A Jar of Whiskers
by O. N. Boyd
The foyer of the Crownpont Royal Constabulary’s central precinct was
already packed with distraught citizens reporting thefts. A spate of
burglaries without pattern or motive had left the capital city’s law
enforcement confounded. The criminal was both a lazy opportunist,
swiping unsecured copper wire from a dock, and a genius cat burglar,
slipping past the armed guards in the dowager Viscountess Darling’s
penthouse to abscond with, of all things, her silk stockings.
Babs Bedfellow, her tall, thin frame wrapped in an elegant kimono,
pushed through the clamoring crowd to the constabulary’s reception
desk, where the befuddled desk sergeant was pleading for everyone to
please form a line and speak one at a time.
“Silence!” Babs shrieked, the piercing sound of which brought the crowd
to order. She turned to the sergeant and said, “You will attend to me
first.” When a murmur began to rise from those who had arrived before
her, she lifted her manicured brown hand and said for all to hear, “I
am Babs Bedfellow, Chief Curator of the J. Prisepont Fretty Museum.
Last night, someone tried to steal the world renowned Behemoth Emerald!”
A gasp passed through the crowd. The desk sergeant immediately led her
through into Chief Cartouche’s office. “Chief?” he said. “You’d better
take this case yourself. This is Babs Bedfellow from the Fretty.”
Chief Cartouche stood up and shook her hand. “Welcome, welcome,” he said before muttering, “This can’t be good…”
The desk sergeant hurried back to his post while Babs said, “As you
know, Chief, the Fretty Museum houses some of the rarest and most
valuable objects in Eleria. Obviously, in light of the thefts plaguing
the city and with your department’s incompetence in catching the
Crownpont Cat Burglar, we have increased our security.”
Chief Cartouche turned quite red and his eyes bulged. “I’ll have you
know, Curator Bedfellow, that catching a thief is a fair deal harder
than guarding a bunch of hoarded trinkets like a dragon--”
Babs smoothed her golden bob and continued calmly, “It was well we did,
because last night someone tried to steal the incomparable Behemoth
Emerald. Our additional measures deterred the thief. However I am
certain he will have learned from his mistake and will be successful
tonight.”
“What stupendous news!” Chief Cartouche said. “This is the break we’ve
been waiting for!” He rushed to the door, leaned out, and shouted,
“Pripp! Barkwell! Get in here!”
Babs blinked several times before saying, “Well, I had hardly expected
the prospect of an attempted theft of a high-profile artifact from one
of the world’s pre-eminent collections to be met with such joy....”
Chief Cartouche was about to respond when two detectives tumbled
through the door. Detective Cameron Pripp was a lanky, brown-haired
fellow in a trim suit over which he wore a dark blue robe. Detective
Wau Barkwell was a cynocephs, one of Eleria’s dog-headed people. She
had a narrow, pointed snout covered with short, cream-colored fur. Her
deep brown eyes darted about and her shiny nose sniffed the air. She
wore a suit similar to her colleague’s. “Detectives,” the chief said,
“I’m pulling you off your current cases and sending you both over to
the Fretty. According to Curator Bedfellow here, someone tried to steal
the Behemoth Emerald last night, only to be thwarted. He may try again
tonight. Get over there and see if you can find any clues.”
Detective Pripp folded his arms and said, “That shouldn’t be a problem,
but Barkwell here might as well go back to tracking down the
viscountess’s missing undergarments.” He tilted his head at Detective
Barkwell, a sneer curling on his mustached lip. “Based on the pattern
of the recent thefts, we’re clearly dealing with criminal magic. I
hardly need Madame Sniff tagging along.”
Detective Barkwell bared her pointed teeth and growled, “You’rrre full
of yourrrself, Prrripp. And you stink of stale magic. Don’tcha wash?”
“Of course,” Pripp snapped back. “After every time you shed on me.” He brushed off the sleeve nearest her.
“You smell like you live in a shed,” Barkwell said and laughed like a hyena.
“Enough, you two!” Chief Cartouche roared. He turned back to Babs and
continued, “Curator Bedfellow, these are Detectives Pripp and Barkwell.
I’m assigning them to your case. Pripp is the best Law Mage on the
force and Barkwell’s nose could sniff out a pear in a parfumerie.
