It had been a long day, and I hadn't exactly had the best night's sleep, and it would have been nice to be able to go and get some rest before having to deal with Aunty Agnes again, but fate intervened when Michael had another vision. The Whisper Sisters, dead.
We didn't know where the sisters' home was, but Agnes did. Right next door to her. We were already too late though. When we got there Mary was in floods of tears. Robin was there too, back from whatever he'd been off doing for Agnes for the last few days.
We checked out the scene. Not that there was much to check out. Elizabeth picked up the lingering traces of fae spirits passing on. Robin stretched out his wolf nose for a sniff about, and Michael took hold of one sister's hand. That seemed to freak him out, enough to make him run for the door, but before I could go after him he ran into the arriving paramedic, who immediately started freaking out in turn at the sight of Robin.
I thought I was going to have to use the Voice of Temptation, but somehow I found something else within me. A few calm words about how we were friends of the deceased and staying with the bodies until they arrived, and attention was off Robin and nobody was panicking any more.
We finally decided we needed sleep before we tried to look into things any further, and agreed to meet up at the junk yard in the morning. Nobody had found anything useful beyond what Michael had seen - a vision of the sisters' hearts being washed out of their bodies by a tide of water. Horrible, but it was something. We were going to have to do some research. First though, there was the matter of Robin.
I didn't notice it at first, but the others did. I was talking about Agnes the way I normally do. She's nice, but as Terry Pratchett said, nice isn't the same as good, and when it comes down to it, she's the same hellspawn as me and Rusty. I like her but I don't trust her. And the others seem to be on the same page, with even Elizabeth having grasped that Rusty is bad news. Robin, on the other hand, was being overwhelmingly positive about Agnes in response to all my less enthusiastic comments, and Elizabeth quietly suggested a quick banishing rite.
We gathered up what we could in the way of supplies. You can do a lot with some sage and salt. Or you can, if your assistant doesn't set your hair on fire with the burning sage, and you don't completely fumble the salt and mess up your words. That took some explaining, and to make it worse we were getting messages from Agnes wanting to see us at the Wicker Stop.
I took the quick route. I landed myself in the basket room, which wasn't the best choice as it was locked. I should have gone with the toilets. But there I was, getting a big hug from Mary which I wasn't ready for, and a more cautious one from Agnes who seems to have figured out her timeline's version of me was a little more enthusiastic about hugs than I am.
Agnes wanted to know all about the business with the tooth fairy, and I was trying to hold back and not tell her too much, but somehow ended up spilling all about how they were going to use the teeth to open a portal. Fortunately I spotted it in time to hold back when she started asking where the portal was. I told her truthfully that I'd assumed it was going to be in the warehouse where we'd found the tooth creatures, and managed not to mention that we'd later found out where it really was.
Robin and Elizabeth had taken the more conventional route, arriving on Robin's bike, so as soon as I could I slipped off to the toilets and teleported to Adam and Michael to tell them what was up, giving them a bit of a surprise since they were in the van. Agnes was doing things to my mind. I only got the hang of the Voice of Tempation a few weeks ago and already I can do some pretty nasty stuff, and Agnes has had hundreds of years to practice. It was clear that we needed to try again to clear Robin's mind.
Adam's plan was to do it outside the ward. He was convinced that was what had interfered with the first attempt, and not total incompetence on my part, and it certainly wouldn't hurt. I teleported back into the toilets (definitely the best teleportation space) and went to find Robin and Elizabeth. Looking at the way Mary was behaving, I was starting to realise that something was off. I had a nasty suspicion she had also been affecting by Agnes's mind magic.
And of course Adam and Michael had managed to figure out what had killed the Whisper Sisters. What Michael had seen had been a ward washing over them. A strengthened ward, targeting the fae, doubtless in reaction to the tooth fairy being taken out of the ward. Agnes had done it.
By the time Robin arrived at the Premier Inn the hotel room was all set up for a magical intervention. And this time I didn't mess up. Adam made sure everything was set up properly. I knew what I was banishing. It was weird, being surrounded by the kind of religious iconography and not feeling immensely uncomfortable, but it was doing the job. Michael and Elizabeth got Robin into the right place and I pushed Agnes' influence right out of him.
And then we all had KFC, because if we were going to drive out all this way, we might as well.
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