The Mysterious Mr Wylie: Wonky Inn Book 6 Read online

  Apart from Gwyn and she was absent more than she was present at times.

  I sighed. “Florence, my dear. This is my inn. My kitchen.” I paused, knowing that if Gwyn were around, she’d have corrected me. The inn wasn’t mine, it was simply in my care. I was custodian of the bricks and the mortar, of the grounds and the woods, but more importantly the spirits and other creatures and the magickal essence that breathed life into us all. “Well you know what I mean,” I said. “I’ll tell Monsieur Emietter that you’re allowed cake-baking time.”

  “And bread?” Florence asked.

  “Of course.” Florence’s bread was exceptional.

  “And pies?”

  “Well okay.” That would probably involve treading a little more on my French chef’s toes.

  “And puddings.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Florence,” I promised and hurried away before she made poor Monsieur Emietter redundant.

  A cursory glance of the attic room proved Gwyn’s absence, so I tried the room on the other side of the attic stairs. I flicked the light switch, illuminating a smaller room. It smelled slightly musty. Motes of dust floated in the air. This was where the old records for the inn were kept, many arranged neatly on bookshelves and others piled high in cardboard boxes. Old accounts, receipts, signing in and visitor books, customer records, invoices—you name it—anything that pre-dated the age of the computer database were all stored here somewhat haphazardly.

  But no sign of Gwyn.

  I was about to exit and make my way back downstairs when a thought occurred to me.

  The entries on my computer records with regard to Mr Wylie had been erased. I wasn’t sure that Gwyn had done it, but her magick was powerful enough that she could have done, even without knowing little about modern day software.

  But would she have bothered to erase any hard copy evidence of his stay at the inn?

  Even if she had, any irregularity would be noticeable. Without destroying all the records, a smudged entry or a torn-out page was going to aid in the identification of when Mr Wylie may have stayed at the inn in the past. This might help me find out more information both about Mr Wylie and his friend.

  I gazed with distaste at the books in front of me. There were hundreds of them. Proper record keeping at the inn had been started by my Victorian ancestors, not surprising given that the Victorians as a society had been obsessed with record keeping and data, and my forebears were no exception. From the 1840s the records were highly detailed and recorded in a neat legible hand. Most of the nineteenth century record books were black leather. From 1902 they were oxblood red until 1940 when they became green. Prior to the 1840s the books were brick coloured, the paper edges now dry and crumbling with age.

  I groaned. This would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

  It seemed like a good idea but for now I decided to sleep on it.

  Funny how your subconscious likes to work out all your problems for you while you sleep.

  I jolted awake in the early hours and sat bolt upright. The obvious place to start looking through the registers would be to line up my investigation with the date on the back of the photo that George had shown me. He’d given me a copy of the photo, not the original, but while asleep I’d remembered the date.

  I scrambled out of bed and slipped through to my office, scrabbling around on the desk for a pen and paper. Switching the desk lamp on, I scrawled the date to remind myself to check in the morning.

  Then I stumbled back to bed and fell deeply asleep once more.

  After that, my dreams were weird. George, Stacey and I were floating around in space, struggling to stay together without gravity to help us. Mr Wylie was there, and he was crying because he had lost something. I kept asking him what he’d lost, but he wouldn’t tell me. Then Florence floated up into space to join us—easy for her given her ghostly form and the fact she was accustomed to floating everywhere. She offered us all a cupcake, but when I took a bite of mine I found it was covered in feathers.

  “Does Mr Hoo know you have his feathers?” I asked Florence, but she was too busy watching television to answer me, her eyes were squares, which reflected the stars around us.

  I woke up with a start, imagining I was spitting feathers out of my mouth. Mr Hoo backed slowly away from me and settled on the arm of the window.

  “Hooo-oooo,” he told me. “Hooo!”

  “You’re right,” I answered. “I’m cracking up.”

  As I’d suspected, Gwyn had not altered the original records.

