‘Maybe it’s not,’ Gretel suggested. ‘Maybe … maybe he knows about us already? Maybe … I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that this man has confessed to the murder of Hattie Trick, and we have to do something about that.’

  Finn groaned again. ‘I know. I know we do. Gretel, can you give Paul the hat for testing? And keep an eye on Flopsy? And Wanda, can you come question him with me?’

  ‘Sure.’ I squeezed Finn’s arm. ‘But first, I’m going to go and get you some coffee.’

  He gave me a grateful smile, and I headed to the canteen.

  ≈

  ‘Hi Gavin,’ I said, pushing a cup of coffee towards him. ‘I know you already met Finn. I’m Wanda. I’ve been looking after Flopsy for you.’

  He had been focused on the table-top, but he jerked his head up and stared at me. ‘Flopsy’s all right? He’s alive?’

  ‘Sure he is,’ I confirmed. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’

  ‘Gavin didn’t really give his friends a chance to get a word in,’ Finn explained. ‘He just walked into the club, threw the money down and made his confession, and then he clammed up again.’

  ‘Why did you think Flopsy was hurt?’ I asked gently.

  This time, Gavin didn’t look up. He did a micro-shrug, and said, ‘I dunno, actually. I just … I just thought he was gone. I thought he’d disappeared. And I heard Lady Fluff died, too, so … I suppose I assumed the worst.’

  I’d gotten myself some tea rather than coffee, and I took a long drink before speaking again. ‘Gavin, when Flopsy went missing from Laurence’s flat, the hat remained in the rabbit run. Then, sometime yesterday, it suddenly disappeared. Did you enter the flat? Did you take the hat?’

  ‘No.’ He looked confused. ‘No, I don’t think I … well … maybe I did. Yeah, I did.’

  ‘And where did you hear about Lady Fluff?’ asked Finn.

  ‘I … I suppose someone must have told me.’

  ‘Someone?’ Finn had already finished most of his coffee, and he was swirling the dregs in the cup. ‘You don’t know who? Could the reason you know about Lady Fluff be because you saw the dead rabbit when you went to retrieve the hat? Did you go there to get Flopsy? And when he wasn’t there, you took the hat instead?’

  ‘No.’ Gavin said it forcefully. ‘No, I didn’t go to get Flopsy. He doesn’t need someone like me in his life. I’m useless now. I’m a shell of what I was. And I’m … I’m a killer.’

  ‘So you say.’ I looked at him closely. Despite his messy appearance, Gavin was incredibly handsome, but in a sort of … ethereal way. His hair was incredibly black, and his eyes were a shade so pale that they were almost silver. Like Fifi, he had something special about him.

  ‘I must admit, I feel kind of sad that I’ll never get to see you perform,’ I said. ‘By all accounts, you were amazing.’

  He snorted. ‘I was, yeah.’

  ‘Well, it was a good trick you did with Hattie, wasn’t it?’ I continued. ‘The only way she could have left was through that storage closet, and there were cameras pointed that way. So how did you get her out of the club, Gavin?’

  Gavin sighed. ‘I told her to hide below the stage, that it would be a prank, and that she should sneak out while we were all searching for her, and head to my parents’ house. Then I went over there myself, and I … well … I kept her prisoner. When she wouldn’t love me, I killed her.’

  It was chilling, how matter of fact he was about all of this. It reminded me of the conversation with Fran.

  But it made no sense, because they’d searched below the stage straight after she went missing. ‘Where did she hide, exactly?’ I pressed. ‘Fifi and Laurence said you all combed that area when she disappeared. And Theo searched the house when you went missing, too. Surely, if you were hiding out there with Hattie, he would have seen you.’

  He gave us another micro-shrug.

  Finn glared at him for a few seconds, and then said, ‘We’re going to need more details than that, Gavin.’

  ‘Why?’ questioned Gavin. ‘Why do you need to know details? You have my confession. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I replied. ‘I want to know how Hattie disappeared. How you disappeared. I want to know how you got out of the Magic Hat, and I want to know where you’ve been all this time.’

  He looked down at his hands. ‘I can’t tell you that. Even a crappy magician never reveals his secrets.’

