The pair of hags waited for me in the bright, cool parking lot of the Safe Harbor Café. They did not look like two women who were there to collect a body. But who would? The young woman was drop-dead gorgeous in the most conventional White woman way. She was tall and blond. She wore a short pink jacket, but what I could see of her figure was perfect and curvy. The old woman was ugly. There wasn’t a polite word for it. Her skin was deeply creased, and her hair grew in sparse gray patches. Her nose hooked forward, and she had no chin. She looked so much like the conventional image of a witch that I was a little startled. She even dressed in shapeless black.

“Hi. I’m the guardian. My name is Harper.” I tried to keep my tone professional. Sometimes I wished I dressed as nicely as Lily did. It took a lot of work, but she always looked like she was a professional. I was lucky if I didn’t have sauce on my shirt.

“You have our dead. We want her back,” said the young woman.

“Um, okay. That’s not a problem. Just come with me around back. We, um, we put her in the freezer.” I winced a bit. It sounded pretty heartless.

“Good. That way, she won’t stink,” the young woman said. She didn’t offer their names, and I didn’t ask.

“Do you want to bring the car around?” I asked. “It’ll make it easier to load and unload.”

The old woman nodded at the young woman and tottered off toward the car. It suddenly dawned on me that they were hags; just because they looked old or young didn’t mean anything about their actual age. The young-looking woman followed me around the back, and the café formed a door again. This time, the door had a large and impressive electronic lock. I couldn’t imagine why we would ever need a lock since the door wasn’t even there all the time. Besides, the café could more than keep out unwanted guests. Perhaps it just didn’t like or trust the hags and wanted to show them that it would keep them out. Not knowing what else to do, I keyed in my birthday. The lock popped open with an audible click.

Before, the basement had looked dark and cellar-like, but now, it looked more like a torture chamber. The ceiling, walls, and floor were completely tiled in white. There was a large, prominent drain in the center of the room. The floor slanted almost imperceptibly down toward the drain. To set the mood, the café had provided some stark, fluorescent lighting. The freezer dominated this pale landscape and was one more white spot. I opened the freezer this time. There was nothing other than the body bag in there. Where had that thing in a plastic bag gone?

“That’s her, then?” the blond hag asked me. I nodded in agreement. “You don’t mind if we do our own tests, then? Ashley’s powerful and all, but she’s not a hag.” The hag lifted the stiff bag out on her own and unzipped it. “Oh, yuck. Did she do something to the body, or did the killer?”

“Ashley did some sort of spell to the head to identify it,” I told her.

“Well, that makes this a little harder.” The blond unzipped the bag further and pulled out what had been a hand. She had to tug it a bit to get it unstuck from the body, where it was frozen. She broke off a gray finger and stuck the bone in her mouth. She sucked on it, pursing her lips and hollowing out her cheeks. I felt my own throat close up as I started to gag a bit. I managed not to make any noise, but only just—

She took the bone out of her mouth and put it back in the bag. “It’s one of us. I can’t tell who. But it won’t be hard to figure out. There aren’t that many of us. Poor bitch.” She zipped up the body bag in a much more respectful manner than she had unzipped it. Then she picked it up and carried it toward the door, which, on this side, was made of steel and had all the charm of a prison door. I held it open for her, and she maneuvered the rigid, frozen body through the door, taking care to keep it from banging against the sides.

I was impressed by her strength. Even though I knew it was magical in origin, it was still startling to see a woman of her size moving a body around like that. While we had been inside, her partner had brought the car around and waited with the trunk open. She looked like a young woman now, and when I looked again, the woman carrying the body now looked old. I wasn’t sure what the change meant or if I was supposed to comment on it or not.

“She’s one of ours,” said the now old woman carrying the body. The young woman who was standing beside the car just nodded. It took the old woman a few moments to wedge the frozen body into the trunk of the car. I almost offered to help her, but then I remembered that she wasn’t really a terrifying old lady. Or maybe she was. I couldn’t tell which face was the true face and which one was the mask or lure. Maybe they were both equally true and false.

“Thank you, Guardian,” said the now old woman as she slammed the trunk.

I could tell that I was about to be dismissed. I asked, “May I join you on the hunt?”

