Murder Most Fowl Page 3

  Tansy ran alongside me out of the office, while I did my best not to feel guilty for not being able to be in two places at once. Mum hadn’t greeted the funeral’s guests on the hillside herself, but then again, she’d been too busy trying to clean up the mess left behind in the wake of her mother’s death as well as her suspicion that she’d been murdered. That was a better excuse than being overwhelmed like I was, but it was only my first day on the job, and I’d little expected to find myself playing my new role in front of a bunch of strangers.

  Yet despite all the odds being against me, I’d been the one who’d found Grandma’s killer. If I’d managed that, I could judge a simple contest. Right?

  Mum’s office door was locked, so she must have already left for the town hall. I tried to lock up my own office, but Carmilla yowled at me from the other side of the door. “Don’t you lock me in here.”

  “Are you sure you won’t fall asleep again?” I left her to it, though, figuring that she might do worse than hack up hair balls on my desk if I locked her in. “This wasn’t in the job description.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Tansy said, running underneath my hand. “Ow. Watch where you’re swinging that sceptre.”

  I adjusted my grip on the long instrument. “I don’t know how else I’m supposed to carry it.”

  “Get a sheath or strap it to your back.” Tansy flicked her tail in demonstration. “Wear it like one of the warriors in The Lord of the Rings.”

  “How do you think Grandma would like that?” I stifled a laugh at the mental image of her face if I showed up with the ceremonial sceptre sheathed like a medieval sword, though I had to admit it was a tempting idea. Even so, there wasn’t an inconspicuous way to carry a giant stick the length of my arm, and I felt a dozen invisible stares on my back as I walked down the street from the witches’ headquarters.

  At least I could appreciate the sensation of the cool breeze on my face after a day indoors and the humming magic of the Wildwood which surrounded the whole town and which strengthened my family’s magical powers. Even in the busy main street which ran through the centre of town, I could feel the connection to nature that I’d missed when I’d lived away from home. That alone was worth putting up with being Head Witch for. I think.

  The farther I walked, the more heads turned in my direction. Not a new feeling for me, by any means, but it felt like an age since I’d last walked down the street. It’d been a couple of days since then, but my life had been completely upended in the interim. I held the sceptre in a firm grip and did my best to ignore the stares.

  The enticing smell from Were’s My Coffee? drew me to the doorstep of the cosy café, where I peered through the window to make sure there were no reporters inside. I’d chased off Clarice and Speck from the Blue Moon the previous weekend, but even the Head Witch couldn’t ban the press from the entire town. When I was sure the coast was clear, I pushed open the door.

  A sharp sensation in my ankle made me look down. Prickles the hedgehog stood between me and the way into the café, an expression of disapproval etched on his face. “What are you doing?”

  “Buying coffee,” I said. “And lunch.”

  “Didn’t Chloe warn you about not buying food and drink which hasn’t been tested for poison?”

  “The werewolves aren’t going to poison me.” I couldn’t believe even my brother’s familiar had got in on the paranoia. “If I don’t get some caffeine in me, the contenders won’t see me at my best, I can assure you of that.”

  It wasn’t as if the café’s staff had known I was coming, and the shifters who worked there wouldn’t dare risk the backlash of poisoning the Head Witch even if they’d been inclined to do so. Which they weren’t. My brother and his familiar desperately needed another hobby.

  “Go on, hop it,” said Tansy. “I’m her familiar. I can protect her if necessary.”

  I stepped over the hedgehog and entered the café, hoping I might see my cousin Rowan inside. She’d used the money she’d inherited from Grandma to pay the deposit on her new flat, but she’d need to find employment soon. Maybe the café would hire her, but I’d sworn not to bring the coven’s drama to her doorstep until the sting of her mother’s treatment of her had worn off a little.

  I also gave the tables a quick scan for Harvey Walton, the professional Sky Hopper player who I’d had a crush on at school and who had also asked me out on a date a few days ago. I didn’t know when I’d have the chance to take him up on that offer, and he knew I was busy this week anyway, but it would be nice to have something to look forward to. Since Harvey wasn’t anywhere to be seen, I left the café and took my latte and sandwich with me to the town hall.

  Inside, I found a carpeted hallway with a desk and a couple of chairs positioned in front of the door. At the far end stood a pair of polished oak doors which presumably led into the hall itself, while several smaller doors on either side were marked with signs in Mum’s neat handwriting. One room was designated as a cloakroom for the contenders to leave their wands in—all magical items were banned from the contest to prevent cheating—and the room next door was for the contenders to gather in before the contest officially began. A quick glance through the small window told me it contained enough chairs to seat at least fifty people, though only sixteen contenders would make the final cut to take part in tomorrow’s main event.

  “There you are, Robin.” Mum walked out of the main hall, the twin oak doors swinging shut behind her. “You’ll sit there in front of the door to greet all the guests. There’s a list, so you can check their names are on there. We don’t want anyone sneaking in who isn’t supposed to be there.”

  “Ooh, what’s in there?” Tansy scampered past Mum’s feet to peer through the gap in the oak doors behind her.

