A SPELL FOR SUSANNAH, ISBN 1-59998-872-0, Samhain Publishing

1739 Words -- Susannah Meets Detective Jon Tom 

The Queen shot her a sour look and rang the silver bell. The tall double doors swung open and Jon Tom the detective walked through. Susannah examined him, as she had the other applicants, for potential threats. He had a swarthy face, dark hair and white teeth, which gleamed brightly in the afternoon sun streaming through the tall, thin windows.

“My Queen, my Princess,” he said, executing a low and graceful bow.

“Greetings, Jon Tom,” the Queen said. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I understand you’re a detective?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“What exactly is a detective? What is it you detect?”

“I detect solutions, Your Highness. Solutions, answers, reasons and culprits.”

“Solutions to what?” Susannah wanted to know. The man had a wily look she didn’t like. His dark eyes glanced about the room, assessed everything and everyone in it.

The man regarded her coolly, almost insolently, as if he knew her secrets. “Solutions to who killed Cock Robin. Solutions to what happened to the Queen’s tarts. Solutions to where twelve naughty ladies go every night when the sun is down and the night is full.”

The Queen stopped scratching her quill on her notepaper and leaned back in her chair. “Do you indeed?” A smile spread across her face.

“Not every city has a Lost and Found department as assiduous as yours,” Jon Tom complimented the Queen. “Not every kingdom has a king who puts his own daughters to work solving the citizens’ problems and caring for the community.”

“Have you been detecting solutions for long?” the Queen asked.

“Many years, Your Highness. I hail from Pavilion, where the late ruler’s failure to produce a male heir has resulted in near anarchy. The kingship has gone to a baronial cousin who isn’t bearing the burden particularly well.”

“We would like to avoid Pavilion’s troubles, but first we must control our daughters.”

Susannah pressed her lips together. As if she wanted this strange man thinking of her as out of control!

“You seem to know quite a bit about our situation already.” The Queen steepled her fingertips near her chin. “Perhaps you would like to share your theories at this point?”

“Oh, no doubt there is a man involved.” Jon Tom winked at Susannah.

Had her mother noticed this bourgeois man, this detective, wink at a royal princess? Susannah turned to her mother to protest.

But the Queen’s face was lit with pleasure. “That’s exactly what I said.”

“And I told you, Mother, there isn’t a man involved,” Susannah snapped.

Jon Tom smiled, seemingly pleased by the outburst. Her eyes drifted away from that face, from that hawk-like nose and strong chin, to his broad chest, two strong arms crossed over it as he lounged in his chair. Down to tan trousers encasing a fine pair of legs. The man was as attractive as any of the enchanted princes in the land beneath, but he had such an air about him, such a dangerous air, as if he’d sooner snatch her up and eat her than dance a reel.

“So tell me, Your Highness, about your daughters. The more information I have, the more easily I can solve the case.”

“Well, you have met Susannah. At five and thirty, she is the eldest and I fully believe she is the ringleader of whatever is going on.”

“I make no mistake about that,” the man agreed. “Princess Susannah.” He rolled her name around in his mouth like a toffee. “I am charmed to make your acquaintance.”

Susannah sniffed and turned her head to one side. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man smiling a strange, slow smile.

“My second eldest is Calypso,” continued the Queen. “She is a tomboyish gel who loves horses and polo. She hasn’t the sort of trickery about her to instigate this matter, but she’s game for any adventure. My third daughter is Peter.”

“Peter? That’s an odd name for a princess.”

The Queen inclined her head regally. “His Highness was convinced an amulet he acquired on the black market could defeat the Female Curse and named her Peter before the doctor could say, ‘It’s a girl.’ It wouldn’t do to tease Peter about her name, though. She’s very sensitive about certain things.”

“She’s as sensitive as your wooden cane,” Susannah muttered.

“Hortense is next. She’s a law-abiding woman who isn’t the type to go along with escapades.”

“Never be surprised the lengths to which a lady will go when there is a man involved,” the detective assured the Queen. “Even a proper girl can have her head turned by a handsome man…or a very determined sister.”

Susannah focused an intent glare upon Jon Tom. It would be nice if she could use that pincher spell and needle him in the…but she didn’t dare. Her hostile regard didn’t discomfit him. He gazed back at her knowingly until she looked away first.

Why did her mother not notice the things this man was saying to her with his eyes? “Mother,” she whispered, “I don’t think this man will suit. He’s disrespectful.”

The Queen ignored her and continued to catalog her daughters.