  An entry for Mr William Wylie existed for the dates July 18th, 1920 through July 25th inclusive. The entry had been made in black ink, in the same handwriting I’d seen on the reverse of the photo. A small neat cursive hand. Gwyn’s most likely.

  The same handwriting had filled in hundreds and hundreds of entries in this reservation book. Under her patronage, Whittle Inn had been a popular haunt—excuse the pun. I ran my finger along the page of entries feeling oddly melancholy. She’d been so very alive when she’d completed the details contained here. Laughing, loving, talking, eating, walking on the ground, sleeping, brushing her hair—just being physical.

  “Oh, Grandmama,” I muttered, feeling sad for her, although I knew she would hate me being maudlin for her sake. She’d often told me she enjoyed her spirit existence, so I shouldn’t have minded it on her behalf.

  William Wylie had been staying in what had then been Room 4. When I’d taken over the inn, the rooms had been relabelled according to the floor they were on, so I couldn’t be sure exactly which one had been Room 4. However, I figured that logically it would be one of the bedrooms on the same floor as my suite of rooms so that Room 4 subsequently became Room 104 and then The Throne Room after I’d made my own changes.

  Directly underneath William Wylie’s entry was another that could only refer to the ‘GG’ of the photo. This entry belonged to Guillaume Gorde. He’d been placed in Room 3. Both of them had given their address as care of The Full Moon on Celestine Street. That was standard among witches who didn’t want to be tracked down, I knew that. However, I was surprised that Gwyn had allowed them to register only using those details.

  Why had she felt those two deserved a special treatment?

  Could I make the assumption that Guillaume Gorde was William Wylie’s lost friend? Was he the skeleton behind the wall? Or had Mr Wylie stayed at the inn on any other occasion and with other friends? Flicking through every entry in every book in the attic store was going to take me ages.

  Unless…

  A vision of Mr Kephisto and the way he had located information the day before materialised in my mind. Could I use my magick, too?

  I ran my fingers along the spines of the black leather volumes leaving a clean trail in the dust, grey fluff bunching up on the tip of my finger. Florence obviously didn’t get in here much, but then I’d never asked her to do so.

  Nothing jumped out at me. The books continued to appear normal, nothing out of the ordinary. The books in Mr Kephisto’s room had positively glowed with a vibrant and unmistakeable force.

  I blew on the dust on my finger. “Animare.” I breathed the word, softly, and watched as the sprinkles scattered in the air, floating gently on my breath. For a moment it didn’t appear that anything would happen, and then suddenly each speck began to glow as though a miniature fire had been set within. The burning specks drifted towards the books and finally lit the torch paper. A rapid pulse of energy spread through them, from the black volumes to those with oxblood leather and then on to the green.

  Now when I ran my finger along the side of the books, they glittered underneath my touch. “Ostendus,” I ordered, “Mr William Wylie.” I watched in satisfaction as one black-spined volume, and then another, followed by one oxblood and another, and then no less than four tattered green volumes pushed their way out from the wall.

  I plucked the volumes out and created a pile. This made my job so much easier.

  In between the other tasks and
chores needing attention, I pored over the volumes on my desk in the office where the light was better for scrutinising the faded entries in the books. I kept half an eye out for Gwyn in case she appeared somewhere. There were so many questions I wanted to ask her, but she continued to remain hidden from me.

  The process of searching through entry after entry in each ledger took hours. At first, when I drew a blank, I imagined my magick hadn’t pulled out the correct volumes at all, but eventually towards the back of the first book I spotted the first entry for William Wylie. He’d first stayed at the inn, according to the records at any rate, on 27th April 1888 for two days. Alone.

  By the end of the day, when my eyes were tired and scratchy, I had a list of dates that a William Wylie had stayed at the inn, and a shorter list for Guilluame Gorde. Gorde had only ever stayed at the same time as Mr Wylie, but the last occasion they had stayed together had been 1932.

