For all his unreliability, Titus was aggravatingly exact about anything he set his mind to. He was up with the sun the next morning, and had already eaten and groomed by the time Bella stirred and found herself in imminent danger of being left behind. She scowled as she snatched a bite to eat before beating Titus out the door. He didn't even give her the satisfaction of looking annoyed.
Now that they were actually doing this, Bella's wings itched to fly ahead and confront Hyacinth's second Witch immediately. As though sensing this, Titus wove an extremely leisurely path through the town, sniffing flowers, greeting villagers, then forgoing available fence posts to sharpen his claws on a barrel-flowerpot halfway across town. Bella landed in yet another tree to wait for him, vibrating with impatience. The temptation to ditch his company burned through her feathers, but she did not trust him enough to leave him unsupervised.
And so it was the better part of half an hour before they traversed the small town together, winding up outside the house of Daphne's grandparents. Bella scouted it quickly and returned to land in a bush beside Titus. This proved too weak to support her, and she succeeded only in tattering her wings before hopping ingloriously to the ground. Titus licked a paw, waiting for her to recover her dignity.
"She's out back," said Bella. "On the bench under the maple tree. What are you planning?"
"What I said before," said Titus, stepping past her like so much dirty laundry. "Talking to her."
"Care to fill me in on how you plan to approach the conversation?"
"By keeping you out of it, I believe."
Only a passing villager's eyes kept Bella from launching herself at him. Even just rolling him in the dirt a couple times would be satisfying at this point. She'd lost count of the number of times he'd stopped to groom on the way here—a fitting demonstration of his order of priorities.
Titus had already sashayed up the path, tail cocked in a friendly question mark. Bella took flight again and glided from tree to tree, keeping pace with the cat as he approached the oblivious teenager. Daphne was buried in a textbook in the backyard's quaint sitting area, curled on a rocking bench with a blanket draped about her shoulders. An array of potion bottles—some empty, most full—dotted the rest of the bench's plush cushion.
"I was wondering if I'd find you here," said Titus.
Daphne startled so violently, she cracked her chin on one knee and sent several potion bottles tumbling. She dove after them, then spotted Titus and froze like a deer in Wight-lights. The cat sat primly and wrapped his tail about his paws.
"My apologies," he said. "I didn't mean to scare you. There's no need to worry; I just want to talk."
"About what?" said Daphne warily, gathering her potion bottles and retreating to the bench in slow motion.
Before Titus could answer, Bella swooped down to a garden sculpture. "We want to know why we caught you lurking around Bryony's house yesterday morning, messing with—"
"What my companion here means to say," said Titus, cutting her off, "is that you might have been one of the last people to see Bryony before she potentially disappeared, and we would very much like to know what you saw."
He couldn't just go about revealing Bryony's disappearance to a prime suspect. Daphne's eyes flew wide at the mention. She'd frozen again, halfway through rearranging her potion bottles; she still had one in each hand, seemingly forgotten.
"If that isn't too much trouble," added Titus, then, "Do you mind if I join you?"
Daphne unfroze and scrambled to clear the potion bottles, stuffing most of them into the school-issue transport bag on the ground beside her. Titus thanked her and hopped up on the cushioned bench, making himself comfortable.
"Start from yesterday morning," he said. "Or wherever makes the most sense, if the inciting incident goes back further."
Daphne's eyes darted to Bella, still perched on her tower of artistically woven branches.
"My companion will not antagonize you again," said Titus.
Bella's feathers all rose. "That's not for you to—"
"Or else we can find a more private place to talk later today. I apologize on her behalf; she has been terribly worried since Bryony appeared to go missing."
If he had the decency to treat it as an actual disappearance instead of constantly adding modifiers, Bella might not need to step in. Let alone with such antagonism to get the answers Bryony deserved. And least of all with him threatening to leave her out of this discussion if she refused to comply with his orders. Still, she supposed, he might have a point in approaching the kid more gently. If Daphne believed him to be an ally, she might be more inclined to let her secrets slip.
"Fine," said Bella. "I will simply be an observer."
"Thank you," said Titus.
Daphne pulled up her knees and hugged them, rocking a little and continuing to dart glances in Bella's direction as she shrugged. "I can tell you what I saw. But I don't know where she actually went, if that's what you're looking for."
