Page 22 of Secrets of the Eternal Flame

I grinned. ‘Thanks. Maybe you need to think about hiring a replacement for Kaz.’

He grimaced. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

After I’d grabbed my bag and tray, Eva and I walked to the police station. I’d really enjoyed working with Yanni and Dove and getting to know Witchlight Cove again; what I hadn’t enjoyed were the early mornings. It was good to have a reason to pop in and see them all – in my own time frame – and to see how Maddie was coping with Yanni.

I opened the door to the station and stopped. Yanni and Dove had left their desks and were standing looking exasperated at a small, elderly goblin who had placed herself in front of them with her hands on her hips. ‘I don’t understand why you won’t listen to me!’ she shouted. ‘You’re meant to help people, so why aren’t you helping me?’

Chapter Fourteen

‘Four times!’ she said, stamping her foot on the tiled floor. ‘Four times I’ve been in here and you’ve done nothing. I’m telling you, they’re not lost, they’ve beenstolen.’

Though her back was to me, the large ears jutting out at ninety degrees made it clear what she was. The slight warble in her voice paired with an outfit straight out of a 1920s’ issue ofVogue,complete with a real fox-fur stole, told me we weren’t simply dealing with a goblin but an ancient one.

Eva looked at the dead animal and whined, her eyes wide. ‘Don’t worry, girl. It’s fake,’ I lied.

On the other side of the reception desk, Yanni drew in a long breath as she tried to hold in her frustration. ‘Gwen, I hear you, I do, but I don’t understand what you expect us to do. We’ve been down to the shop and it’s very difficult to see where this grimoire was taken from. And as for the mug—’

‘It’s been in my family for generations,’ Gwen interjected forcefully.

‘I understand,’ Yanni said. ‘But is there a chance you could have misplaced it? I leave mugs in different places all the time, don’t I?’ She looked at Dove for confirmation.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Dove said, jumping in with the enthusiasm she knew Yanni wanted from her. ‘In the police car, in the kitchen. I sometimes leave them in my bathroom too, but that’s normally when I’ve had a hot chocolate at night to relax. I’m not sure if Yanni does that.’

An image of Yanni sharing a bath with a very naked Ernie assailed me; from the way Maddie shuddered on the other side of her desk, I suspected she’d had a similar vision.

‘And yousellgrimoires,’ Yanni continued. ‘Your shop is called “Grimoires and Goblets”. Could you have sold the missing one by mistake?’

‘Why would I have sold it?’ Gwen stamped her foot again. ‘It was a blank book – adisplaygrimoire. As for the mug, I’ve already told you I didn’t lose it. It’s been stolen!’ Her voice rose even higher.

‘I know that’s what you’ve told us,’ Yanni said patiently. ‘But from what you’ve said, these thieves have stolen an old mug and a blank grimoire. They don’t sound like the most valuable goods to steal.’

Gwenstill had her back to me, but when I lowered my shields her outrage struck me like a fist. She wascertainshe hadn’t misplaced the items.

‘It’s not only that,’ she insisted. ‘There’ve been other things, little knick-knacks. I thought my memory was getting worse, but it’s been happening for months. Shoplifters. But they made a mistake in taking that mug! IknowI wouldn’t misplace that!’

‘Why don’t you buy some security cameras?’ Maddie suggested. ‘Then you could see if somebody is pinching your stuff.’

‘That’s not going to help with my mug, is it?’ Gwen shook her head. ‘My mother would be so disappointed in me. She absolutely loved that mug – she went on and on about it being the perfect shape to drink out of.’

I felt a twinge of sympathy. It may have been just a mug to others but clearly it meant a lot to the goblin, especially as it had belonged to her mother. But I could also see it from Yanni’s point of view. Police resources were scarce and it wasn’t feasible for her to spend even more time on something she’d already investigated when she had real police work to get on with, not to mention a Big-Ben-sized pile of paperwork to get through.

What Gwen needed was someone who had the time to look into the disappearances for her, someone who couldeither find where she’d put the misplaced items or confirm that they’d been stolen and recover them… Put simply, Gwen neededme.

Which was why I opened my mouth.

‘I’ll help you,’ I said to the goblin who still had her back to me. ‘I’ll help you find your things.’

I could see why Yanni thought Gwen might have misplaced the items. It took her a few minutes to grasp that I was a PI rather than a police officer and even then she seemed to get so muddled that I began to doubt that the items had been stolen. Still, there was no harm in checking so I passed over the coffees and cheesecake then headed down to Grimoires and Goblets with the aged goblin leading the way.

‘The shop has been in my family for more than two hundred years,’ she told me, ‘and its name hasn’t changed, not once. Although people call it Gwendolen’s Grimoires and Goblets, and before that it was my dad’s – Gordon’s Grimoires and Goblets – and before that my grandmother Gloria’s… You get the idea.’

I did. It seemed Gwen’s family had strict rules about names: each one had to start with the letter G. It was theworld’s most niche G-string. I shuddered; thinking about the aged goblin and G-strings in the same moment was a mistake.

‘How long have you been running the shop?’ I asked. Gwen’s hair was white and her skin had more creases than my old case files rammed into my bottom drawer; at a rough guess, she was in her eighties.

‘Coming up to forty years now,’ she replied. ‘I want to hold on for the big fifty, at least. The last person who did that was my great-great-grandad, Gothering. He holds the record – he was in charge for sixty-seven years. I doubt I’ll manage that but I’m going to try. My Glenda isn’t that interested in taking it over anytime soon.’

From the way Gwen was talking about the shop, it was clearly more than just bricks and mortar to her. It was her legacy – and I knew exactly what that felt like. ‘So the shop is really old?’ I asked, more to keep the conversation flowing than because I didn’t grasp that it clearly was.

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