“Do you mind if I write this down?” The detective took some tiny paper and a black crow’s feather out of a small pocket on his tunic.

“Do you need ink for your quill?” The Queen gestured to her inkpot.

“Oh, this is an enchanted quill—never runs out of ink. A fairy gave it to me when I aided her on a confidential matter. Please continue. I’m learning a great deal.”

Susannah rested her chin on her hands as her mother described Susannah’s sister Lilly. “She would make a lovely bride,” the Queen said. “Not that there are any men for her to meet and marry.”

“No men you know of,” Jon Tom commented. “I’m willing to bet Princess Susannah knows differently.” He wrote another note in his book and tapped his mouth with the dark quill.

Susannah twisted about in her chair. “Mother, do we have to hear any more? This man is clearly a fraud.”

“You seem anxious to get me out of here, Princess.”

“I’m anxious that my father not waste his gold hiring a charlatan. Who has ever heard of a detective, anyway?”

“Susannah!” exclaimed the Queen. “That was very rag-mannered.”

The strength of her annoyance surprised Susannah, but she didn’t back down or apologize. There was something about this man that activated her hackles.

Jon Tom held up a strong brown hand. “Don’t worry about my feelings, Your Highness. The Princess’s discomfort is natural when the end of her clandestine revelry is so near.”

“You don’t know anything about it. Or about me.” Susannah crossed her arms over her chest, echoing his posture. “Mother, you shouldn’t allow a commoner to speak to one of royal blood in such a way. Father would be most displeased.”

“I think your father will be delighted.”

“What do you mean, ‘Father will be delighted’?”

The Queen twitched a single finger in a silencing gesture but didn’t otherwise acknowledge Susannah’s interruption. First her mother said she was out of control. Now she shushed her like a child. When Susannah peeked at him, he twitched his own finger in a similar fashion, and it was all she could do not to jump up from the table and pull his stupid, shining hair out by the roots.

“My twelfth child,” the Queen said, finishing her litany, “is Rosa, my baby. She was twelve this past Snow Faire.”

“I’ll enjoy meeting all your children, Your Highness.”

His assumption he’d meet all her sisters was overconfident. Susannah’s ire rose. “This man shouldn’t be introduced to my sisters, much less Papa.”

“Your father is going to enjoy meeting Mr. Tom and discussing possible theories with him. Tonight.”

“Tonight? You’re hiring this man?”

“I am.”

“Mother, please. I don’t like the look of him. He will probably be gone in the morning with half the crown jewels.”

“I’m wealthy already, Princess. I have the luxury to choose my cases based on which ones interest me. This one interests me very much.”

Susannah clutched her mother’s arm and lowered her voice. “He winked at me. He keeps intimating things that aren’t proper.”

“Don’t be silly, Susannah. I intended to hire the candidate to whom you most objected. By the strength of your objection, Jon Tom will do a wonderful job. You have outsmarted yourself, my darling.”

Susannah’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, and at that moment a flicker of fear scampered across her skin. Could Jon Tom truly use these detective skills to discover her use of fairy magic and the enchanted realm beneath? Just what were these skills? Had he some magic mirror which answered questions? Had he some djinn in a bottle bound to obey its master’s commands?

“Your Highness,” Jon Tom said, “I’m flattered by your quick decision, but you’ve yet to hear my terms.”

That seized the Queen’s attention. “You would barter with the Queen?” The regal lady’s eyebrows flew up toward her hairline.

“I would, Your Highness. I have certain requirements for proper detective work. One, that I not be dismissed until the princesses evade me at least three times, as according to the common rule of three. Two, that royal chaperonage customs be relaxed so I can spend time with the ladies alone. And three, when I succeed, I wish a house and fertile lands instead of gold.”

It was the Queen’s turn to gape like a landed fish. “We’ll talk to the King,” she finally said. “You may discuss your terms with him. And you, Susannah, may repair to the library for the rest of the day.”

Susannah rose and stalked as far away from Jon Tom’s chair as she could get without being too obvious. Not that obvious mattered at this point, for she’d expressed her disapproval of the man clearly enough.

“Princess Susannah,” Jon Tom said, just as she gained the safety of the door. Reluctantly she turned. Jon Tom had risen from his chair and stood facing her, a glint in his coal-dark eyes.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I look forward to discovering your secrets, no matter how you hide them.”

“My only secret is I wish the headhunter had never found you.”

“The headhunter didn’t find me, Princess, I found him. I found him, and soon I’ll find out about you.”

© 2008 Jody Wallace

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