In 1943 David Martin hexed a single train in Nazi-Occupied Denmark and fled back over the English Channel in a small speedboat under the cover of night. He always planned to return and lift the curse. But eight months later, heavy winter storms in his native Pembrokeshire washed half a hillside down onto the road on which he was driving. His car was swept into a river where he and his wife drowned.
A year later, as allied forces pushed deeper into Europe, it became apparent that the curse had spread further and faster than anyone had anticipated. Counter-curses, which should have spread the same way - from train to track and from track to train - were simply overwritten by the first cursed carriage that rolled by.
There’s nothing quite as annoying and persistent as a Dead Wizard’s Curse.
Wild Life
Tuesday, March 15th, 9:05 AM
With two days to the Parade, it was all-hands-on-deck at the department, which meant I arrived at work at the general time I was supposed to. As I entered the lobby, I saw a young woman in lycra jogging gear sitting on the visitor’s bench. She had dark hair braided tightly behind her, and several esoteric tattoos visible just peeking out from under the cuffs of her sleeves. Her right calf was heavily bandaged and she was tending to it as I entered. She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“Good morning,” I said. “You’re here to see someone at the O.S.I.?”
She returned to her bandages and gave a noncommittal grunt.
“My name is Victor Grey. I’m the chief investigator here.”
She looked up again and squinted. “You’re a troll.”
“And you’re a witch. Yet here we are.”
She covered her surprise quickly. “I was told to wait for someone to take my statement. It’s been almost two hours.”
“I can do that, once I put my things down,” I said as she looked at me sharply again and I realised I had no things to actually put down. “Follow me,” was the best I could manage.
“Let’s start with your name,” I said as I sat at my desk and took out a witness statement form.
“Miranda Star,” she said.
“And that’s your legal name?”
“It’s my True Name.”
Oh goodie, she was one of those witches. “And for completeness sake, what is your legal name?”
She hesitated a bit before answering, “Miranda O’Connor.”
“Thank you, Ms. Star,” I said, on the principle that it never hurts to be nice. “Now, can you tell me what happened?”
“I was jogging in the park at dawn, and I was attacked by a damn werewolf.”
My pen paused in its transcription, and my policeman’s instincts sent the words, “Are you sure?” tripping off my tongue before I could stop them.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she snapped. “It was a big bloody wolf with way-too-long legs and fucking fingers. What else could it have been?”
“Did it bite you?” I asked, indicating her leg.
“It clawed at me. I’ve already treated the wound with wolfsbane and silver.”
“A very sensible precaution,” said Sir Arthur, who was standing beside us. I hadn’t seen him arrive, and wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t been there the whole time. He bowed deeply to Miranda as he introduced himself. “I am the resident Magistrate here. You may call me Arthur if you wish. May I?” he reached out to her bandaged leg.
She looked from me to him warily and then raised her foot.
Arthur took the injured leg and pressed delicately on the bandage. “A very thorough job. I doubt I could do any better myself.” He smiled. “Though if you find yourself losing hours or waking up in strange places, be sure to let us know.” He then turned to me. “Victor, once you are through taking her statement, come see me,” and he was gone.
Twenty minutes later, I had finished taking her statement. Miranda’s description fit a werewolf pretty accurately and, coming so soon after the deer carcass, I didn’t doubt it. I tasked Containment with a search of the Phoenix Park, spiralling outwards from the place she had been attacked, and sent McGinnis and another specialist from the Scene Team with them to help with tracking. Then I headed downstairs to visit the Magistrate.
He wasn’t in the Drum Library, for a change. Instead, I found him sitting behind his desk in his personal study. It was a much smaller square, room that seemed to contain twice as many books as the multi-storey library. The only thing that stopped each bowing shelf from failing completely was the mass of books on the shelf below. I knocked on the open door and waited for the go-ahead to enter.
“Werewolves, Mr. Grey?” he asked as I entered.
