4 - The InvisibleA Chapter by XindarisIt's very easy to miss something you don't usually pay much attention to in the first place.First came a trip toward the front of the manor. Fortunately, she found her target long before reaching her destination; Alyssa entered a hallway at about the same time she did. "Oh, uh..hello again, Miss Varga," she said, quickly recovering into a brief curtsy. "Done
answering the door?" "Good. I was just about to ask directions," Varga said. "To--oh." The maid nervously fidgeted, but clearly remembered an order to let her go where she pleased. "Well, certainly! Right this way." She continued on her course, the detective not far behind.
"How often
would you say the place gets cleaned?" "Where do you dump it?" "Mm..usually out back with everything else. There's a dustbin next Sir Vaersi's desk that I'll put it in if there's not too much, though. It's small, but it doesn't see too much use otherwise." "So it's not
dumped often?" Varga just nodded to herself, saying, "Good," which didn't do anything for her worries.
Finally, they
reached the inner chambers. "Well, uh..here we are." "Sorry, but
I'll have to make more work for you," she said.
She got out a few
crumpled pieces of paper and disposable handkerchiefs first, setting
them aside. After that there were a few clumps of dust and hair,
which were placed in an orderly manner in front of her. Picking one
at random, Varga began carefully pulling out some hairs from it.
"Um..Miss Varga, if I may..." She moved on to
progressively darker-shaded strands. "Hair color?" "Good."
Finally, she pulled out a dark strand and held it up. "Know
whose this is?" The werewolf shook
her head. "Look closer. Too short, wrong color." "Know whose it is?" "Well..no one that I can think of." "'Course not."
Varga stood up, taking the strand with her. "I'll get out of
your way, now."
She returned to the servants' quarters; tracking her own scent back there was easy enough. Looking around, only one of the bedroom doors was shut, so Varga tried knocking on it. Serra's voice inside made a vague, half-asleep groan which at least let her know she had the right room, so she knocked again a little louder. The quick shuffle of someone suddenly sitting up. "Wah! I'm up, amIlate?!" "Relax. This
is Varga; we met last night. Can we talk?" "Better we
talk in private. Use your room?" the werewolf said, gesturing
inside.
The room itself was small and stark, possessing little more than an old dresser and a small wooden cot that served as a bed. If Serra had personal possessions other than clothing, they were hidden in the former, or not here at all. It wasn't dirty and didn't seem an entirely unpleasant place to sleep, but it lacked anything that could remotely be termed a luxury. Varga crossed her arms. "Well, you're in deep." "Um..?"
Serra either didn't understand, or faked it pretty well.
The detective moved her hands slowly back toward the pockets of her coat. "Must be easy to sneak around when folks treat you like you don't exist." In response to this, the girl made a kind of choked squeaking noise in her throat, and thrust her left hand forward in a swift, panicked motion. A jolt of miniature lightning sparked from her fingers at the werewolf, stunning her enough to fall back against the door and convulse briefly. It wasn't enough to do any real harm to a human, much less Varga's sort. She took this opportunity to turn and bolt, leaping out the window behind her and taking off at the sort of run any cornered Lagomai has at their disposal. "Bad move," Varga yelled as soon as she recovered, starting toward the window herself. "Running always makes you look worse."
It was too small for her to exit all at once; she stuck one leg out, then the other, before pulling her body carefully through. Then she ran; her prey was nearly out of sight already but the frightened scent was easy to track, and there was no way a sous chef had the endurance to keep up such a pace for long. After vaulting the manor's back fence, it took little time for the trip to leave the well-off part of town and veer into the grubby, misshapen alleys of the city's new construction. Unfortunately for Serra, this was Varga's territory, and when she caught up to the out-of-breath Lagomai it was easy enough to goad her toward a dead end. Before long she was facing a wall, and turned around, half-bent over and entirely out of breath, to find her pursuer a few yards off, standing calmly with her hands in her trenchcoat's pockets.
"D-don't come
any closer!" between gasping breaths and voiced exhalations that
weren't doing her any favors. Serra held up her hands and some
electricity arced dangerously between them. "Or I'll..!" "Help me? B-by lecturing me on how much trouble I'm in?!" By now, she'd regained enough breath to stand up straight. Her prepared magic destabilized to a few stray sparks. "Hard to get out of trouble you don't know you're in. I'll make this simple: The guard don't care about things like evidence if a noble dies." "Wh--dies?!" "One or two people pointing the finger your way is all it'll take to get a rope necklace." The werewolf traced a finger along her own neck, then mimicked a pulling motion above her head with the same hand. Serra held her hands up defensively, her ears sticking straight up and eyes widening with surprise and panic. "Wh--I--I didn't, kill anyone!"
