“Well, no… but you could have told me. I’m your friend.”
Meg looked over her shoulder. “You are. But… well, I just didn’t think of it. Never had anything to do with the Bulcocks and never wanted to. I hadn’t met any of them until the day Sybil started here.”
“Did she know? That you were her sister?”
Meg shrugged. “Dunno. Doubt it. I think she’d have been way shittier to me if she had. I mean. All this?” She patted her hair, the tiny snakes half-hidden under her cap writhing and hissing happily at the touch. “She’s not… wasn’t gorgon. Was she? Any witch would be jealous. And besides, she’s got an older sister… I wouldn’t get anything from my sperm donor’s estate even if I had killed her.”
A smile pulled at the corners of Daffi’s lips. Put like that, it was far more likely for Sybil to bump Meg off, not the other way around. And besides, there had been no evidence of Sybil being turned to stone. A gorgon’s glance wouldn’t be fatal for a witch, just give them a dead leg or arm. Which while annoying and embarrassing, it would have held her for a while so Meg could finish the job with the machete…
But Meg was clever. If she had killed Sybil, she wouldn’t have done it in a way that would have led suspicion right to her door. Would she? Daffi bit back her growl. This investigation lark gave her a headache.
“So… on the day of the murder, where were you between five and seven p.m.?” she asked, flicking to a new page in her notebook.
Meg pursed her lips, thinking as she mended one of the veins on the underside of the cock. “I was here until about one in the afternoon. Dave at the ticket desk saw me leave. I went shopping down in Covent Garden and then took the ghost train home around five. Mom and I went out for a curry at seven.”
Daffi nodded and then looked up from her notes. “And your mom can confirm this?”
Meg eyed her. “Of course. You want me to call her?”
Daffi closed her book with a snap. Out of the corner of her eye Oberon was nodding. Meg was telling the truth. “Nope, we’re all good. Last question. Did you notice anything off, at all, on the day of the murder?”
Meg leaned against the cock, cleaning porridge off her fingers absently. “Not on the day of the murder, but Whippy was down here the other day,” she said. “It was odd because she’s not down here usually.”
“Oh?” Daffi’s ears picked up.
That was unusual. Whipsnide rarely did anything that could be counted as actual manual labor, so walking all the way down here into the archives… “Any idea why she was down here?”
Meg shook her head.
“She was over in the Medieval artefacts area. Florentine section. That’s all I know. I got my ass out of here before she could see me and make me stay late.”
“Good call,” Daffi murmured. Everyone who worked here knew to avoid Whipsnide before clocking out time, or she’d find you a hundred and one extra tasks to be done before you left. “Okay, I have everything I need. Just… watch your back, okay?” she said in concern. “Real weird shit going on at the moment.”
Meg grinned and two snakes wriggled free to poke out from under her cap at the back. “No worries. I got built-in security.”
The three of them left her to the cock repairs as they headed over to the Florentine section. This was an area of the archives she’d never really spent any time in. Medieval magical history wasn’t really her forte.
“There’s cold-iron here,” Oberon said suddenly, his brows snapping together. She heard a strange buzzing and realized his wings were fluttering in agitation under his t-shirt.
“There is?” she asked, motioning for Oberon to go first, like some sort of fae cold-iron seeking bloodhound. He led them directly to the back of the section and a large glass case. It held a dagger, the weapon supported in an upright position. Even though Daffi wasn’t fae, she felt the malevolence pouring off the blade.
“This was used to kill someone.”
The knowledge came from the part of her deep down that she was ignoring, the part that remembered. Three babies in a crib… She cut the memory off and concentrated on the dagger in the case.
“Cold-iron,” she read from the card on the glass. “Mid- to late-sixteenth century, suspected to have been forged by Da Vinci or one of his students. Shit…”
There was magical ordinance and there was scorched earth. A Da Vinci forged cold-iron blade? That was magical apocalypse.
“Jack never stood a chance,” she breathed and then something on the latch caught her eye. Leaning down, she squinted like a mole caught in the sunlight and reached out. There, caught in the latch of the case were two long, white strands.
“Fuck me…” she breathed. White hairs. According to Jack, the killer had worn a white wig. If they could get a location off these babies, they’d cracked it. They could identify the killer!
“Gladly,” Oberon said immediately.
Garlick sighed. “Please don’t. I’m already scarred for life. When you’re queen, you’re going to be getting some very expensive therapy bills, I assure you.”
She waved a hand. “If I’m queen, I’ll be able to afford it. Won’t I? Or, alternatively, I can just throw you in the dungeons.” She shot a look up at Oberon. “We do have dungeons. Right?”
He grinned. “We do… more than one type.”
“Oh?”
“Well, the bad kind and…” His eyes darkened with heat. “The really wicked kind.”
“Mind bleach!” the cat warbled, clapping his paws over his ears. “Lalalalalalala!”
Oberon snickered and nodded toward the strands of hair Daffi pulled free from the case lock. “From our killer?”
She nodded. “I’m assuming so.”
She held the strands out to him and then froze as it hit her. “Shit. They’re not real.