“I’m handling it. Got a search ongoing as we speak, and I’ve got the word out with the regular Gards, looking for the pack.”
“Since Sunday morning, I understand?”
“Yes, about that…”
“I had to read about the deer carcass in the daily reports. Dropped on our own doorstep!”
“It’s a prank. A provocation. The only way they win is if you respond personally.”
He steepled his fingers and looked at me coldly. “I assure you, Mr. Grey, that if I respond personally, they will not win.” The ‘jolly professor’ was gone in that moment and I felt a chill start at my scalp and wash over me in a cold wave.
“Yes, sir. Will that be everything?” I asked.
He shuffled some papers on his desk and looked up again with his usual smile. “I trust everything is in place for the Parade?”
“The whole department will be working Thursday. We’ve got the parade route covered and a Containment squad on standby.”
“Excellent, excellent. Carry on, then.” He opened a book to what looked like a sixteenth-century map of Ireland and began measuring some tiny part of it with the pair of callipers he had been using as a bookmark. As I left, I could just see the tip of his tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth.
The Ballad of Mrs. O’Riordan’s Banshee
Tuesday, March 15th, 1:25PM
“Are you boys sure you won’t have a cup of tea?” Mrs. O’Riordan asked again.
“Quite sure, Kathleen, thanks,” said Cormac. “Can you tell us again what time you heard the banshee?”
We were sitting once more in the kitchen of Kathleen O’Riordan’s house on the North Circular road. I was there because I was avoiding Sir Arthur and Cormac had come because he had never quite dismissed Mrs. O’Riordan as the harmless headcase that the rest of the office had. She had made fourteen calls to the office in the previous year reporting a ghostly wailing from behind her house, and the serious money was on her making another twenty five this year, but Cormac had gone all-in on the ‘banshee is real’ option after his first meeting with the eighty-six year-old.
“It was about eight o’clock yesterday,” she explained. I tried to record it this time, like you told me.” She took her phone from a kitchen drawer and struggled briefly to unlock it. Cormac and I exchanged looks as she rummaged through its file system to find the recording.
“Perhaps I could-” I began as the silence stretched into its third minute.
“Here it is!” she said triumphantly and turned the phone towards us. The screen showed a recording app and the speaker emitted a low droning noise.
“That sounds like wind…” I said.
“It was pretty windy last night,” Cormac said. “My flight had a very bumpy landing.”
“Oh, were you anywhere nice?” she asked, lowering the phone briefly.
“Madagascar,” he replied without missing a beat.
“Oh, very nice. Did you go for-” At that moment, a shrill screeching emerged from the phone. It was brief and barely audible over the noise of the wind, but unmistakably there.
“Where did you record this?” I asked, standing.
“Just at the back door,” she replied. She led us out of the kitchen, through a utility room and unlocked the back door of her house. For an inner-city terraced house, it had a surprisingly large back garden. Flowerbeds ran along the three walls and an ash tree growing at the rear of the garden cast a long shadow towards the house. Even now, with just a light breeze, the top-most branches swayed wildly.
“I was standing on this step,” says Mrs. O’Riordan, “and held the phone out. I didn’t see anything, though, just heard it.”
I did a circuit of the walls, examining each neighbouring house and those in the row behind while Cormac stood at the base of the tree looking upwards. After a moment, he beckoned me over and said, “Vic, gimme a boost.”
I peered up into the branches. I couldn’t see anything unusual, but still cupped my hands together as a stirrup for Cormac to stand in. He launched off my hands and shimmied up to the lower branches where he was soon almost lost to view among the budding leaves.
“The noises started last year in the early summer, right?” he called down.
Mrs. O’Riordan had emerged from the house and stood by my elbow. “Yes, about May or June.”
“That explains it,” said Cormac.
“Explains what?” I asked.
“New growth,” he called back, with infuriating enigmaticalness.
There was the sound of creaking wood and a slow cracking noise and then I could see him climbing down again, holding something in his hand. I stepped back as he jumped the last few feet to the ground and then held the object out towards us with both hands.
