Book 1, page 3
But the head was always the worst. He could feel the pieces of his skull come together and begin to mend, squeezing his brain back into shape and giving him the sensation of a thousand migraines as lost childhood memories of harpsichord lessons, rolling hoops with sticks, and awkward moments in front of the class as a teenage boy wearing revealing tights flooded back into his consciousness.
Winston felt his body become whole again and, after taking a moment to catch his breath, he sat up. Every molecule of his body felt sore and he knew he could look forward to at least a week of stiffness, limping, and rounds of grunting when getting out of a chair. He fondly remembered his days as a younger man when he only needed a few hours to recover from reconstituting. Nowadays, a full recovery required a long nap, several bottles of wine, and a holiday in Spain.
The sound of someone dropping a tool outside pulled his attention back to the van. He reached under the passenger seat and grabbed a rusty wrench to use as a weapon. He then quietly popped open one of the back doors and slid out while trying to keep his grunting in pain to a minimum.
Winston crept around the side of the van toward the open bonnet, his wrench held high. He could see his mysterious rescuer was dressed all in black and had their head buried deep in the engine bay.
“Alright, come on out of there nice and slowly. I have a weapon.”
“Seriously, Winston, do you ever do any maintenance on this poor thing?” came the response.
The stranger popped their head up and smiled at Winston, who dropped his wrench.
“Maggie…Jesus….” he mumbled.
“Nice to see you too, pumpkin butter,” Maggie said.
“What are you doing here?” Winston asked.
“Saving your arse, as it goes. You’re welcome, by the way. You’re lucky I found an access road down to that beach, otherwise I’d have left you down there,” Maggie said. “How did the reconstituting go? Sounded painful.”
“It was fine. Wait a minute, you were at Lady Devon’s charity event?” Winston asked.
“I mean you were really going for it with the screaming in agony,” Maggie said as she put her head back under the bonnet. “Like a colicky baby, but with just a sprinkle of teenage girl at a pop concert near the end.”
“I said it was fine,” Winston said, surprised at how quickly she could annoy him.
“I mean I know most people think vampires are immortal so they never age, but that isn’t true is it? You still get old, right? You still get wrinkly, you still start wearing your pants up near your armpits, and by the sound of it, reconstitution really starts to hurt after a few hundred years…”
“Alright, you having a good time with this?”
Maggie smiled and patted his cheek. “Sorry, Winny. Hard to resist.”
Winston wiped the engine grease off his face. “What were you doing there, Mags?”
“Same as you. Working,” Maggie replied. “But unlike a certain someone, I didn’t spend the evening playing with the family pet.”
“Working on what? Who hired you?”
“You know I can’t tell. But I can show you the fruit of my labours,” Maggie said as she closed the bonnet and walked over to the passenger door to the van. She popped it open, grabbed a black backpack, and handed it to Winston.
“Couldn’t have done it without ya, babe,” Maggie said with a smirk.
Winston opened the backpack and gasped.
It was the teapot.
“You stole it?!” he exclaimed.
“It was easy, thanks to you. You figured out where it was stashed, kept that dog thing distracted, and supplied me with a getaway vehicle. Bringing you home was the least I could do. By the way, dressing like a cat so everyone thought your fangs were just part of the costume. Very clever.”
Winston could see Maggie had changed little in the five years since he’d last seen her. She still had her stocky, heavyset frame, large green eyes, and wide smile that always made her look like she was keen to get into trouble. And it was all still topped off by her curly, dirty blond hair that was allowed to roam freely about the top of her head, lending her a wild, almost feral, aura.
“Don’t give me that look,” Maggie said. “We’ve been in the same business for a long time. It was only a matter of time before we bumped into each other again.”
Winston felt his blood boil. Just like old times, he thought.
“No, Maggie, we are not in the same business. I’m a PI. A private investigator. I gather intel, take pictures, that sort of thing. I don’t break the law. You remember when you used to do that, right? You know, before you turned thief?”
“Hey!” Maggie barked back. “I am not a thief! I just repossessed something that was already stolen,” Maggie said as she returned to working under the bonnet. “Besides, my PI license is expired and I needed something under the table to get me by. It was a one time deal.”
“I know the teapot was stolen, that’s why I was hired,” Winston replied. “And at least if I still had my camera I could just give them the pictures and feign ignorance. C’mon Maggie, give me something I can take back to my employer. Some piece of intel I can sell so this night isn’t a total write-off.”
“Sorry, Pookie. But I don’t think tonight was a total write-off. I did manage…” Maggie started.
Winston sighed. “Fine, fine, I give up. This really could have been it for me. My One Big Job. The one to get me back on top. It was for a big antiques brokerage in Shoreditch. They were big time. I could have carved out a name for myself with them.”
Maggie closed the bonnet loudly to startle Winston out of his mood, then made her way to the driver’s side door.
“Oh come on, Winny. You think every job is The One. I saw you at that party tonight. You loved it. Hob-knobbing with all those rich hoity-toity types in your little tuxedo, doing that fake laugh thing that sounds like you’re having a stroke, pretending you actually like hummus. I know you miss the old days, but they’re in the past. You should be happy to be down here with us bottom feeders now. This kind of work is a lot more fun if you’re not always so worried about impressing people.”
