‘That was good,’ she said.
I wiggled a bit further forward. If I could just shimmy my hips through, I’d manage this. ‘So it worked?’ I asked her.
Clare laughed. ‘Oh no! They can’t hear you. Probably because your bottom is in the way and it’s blocking out all the sound. But if they could hear you, I’m sure it would make a big difference.’
I cursed to myself. Grabbing hold of the curtains I started to pull, hoping I could yank myself through before I ripped them off the rail. I pushed and I pulled. Come on, Ivy.
‘Oh!’ Clare said. ‘Pete says that my brother told him I’d gone off for an extended holiday. He asked him to keep an eye on the house for me and to call him if there were any problems.’
I grunted loudly. I’d never experienced labour pains but they couldn’t be a million miles away from this. Push! Breathe! Push! I threw everything I had into one final effort and my hips finally squeezed past the frame. I popped through, landing on the floor of Clare’s upstairs hallway with a loud sigh of relief and what felt like some extensive scrapes and bruises.
As I tried to disentangle my limbs from each other, Clare pursed her lips. ‘Of course, I don’t actually have a brother so either Pete is lying or Blackbeard spoke to him.’
I staggered upwards and back to the window, peering out. Winter and Tattooed Pete were still facing each other as if squaring off. It looked to me as if things were calming down slightly. That was good – at least until Pete said something and Winter smashed his fist into his nose.
‘Rafe!’ I yelled. What the hell was he doing? It wasn’t like him to grow suddenly violent. He should be doing everything in his power to calm the situation down, not escalate it. There was no way I was clambering out of the window to try and sort things out, though. It had taken far too long to get inside and I didn’t think I could do it again.
‘We’re friends of Clare’s,’ I shouted.
Pete’s fists were tightly bunched. He ignored me and took a swing at Winter, smacking a hefty punch into his jaw.
I yelped, ‘Leave him alone!’
Winter and Pete began to circle each other. Good grief, this was about to turn into a full-blown cock fight. I certainly felt like I was watching two cocks, anyway.
‘You idiots!’ I bellowed. We were hunting a serial killer. There wasn’t time for tests of strength or testosterone-fuelled one-upmanship. ‘Clare told us about you, Pete. You have a Chihuahua called Bruiser.’
‘It has the hots for the cat at number ten,’ Clare said helpfully. ‘Keeps trying to hump it.’
‘Bruiser’s in love with one of the cats from this same street!’ I shouted.
Pete paused for a moment. Unfortunately, it didn’t last as he bounced round and took another shot at Winter from the side. This time Winter managed to duck in time and I prayed that he was keeping at least some of his cool. If he resorted to using magic against this guy, all was lost.
‘This is so stupid,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Winter’s been possessed.’
‘Nah,’ Clare said. ‘He’s just defending your honour. Pete said he’d never seen a burglar with such a fat arse.’ She tilted her head. ‘To be fair, it was all he could see of you at the time. He doesn’t usually say much at all.’
I should probably have been offended but I actually felt kind of warm and fuzzy that Winter was so worked up on my behalf. But that didn’t mean I could allow this to continue.
Until we knew the lay of the land, I didn’t want to alert Pete to the fact that Winter and I were witches. I could search for a bucket to throw water over them but in the time it took to find one, both Winter and Pete could end up knocked out. Instead I did about the only other thing I could think of. Pulling down my waistband, I turned round and mooned the pair of them. ‘You want a fat arse?’ I screeched. ‘Here you go!’
‘Nice,’ Clare said with an approving nod. ‘They’ve both stopped and they’re just staring at you.’
I sniffed, returned my clothing to its appropriate position and turned round.
Winter threw me a glare. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’
‘Getting you to stop acting like idiots,’ I yelled back. ‘This guy is a friend of Clare’s. He’s only looking out for her. Just because he’s a misogynistic bastard doesn’t mean you need to hurt him.’
Surprisingly, Tattooed Pete looked rather abashed. He put his hands in his pockets and looked away. ‘I’m sorry. But Clare is a nice lady,’ he said. ‘A really nice lady. She always has a kind word for me. And I promised her brother I’d keep an eye on her place. I didn’t mean to be rude but you’re breaking in.’
Oh, Pete. Poor guy. ‘We’re not breaking in.’ It was unfortunate that I still had to shout to make myself heard; it didn’t exactly ease the situation that I was bellowing out of the window like a fishwife. ‘And he wasn’t her brother. Clare doesn’t have a brother.’
Pete stiffened, his spine rigid. He obviously didn’t know whether to trust us or not but either way he was still alarmed. ‘Then who was he? Is Clare alright? Where is she then?’
I glanced at Clare. Her head drooped. ‘Tell him,’ she said, turning away. ‘Tell him the truth.’ I nodded at Winter. He understood and spoke awkwardly to Pete. His voice was low, so I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, but the moment that Pete realised that Clare was dead was obvious. His body language said it all.
‘I think he really liked you,’ I said to Clare.
She wouldn’t look up. ‘I never knew,’ she said. ‘I thought he was just a bit rude and bullish. Sometimes he wouldn’t even look at me when I said hello in the street. I’ve been such an idiot.’ She sighed. ‘About so many things.’
There wasn’t very much I could do to comfort her. I couldn’t give her a hug; I couldn’t tell her that things would look much brighter tomorrow, or that this was just a passing phase. She was dead. That was all there was to it.
I pinched off a headache. When in doubt, be brusque and to the point. I had no words for Clare other than the stark truth. ‘I can’t make this better for you, Clare. I can’t make you undead.’ Not without becoming a freaky necromancer who might destroy the entire country in the process. ‘All I can do is try to bring the person who did this to justice. That’s all I’ve got.’ I gestured downstairs. ‘Blackbeard obviously has plans in place. He spoke to Pete and he set up that booby trap. Whatever’s going on here, he’s nowhere near finished.’
For a beat or two Clare didn’t move, then she tilted up her chin. Her jaw was set and her expression firm. ‘Then let’s see what we can find out.’
Good. That was good. ‘You see if he’s touched anything, been through any of your stuff or taken anything. Even it’s small and inconsequential, it might help.’
She nodded. ‘Trophies. Serial killers like trophies.’