It was a plastic ring; black and green, though the green had faded with long exposure to the elements. The whole thing was flat with a slight curve as though someone had taken a ten-inch wide plate and cut an eight-inch hole in the centre of it.
“I had a few of these as a kid,” said Cormac. “I think it’s called a Fris-O-bee? Or a Fris-O-rang.” He turned it over, trying to read the long-faded print on it.
“That must have been my son’s.” Mrs. O’Riordan eyed the toy cautiously.
“I didn’t know you had a son,” I said.
“Oh, Jason went to London in eighty-five. I didn’t see him after that and he died a few years later.” She said this with a quiet tone I had never heard her use before. “Complications from-" she stopped again and then added, "Pneumonia”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that so simply asked, “It’s been up there forty years?”
“It was hooked over one branch and sort of wedged between two others,” said Cormac. “I imagine it’s always rattled in the wind, but last summer the bark on the branches finally grew enough to hold it in place more firmly. It stopped rattling and started whistling, like the reed in a flute, whenever the wind came from a certain direction. The first few times we came over last year, it was summer and we didn’t see it because of the leaves. After that, we weren’t really looking. I’m sorry we didn’t find it sooner.”
He held out the disc and Mrs. O’Riordan took it from him slowly, before crossing her arms over it and hugging it to herself. “Thank you,” she said after a moment.
On the footpath outside her house, Cormac reached for the door of his car and then stopped. “I’m going to walk back to the office,” he said.
“And then walk back here to get your car later?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“I don’t drive and I’m not carrying this thing back on my shoulders,” I explained taking in the car with a wave, “though this is not me not saying I couldn’t.”
“Oh right, sorry, I was a million miles away,” said Cormac, snapping out of his reverie and opening the door of his car.
“Why don’t I walk back,” I said. “It’ll give you some time alone to call your mother.”
Cormac grinned at that.
“And while you’re speaking to her,” I added, “ask her for a loan because you just lost a shit-ton of money on the office pool.”
Date Night
Tuesday, March 15th, 7:25 PM
Tuesday evening was the only hole in my work schedule on Saint Patrick’s week, so I had arranged to meet Sam for dinner at a restaurant she liked near Stephen’s Green. The place was packed, but she had reserved a booth that afforded us some privacy.
I squeezed into the booth and studied the menu while I waited for her to arrive. I was in the mood for a steak, but after seeing the prices, I was suddenly in the mood for a small salad.
Sam dumped her coat in the chair and leaned over the table to give me a quick kiss before sitting down. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Been working on a major case and the time got away from me.”
“Oh? Anything interesting?”
“Drug dealer in Drogheda,” she said, opening her menu. “Seems he’s been sheltering almost a million euro in a dummy corporation in Brussels. The whole thing’s being run by an accountant in Navan and we suspect he’s made the same arrangement for at least a half-dozen others. Could be a massive money-laundering scoop. I am starving. You working on anything unusual?”
“Werewolves in the Phoenix Park. Maybe. They keep giving us the slip.”
She closed the menu with a laugh. “I don’t know why I try to compete with you. For real, werewolves? Howling on the full moon werewolves?”
“Not exclusively, but yes.”
“If you catch one and it bites you, will you turn into one?”
“I’m immune, thankfully. But anyone else will need special gear and we’re making poultices, just in case.”
“Jesus. That’s mad. I thought they were something from books where people pose on the cover with their shirts off.”
“The books need their inspiration somewhere,” I said as the waitress arrived to take our order. Sam ordered a bottle of red wine for us that cost far too much money and the chicken salad. I really wanted the ribeye, but settled for some pasta dish I couldn’t pronounce.
“You still working the parade?” she asked while we waited.
“I have to. There’s a credible threat by a group of known Bad People, and the parade is perfect for exploitation.”
“Because of the crowds? Or something else?”
Another couple took the booth next to us, so I lowered my voice. “OK, you know how I explained that magic moves on roads and travelled routes?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “Like Feng Shui.”
