She cleared her throat. ‘I think that Goodwitch Night’s antidote might have adjusted me a little too far in the opposite direction. You’re lovely, Wanda, and you have lots of friends and loved ones, and no one wants to kill you or ruin your life.’

  ‘Nah.’ I hip-bumped her. ‘You were right the first time. Someone’s been messing with me for a while now. I hoped it’d be easy for Ronnie and Finn to figure out who, but I guess not.’

  It was true. Despite my lovable nature (ahem), I couldn’t deny the obvious: someone was out to get me. And it wasn’t just my exams they’d been messing up. For months before the tests began, my class schedule had been constantly changing, making it impossible for me to plan anything. Ronnie and Finn had assured me that they’d get to the bottom of it so that I could concentrate on finishing up at school, but clearly the job was more difficult than any of us had envisioned.

  At first, Finn had believed that the prankster was trying to mess up my schedule to make it impossible for me to track down Kilian Berry, but now that the man himself was dead and gone, it seemed as though someone wanted to mess with my plans just for the fun of it. And if I had to compile a list of who would want to make my life a misery, well … I’d need quite a lot of notebooks.

  My eyes drifted across to the campus Fire Squad, who were exiting one building and heading into another. I recognised one of their members, Alan, from my Defensive Magic class. Seeing me, he gave me a smile and a wave, pausing at the door to the administration building.

  I rushed across to greet him, with Gretel coming alongside.

  ‘Hey, Wanda,’ said Alan. ‘You weren’t in the middle of an exam, were you?’

  ‘I was,’ I told him. ‘Potions. It’s the second time the alarm went off during my test.’

  ‘Well, that sucks,’ he said. ‘But you finished Defensive Magic, finally, so that’s something. How was that exam? Because I can’t believe you sat it this year. I don’t think I’ll be prepared next year, let alone taking it early the way you are.’

  ‘It was okay, I think,’ I replied. ‘I’ll get the results this afternoon. Hey, as a matter of interest, Alan, do you know how or where the fire alarm was triggered? Is there an actual fire or …?’

  ‘Nope, no fire.’ He shook his head, looking annoyed. ‘Again. And we’re all getting a bit sick of it, to be honest.’ He glanced in at the rest of the team. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but … we think that someone hit the alarm in the administration office. That’s where it was set off last time, too. But it’s not like the dean, or anyone on the faculty or the administrative staff would set it off on purpose, is it? They’re hardly a bunch of jokers, that lot.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Gretel muttered. ‘It sure seems like someone has a sick sense of humour.’

  ‘You think?’ Alan looked dubious. ‘Dexter – the boss on the team – he thinks so too. But I reckon it’s a little farfetched. Maybe the system is just faulty. Or maybe someone’s setting it off by accident. Could be it’s behind a … I dunno … a filing cabinet or something, and every time someone opens a drawer it shakes the cabinet and hits the alarm.’

  He smiled wryly. ‘Yeah, even I know I’m reaching with that one, but I just don’t want to believe that there’s someone out there who’d create this much upheaval just for kicks and giggles. Anyway, better go before the rest of the team gets mad.’ He gave us a little wave and ran inside to his impatient-looking colleagues.

  ‘Hm.’ As I watched Alan leave, I tapped my foot on the ground. ‘You know, I think it’s about time we did a little investigating of our own.’

  Gretel grinned. ‘Oh, thank the stars! Wanda’s back.’

  ‘What?’

  She winced. ‘I just meant, you know, it’s good to see you getting excited about something. Not that I don’t understand why you might be feeling less than peppy, these days.’

  I pushed my hair back into a ponytail. ‘Well, I’m feeling peppy now.’

  ‘Good. So listen, there’s a back entrance that leads right into the central admin area. And if you did one of those nifty spells of yours where people can’t see or hear us, we could shadow the Fire Squad and find out exactly what alarm was triggered.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ I said, as we rushed around to the other entrance. Just as I was about to make us both invisible, however, we crashed into an oncoming Ronnie.

  ‘Oof!’ The Potions’ professor shook herself and stepped back. ‘Sorry about that. I think I was blinded by rage.’