  A crappy magician? By all accounts, Gavin was very far from that. I stood up, and said, ‘I’ll be back in a second, Gavin. You just wait right there.’

  ≈

  A few minutes later, I returned with a deck of cards.

  ‘That’s my deck,’ said Gavin. ‘How did you–?’

  ‘I move fast.’ I grinned. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d nipped back to his bedroom with Flopsy, gotten the rabbit to point out Gavin’s favourite deck, and then returned here even quicker than your average human might pop to the loo. Maybe I’d tell him some secrets, when he started being honest. ‘So Gavin, do a card trick for me. Any trick.’

  ‘I … I can’t think of one I want to do right now. Cards aren’t my best thing, anyway. I like vanishing tricks more.’

  Finn, understanding what I was doing, said, ‘Okay. Just shuffle them, then.’

  Gavin gave us yet another micro-shrug. ‘Fine. Whatever you want.’ He roughly shuffled the deck, and he did it about as well as I could shuffle (which is very badly, indeed). Then, when he’d finally got them into a neat, rectangular pack and tried to fan them out, they spilled all over the table.

  Gavin sighed. ‘See? Crappy.’

  ‘Yeah. Okay, well let’s try a vanishing trick, so.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out a coin, a silver star, and passed it his way. ‘Make this appear somewhere else. Behind my ear. In my front pocket. Wherever you want.’

  A look of concentration passed over his face, before he waved his hand over the coin. It remained where it was. He tried again, and again, and again. Finally, Gavin shook his head and groaned. ‘I … I’m usually so good at this.’

  ‘Are you?’ Finn looked closely at Gavin. ‘And how do you do it, usually? What’s your technique? Distraction? Sleight of hand?’

  His face was all screwed up. ‘I … I told you. Even a crappy magician never reveals his secrets.’

  ‘Except you’re not crappy, are you, Gavin?’ I pointed out. ‘Not usually, anyway. So what made you suddenly so sure that you were?’

  ‘Well …’ He gestured helplessly to the coin and the cards. ‘There’s your proof, surely. I am terrible. You’ve just seen it for yourselves.’

  I sat forward, keeping my eyes on his. He looked terrified. ‘But Gavin, you didn’t know that. When you first called yourself a “crappy magician” it made no sense, did it? You’re the biggest draw at the Magic Hat. Your shows are supposed to be amazing. And now, all of a sudden, you can’t even do the simplest tricks. I can see it in your eyes, Gavin. I know this makes as much sense to you as it does to me – which is, to say, no sense at all. And you’re not the only one this has happened to, are you? Hattie disappeared, and came back without her mojo, right? And now you’ve gone walkabout, and you’ve come back suddenly unable to shuffle your own deck of cards. You’ve lost your talent, Gavin, just like Hattie did. Except that’s not possible, is it? Not unless something happened to you. Not unless someone messed with you. The same someone who messed with Hattie.’

  ‘I did that,’ he insisted, his voice barely a whisper. ‘I did it.’

  ‘Fine. So you say.’ I stared at him, hard. ‘But the thing is, now that I know you’ve lost your talent, just like Hattie did, I believe you even less than I did to begin with. So, if you want us to arrest you, to convict you, then you’re going to have to convince us. Tell us, Gavin. Tell us how you made Hattie Trick disappear. Tell us.’

  I was about to say ‘Tell us’ again. I would have said it as many times as it took. But I didn’t need to, because Gavin stood up, and shouted. ‘I don’t know, all right! I don’t know what happened to Hattie!’

  Finn sat back and folded his arms. ‘Oh?’

  Gavin swallowed, looking shocked, and even more terrified than before. He sat back down, and in that whisper-quiet voice he’d used a short while earlier, he said, ‘Well I … I mean, I can’t … I mean … I … I did it, though. I killed her. I killed her, all right? All right? So just throw me in a cell, will you? Because I refuse to say another thing.’

  18. Before the Moon

  The good thing about eating lunch in a Wayfarer canteen, is that no one cares if you’re feeding a rabbit on the table. Not that the rabbit in question was eating much.

