Page 10 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga #1)

“So, you’re the one who is gonna take care of all the gondogol12 going about, then?”

“Something like that,” Avery answered, half distracted by the new surfaces, textures, and materials. “Apparently, it’s my one redeeming attribute.”

“But so redeeming your sentence was cut three hundred years short in order to utilize it, eh? That is something to celebrate!”

Gideon was right. This man did smile too much. “How did you get mixed up in this?”

“We volunteered,” the man chirped with an almost disturbing cheerfulness. “My wife offered the apartments, I offered to shadow you—keep you out of trouble as it were.” Lahiri winked good-naturedly.

This was unexpected information. “Your wife is a Hudson.”

“Mm.” It was such a small noise, yet it resonated with pride. “One of the oldest families of witches, the line unbroken and involved in our ways since who knows when, but still a mortal, and thus still treated with relative trepidation in most circles.”

“Yet it was mentioned to me that you abstain from magic?”

Lahiri laughed—it was the sort of laugh that overtook his whole being. “You make it sound so dramatic with that word—abstain. I just don’t find much of a use for it.”

Avery stared at him. “You are a policeman.”

“I work a Mundane job, with Mundane coworkers, protecting and serving Mundane people,” said Lahiri. “I am an ifrit, what good would my magic do? Shall I engulf a suspect in fire?” He chuckled at the ridiculousness of the notion. “No, my friend, you have been misled about me.”

Reza Lahiri | Jinn (Ifrit), Age: Mid-40s?

6’0”? Lean muscle, dark complexion

· Prefers to not use magic.

· Family: Married to a Hudson witch and owner of the café.

· Detective Inspector for Scotland Yard, Charing Cross Station. Winter Council Lackey.

Avery huffed through her nose. “We will see.”

Where Avery deliberately limited the information she gave to others, Detective Lahiri volunteered his unprompted.

“Leigh and I just had a daughter last winter. We want to make sure the world she’s coming into won’t be actively trying to push her out—from either side.

Your return feels like a step in the right direction. ”

Another changeling. This gave deeper meaning to his surprise at her introduction.

“Hemlock” in the old days was often spat in the direction of any mortal/fey progeny.

Humans weakened fey bloodlines. Immortality was one of the first traits to wane with each added mortal generation.

Mortality, much like hemlock, was a fatal poison with no true antidote.

“You believe that, even knowing what I’d done? ”

“There is a saying people are always quoting, but I do believe for you it fits. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

There was a blatant sense of support in his words. Support from an absolute stranger for actions that she herself had often questioned. “Who are they quoting?”

Lahiri shrugged. “No one knows—it’s one of those sayings everyone thinks someone else said.13 Anyway, my wife and I thought if we helped you out, maybe by the time River is grown she won’t have to make a choice between which world she wants to live in. Perhaps we’ll have reached something better.”

It was the kind of consideration any former neglected child would have envied, but, Avery distracted herself by testing the texture of the floor with her shoes. “What is this?”

“It’s called linoleum. After your time, right? You must be seeing a lot of that sort of thing since you woke. I imagine it’s pretty strange, eh?”

“Curious,” Avery corrected, gently. “What’s it made of?”

“No idea. I just know that it’s biodegradable, per the Green Agreement of the UN.”

“The UN?”

Lahiri snapped in realization. “Right, you wouldn’t know about that yet. When did you go under, exactly?”

“1837,” Avery answered distractedly. “Just after Christmas.”

He let out a low whistle. “That’s going to be a lot of catching up, eh?

Well, consider me your guide. The UN—the United Nations—is a worldwide council made up of representatives from every country.

Well, more or less; it gets complicated with some of the larger continents.

I’ve never been much for politics. The Green Agreement is a series of laws that boil down to basically we as a planet agreed not to murder the Earth to the best of our ability.

It governs means of production, products themselves, energy conservation, gathering—a lot.

You will probably want to read up on both of those at some point, but those are the basics. ”

Avery couldn’t decide if it was more strange that such an agreement had to be made into law or that every nation had agreed to it. “And biodegradable, from the roots, I assume means something along the lines of degrading through…life? Like decomposition?”