  ‘You’re going in to spy on the Fire Squad too?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope.’ Ronnie ran a hand through her short, spiky hair. ‘I’m going in to shout at the dean. Like the rest of us, he knows that there’s no actual fire. He’ll be in there now, hiding from me in his office, hoping that I’ll stay outside instead of interrogating him to find out who he’s gone and hired this time.’

  ‘This time?’ Gretel rested back against the wall. ‘What do you mean?’

  Ronnie focused on the ground, avoiding my gaze. ‘Well, you might be wondering why these things keep on happening even though we told you we’d get to the bottom of it. It’s just that … we have gotten to the bottom of it. About a dozen times now.’

  Ronnie continued to avoid my eyes. ‘When your schedule started getting messed up the first time around, we traced it to a disgruntled IT guy. It seemed that you’d arrested his girlfriend for dealing in love potions, and he was out for revenge. We thought that was the end of that, but then it happened again, only this time it was the dean’s secretary – you’d put his cousin in jail for murder. The next time it happened was another IT guy. He was out on work release and wanted to get back at you, because you were the one who realised that not only was he a dangerous hacker, but he was also murdering women he met online.’

  My eyes were bulging. ‘And the college is hiring these people?’

  ‘Well … the dean says that his budget is tight,’ Ronnie replied. ‘Of course, he also gets money from the Wyrd Court if he hires ex-cons. Anyway, after that there were a few more similar instances, most notable among them being the last Head of Scheduling, who … well, she wasn’t avenging anything. She said she just really, really couldn’t stand you.’

  Gretel stood tall. ‘You know, I think we get the picture.’ She patted my back. ‘Haters gonna hate. Don’t worry about them.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ronnie finally met my eyes and gave me an encouraging smile. ‘Gretel’s right. Haters gonna hate. Just shake it off, Wanda.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m fine with it. Let’s just get in there.’

  ≈

  Ronnie had decided to postpone her showdown with the dean, so that she could come in under an invisibility spell with Gretel and me. We followed the Fire Squad around until they paused at one of the alarms, situated about halfway between the women’s toilets and a desk.

  ‘You think this is it, Dexter?’ Alan asked the man in charge.

  Dexter, a stocky looking guy of about fifty, looked carefully at the fire alarm, moving some sort of scanner around. ‘There’s no doubt about it. This is the alarm that was set off. Not by a spell, mind you. By someone’s hand. Of course, they left no prints behind. Wore gloves, I imagine.’

  ‘Huh.’ Alan stared around the room with his hands on his hips, looking perplexed. ‘But the Head of Scheduling sits right here.’ He pointed to the nearby desk. ‘Now, I know she’s new, but by all accounts this latest one is a stickler. Surely no one would dare set off a fire alarm with her sitting right here, where she could catch them at it.’

  Dexter shrugged. ‘Maybe she was in the loo or on a coffee break. Anyway, let’s go see what the security camera has picked up. After the first couple of times this happened, I made sure we had secret cameras pointing at every single fire alarm on this campus. We’ll catch the bugger, you mark my words.’

  As Alan and Dexter ran off, Ronnie, Gretel and I undid our invisibility and approached the desk. I stared at the nameplate, feeling sick.

  Head of Scheduling

  Carmel Plimpton.

  ‘No way.’ I shook my head. ‘No blooming way. She …’

  I couldn’t finish that sentence. Bile was rising, and I was afraid I might throw up. Carmel Plimpton hated me. Okay, a lot of people hated me, but she hated me more than most. She hated my whole coven, in fact. It was difficult to accept that she would let her hatred mess up the exams for so many other students, though. But the fact that she had somehow finagled her way into a job here … it had to be more than just coincidence.

  ‘She wouldn’t be that dumb, would she?’ Gretel wondered. ‘She was lucky Wanda let her away with what happened when she was at Riddler’s Cove School of Magic. She wouldn’t dare try something so crazy again.’

  When I’d finally been admitted to the school for witches, Carmel had been my Simple Spells and Incantations teacher. During my Travelling exam, she’d sent me to an incredibly dangerous coordinate called the Precipice of Doom. The unstable ground had given away and I’d tumbled off the cliff and almost died. It was only thanks to some ghostly intervention from one of the original Wayfarers that I’d lived to tell the tale. My mother had made sure Carmel couldn’t work as a teacher again. That didn’t mean she couldn’t have gotten other educational employment, though.