"We have some sense of that already, so details from before then will likely prove the most valuable. What drew you to investigate behind her house? This is not a judgement—I only want all our potential leads on the table."
"I saw her hiding something there before she left. Or retrieving something hidden. I couldn't tell."
Bella gripped her sculpture perch. That had to be a lie. A cover story for... for what? What other reason would Daphne have to snoop around Bryony's mulch buckets? She hadn't even gone for the gardens, like Bella would have expected if this was an attempted sabotage.
"Say more," said Titus.
Daphne fidgeted with the blanket's edge. "She was acting susp—strangely two nights in a row, both in the same spot. Moving the buckets and doing something behind them. And looking over her shoulder. She left after the second time, so I wanted to investigate."
"What time did you see her there?" asked Bella, and got a warning look from Titus for it. She ignored him.
Daphne, though, answered the question without hesitation. "Around midnight both times."
"And what were you doing up—and observing her—at midnight two nights in a row?"
Daphne's brown cheeks flushed rosy. Rather than answer, she rifled through her potion-bag, retrieving a flask of clear liquid. "I wasn't watching her. I was testing this."
Titus did a poor job of hiding his curiosity. "And that is?..."
"It's supposed to attract fireflies, but I haven't gotten it to work yet." Daphne set the potion bottle on the bench between them and retrieved her textbook. The page she flipped to fell open like she'd been reading it just before they arrived. Bella reluctantly abandoned her perch to come closer. The textbook page bore a variety of recipes and technical considerations for lure potions: the kind professional Herbalists used to draw pollinators to crops, pests from houses, or lost pets home again.
Daphne bit her lip. "Don't tell my grandma, please. It's supposed to be a surprise. Her birthday is just after Wightnight, and she loves fireflies. I want to fill her garden with them, but I've been testing along the road. They gather there, and up near Bryony's house is the one place my grandparents can't see from their windows."
If that was a cover story, it was a good one. Fireflies did prefer Hyacinth's roadsides, and that would certainly be a thoughtful gift. Not out of the realm of possibility for a young Witch, either. Bella eyed Daphne's grandparents' house. It did have a lot of windows.
"Did you notice anything else out of place about Bryony's behavior lately?" asked Titus.
Daphne sat silent for a while. Then she put away the textbook and potion bottle and went back to hugging her knees. "What do you mean by 'out of place'?"
This would go nowhere. Hyacinth was rife with rumors about Bryony's purported "suspicious activities," spread by the Borns in an attempt to smear the Witch's name. To Bella's knowledge, most originated from the visits of shadier characters who turned up on occasion to prove the darker side of fame. Not a year went by when Bryony didn't get some midnight knock on her door or subtle inquiry into her "methods." All were founded on the assumption that she mixed Wight and Witch magic to achieve her current skill—an allegation Bella knew was false, and which even the failed investigation led by Daphne's parents had disproven.
The unwanted attention had begun soon after Bryony settled in Hyacinth, convenient timing for the Borns. Most visitors were little more than a nuisance, not to mention an insult to Bryony's actual competence. She'd taken to collecting their contact information and turning them in to the authorities for having exposed their own interest in violating the Law of Non-Interference.
Titus seemed to have the same idea, and sighed. "That may be a question for a later time, then. I am more curious to investigate behind our house. Would you show us there?"
He still spoke to Daphne, but looked Bella directly in the eye as he did so. She nodded reluctantly. As much as she disliked giving Daphne free reign to carry on with her snooping, this was for Bryony, too.
"Are you sure?" said Daphne.
"Quite," said Titus. "Three heads are better than two, and we'll get nowhere if we simply discard potential leads here. Please, lead the way."
A/N: This week's ONC recommendation!
A Slut's Guide to Romance by AWryneckWrites:
A contemporary fusion of The Great Gatsby and The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo, Podcast Journalist Lilah Mōkena unravels the true story behind the bestselling novel inspired by the real-life romance between Alexia Fairchild and Lucca Mendoza. The lines between reporter and subject blur as Lilah unexpectedly finds herself falling for the enigmatic woman who inspired her favorite character.