"Really? What do you call that curse you laid on him, then?" "That's just--all that does is make someone feel bad!" "A Wasting
Curse makes the body sick and then kills it. Where'd you get
your version?" "If you don't
get rid of it, he'll probably die," Varga interrupted, deciding
that this point could be dealt with later. "You want
that?" "Listen." The werewolf took a couple of steps closer, to speak more quietly. "The man you work for is soft. Get rid of the curse and tell the right sob story, I wager he sweeps the whole thing under the rug. Run away now and let it do its job, and you'll be on the most wanted list within a week." "B-but I..I don't know how to..dispel it," she said slowly. "The book just said it would go away on its own!" Another step
closer, and Varga carefully placed a hand on the young Lagomai's
shoulder. "You don't want it to kill him, right? You'd rather it
go away?" "Far as I can tell, you just need to say something like that to him. You're sorry you cursed him, hope it goes away. That curse's made of the hate you put into it, and it goes away without it." Something like that, anyway, she thought. "O-oh..okay..."
Serra looked back
down again. "I guess..I have to tell him I did it, though. In
front of everyone..."
A storage room
shared a wall with the manor's tea room. It usually wasn't hard for
people with relatively weak hearing to eavesdrop through the wall,
but try as she might, Alyssa could only make out vaguely muffled
voices. "Mnngh, I can't make out a thing. Can you hear--?"
The Ketshi girl's expression darkened, her ears folding back slightly despite needing a certain direction to hear through the wall. "It was her! She made him sick with some kinda curse. Why I oughta..." The door to the storage room opened, and both of them snapped to attention, trying to look busy. The house's third maid stepped inside, giving both of them the same sort of impassive, withering glare as usual. "Uh,
heeey..."
"It was that
girl he hired for the chef, wasn't it? Serra?" "I think she's dispelling it now," Rion said. Her ears drooped slightly. "Oh..." "I really should have caught on sooner. At least this is resolved, now." "What're they gonna do to her?" the Ovissan asked, looking Rion's way again. "Did miss Varga call the guard?" "Um..no." "Uh, if you say so. Hey, do you know how to..?" The winged woman turned and left before Alyssa could finish her question, anticipating its content before it was asked. Shrugging, the last maid in the storage room shut the door on her way out.
The following day,
midmorning, shortly after a single knock from the floor, Varga heard
a polite couple of knocks from her door. "Come in." Sir
Edwin opened the door and gracefully stepped inside. The werewolf
leaned back in her chair. "Well, you're looking
better." "I'm not busy."
Sir Vaersi nodded a
couple of times, half to himself. "Indeed. Ah..What I would like
to say, is that I owe you my life. While perhaps Friedel or the
others might have discovered the culprit, it could have been too
late. They might not have been so successful in convincing her to
lift the curse, or she may have bolted before she could be caught. In
theory, there should be no limit to the price I'd be willing to pay
for that." "Maybe. Is that all?"
"Well..we
weren't able to find the book Serra said she found that curse in. The
librarian insisted no book matching its description was in the
library, and a thorough search has yet to turn it up. I don't believe
she's lying; therefore..." "That's all right, you've done more than enough," he said.
"You may also
be pleased to know I found better employment for Serra. A friend of
mine specializes in..discreet arrangements, and while she likely
assumed a different reason for the move's need--well, discretion is
her occupation. The chef she'll work under now shall be far
more..understanding, I should hope."
"When you first walked in here, I barked at you. You didn't get angry back, or run away. Then you sat down and asked for my help instead of trying to order me to give it." Varga shrugged. "Enough to give your case a shot. 'Family' means little to me, so that didn't figure in." "I see. Well--I
am extremely grateful, at any rate. You can expect someone to drop
your payment off here by the end of today," the noble said, and
began to turn to leave.
© 2021 Xindaris |
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Added on August 27, 2021 Last Updated on August 27, 2021 Tags: werewolf, fantasy, noir, murder mystery AuthorXindarisAboutHi, you can call me Xindaris. I've written fantasy for a long while more or less in private, and want more eyes on what I've written to know whether it's any good. more..Writing
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