Modern Magick

Toil and Trouble: 15

I fumbled the bag open and dragged Bill out. 'What do you mean, she isn't here?'

'She is not here. I detect no trace of her presence.'

'Bill, she's been dead for more than five hundred years. There is nothing left of her to detect.'

'That is not necessarily true. A strong bond was formed between us, and I would know if she was nearby.'

Damn it. 'I take it you haven't sensed any trace of her presence anywhere else?'

'I am afraid not.'

'Not even at the churchyard?'

'No.'

I felt, for one awful moment, like hurling Bill into the nearest of the puddles left by last night's rain. I contained the impulse. It wasn't his fault that we were apparently barking up the wrong tree.

'Any sign of them?' I asked Jay.

He shook his head. 'Nowhere near here.'

I began to get a bad feeling. 'Bill. Are you certain your mistress died here?'

'Perfectly.'

'I hate to be insensitive, but truly? You... did you see her die?'

Bill hesitated. 'Well, no.'

Damn it.

'She became very ill indeed, and with such speed that her imminent demise was inevitable. Soon afterwards, she... well, she never came back for me again, and some little time later the contents of her house were removed, including me.'

'Maybe she didn't die.'

'But.' Bill's voice developed a forlorn quality. 'Why then did she never return for me?'

'Good question.'

'Call Val,' said Jay.

My thought, too, but it was not necessary. My phone began to buzz at that moment, and it was Val calling. I put her on speaker.

'Ves!' she said. 'We have all been a bunch of idiots, and I thought you would like to know.'

'You mean our favourite plague-ridden sorceress didn't die in Lavenham?'

'So you figured that out.'

'Only just.'

'How?'

'Well, we're in Lavenham and she isn't.'

Val snorted. 'Zareen's idea interested me, so I went looking in some other, less accessible places—'

'Which ones?' I said quickly. If you catch Val off guard, she will occasionally let something slip.

Not this time. 'Let's just call them the dark depths of forbidden knowledge and leave it at that. Anyway, there is no record whatsoever of any sorceress, witch or other magicker anywhere in Suffolk of the name of Drogryre. Not five hundred years ago, and not ever.'

'Oh.'

'There is, however, quite a lot about a major sorceress called Diota Greyer, commonly called Dio.'

This time, it was my own self I felt like hurling into a puddle. Dio Greyer. I had seen for myself that Wester's handwriting was terrible, and Val had told me that his spelling and punctuation were decidedly eccentric. Why had it not occurred to me that we might have interpreted her name wrongly? And for that matter... 'Why didn't we stumble over her before?' I asked Val.