Page 51 of Spirit Witch
‘Is there any record of the coven’s interviews?’ Winter asked.
‘That’s the only interesting part. They were due to take part next week. They’ve been delayed because apparently the coven is away on a meditation holiday to improve their magic.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘About the holiday? We received a letter from them. It is how we usually communicate, Ms Wilde. Email and telephone are too unreliable and dangerous with all the magic around here, so we rely on the old-fashioned methods of posted letters or face-to-face communication. It’s why so many people consider us dinosaurs. But you can learn so much more from someone’s facial expressions or penmanship than you can from an emoticon.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? And what did you learn from the penmanship of seven dead witches?’
He grimaced. ‘Alas, all the letters we received were typed. The police have taken them away to check for fingerprints but the only prints that have appeared so far belong to our own staff.’
That figured. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess all you Order geeks are kind of screwed.’
Winter winced at my turn of phrase but the Ipsissimus seemed amused. ‘Why do you say that?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Blackbeard hates witches but loves killing. He massacred an entire coven but has drawn out the process of disposing of their remains so that he can savour each and every death. But the coven’s murders are still only a means to an end. That’s why he’s stepped up his timetable for scattering their ashes – he has a date.’
I jabbed a finger at the Ipsissimus. ‘He’s coming here. His end game is to come to the Order and murder again and he’s used Clare’s coven to gain admittance. That’s why he’s had all their letters redirected. He doesn’t want their postcards as trophies, he wants to use their identities to sneak into the Order. He’s honed his skills with a group of weak, non-Order witches so he can step up and make a move against the big boys.’ I paused. ‘In other words you. It’s why he’s kept his murders so quiet. He’s saving up everything for one grand finale.’
The Ipsissimus drew in a breath. ‘That’s quite some theory.’
Maybe, but it felt right. I knew it in my bones.
‘He wouldn’t get very far,’ Maidmont protested. ‘Even if he is some kind of magical null, as you say, there are thousands of witches and only one of him. We wouldn’t need to use magic to stop him.’
‘But,’ Winter said, with a troubled expression, ‘how many would die before we got to that point?’
I sat up straight. ‘Fewer now that we have regained the element of surprise. He doesn’t know that we know what his plans are. We lost the upper hand by accident when we were in Dartmoor. We need to make damn sure we don’t lose it again.’
‘The media embargo is in place,’ the Ipsissimus said.
I shook my head. ‘Even with the best will in the world, someone will end up blabbing something. The police need to back off from the coven’s homes. Everyone needs to lay low. Then, when Blackbeard arrives for his supposed interview, we take him down before he so much as shakes anyone’s hand. We don’t need magic, we just need a baseball bat to whack him over the head with. Job done.’
A fleeting smile crossed Winter’s lips. ‘You make it sound very easy. It will be even easier if we can find out his real identity and get to him before he gets close to the Order.’
The Ipsissimus sighed. ‘The police have been looking at crematoria but there are a lot of them and they operate under very strict guidelines, as you would imagine. So far there’s been no one who meets the description of our killer. Whatever he’s been doing to burn the bodies of coven members, we haven’t found it yet.’
‘Maybe he works somewhere with industrial fires that get to the required temperatures to cremate bone,’ Winter suggested.
‘He may do – but bear in mind that the police are trying to conduct their enquiries without tipping him off. With more time, we might get somewhere. If we broadcast a photofit of the man, we certainly would.’
I sighed. ‘But if we do that, we could well be unleashing hell. What about the mail redirection? All the coven’s post has to be going somewhere. It can’t just disappear into thin air.’
‘All the letters have been sent to a PO box. The police have discovered that it’s registered under a fake identity.’ The Ipsissimus looked grim. ‘A Mr Ripper.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘He’s not very imaginative, is he?’
Winter cocked his head. ‘You named him Blackbeard because he has a … black beard.’ Touché.
‘I’m here,’ Maidmont said helpfully, ‘because I’ve been researching nulls. I’ve managed to trace several historical figures who may or may not have been nulls in the past. It’s quite interesting, really.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘There are bloodlines we can follow?’
He slumped into his chair. ‘No. It appears to be a condition that just occurs at random. Truthfully, there haven’t been enough nulls for us to conclude any definitive evidence about them. That’s probably why we didn’t know anything about them. The trouble is that absence of evidence doesn’t equate to evidence of absence.’
We lapsed into silence. There had to be some way of working through the problem of Blackbeard’s real identity. Winter, Maidmont and the Ipsissimus were super-clever; If they thought hard enough, I was confident they’d come up with an answer.
Rather than tax my brain pointlessly when there were others around who could do it for me, I leaned back in my chair and yawned. The past few days had been considerably more energetic than I liked. If it weren’t for the creepy stuffed animals, I’d probably have asked the Ipsissimus if I could bed down for a quiet nap but, with all those dead eyes staring at me, I wouldn’t manage to sleep – and, for me, that was saying something.