“Well, if someone were to hex the route of the parade in advance, that hex would be amplified by three thousand people all marching along it in rhythm and wearing similar clothing. The tiniest, most undetectable, curse would grow by the end of the parade so that everyone who took part could be made ill or mind-controlled or who knows what.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck indeed. Two weeks ago, we caught a member of a South African gang who are known to use magic, and he had a map of the route in his phone.”
At that moment, the waitress returned with a wine bottle she uncorked. “This is a fruity red from North Italy. It has tones of apple and peach with an earthy after-taste.” She poured a small amount for each of us and I gave Sam one of those ‘you go ahead’ gestures. Same took a sip and then nodded. It clearly met with her approval.
“Does your restaurant have a… a wine guy?” I looked to Sam for help.
“A sommelier?”
“Yes. A sommell- one of those.”
“We do. Mr. Maddox is in charge of our cellar,” she said with a hint of confusion.
“Edward Maddox?” I asked, the penny dropping.
“That’s right. Do you know him?”
“He’s an old friend from work. Would you mind asking him to stop by our table?” I smiled to let her know she had done nothing she needed to worry about, and she scuttled off into the crowd.
“What was that about?” Sam asked.
I turned the wine bottle so its label was facing me. “You see that sigil on the inside of the label? That’s a magical glyph.”
She took the bottle and peered at the symbol. “What does it do?”
“Well, ask yourself: If this bottle is full of red wine, how are you even able to see it?”
She blinked a few times and shook her head. I could see the internal struggle as what she knew battled what she could see. “Is it empty?”
“Nope, just full of water. The glyph turns the contents of the bottle into whatever you’re told it is, in your mind. In this case, a fruity cabernet with undertones of melon, or whatever the waitress said.”
“But it tastes so real.”
“That’s the problem. Ah, Eddie! Long time no see!”
Eddie Maddox had arrived at our table. He wore a full tuxedo and had his hair perfectly styled. He’d certainly come a long way since we had first met. He peered at me, hesitantly. “I do not believe I have had the pleasure, sir.” His speech was precise and clipped.
“Last time I arrested you, you were running a burger van in North Wall. The time before that, a chip shop in Greystones. I think the first time we met, you were tending bar in an unlicensed casino.”
With each pronouncement, his expression changed a tiny bit. It was like watching a glacier crack. Then it crashed into the ocean and his eyes flew wide. “Vic!”
I tapped the wine bottle with my knife. “You know how much trouble you’re gonna be in for this?”
“Ah, c’mon, Vic. It’s just a simple glamour. Fleece a few rich sorts. I’ll swap it out for you.” He snapped his fingers to get the waitress's attention.
“Glamours don’t have a taste and a smell that stays with you. They don’t make you drunk, Eddie. You’re altering people’s state of mind. I think you know how his Lordship feels about magic that messes with people’s minds.”
Maddox was visibly sweating now. “I can’t go back to jail, Vic.”
“You won’t, if you do exactly what I say. One: Take this bottle away and bring a real one. Two: Stop this whole scam. I know you’re smart enough and have the know-how to do this job for real. I’ll be back, at random, wearing different glamours to check. If I see anyone getting drunk on water or if I hear you’ve quit or been fired, I’ll throw the book at you. I'll hurl a feckin' library. Understood?”
Maddox grabbed the bottle from the table and the two glasses half-full of water. To his credit, he grabbed them in a panic, but didn’t spill a drop. “Understood. And your meal tonight is on me.”
“In that case,” I said, “change my order to the ribeye. Medium, with onions.”
He saluted with the hand holding the bottle and scurried away.
I looked back to Sam, who had watched all of this exchange with her mouth agape. “That was just about the sexiest thing I have ever seen,” she said.
"Well," I said, unfolding my napkin with a that satisfying 'crack' sound, “You only say that because you’ve never seen me fight a werewolf with my shirt off."
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