of Wildwood Heath. The role of Head Witch was mostly to act as a judge on matters affecting all the local covens, not just the Wildwood witches, but Grandma had held both titles, and Mum had expected to follow in her footsteps.

  Instead, the sceptre had chosen me, with the result that I’d have to spend the next year travelling to meetings with both the local covens and the regional ones and settling various disputes. That would have been tricky enough to handle if I’d stayed local, but in the last few years, I’d spent more time away from Wildwood Heath than not, and I hadn’t exactly stayed up to date on the goings-on in the covens in the interim.

  Someone rapped on the office door, interrupting my thoughts.

  “There she is,” said Grandma.

  “There who is?” I rose to my feet and called out, “Come in!”

  A young witch ambled into the room, dressed in the customary long black coat of a council member and with her long curly dark hair tied in a ponytail. To my utter bafflement, she dropped into a curtsy, deep enough that her glasses almost fell off the end of her nose. “Head Witch. It’s an honour to meet you.”

  “Er… you can just call me Robin,” I said. “Also, there’s no need for… that.” I gestured at her hunched position, and she straightened upright at once. “Can I help you?”

  “I…” She glanced over her shoulder. “I’m Chloe Watts, your new assistant. I thought you knew.”

  “Who…?” Mum. It was just like her to hire me an assistant without asking my permission first.

  “Good, you’re here,” said Grandma. “Chloe, bring Robin her correspondence.”

  “My what?” I said blankly.

  Chloe raised her wand and gave it a wave. The papers on the desk shifted to make room for another heap of what appeared to be letters.

  “What are these?” I peered at the spiky handwriting on the topmost piece of paper. Dear Head Witch, it began.

  “Letters from the other Head Witches congratulating you on your position,” said Grandma. “It’s courteous to write back, thanking all of them.”

  “Write back.” My gaze skimmed across the letters, of which there were at least two dozen. “You mean now?”

  “Yes,” said Carmilla with a barely concealed laugh. “You don’t want to give a bad impression to your fellow Head Witches, do you?”

  “Not at all.” I turned to Grandma’s ghost. “Do you happen to have a computer somewhere in here?”

  Tansy popped up. “In the desk. Bottom drawer on the right. I checked.”

  “Don’t touch that,” Grandma reprimanded when I opened the drawer to reveal a rather dusty laptop.

  Carmilla sauntered over and flicked the drawer shut with her tail. “Write back by hand.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.” It’d take all morning to reply to all of them, and my handwriting was more or less illegible even if you didn’t take my difficulties with spelling into account. The nonmagical type of spelling, that is. In the normal world, they called it dyslexia or something similar. While I did know a handy spellchecker charm, writing fifty letters by hand did not strike me as a productive use of my time.

  “Sorry,” Chloe said. “It’s customary. Right, Head Witch—ah, I mean… Mrs Wildwood?”

  I looked at her in bafflement for a moment until I realised she was addressing Grandma’s ghost. She’d gone by Head Witch for so long that I sometimes forgot her actual name.

  “Precisely,” said Grandma.

  “Maybe it was the custom when you became Head Witch, but computers didn’t exist then,” I pointed out, picking up one of the letters. “Look, some of these are typed, not handwritten.”

  Grandma drifted behind me, stirring up a breeze that caused the letter to fly out of my hand and land back on top of the pile. “It doesn’t interest me what the other Head Witches do. We have our traditions.”

  “Including giving ourselves hand cramps and living in a forest of paperwork?” I could see how she’d amassed so many cabinets of files over the years. “Chloe, do all the Head Witches write personalised responses to every letter?”

  She shifted from one foot to another. “I don’t think so, but I’m not privy to how the other Head Witches run things.”

  “Don’t you start pressuring her,” Carmilla reprimanded me. “Having an assistant isn’t an excuse not to do anything yourself.”

  “That isn’t the plan.” I felt sorry for Chloe, since I doubted that she’d known what she was getting into when she’d applied for the job, but I was pretty sure this was exactly the kind of task I was supposed to give to my assistant. There must be a magical shortcut to writing fifty-odd letters.

  I drew in a breath and faced Grandma. “Would it be acceptable if I wrote a standard letter and then used a copying charm to make fifty duplicates before adding in the right names and titles afterwards?”

  “If you can use a copying charm correctly, then of course,” said Grandma. “I seem to remember that wasn’t one of your strong points.”

  You didn’t have to remind me. Unfortunately, the last time I’d tried that charm, I’d accidentally created a reflection of the text which nobody could read without holding it up to a mirror. Then again, I wasn’t the only person here capable of using magic. “Chloe, can you cast an adequate copying spell?”<
br />
  “Of course,” Chloe said. “I’ll gladly help you.”

  Maybe there was something to having an assistant after all, though I had the suspicion I wouldn’t be able to send her to attend tedious three-hour meetings in my place. Ah well. “Thanks. Where’s the blank paper?”

  “In there.” She waved her wand, and a cabinet door swung open behind me. “Is there anything else you need me to do?”

  “Can you check if there’s anything else urgent on the agenda for the day? I have to head to a meeting in less than an hour.”

  “I can give you a list,” said Grandma.

  “You didn’t tell me that.” I did my best to swallow down my annoyance, but Grandma probably knew Chloe much better than I did. “Can the two of you talk between yourselves while I write the letter, please?”

  “Only because you asked so nicely.” Grandma drifted over to Chloe, who looked surprisingly unbothered at the notion of dealing with the ghost of my predecessor. Grandma’s own assistant had landed in jail for murder, so hiring a replacement hadn’t exactly been at the top of my never-ending to-do list.

  “If you don’t finish before the council meeting, you can take the letters home and finish them this evening,” added Carmilla. “They need to be mailed out before tomorrow.”

  “Noted.” I selected a piece of parchment, trying to ignore Carmilla’s expectant stare. I’d come in here determined to do a good job despite not being prepared for the position, but my family and I tended not to align with the same views on… well, anything.

  I wrote my response slowly and carefully, copying the formal tone of the congratulatory letters and doing my best to avoid using any words I wasn’t sure how to spell. My wrist had cramped by the time I’d finished, but I didn’t think I’d made any heinous mistakes.