  With an angry glint in her eyes, Ronnie said, ‘That’s it. I’m talking to the dean.’

  We followed her to his office, where we could see him through the glass walls, sitting at his desk and eating a slice of cake. As soon as he saw Ronnie, he clicked his fingers and disappeared.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ronnie said through gritted teeth. ‘Whenever he wants to avoid me, he heads to Swanks. He knows I hate that place. Well, today I’m willing to endure all of the snobs Swanks has to offer, if it means getting Carmel Plimpton fired. I–’ She cut herself off, and stared ahead of her.

  An owl was flying out of a nearby plant pot, and it appeared to be carrying a newspaper, too.

  ‘Hoot,’ said the owl, hovering in the air in front of us and blocking our path. ‘Did you just say that you were going to speak to the dean about getting Carmel Plimpton fired?’

  I crossed my arms. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  ‘Quite a lot, actually. Carmel Plimpton is a suspect in my witch’s murder, and I will not have you idiots impeding my investigation.’

  3. An Owl Investigates

  I stared at the owl. She was an incredibly small, tawny-coloured owl, with big round yellow eyes behind round blue pince-nez. Above those eyes, she had the most enormous set of bushy purple eyebrows I’d ever seen. I had no idea if other owls had eyebrows or not, but I was fairly sure I’d never seen one with purple eyebrows before.

  ‘Did you just say your witch was murdered?’ asked Gretel.

  ‘Hoot,’ said the owl.

  ‘And … did you just say “Hoot”?’ Ronnie added.

  With a roll of her big yellow eyes, the owl said, ‘And you’re wondering why I don’t want you people involved? Owls say “hoot” all the time, you nincompoops.’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t … never mind.’ Ronnie sighed. ‘I swear, familiars are getting stranger and stranger.’

  Gretel pointed along the corridor, where we could see the Fire Squad returning to the area. ‘Look, we have to get out of here. Come with us to Wayfarers’ Rest, will you? We clearly need to talk.’

  ≈

  The owl looked around the kitchen of Wayfarers’ Rest with a sneer. ‘This is … just as I expected.’

  ‘What?’ I gave her a broad smile as I placed a pot of tea on the table. ‘Warm, welcoming and unpretentious?’

  ‘Hoot,’ she said. ‘I only meant that the cabinets could do with updating. But perhaps I’m being rude.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘You most definitely are.’

  ‘Apologies. My witch always told me never to be rude to my hosts. My name is Minerva Gale. My witch was Athena Gale. She was a healer of the mind, working at the Maze, along with her dashing and brilliant husband, Anton. She was also an examiner from the Ministry of Education. She would have been your examiner, Wanda, had she not been murdered.’

  Ronnie threw a log into the woodburner and shrugged off her leather jacket. ‘See, that’s the thing though, Minerva. I knew that the first Potions’ examiner had died, but it wasn’t murder.’

  My eyes snapped to Ronnie. ‘An examiner died? You never told me.’

  Ronnie sucked in some air, taking a seat across from me at the table. ‘Yeah, well, I discussed it with Finn and with your mam, and we decided not to worry you, because it was a natural death.’ She glanced at Minerva. ‘As far as we knew, anyway. And straight after it happened, Carmel Plimpton would have become your examiner.’

  ‘No way.’ You would think that, by now, I would no longer be surprised by anything. But even I had my limits. ‘Her becoming Head of Scheduling is bad enough, but this …’

  She grabbed a cup and poured herself some tea. ‘Yeah, I agree. And I have no idea how she got on the list of examiners, just like I have no idea how she managed to wangle her way into becoming Head of Scheduling. But as soon as I found out, I had words with Rover. He hadn’t known she was on the examiners’ list either – it seems she applied a long time back and had just been biding her time. But as soon as he found out, he got rid of her. Except now, she’s managed to find another way in.’

  I nodded. There wasn’t much more I could do. There was no point in throwing a tantrum about the fact that my friends had been trying to make my exam experience as stress-free as possible. I was lucky I had friends like Ronnie and Rover. With contacts at the college, Ronnie was able to find out in time about Carmel’s examiner role, and as our Minister for Education, Rover was able to put a stop to it.