“More or less—it means something can be broken down into its basic substances through normal environmental processes.” Lahiri paused at the door. “Speaking of environmental processes… Considering it’s been some time since you’ve dealt with a body in decomp, I’d steel yourself.”

Avery waved her hand a little dismissively. “Mental preparation won’t do my nostrils any favors.”

“Suit yourself.” Lahiri opened the door with flair. “Examination Room 5. Body has been prepped for you. Tools available as needed, and a copy of the victim’s medical file.”

Avery’s eyes briefly slid to the interior. The room was small and cold. It was lit brightly but in a way that somehow made her shiver. It reminded her of a cell. “Coroner’s report?”

“Included. One of our own did the most recent notes.”

Avery stepped inside and immediately regretted it. “Fates, what is that horrible smell?”

“I did warn you,” Lahiri answered.

“Is it no longer part of the procedure to clean the corpse?” Avery asked incredulously. “It smells as if someone tried to make beer out of vomit in here.”

“They cleaned it,” Lahiri assured. “Scent persisted.”

It made her eyes water. She attempted to breathe through her mouth, but that only made her taste it.

Spiced, almost earthy, stinging, and aggressively pungent.

She peered at the body of the young woman, pulling an embroidered white handkerchief from her pocket to hold it over her nose.

The perfume had long dissipated from the fabric, but even the slightly dusty aroma was a thankful change.

The victim was lean, but not particularly muscular, covered in bruises from the crash and a line of stitches across her forehead from the autopsy.

Short hair, cropped just beneath the chin, red.

Strong features—high angular cheekbones, a Roman nose, skin accustomed to easy tanning with an olive undertone.

She had the remnants of a tan line of a garment secured around the back of her neck.

She’d been somewhere sunny in the last week or so.

That’s when Avery noticed the source of the scent.

A small metal bowl next to the body, typically reserved for holding the brain when removed for examination, held what could only be described as a murky slop with twigs and weeds sticking out of it.

Closer inspection revealed that the twigs in the murky water were bits of straw.

As for the weeds, they appeared to be possibly sage, a reddish-brown sludge that had begun to separate, a few slimy green half-moon-shaped leaves stuck to three pistachio-like seeds, and what appeared to be mint—though decomposition of the leaves made it rather impossible to guess from visual evidence alone.

Bewildered, Avery reached for the file, skimming through it.

Valentina LaRosa | Human, Age: 28 (Victim)

Average build, medium complexion, 5’4”, brown eyes.

· Healthy, no known family history of illness.

· Nurse, King’s College alumni.

· Willed that her body be donated to help future medical professionals.

Avery paused at the attached photo and held it up to her companion, finally able to ask what she’d wanted to since first seeing one. “Is this some sort of lithograph?”

Lahiri smiled. It was genuine, kind. “It’s called a photograph.

I think it probably came about a little after you went under, to be honest. Maybe a few years—a decade at the most. Not this quality or level of detail, mind you, but…

its predecessors. It’s become a rather indispensable tool for investigations. ”

Avery turned back to the file, examining the picture of the woman.

There were other photos of some bruising, even how they’d found her in the car.

The subject matter should have been unpleasant, but the technology that made the photograph possible was far too fascinating to Avery for the content to quite register.

Photo—from the Greek—for light, and graph—to write or record.

“I’d heard rumors in some of the scientific circles in London about some mad Frenchman.

” She couldn’t keep the smile from creeping its way into her expression.

“Capturing reality with the power of the sun. Heliography, he’d named it. ”

“If only he could see the fruits of his labor now, eh?” Lahiri mused.

She had a brief feeling of camaraderie with the inspector, marveling at how the world had grown in its wonders, but it cheered her.

The coroner noted all bruising acquired in the car crash had been postmortem.

Avery ran her tongue along the edge of her top teeth.

“She was dead before the crash…” She pursed her lips and flipped further through the report.

“Olea europaea L., dihydrogen monoxide, Salvia verbenaca, Ginkgo biloba L., Curcuma longa, Melissa officinalis, Thymus vulgaris, and Triticum aestivum… Well, that explains the smell. Rotting ginkgo seeds.”

“My wife has me take ginkgo biloba. Says it will keep me sharp.” He leaned a little in the doorway. “What’s the rest of them—preferably in a language that hasn’t been dead for centuries?”