  Mr Wylie had subsequently stayed at the inn twenty-four more times according to the paper records. Most noticeably five times in 1942 and seven times in 1983.

  So, what kept bringing him back?

  I rubbed my eyes and stared at the list in front of me. I had no way of conjuring up Mr Wylie myself. He came, he went, and I didn’t know how.

  I couldn’t track down Gwyn—she was nowhere to be found, and none of the other ghosts were able to tell me where she was hiding.

  Mr Kephisto had helped me as much as he could.

  George couldn’t do magick.

  And besides… he had Stacey. Ugh.

  The skeleton—Guillaume Gorde I assumed—had left his mortal remains in the gap in the wall, and a few material bits and pieces, but he hadn’t left his ghost light, so I wasn’t able to call him to me and ask what had happened to him and how he’d ended up incarcerated at the inn.

  I needed somebody who could communicate with the dead after they had crossed over. A necromancer.

  I knew just the man.

  The problem was, I had no easy way to contact him.

  September in the countryside is one thing—even in poor weather the Devon landscape never seems greener nor more alive than in the weeks before Autumn sets in. In Speckled Wood, recovering well now after the toxic outbreak that had nearly killed it, small mammals—badgers, foxes, squirrels, moles, voles, mice and hares—were busy making initial preparations for the winter ahead. They lived each day as if it was their last. The trees reached for the sun at every opportunity. Late flowers and early berries bloomed bright and ripe, fed by the rain and the sunlight in equal measure, and enticed all comers.

  September in the city, on a rainy day, well that’s something else.

  The shop windows on Celestial Street glowed with their usual warmth, while the cobbles, slick with rain, sparkled in the light. The heavenly scent of pies and sweet treats filled the air, but today—as I had once before—I was turning to the dark side.

  Pulling my hood over my head, I hurried down Cross Lane. The narrow thoroughfare separated the shining and happy Celestial Street; where witches, wizards, sages and mages came to undertake their business all legally and above board, from the underbelly of our magickal world. Here in the back alleys, the disenfranchised and the dark, the excluded and the forgotten, the heavy of heart and the doers of black deeds, lived in tiny cramped lodgings. Anonymity was treasured here. Payments were made in cash and upfront. Visitors were expected to forget all they’d witnessed as soon as they vacated the area.

  The first time I’d hired Horace T Silvanus, it had taken me several weeks to make the right connections and had cost me a small fortune in a down payment. Silvan, as I now knew him, was a highly secretive individual who earned his living as a wizard-for-hire, a conductor of dirty activities, who could be trusted to get in, do a job, and get out again and then keep his mouth firmly shut. He lived on the wrong side of the tracks because that was his preference. I’d hired him to help me learn the dark arts and become a better fighting witch.

  So here I was again, approaching The Web and Flame, with my fingers crossed that I’d find Silvan inside.

  As if it would be that easy.

  The Web and Flame was exactly as I remembered it. White-washed walls and small fires burning in black grates that gave off no warmth or cheer. There were a few small gatherings of solemn folks, conducting business in hushed tones, and a number of solitary individuals sitting at the rough wooden table, staring into the bottom of their tankards, or reading newspapers.

  On the face of it, nobody paid me any mind, but I was no naïve witch anymore. The old Alfhild Daemonne might have assumed she could travel incognito and talk her way out of any situation but having trained closely with Silvan in the weeks leading up to finding George, having fought The Mori on more than one occasion, and having come close to losing almost everything I held dear, I was no longer that foolish girl.

  My wits remained on high alert. I rebuffed any curious advances that came my way—slapped away the enquiring thought tentacles sent out by silent observers attempting to inveigle their way into my mind. Simultaneously I sent out my own and was just as quickly repulsed.

  While the toothless and bald man behind the bar was familiar to me—he’d been the landlord I’d seen in here before—there was no spark of recognition in his eyes. He stood in front of his optics, polishing glasses with a soiled cloth. I laid some coins on his counter. “A glass of Hoodwinker, please.”