  ‘The dean isn’t answering my calls or messages.’ Ronnie held up her phone. ‘And the doorman at Swanks says he hasn’t been in today. The fact that he’s going out of his way to avoid me tells me he knew he shouldn’t hire Carmel. I wonder why he went ahead and did it.’

  I was wondering the same thing. Ronnie was a formidable woman. As well as being in charge of the Potions’ department at the college, she also worked with Gretel and me as a Wayfarer. She often threatened to give up teaching altogether so she could concentrate fully on her Wayfarer work. The dean clearly knew he couldn’t afford to lose Ronnie’s expertise at the college, because he constantly did his best to encourage her to stay. Gift baskets, bonuses, excellent parking for her flying bike … you name it, the dean was happy to provide it. Doing something which would anger Ronnie seemed completely out of character for the man.

  ‘Okay, so what does Carmel Plimpton have to do with your witch, though?’ Gretel asked the bird. ‘You think it wasn’t actually a natural death?’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ Minerva sounded certain of that.

  Ronnie kicked her legs up on the table. ‘Athena died from Toadstool Tumours, though, didn’t she? That’s a horrible, incurable affliction, but it’s not murder.’

  Gretel was passing around the biscuit jar, but I didn’t fancy one right now, so I topped up my tea instead. As I poured, I said, ‘But if Minerva is still alive, and her witch isn’t, then it does suggest murder.’ Unfortunately for familiars, they usually died along with their witch. Those who came to seek me out were different – they would stay alive long enough to help me solve their witch’s murder. Although Minerva hadn’t sought me out, had she?

  ‘Exactly!’ The owl nodded at me. ‘I am alive, therefore Athena’s death was not natural. My witch was indeed suffering from the magical malady known as Toadstool Tumours, but she did not succumb. I dare say she would have survived it, had she not been murdered first.’

  Ronnie took one of the biscuits and chewed for a moment. ‘Look, I knew Florence was working with Athena Gale on a cure for her illness. But according to Florence, the first trials weren’t finished yet, and it was looking like the cure would be unsuccessful. Athena’s death didn’t even raise an eyebrow. She was expected to die, and she did.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Minerva lifted one of her purple brows. ‘Well riddle me this, then, Miss Know it All – if my witch died of her Toadstool Tumours, then why am I still here? Even Wanda has realised this much, and everyone knows she’s slow on the uptake. So why keep ignoring the facts? I’m here because it was a murder, that’s why.’

  She lifted from the table in a great huff of annoyance. ‘I was correct to deal with this on my own, I see, and I shall continue to do so. All that I ask is that you stay out of my way.’

  ‘But wait!’ I cried as she headed for the open door. ‘Why do you suspect Carmel Plimpton? Why would she kill your witch?’

  She was already out the door and quite a distance away, but she turned back to me. ‘Hoot. Well, isn’t it obvious? Carmel killed my witch so she’d be in a better position to kill you.’

  With those comforting final words, Minerva flew away.

  ≈

  In the lobby of Night and Gale Healing Hospital, Florence gave Gretel, Ronnie and me some warm hugs before taking a seat. As the head healer, Florence was a busy woman, so we had called ahead of time to explain why we needed to see her.

  ‘So.’ She sighed. ‘Minerva is still alive. That’s concerning.’

  ‘The owl is Athena’s proper familiar, I suppose?’ Gretel questioned. ‘A natural bonding?’

  Florence’s eyes flitted to mine. ‘Yes, a natural bonding. And Athena’s death was a natural death. An unfortunate death, sure, but a natural one nonetheless. I know that usually the only reason familiars stick around is so they can contact Wanda and ask her to help them solve their witch’s murder, but I really don’t see how that could be what’s happening here. There’s absolutely no reason for the owl to still be alive. That I know of.’

  I knew why she was looking my way. One or two familiars had returned from the dead in my presence. For a long time I’d tried to convince myself it was because those familiars, like Dizzy, had been forcibly bonded to witches. But ever since I’d saved Will Berry’s familiar, Fred, I was having trouble believing my excuses. Maybe I could help a familiar to survive, under the right circumstances. But that wasn’t the case with Minerva.