“Do you know what you’re asking?” the old woman asked me. Even her clothing had changed, and she was no longer wearing a pink jacket. Instead, she was wearing the shapeless black coat.

“Not really, no. But I want to find the killer. Your friend wasn’t the only one. There have been several killings. I want to find this person and stop them,” I said.

“You do, healer? And how are you going to stop them?” she cackled.

“I am a guardian. It is my job to stop them,” I said. Despite the cold, having to get even slightly confrontational made me sweat a little. Only my connection to the Safe Harbor Café helped me stand up for myself.

“You’re going to hurt someone? Do you really think you can?” she asked again.

“I can’t. But the café sure can if it needs to.” I wiped my hands on my pants and tried to discreetly take a breath to steady my nerves.

“We aren’t afraid of getting blood on our hands and spending some time worshiping the dark side of our craft. So, why don’t you leave the vengeance stuff to us and get back to curing headaches?’’ She started around to the passenger side of the car. The young woman got into the driver’s seat.

“I administer justice, not vengeance. He killed a vamp, a wolf, and a dryad that we know of. There may be more. The wolves are already looking for him. I’d like to make sure there isn’t an incident,” I said.

“Whatever,” the old woman said, “We’re the only ones who have a real chance at him. The wolves can’t smell as well as they think.”

“You’re going to count out the vamps? With all their resources?” I had no idea what the vamps were going to do or if they even cared. But their secrecy cut both ways. She didn’t know what they were capable of.

“So, the race is on, then. May the best man win. Or in this case, may the best woman,” the hag said, getting into the car.

I was losing her. I had to get her to let me help with the hunt. I put my hand out and stopped her from closing the door. “The killer is human. We need to navigate very carefully.”

“There’s no way the killer is human. That’s just not possible,” the young woman said from the driver’s seat.

The old woman glared at her, and I again wondered what their relationship was. “It’s possible. But highly improbable.”

“I’m not working with dogs and corpses,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to work with me. I just want to make sure that this gets handled so that everyone gets closure and no one gets exposed. I just want to see him punished in a way that appeases everyone.” I knew I was losing them, and I felt desperate.

“We will consider your offer and talk it over with the others. If we take you up on it, we will call you in the morning. Don’t call us. We’ll call you,” the young woman said, though somehow, she sounded old when she said it. I let go of the door, and the old woman slammed it so hard it the bang echoed slightly in the back lot of the café. The few birds left from the summer all stopped singing for a moment when she banged it shut. They drove off, leaving me standing there. I walked around to the front of the Safe Harbor Café and went inside.

Lily was still in the kitchen, and I walked in to meet her. “That could have gone better,” I told her and got a pickle out of the fridge.

“Did they at least agree to tell you when they figured out who it was?” Lily asked. She was washing dishes.

“Nope,” I told her.

Lily moved a load of dishes into the sanitizer. As she loaded it, she asked, “Really? They refused you? In the café, too?”

“Outside of the café. And they didn’t exactly refuse me. They just didn’t say yes.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” she asked.

“They said they would think about it and talk it over, and if they can, they’ll call us in the morning. Don’t call them. I didn’t even get a chance to ask if the hag had any connection to Fidnemed,” I said, kicking myself for having not brought it up. I wasn’t very good at this detective stuff.

“I’ll talk to Chris tonight. You just focus on the healings and catching up on your sleep. Yesterday was a long day for you. How’s your magic?” she asked. I was surprised she directly addressed the fact she had eaten my magic the day before. I had assumed that we would just be ignoring that one forever and always.

I shrugged. “Seems fine. I haven’t had to heal anyone yet today, so I don’t know. But I don’t know. I think if there were something wrong with it, I would know. Or I hope I would.” I stopped talking for a moment and tried to feel my magic. But I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t even sure what it should feel like. “You know, I think I’ll have a cup of coffee while I wait for Ashley to call. I wonder if I have time to go home for a nap.”

“Why don’t you text her and ask? Here I’ll give you her number,” Lily said. I texted Ashley, the head witch, and was disappointed when she said I could come over anytime. I had been looking forward to the nap. After drinking a cup of coffee, I headed out to the address she had given me. I was off to heal the injured fairies. At least this was a job no one doubted I could handle.