Detectives, get over to the Fritty. Guard that emerald yourselves if
needed.” He sat back down behind his desk. When the others continued to
stand around, he shouted, “Everyone out! Thieves, no matter how bold,
are hardly the worst thing plaguing this city.” He then pushed a button
on an intercom and ordered his secretary to get the mayor on the
Intracity Line.
Pripp, Barkwell and Babs Bedfellow took a pony cart from the central
precinct building across midtown to the J. Prisepont Fritty Museum, a
building both too ornate and too sprawling to be the result of good
taste. The inside of the building was worse. Every room had gilded
wainscoting and painted ceilings depicting mythological heroes doing
indecorous things. They climbed various stairwells and passed through
galleries filled with faded paintings, carved stones, and the
reassembled bones of long-extinct animals before arriving at the
Exquisite Stones and Minerals gallery, a long room with large windows
looking down on the museum’s inner courtyard. A latticework of iron
bars filled each window and the only way in or out of the room was
through a single door.
“Here we are,” Babs Bedfellow said. “The Behemoth Emerald is displayed
in a special case at the far end. I will leave you to your
investigation. I have some business to attend to. You may have full
access to the museum. Send for me if you need anything. I am afraid I
shall be occupied tonight, but I am at your disposal until then.” The
detectives thanked her and proceeded past cases full of bejeweled
necklaces, opals as big as hen’s eggs, and an impressive jade dragon
with ruby flames shooting from its mouth. At the end of the gallery
stood a pillar topped with a thick glass case. Inside it glittered an
enormous emerald, so green it seemed to shift in and out of reality.
Surrounding the pillar were a pinkish anti-magic shield and four Groad
guards, their knotty skin and frog-like faces looking out of place
among the jewels.
As they approached the guards, Barkwell said to Pripp, “You talk to the
guards seeing’s how you couldn’t find a clue if you trrripped overrr
one.”
“Bite me, Barkwell.”
Barkwell grinned and snapped her teeth. “Gladly, Prrripp.”
While Barkwell turned to using her nose for a thorough inspection along
the windows, Pripp approached the quartet of Groads. He took a small
notepad out of his breast pocket and readied his pencil. “Gentlemen,”
he addressed the them, “I’d like to know what you witnessed last night
with regards to the attempted theft of this here emerald.”
The largest guard, a chap with fresh claw marks across his face, said,
“Was a blue-white translucent tiger, it was. It knocked us all aside
like fresh hatchlings. The anti-magic field held, but barely. By the
time we found our feet, the creature’d fled.”
“A magical tiger?” Pripp said, twirling his mustache in thought. “I
heard of something like that when I attended the Conservatoire. It
sounds like a Hoo—a spirit of Law and Justice. According to legend,
they protect against thieves, so why this one has turned to stealing,
I’ve no idea. Did it say anything?”
All the guards nodded their heads and the spokesgroad said, “Only, ‘The last piece’, whatever that means.”
“Hum,” Pripp said. “Perhaps there is some reason behind the motley
assortment of stolen things. How did it get in? The door or the
windows?”
“We think a window,” the Groad answered. “Really, it just appeared out
of thin air. One minute we were alone, the next---tigered!” The other
Groads murmured in agreement.
Pripp jotted this all down as Barkwell, on her hands and knees, sniffed
along the shiny marble floor, making her way toward the pillar
supporting the Behemoth Emerald. “How... goes the nose, Barkwell?” he
said with a chuckle as he put his notepad away.
She got to her feet and said, “Definite arrrcane arrroma. Lots of it. Something verrry magical was here, but it’s faint now.”
“A Hoo,” Pripp said.
“Who?” Barkwell asked.
Pripp rolled his eyes. “Not ‘who’. A Hoo!”
“Hoo...hooo... Owls,” the clawed Groad grunted. The others snickered.
“Not owls!” Pripp gnashed his teeth. “A Hoo.”
Barkwell scratched her snout and asked, “A Hoo, huh? Then why’s it stealing? Maybe it’s a fake Hoo.”
“Doubtful,” Pripp said. “You say yourself, its magic was strong. All we
can do is to try to catch it and ask it why it’s turned to a life of
crime.”
Barkwell folded her arms and furrowed her brow. “You can catch a
tigerrr? By the tail, I prrresume?” The Groads snickered. “What’ll you
do with it then?”