  Paul was slurping down some milk and eating a lasagne, I was listlessly playing with a plate of pasta, Gretel was enjoying a garden salad, and Finn was chewing some chips. Flopsy had a plate filled with dark leafy greens, hay, thinly sliced cucumber, and some specially-made pellets. Despite the array of food we’d put together, he’d barely taken a bite.

  The hat was our centrepiece, having just been tested by Paul.

  ‘So … when you say “incredibly magical”,’ Gretel began. ‘You mean … an OUP?’

  Paul grinned. ‘Even better. An OAP.’

  Flopsy frowned. ‘You’re laughing about how old the hat is?’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ I assured him. ‘Flopsy, an OAP is an object of awesome power. What Paul’s saying is that this hat is incredibly powerful. Magical.’

  ‘But,’ added Paul, ‘it’s not quite that straightforward. Despite how magical it is, I couldn’t channel it. I think that the hat is just like that Clive guy says. It chooses a person. I think it’s bonded itself to Gavin, and by extension to Flopsy. Flopsy, what’s it like, inside the hat? Where do you go when Gavin does disappearing tricks with it?’

  ‘Except for the time I wound up in Luna Park, I never went anywhere. Just inside the hat. Where else could I go?’

  I placed the hat beside Flopsy. ‘But you’re bigger than it. We’ve already measured you, and measured the hat. You don’t fit in.’

  ‘Yes I do. There’s loads of room.’ Flopsy hopped in, and I could see space around him – space that, if the measurements were correct, should not exist. ‘And when Gavin wants me to disappear, I just imagine that I’m hidden, and then I am.’ He winced a little. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you that.’

  ‘You should.’ I stroked his beautiful ears. ‘You can tell us anything, Flopsy. So, when you’re hidden, can you still see the audience?’

  ‘Mm hm. I’m still there. I’m just invisible. And with everything else, I think it does the same – I think the hat listens to Gavin. So when he wants something to vanish, the hat helps it vanish, and when he wants it to come back, the hat lets it come back. And when I want to be comfy, and rest, the hat makes me feel like I’m sleeping on a soft squidgy bed. And when I wanted help to find Gavin, the hat took me to you.’ Flopsy rubbed his nose against the brim, and it seemed as though the hat jiggled in delight.

  ‘I’ve heard of this before,’ said Finn. ‘Only with a broom.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Gretel nodded. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you all, right now,’ Finn went on, ‘do not speak about this hat outside of here. It’s Flopsy’s hat, all right? We don’t need some nosey Crooked College professor finding out about it and wanting to study it. Okay?’ He looked sternly at us all.

  ‘Duh.’ I pushed my plate away. ‘Some things don’t need to be said, Finn.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gretel. ‘Like Wanda says. Duh.’

  Once Paul had also voiced his ‘Duh’ we all went quiet.

  The truth was, we might have known what to do – or what not to do – about the hat, but it was the only subject on which we were certain. We had a fully fessed-up Gavin in a cell, but what did we do with him now? We’d tested him again since his arrival, and he seemed to be human. Paul had taken an aura photo of him on arrival, and there wasn’t even a glimmer of gold. Even if I did believe Gavin was guilty, I had no idea whether he should be in a supernatural prison, or a human one.

  ‘It’s not just my hat, though.’ Flopsy’s voice was cracking as he spoke. ‘It’s Gavin’s, too.’ Huge, fat tears fell from his pink eyes. ‘And it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t. He didn’t even like Hattie. He liked Fifi. Everything Fran and Gavin just said is a lie. I was there that night Fran talked about. No one kissed anyone. Nothing like that happened. Everyone was just … down. Weirded out by the fact that, even though Gavin’s and Fifi’s shows went well, everything else about that night was bad. They were worried that if the other Magic Hat performers didn’t get their acts together, the club would soon lose its customers. Even Fran was upset about that. How he was when you met him today … I don’t know if it’s because of working with Wayne, but that wasn’t the Fran I know. Fran is nice, usually. Everyone in the Freaky Five is nice. So I don’t know why Fran lied about kissing Hattie. And I don’t … I don’t know why Gavin would lie. Why would he lie when it’s going to take him away from me?’

