Thankfully, Canary held no grudges. Which was a relief, given she’d killed him hundreds of times throughout his magically enhanced life. But it was after all what he’d been built for. His raison d’etre. Her -canary down a coalmine- if you will. Designed to test her burgeoning, uncontrollable elemental balance powers when she had first come into them at agethirteen. And discovered baking was the perfect outlet to test and refine her magic.
A Great-Aunt specialising in creating intricate useful magical constructs, after a nasty experience thanks to a slice of Gigi’s lemon drizzle cake, had teamed up with her husband, a geo-spatial mage, and produced Canary. A living - or should that be dying - mobile poison detector and waste disposal unit disguised to look like a bunny.
The weird thing was, Gigi had been advised that Canary would last two, three years, at the max. That was sixteen years ago. And she highly doubted that either of her relatives who’d created Canary would have ever foreseen the connection that Gigi would eventually form with him or that Gigi would be able to direct Canary to kill upon her command.
Watching on as the shadow ninja clawed desperately at themselves, futilely trying to find a way to break or tear away the impenetrable taffy so they could breathe. Gigi knew many of her family would be kind of shocked to discover how gleeful she felt, watching as the intruder’s knees buckled, sending them sprawling to the floor, back arching once before they were still. Deathly still.
Gigi was a chocolatier and cookie maker. Entrepreneur. Small business owner. Caterer. Sister. Daughter. Other than taking thrice-weekly defence lessons and hanging out with her friends, Gigi’s life consisted of work and more work. She’d never yearned to join the family Enforcers. All she’d ever wanted was to use her magic to create wonderfully decadent concoctions that brought a little joy into someone’s life, even if it was for just a split second, as they consumed one of her creations.
That, and prove to herself, and to her family, that she had complete and total control of her powers. That she was no longer the family screw-up. Which was a mighty lofty position, giventhe wacky magic some of her relatives had, and all the mistakes her siblings, cousins and friends had made over the years.
And sure, Gigi’s store was a raging success. Most days the emporium closing early due to running out of stock. Whilst her catering calendar was chock-a-block. Jam packed with lunches, high-teas and parties for various local social group gatherings, and non-stop family celebrations.
Yet, it didn’t escape Gigi’s notice, the enormous number of relatives that still broke off a small piece of one of her creations and fed it to Canary. Discreetly, of course, waiting several heartbeats to see if he would change colours, cark it or worse, explode.
Which he totally hadn’t done for at least a month or so.
And he only tended to do that when Gigi was working alone in her test kitchen, letting her creative freak-flag fly.
She’d never said anything to any of her relatives, but a little trust that she wouldn’t poison or kill them would have been kind of nice, and a little validating. Given she was twenty-nine now, and totally had her magic on lockdown… mostly.
Switching on the lights in the industrial kitchen, Gigi cut the psychic link with Canary. Surveying the mess. Damn. Finally able to examine the sprawled dead body of the flour and taffy coated shadow intruder with her own eyes. On slippered feet she approached, kneeling down beside the dropped metal syringe. No way did she intend to touch that. Her magic kicking in as she studied it, analysing the components of the contents and the amounts present. Yikes.
Two and a half years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to separate the elements within the syringe using her magic with just a concentrated thought. But something had changed in the Southern Sanctuary recently. She’d heard on the red hot gossip grapevine that many of her family were experiencing challenges when it came to their powers. For some, it was changes orvariations to the existing magic they held. For others, new, unfamiliar strong magic was erupting without warning.
Gigi was a poster child for these changes. Her magic enabling her to sense and weigh up all the elements present around her. A more recent development was the ability to control those elements. Such as separating out the contents of someone else’s recently digested meal and recombining the ingredients in a very uncomfortable fashion.
Then there was her new ability to mind-link with Canary. And better still, have the bunny regurgitate anything from the pocket dimension where thousands of thousands of successful and not so successful creations had been disposed of over the years.
Frowning, Gigi double-checked the syringe contents. Harmless now that she’d isolated one component and combined two others. Glancing to the left, she addressed what looked like a swamp coloured badly wrinkled pile of discarded old rags.
“Do me a favour and grab his feet?”
The ball of material rolled across the flour stained floor. Her bridesmaid dress wasn’t much of a guard dog. Case in point, it had let Canary do all the heavy lifting tonight. But it was pretty good at cleaning up any messes that landed on the floor. Once Gigi had this dead body stowed in the freezer, she’d let it loose in here. Any splattered taffy wouldn’t stand a chance against the fabulous scouring nature of the fugly ass fabric.
Fortunately, Gigi had a humongous freezer with three separate areas. One section always kept locked, because her employees assumed that was where she kept potentially dangerous creations. Would that it were so.
Opening the special section, Gigi backed in, dragging the body, dropping the dead shadow ninja with a thump, right beside the other dead body already there.
Staring down at the lifeless duo, Gigi huffed out a foggy breath. Two intruders. One eight nights ago. One tonight. The firstone female, some kind of bird-human hybrid. Tonight, a male shadow ninja. The only thing the two had in common - besides being dead - was that both had been packing syringes full of some very nasty poison.
It seems someone wanted to hurt her family through Gigi.
After the first body, she’d considered calling someone. Elijah, Head of the Enforcers. Or Darcy, the Southern Sanctuary Liaison. Both would take the threat ultra-seriously and rain down misery and death and destruction upon their enemies. Problem was these intruders were clearly for hire. Whoever was behind this threat was lurking deep, deep in the background.
After the first intruder, Gigi had casually questioned Darcy about any looming threats. Two hours later, eyes glazed over, she’d begged Darcy to change topics, having learned nothing that might help pinpoint the culprit endeavouring to use Gigi as a conduit for murder.
Deciding to keep the first intruder incident a secret, she’d waited to see what their mysterious benefactor would do next. With no hireling reporting back on their assigned mission, what would the moneybags puppeteer do next? Give up? Try a new approach? One that the family Enforcers would no doubt quickly shut down? Apparently, their strategy was not to reinvent the wheel but instead send in a new hireling with slightly different skills, aimed at the exact same target.
And who exactly was their target?
Gigi’s customers were mostly the residents of the Southern Sanctuary consisting of her extended family, friends and the large - mostly mundane - artist community living in the nearby town of Reverie Valley. The only real outsiders in the mix was the occasional busload of tourists, who found themselves mysteriously whisked in and out of the Southern Sanctuary, their visit seeming dreamlike when they looked back on it,though they had some gorgeous goodies in their tote bags and their bank accounts were significantly lighter.
Staring down at the two dead bodies, a multitude of questions whirled around Gigi’s head. What had been the plan here? Widespread deaths? Perhaps with the intention of using the resulting panic as a smokescreen to launch an offensive against the Sanctuary? Whatever was going on, it was clear whoever was behind this was tenacious and had no intention of giving up.
“Damn, this is above my paygrade.”
“Yup.”