Maggie reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a set of keys, then tossed them to Winston.
Winston sighed and got behind the wheel of the van as Maggie hopped into the passenger seat.
“I wasn’t hob-knobbing,” Winston said with an annoyed tone. “I was gathering information. It’s what PIs do. Or have you forgotten that already since you’re not a PI any more? And you’re not a thief either, apparently. Tell me Maggie. What are you these days? Eh?”
Maggie shot Winston a look of death and he knew he had gone too far. Identity was always a hot button issue with her.
Maggie suddenly had a litre bottle of motor oil in her hand that she’d found under the seat. She took the cap off in a threatening manner.
“That’s a nice suit you have on tonight. Rented, I’m assuming?” she asked, holding the open bottle of motor oil over it.
“Yes…with quite a large deposit, actually…what are you doing?” Winston asked.
Maggie pretended to almost pour it. “You know that brown stuff you got all over it will probably just wash out. Not sure the same can be said for other things. Be a shame if you couldn’t take it back.”
“Yes, it wou…hey! Stop it!” Winston said as he moved his hands up to block hers.
Maggie resisted him and poured a little on Winston’s trousers. Winston was shocked, then grabbed the oil and poured a bit into Maggie’s hair. Maggie screamed, grabbed the bottle and wrestled with Winston before pouring a bit onto his smooth, bald head.
“Stop it!”
“Get off!”
“You get off!”
Winston and Maggie wrestled over the centre console, each pouring more of the motor oil onto each other until the bottle was empty.
The two stopped struggling and stared at each other as the oil streamed down their faces, the only noise being the sound of the empty bottle bouncing about in the back of the van.
Winston and Maggie then collapsed into laughter.
As the tension eased, Winston wiped some of the oil from his face. “I’m sorry…” he said, gazing at the passing traffic outside his window to avoid looking at her. “…about calling you a thief.”
Maggie opened the glove box, grabbed something from inside and plopped it onto Winston’s lap.
Winston looked down to see it was his camera. It had somehow survived the fall and, after switching it on, Winston confirmed his photos were still intact.
Winston shot Maggie a quick glance of gratitude, then turned the key. The van roared to life and Winston pulled into traffic and drove off into the cold, wet evening.
3
Thank you again for being so understanding, Lord and Lady Darby.” Nigella smiled warmly at the sour-faced couple who avoided her gaze as they supervised their staff in situating their things in the guest bedroom.
“Let me assure you again that the proper authorities have been informed and will sort everything out in the morning. For now, please have a peaceful night and we will see you for a lovely breakfast on the veranda in the morning.”
An icy silence was the response and Nigella took her cue to leave. Her smile quickly faded as she closed the door and found herself alone in the corridor.
She took a brief moment to let the exhaustion of the night’s events wash over her. It had been a long evening of cleaning up the wreckage of her fundraiser. Some of those in attendance were the most generous charity patrons on the scene and she’d only managed to convince a precious few to stay the night. The only reason the Darbys decided to stay was because their Rolls Royce had been mysteriously turned over in the car park. She’d had to lie and tell them another car wouldn’t be available to come get them until the morning, which was true along as one didn’t count Nigella’s four perfectly-usable sedans stashed away in the old horse stables. But it was going to take all the charm and discreet spell casting she could muster if she had any hope of them still donating to the cause. After tomorrow, she knew her days of hosting fundraisers were over. Once word got out of her security man’s head-ectomy she would have to disappear. It also meant she had one last shot to get the funds she needed.
Nigella closed her eyes and brought her breathing under control. She focused on the mental picture of that horrible man in the cat mask who had ruined everything. It was people like that who would be swept away in the new world order she was about to bring. There would be no more room for troublemakers and non-believers like him. She was about to bring a day of reckoning to the entire world and it was just round the corner. The thought soothed her troubled mind and she could think clearly again.
Nigella then glided gracefully down the corridor towards the back study and stepped over the tattered remnants of the large oak door to go inside. In front of her now lay the scene of the crime. The glass of the display case lay in shattered, glittery pieces on the carpet with only a blank space where the teapot used to be.
Thankfully, the criminal had done little to cover their tracks. It was obvious that the large leather-bound chair had been used to smash the case and the thief had simply crawled out the window and slipped into the night.
It was also obvious that the man in the cat mask Moolsem had chased over the cliff was not the real culprit. He had been merely a distraction. It made sense given his silly antics. No professional PI would have made such a mockery of things unless it was to purposefully attract as much attention as possible. Nigella thought their plan was actually quite brilliant in its simplicity.
Nigella’s wand appeared in her left hand along with a small vial of blue spell powder. She rubbed a bit of the powder on the wand and tried to remember the activation words. She hated using this spell as the powder had to be specially imported from a tiny shop in Turkmenistan and kept at a precise temperature during the entire journey to London. It went without saying it was very expensive, but quite useful for those that could afford it.