  Mum barred the way. “The hall is off-limits until the qualifying round starts. I’ve been working on this since the weekend.”

  “Exciting.” Tansy hopped over to the desk, which had been set up near the front door, while I took a seat to wait for the contenders to show up.

  I didn’t have to wait for long. I’d barely finished my coffee when the first person showed up, who happened to be none other than my cousin Vanessa. Her sparrow familiar, Hector, perched on her shoulder. Interesting that she’d shown up for the contest while she and her mother had been mysteriously absent from the morning’s council meeting. No doubt she’d have some excuse brewed up if I confronted her, so I put on the most pleasant voice I could manage when I addressed her. “Are you here for the contest?”

  Vanessa gave me a blistering look. “What do you think?”

  “Please leave your wand in there.” I pointed to the room behind me on the left. “Then take your familiar into the waiting room. The hall is off-limits.”

  She didn’t move. “You aren’t entering with that squirrel of yours?”

  “I’m a judge, so no.” I kept my tone light and pleasant despite Tansy’s tail furiously wagging from her spot on the desk. “Best of luck.”

  “A judge.” Her words dripped with disdain, but I simply smiled and added her name to the top of the blank page listing all the contenders. If I had to guess, she’d wanted to trounce me in public, and I’d ruined her day by not entering. At the thought, my own mood improved considerably.

  Vanessa slunk away into the waiting room while the other contenders began to show up with their familiars. Some were local, some not, but the next person I recognised was a dark-haired witch around my age with a few grass stains on her jeans and a blackbird perched on her shoulder.

  “Piper,” I said, relieved to see a friendly face. “You’re entering?”

  “Thought I might as well.” Her familiar cheeped in response. “I know your brother’s watching out for trouble, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a friend among the contenders.”

  “Definitely, since Vanessa’s taking part in the contest.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “What’s she doing here?”

  “I think she assumed I’d be competing,
and she couldn’t resist the chance to show me up.”

  “Pity you can’t enter,” she said. “Tansy is great.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Tansy. “I think I should at least be allowed to help with the judging.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Piper. “You look tired, Robin.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it,” she said. “I work for your mum, remember? Not that pruning roses is anything like being Head Witch, but I know how hardcore your family is.”

  “She let you have the afternoon off, though?”

  “Yes, she seemed keen to let me come and enter the contest,” she said. “Maybe she wanted me to keep an eye on you. I figured you needed a friend here anyway.”

  “I appreciate it.” Unlike my family, she wouldn’t judge me for struggling with my new position. Besides, Piper had actually been present in town for previous contests, so she’d know how things worked. She gave a running commentary on all the contenders who showed up, while I did my best to remember who’d come from where and which familiars they had.

  “Who won the last time?” I asked her.

  “Someone called Roxy Denton,” she said. “She has a raven familiar.”

  I’d seen at least four ravens on the way in, not to mention countless blackbirds and crows. In fact, the waiting room was now so crowded that I wondered if we should have asked everyone to wait outside instead. It didn’t help that the animals took up twice as much space as the humans and made a lot more noise, as I found when I opened the door to check on the contenders.

  A scuffle from one side of the room drew everyone’s attention as two wizards squared up to one another while a stripy cat yowled from a nearby chair.

  I stood on tiptoe, holding up my sceptre in case I needed to use it. “What’s going on?”

  “His cat tried to eat my rat familiar,” said a wizard with greasy dark hair, which looked like it hadn’t been washed for a while.

  “He was only playing,” protested the other wizard, a slightly better-groomed individual with curly red hair who seemed to be the owner of the stripy cat.

  “Oh, like when he and that other cat were throwing him around like a toy?” said the greasy-haired wizard.

  “Don’t you dare drag my familiar into it!” an annoyed voice rang out from among the others.

  “That’s enough.” I raised the sceptre higher, which unleashed a bolt of bright purple light into the air. I hadn’t intended to do so, but everyone in the room fell silent. “No more fighting. Save your energy for the contest.”

  I returned to the entryway, where Chloe had reached the front desk and picked up the clipboard. “I think that’s it for the contenders. You’ll need to go in and welcome them.”

  At least I knew how to get their attention. “Okay. Can you hang onto the clipboard?”

  At that moment, the door slammed open, and a pale, mousy-haired woman carrying a chicken in her arms sprinted into the town hall.

  “Sorry,” she gasped out. “I took a wrong turn on my broom. Am I too late?”

  “No, but I think you’re the last.” I indicated the clipboard in Chloe’s hand. “Sign up there.”

  She gave her name—Anne Rafe—and then hurried to join the others in the waiting room. I waited a moment longer to make sure there weren’t any more latecomers before following her inside. From there, I made my way to the front of the room by stepping around familiars and their owners, having to hold the sceptre at an awkward angle to avoid accidentally poking anyone with it. People mostly gave me a wide berth, though, and I reached the front of the room without tripping over anyone.

  I faced the crowd and cleared my throat. “Welcome to the Familiar Contest. To those of you who are new to town, welcome to Wildwood Heath. I’m Robin Wildwood, the new Head Witch, and I’ll also be helping to judge the contest.”