  The landlord set his lips into a thin line and dawdled across to his pumps to pull me a short measure. I didn’t complain. I wouldn’t be drinking the ale on this occasion anyway. When he plonked the glass down in front of me, I covered the coins with my hand.

  “Would you know the whereabouts of Silvan?” I asked, absolutely certain that everyone would know everyone else in this tiny backwater of the magickal world. Infamy and daring deeds had to amount for something.

  The landlord’s eyes remained black, the look on his face distinctly disinterested.

  “No,” he replied shortly. “No idea who you mean.”

  It didn’t matter. It was enough.

  I carried my glass to a free table and sat with my back against the wall so that I could watch people coming and going. I didn’t have to wait long before I spotted a small girl dart out of the front entrance and turn left, heading further down Knick-Knack Lane and away from Cross Lane.

  My message would be delivered.

  I took a quick swig of my Hoodwinker. It was as good as I remembered. An ale remarkably dark and rich in colour, but which tasted light and refreshing. Whatever else you might say about The Web and Flame, the beers were top-notch.

  After a few minutes, I abandoned my drink and exited the pub. The rain was falling straight like stair-rods, leaking relentlessly from a miserable and sour-grey sky. Water dripped down the walls of the old buildings or trickled from ancient iron guttering. I turned left and walked along Knick-Knack Lane, further into the underworld than I had ever ventured before.

  I was entering a rabbit warren of epic proportions; it would be easy to get lost. I kept half an eye on potential landmarks: a teeny bakery, a pie shop, an old wand shop—this latter little more than a window into someone else’s front room—a magickal curios shop and several more public houses and inns. At the same time, I envisaged a gold thread unravelling around the streets and lanes and thoroughfares as I walked. I would use this to find my way back.

  The little girl had disappeared from view, but again that wasn’t important. As long as the message had been delivered, I trusted everything else would go to plan. I continued onward, making sure to mentally note the street signs where they were visible.

  It was therefore disappointing, thirty-five minutes later, to find myself back in Knick-Knack Lane, very close to The Web and Flame. I stopped stock still and glared at the old inn in front of me. How had I managed that?

  Then the little girl stepped right out in front of me, so close I could have almost touched her. She gazed up at me through large dark eyes, her face, streaked with di
rt, but with no expression at all. With a small movement of her head, she indicated a door to the right of her and took to her heels, disappearing into the entrance of The Web and Flame.

  I watched her go, and then with one last glance along the street I turned to my left to duck through the doorway she’d indicated. A narrow and steep flight of old wooden stairs led up to a landing, a kind of open veranda looking down onto the street below. A second entrance took me up more stairs to the next level.

  A pair of louvre doors were propped open in front of me. I carefully approached them and peered through. A woman of about my age with long white hair was pulling a jacket over her thin bodice. She spotted me and smiled, beckoning me through. The room was surprisingly light, painted white, with pot plants dotted around and three wicker chairs grouped around a glass table, each of them draped with orange throws.

  “Out the back there,” she said, indicating another room through a wooden beaded curtain. She bent to retrieve a small hessian sack and disappeared through the louvre doors. I walked through to the back room.

  The blinds had been drawn in here and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but when I could finally focus, I was thankful to see Silvan lounging on his bed watching me.

  “Alfhild Daemonne, as I live and breathe.” I’d grown accustomed to his drawl, and his handsome face. In fact, he had become so familiar, and such a part of my adventures with The Mori, that seeing him again was rather like looking in a mirror.

  My stomach fluttered with a sudden onset of nerves. “If I’d known you lived so close to The Web and Flame it would have saved me a whole lot of shoe leather,” I complained.

  “Oh, I don’t live here. This is Marissa’s place.” He nodded towards the door and the white-haired woman who had left us to it.

  “Is that your girlfriend?” I asked. He’d never mentioned a partner before, and I found myself curious.