Nigella gave her wand the slightest of waves and mumbled under her breath, “Stultus est qui cogitat et abscondi me fac.”
The blue powder began to sparkle and glow, then streamed from the end of her wand and covered the shattered display case. The shimmering powder crawled its way into every nook and cranny of the case like a swarm of hungry ants.
Then success. Half a thumbprint appeared on the left side of the glass casing. It glowed brighter as the powder focused on it, swirling and sparkling.
Nigella smiled. The thief had been careless and had steadied themselves with an ungloved hand as they pulled out the teapot.
The thumbprint glowed brighter as blue powder began to swirl above it. Shapes appeared and became gradually more defined until finally becoming recognisable objects. Cars going past. A road somewhere. A corner shop.
A window had been opened. Nigella was now looking through the eyes of the owner of that thumbprint, the powder forming a psychic connection and showing her what was in their field of view at that moment. It was a spell that only worked if the print was less than twenty-four hours old and still held a bit of the owner’s psychic energy within it. In the right hands, the spell could work with just about anything the owner had touched. She had even heard of a witch in Peru who had been able to make it work having little more to go on than a sneeze the subject had done in the room the day before.
The effect didn’t last forever and as Nigella watched, she hoped for her prey to glance into a mirror or any kind of reflective surface that would reveal their face.
What she got was far better. She could see the thief enter a shop and talk to a clerk. A moment later they were rifling through a wallet stuffed with money. Then a permit of some kind was produced. A witching permit that was used to buy spells. And for a moment, the name and address were clearly visible.
“Margaret…Bentwater…” Nigella whispered to herself.
Something moved behind her. Nigella, showing no alarm, rose to her feet. The blue powder became unfocused and returned to its previous undefined shapes. As the effect of the spell wore off, the powder stopped sparkling, turned grey and fell lifelessly to the floor.
Nigella walked to the opposite corner of the study where Moolsem lay licking his injured paw and ran her fingers through his thick fur. It was so soft and plush, one could almost sleep on it, if it wasn’t wrapped around the body of such a fierce creature.
Moolsem whined.
“I know it hurts, poor dear. You didn’t deserve that,” Nigella whispered to the massive dog. “But mama will get back what was stolen from us. Our plan will stay on schedule. I just need to call on the help of some good friends of ours. You know the ones. They’ve been eager to help us for a while now. And together, we’ll make this right. We’ve come too far to stop now.”
4
The rain hadn’t let up for days as Winston sat down in a corner booth of the Old Doctor Butler’s Head pub. He wore his best black corduroy blazer, as he always did when he met clients. Unlike with his others, the rips and stains could be mostly hidden as long as he kept seated and didn’t turn too much to the right.
Winston twisted the half pint of mass-produced alcoholic blood swill that sat in front of him. It was yet another of those modern brands that attempted to cross brew something that would appeal to both blood-loving upper-class vampires and beer-loving footballers and resulted in a concoction that appealed to exactly none of those demographics. So they dropped the price to make it slightly cheaper than toilet water and attempted to sell it in bulk to teenagers. Winston felt the fifty pence in his pocket that represented the last of his spending cash for the week. He had only bought the half pint to keep the barman from glaring at him while he conducted his business. This had to go well.
“Ah, drinking in the middle of the day. Always the mark of a professional,” came an Indian-accented voice from behind him.
Winston turned around to see a young Indian man in a tailored suit join him in the booth and removed his coat. It was Timir, the young assistant to the mysterious Mr Moorhouse of Moorhouse Antiques Brokerage.
“Good to see you too, Timir,” Winston said. “You look a bit rough.”
“Yes, well, it’s been a long week. No, a productive week. As Mr Moorhouse says, if you are a winner destined for success then you have to be willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Admittedly, I’ve had only a couple hours sleep in the last few days, but you know what? I’m proud. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. It means I’m on my way to being a winner. And that’s all that matters…because when….you’re winning…then you’re…”
Timir stared at Winston intensely and said nothing for nearly a minute.
Winston took a drink of his swill and waved his hand in front of Timir’s dead eyes. A faint snoring sound came from the back of Timir’s throat.
Winston slapped the table and Timir snorted and blinked his eyes. He looked around, momentarily confused as to where he was.
“…when you’re winning, then you’re…” Winston said, waiting to see if Timir would finish his thought. He had never seen Timir pushed so far before and felt a bit bad for the kid. This Moorhouse must be quite a monster to work for, Winston thought.
“What?” Timir asked, trying to focus his eyes on Winston’s face and failing.
“You should go home. Get some sleep,” Winston said.
“What? No…no. Mr Moorhouse says there’s no time to sleep now. Too much going on. Because if you’re a winner destined for success…”
“Right…” Winston said. “…then you have to be willing to do what it takes. Got it. Do you have my money?”
“Money?” Timir asked, trying to shake off the fog that was collecting in his mind.
“Lady Devon’s little soirée last night?” Winston reminded him.
Timir gasped. “Right, the teapot! That’s our number one priority right now. The fate of the company, and especially our jobs, depends on it. Mr Moorhouse was very insistent. Did you get the photos he asked for?”