  “And I’m Tansy,” said my familiar, scampering up to join me. “I’ll be helping judge and keeping an eye out for cheating.”

  A murmur went through the crowd. If some of their familiars were likely to try to eat the others, then cheating might be the least of what I had to deal with. Good job I had Piper and Chloe helping me out.

  “This afternoon’s trial is intended to eliminate those of you who aren’t ready to qualify for the contest,” I told them. “You’ll compete until sixteen of you remain for tomorrow’s contest. The rest of you are welcome to stay in town for the duration, whether you compete or not. Meanwhile, there is to be no use of any magical objects, and everyone who meets the qualifications for the final sixteen must agree to leave their wands in our custody until the contest is over.” That one was Mum’s idea, though I suspected it was more to prevent the contenders from hexing one another than from using spells on themselves.

  A discontented mutter travelled among the contenders, but nobody challenged me. The sceptre’s presence helped, but as long as I stuck with the established rules from the previous contests, they shouldn’t have any complaints.

  “The preliminary round will begin shortly.” I looked to Chloe for confirmation.

  “This way,” Chloe said, beckoning to the contenders to follow her out of the waiting room and through the oak doors into the main hall.

  I could see why Mum had refused to let Tansy into the hall earlier, because the large space had been completely taken over by what appeared to be several obstacle courses, consisting of ladders and bridges and slopes. They varied by size, but they were clearly designed for familiars rather than humans.

  Mum addressed the contenders from the front of the hall as they filed in. “You’ll be divided into groups according to your familiar’s species before being assigned an obstacle course challenge. The first four from each group to complete the challenge will advance to tomorrow’s contest. Everyone else will be disqualified.”

  Chloe took charge of dividing up the contenders into groups according to their familiars’ species. The cats and birds formed the largest groups, and the others ranged from frogs to goats and even the chicken—which caused a lot of confusion, because its owner claimed her chicken wasn’t a good enough flier to compete fairly against the other birds.

  I could see why this round had been designed as a process of elimination because of the sheer number of people who couldn’t follow basic instructions, let alone their familiars, half of whom seemed disinterested in the obstacle courses. Instead, cats lay down to take naps, birds flew up to perch on the high ceiling, and other animals got into fights with one another. Chloe rushed around, breaking up these scuffles, but it wasn’t my job to do anything but watch and judge the victors.

  Among the bird familiars and their owners, Roxy Denton—a tall lean witch with straight dark hair—reached first place with her raven, and Piper won second place, but Vanessa scraped in third and would be advancing to the next round too. Among the cats, the stripy cat from earlier came out as the victor, to the evident pleasure of his owner. Lastly, there were the miscellaneous familiars, among whom the greasy-haired wizard’s rat narrowly won out over the late arrival’s chicken.

  I had to employ the sceptre’s glowing effect to quiet down the grumbling of the losers when the race came to an end. “There’ll be plenty of other contests, don’t worry. The preliminary round is over.”

  “All of the winners are to follow me, please,” Chloe said.

  The sixteen qualifying contenders followed her out of the hall and back into the waiting room, while the others remained in groups next to the obstacle courses. At a gesture from Mum, I made to follow them, only for a loud screech to come from the waiting room.

  As I entered, the chicken familiar ran in frantic circles around the waiting room, screeching, “She’s dead, she’s dead!”

  The mousy-haired witch lay sprawled on the floor, unmoving, while her familiar shrieked and flapped her wings. “Dead!”

  3

  The chicken’s shrieking stirred the other familiars to start making noise too. Even with only fifteen of them in the waiting room and not dozens
, they created such a cacophony that Mum closed the door behind them, presumably so the noise wouldn’t disturb the other contenders waiting in the hall.

  Unfortunately, that meant trapping us all in the same room as the body of a woman who’d been perfectly all right not a minute beforehand.

  “What happened to her?” My gaze travelled over the other fifteen contenders, all of whom looked confused or shocked. “Who saw?”

  “She just… fell over,” Piper said, appearing as stunned as the others. “Out of nowhere.”

  Mum’s sharp gaze travelled among them while her familiar, Horace, hissed at the stripy cat when he wandered too close to the witch’s body. “Every one of you is to wait in this room while I have the body removed.”

  I assumed she’d included me in that number, so I stepped aside as she raised her wand and levitated Anne Rafe’s body out of the room. The chicken ran after Mum, still squawking, while I faced the remaining finalists and caught Vanessa giving me a derisive look. A prickle of doubt travelled down my spine. Had she somehow arranged for someone to drop dead in order to make me look like a failure of a Head Witch? Surely even she wouldn’t go that far. I’d believed her and her mother guilty of murder before, and I’d turned out to be mistaken, but the timing seemed suspicious to say the least.

  Piper took a step towards me, worry etched on her face. “Is there anything you need me to do?”

  “Can you keep an eye on the others and make sure nobody tries to sneak out?” I whispered. “I should probably be with my mum while she figures out the cause of death.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything suspicious.”

  I trusted that she’d keep a close watch on Vanessa in particular, so I followed the sound of the chicken’s screeching and found that Mum had levitated Anne’s body into an empty room.