  While I comforted Flopsy, Gretel passed Finn the ketchup. ‘See? It’s not right, Finn,’ she said. ‘And not just because we have no idea what to do with a human prisoner who happens to have a magic hat. Something feels so off about all of this.’

  He covered his chips almost entirely in sauce, until his plate resembled a massacre scene. ‘What?’ He saw our judgy eyes, and stared right back at us. ‘Why are you all looking at me as if I’ve just murdered the tomatoes myself? Lassie told me I need to eat more vegetables. Ketchup’s a vegetable. Kind of. But getting back to the actual murder case … look, I know. It’s off. Something took away Gavin’s talent, and Hattie’s. And didn’t Laurence say he couldn’t do his psychic act anymore? Flopsy, exactly how many other performers have lost their mojo?’

  The rabbit looked thoughtful, before saying, ‘At least three more, I think.’

  ‘Three more?’ I stared at him. ‘But why didn’t Laurence say something about that? Or Fifi?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Flopsy. ‘But it’s been happening for a while, and all spaced out, so no one really saw a pattern at first. That’s what I meant when I said Gavin and his friends were worried – if the performers kept going downhill, they wouldn’t be able to stay open much longer. Marge the Magnificent was the most recent. She did stuff with knives and scissors. I don’t know if she went missing, though. I don’t know if any of them did, other than Hattie. So many people want a spot at the club, and Laurence gives preference to the most popular, like Gavin. For the less popular performers, weeks can go by without seeing them.’

  Finn was adding more ketchup to his remaining chips. ‘So they could have disappeared before losing their mojo, too. You know what, I’m glad Victoria is leaving this case to us. Because at least it gives us a chance to get to the bottom of it. So listen, the Magic Hat is reopening tonight. To raise money for Hattie’s funeral, they said. Wanda, I think you and Gretel should go. Talk to Fifi and Laurence and Theo and … I dunno. Find out who else has become all tricked out, I suppose. Get names and addresses so we can interview them. And definitely find out why they’ve been playing this down. I’ll check out the other club again.’

  He finally put the ketchup down and rubbed his hands together. ‘Maybe I’ll wear my old lady glamour. See what I can find out over there.’

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘But if you’re going to wear your old lady glamour again, please let me take pictures. I do love it when you’re toothless.’

  With a plan, even a vague one in the works, my appetite returned, and I pulled my food back towards me.

  ≈

  There were a few hours to go before Gretel and I needed to head to the Magic Hat, so I spent some time at home. Max had the afternoon off, too. He often took a few hours off before full moon, so he could rest up for the night ahead.

  That afternoon we had tea and cake together, and watched some TV. Wolfie was there, too, back from his guilt-induced visit with Jasper. As a werewolf, Jasper would also be spending the next few nights out and about, so I’d volunteered to look after Wolfie.

  Later, when I went to the Magic Hat, Wolfie would be going to Wayfarers’ Rest for a couple of hours. Over the years he’d reached somewhat of an arrangement with the coven cats. Princess, Melissa’s familiar, was especially fond of him. They still teased him a little, but they were kinder about it then they’d been at first. And, if he was ever in trouble with an especially frightening mouse, they always sprang to his defence.

  Dizzy would be going along to Wayfarers’ Rest, too – but I suspected it was less to do with spending time with Wolfie, and more to do with the fact that today was my parents’ shopping day, and they always bought fresh mango.

  While Max and I curled up on the couch, Wolfie slept on the rug by our feet, his tail thumping and his legs jerking as he dreamt. Dizzy was snoozing too, hanging from the curtain rail in the adjoining dining room. We’d shut out the light for him, and I cleverly worked out that he was dreaming of mangoes, due to the fact that every few seconds, he murmured ‘Mangoes’ as he slept.

  Flopsy was the only one who wasn’t relaxed; he was shivering anxiously, and asking me every few minutes, ‘Is it time to go yet? We don’t want to be late.’

  And, even though I responded, ‘Soon,’ each and every time he asked, there was a reluctance, somewhere inside me, that I could neither deny nor understand.