Avery shook her head. She didn’t have time for this. Whatever the council was protecting Bimo Shinwell from, it was unrelated to her current case. There was a dragon counting down the minutes just outside, and she certainly wasn’t going to get her answers by “manifesting” them. She drew the files from her coat and held them out to Bimo, who took them with thick-nailed hands that resembled hooves. “Two victims, each with an organ missing, each with a mass of herbs, straw, and oil found in the organ’s place.”
“Oooh, now that’sinteresting…” Bimo peeked through the file, skimming over notes as Avery continued.
“The herbs in each all have both medical and magical correspondences to the missing organ. Hawthorn in the heart, lemon balm in the brain. I don’t know why our killer is stealing the organs, but I do believe they used these straw organs as poppets, possibly triggering these spells at a distance and performing the initial ritual a few days prior. This has enabled different apparent causes of death and would have gone undiscovered under normal circumstances. There is a chance they may have gotten away with it before. What I need to know is, how would this kind of magic be accomplished?”
“Hmm,” Bimo answered, the frown apparent on his piggish face.
“Hmm,what?” Avery asked.
“Well… You know I love the way your mind works, I do, but I think you might have lost the plot on this one.” He shivered. “Sounds too personal and vicious to be about organ theft.”
Avery recalled Saga voicing a similar reservation. “How do you mean?”
“I could be wrong,” Bimo prefaced, showing her the picture of the herbs in the brain bowl. “But there is such care put into the construction of the spell, and the specific herbs, the straw body maintaining its relative shape, the oil to bind it all together.” He took a moment, preparing his statement with a deep breath. “I think these were meant to be fetches.”
The word hit Avery like cold water. “Fetches?”41
“Well, partial fetches.” He turned to Saoirse’s file. “This heart, see… All of these herbs are focused on heart health—you don’t need all that for a poppet. You just need a lock of hair, drop of blood. And if you’re close enough to perform a ritual around someone, you certainly don’t need a poppet. Nah, my money is this wasn’t about making it similarenoughto a heart, but rather meant to act as an actual heart… Well, for a few days,anyway. You couldn’t live for very long with one of these, no matter how powerful or well crafted the charm.”
“Why not?”
Bimo neatly closed both folders and handed them back to Avery across the car. “It’s a bit of a lost art, creating a fetch. That was before your time even, wasn’t it? Been illegal for quite a while—ever since Faerie put a sanction against human captivity and trade.”
“That didn’t exactly stop trafficking,” said Avery gravely.
“Made it more difficult,” Bimo Shinwell offered as if trying to find the silver lining on a cloudy day. “But no, definitely hasn’t stopped mortal trafficking. So yeah, maybe your organ theory could hold water… But see, a full and proper fetch doesn’t have to function with human physiology, does it? It just has toseemhuman to other humans—it’s not actually alive, just mimicking life. And, even then, in order to keep it stable when not in the presence of the caster, you’d have to bind the charm to an object—something solid and unchanging—I believe necklaces around the fetch’s neck were common.”
Avery thought about the necklace she found in Valentina’s jewelry box. “Could one of these organs also be bound to something like that?”
Bimo stroked his snout thoughtfully. “I suppose one could try, but full fetches mimicking humans know they cannot take off the necklace—sounds to me like your victims didn’t know they’d had a swap, eh?” He grinned his tusky grin. “Nah, to make an artificial organ using fetch magic, you’d have to bind it to the body itself. Maybe if you infused it with some sort of healing charm you could manage, but… If there’s something a mortal body ain’t, it’s ‘unchanging.’” He chuckled at that last part.
Avery didn’t laugh. “So that’s why these organs failed?”
Bimo shook his head and clarified. “That’s why these wasnever going to succeed. Anyone who remembers anything about the old magic enough to make a fetchshouldknow that. So if they did it anyway, they was either really desperate, or they wanted those organs to fail.”
“You said anyone whoremembers.Would they have to be old fey?”
“I don’t see how they’d get any of the information otherwise. Councilordered it all destroyed on this side centuries ago. I suppose someone could cobble something together if they dug enough, though I can’t imagine that would be very successful.”
Hadthese been successful? Avery turned a doubtful expression to the files in her hands. If this was true. If this was right… “Have you heard of anything like this?”
“No, but I’ve also been off the grid for about a month.” His thick nails scratched at his wiry beard. “My best guess is this is very personal to someone. They chose these victims very specifically. Risking banned magic to inflict organ failure? They wanted them to die slowly and painfully. If I were you, I’d be looking for whoever wanted revenge.”
Avery growled at the word; guttural, involuntary, and animalistic.
“Or maybe not,” Bimo said quickly. “Maybe they were hoping the organs would never fail and these people would go on living their lives as if nothing was wrong.”
“If only,” Avery muttered. She grimaced apologetically to Shinwell. “Thank you. This does really help. It just…creates some complications for me.”
“Always a pleasure doing business with you,” Bimo answered with a toothy smile.
The word “business” gave her pause. “Why did you talk with me? I haven’t given you anything in exchange. Am I to owe you some sort of favor in the future?”
Bimo winced. “The dragon made it clear that if I was uncooperative, the paperwork surrounding my sanctuary at Blackthorn might be…mysteriously misplaced.”
Knuckles rapped on the window. Ten minutes were up.
Avery carefully exited the car, tucking the files back into her coat.