Pripp’s face flushed and he said imperiously, “I’ll have you know I
didn’t make detective as a Law Mage without an impressive arsenal of
trapping magic at my disposal. You just watch. I’m the best on the
force. I’ll keep this emerald safe.”
“You can capturrre a guarrrdian of justice? I don’t believe you,” Barkwell said with a prim grin.
Pripp narrowed his eyes. “Want to place a bet on that?”
“You’rrre on,” Barkwell said. “A dozen glazed doughzels everrry day for two weeks.”
“No problem,” Pripp said, and they shook on it.
Later that night, the two detectives and the four Groads were keeping
watch over the Behemoth Emerald. Around midnight, a sudden flash of
light came through one of the barred windows and an enormous blue-white
tiger materialized in the gallery. It roared and leapt towards the
emerald, one vast paw raised to swipe down the anti-magic field
protecting the display pillar.
The Groads scattered. Barkwell rolled out of the way of the charging
Hoo. Only Pripp stood his ground. Raising his hands, he cast a mauve
bubble that wobbled its way through the air and encapsulated the Hoo in
mid-leap.
The Hoo struggled to escape the bubble, but the more it thrashed, the
more entangled it became. Pripp kept his hands up and shouted at
Barkwell, “I can’t hold it much longer!” Sweat beaded on his brow and
his fingers trembled.
Barkwell scrambled to her feet. She drew out her revolver and
positioned herself in front of the Hoo’s snarling maw. “You, Hoo!” she
shouted. “Arrre you rrrobbing the entirrre city? If so, why?”
The Hoo’s wrathful green gaze burned at Barkwell. “The terms of my
imprisonment forbid me from revealing my purposes.” It thrashed against
the bubble.
“Are you not a Hoo, an administerrr of justice?” Barkwell asked.
“I am, as are you,” the Hoo growled. It raised a great paw and started
slashing at the bubble with its sickle-like claws. “Now, foolish
mortals, you have only until dawn. Mark well: my freedom is yours.”
With this, the mauve bubble popped with a resounding snap. The Hoo
roared, its breath washing over Barkwell as she quailed before it.
Behind her, the anti-magic field protecting the emerald blinked out.
The Hoo bounded over Barkwell, slapped the glass cover aside, and
snatched the emerald off its stand. The gem in its mouth, it dissolved
into a silvery mist that slowly disappeared.
Once the Hoo was gone, Pripp dropped to his knees from exhaustion.
Barkwell rushed over to help him stand. “You owe me a dozen doughzels,
Barkwell,” he gasped as he rubbed his hands.
“Harrrdly,” she said. “You owe me.”
“I trapped it!”
“It stole the emerrrald anyway.”
“What? Oh no…”
She stuck out her tongue and panted. “I thought the Hoo would devourrr
me. I’ll neverrr forrrget the smell of its breath. Overrrwhelming.” She
sneezed and licked her nose.
Pripp wrinkled his nose and asked, “What did it say?”
“The Hoo said it was imprrrisoned--”
Pripp snapped his fingers and interjected, “I see. It’s being forced to act against its nature.”
“It might be lying.”
“Hoos don’t lie,” he said with a smugness that made Barkwell bare her
teeth. He continued, “The true crime here isn’t the thefts, it’s that
someone’s managed to enslave a guardian spirit and is using it for his
or her own purposes.”
“Then we must frrree it,” Barkwell said, “but how?”
“Such spirits,” Pripp began, “can be captured in a number of ways, but
for one as strong as a Hoo, I suspect that whoever controls it is doing
so by keeping part of its spirit separate from the rest. Thus, the Hoo
must obey its captor or risk being destroyed.”
Barkwell sniffed the air. “I can’t track it through the ether, but if
parrrt of it’s in the city somewherrre, I’ll rrrecognize it if we get
close.”
“We don’t have time for you to smell half the city,” Pripp said.
“Besides, a good detective uses his intuition. I can already tell you
who’s captured the Hoo.”
Barkwell rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Who?”
With further smugness, Pripp said, “Babs Bedfellow, of course.”
Barkwell blinked. “Babs Bedfellow? She... capturrred a Hoo with the
intention of making it steal herrr own emerrrald? Then she came to us
so we could catch herrr?”
“Exactly,” said Pripp. “It’s the perfect crime. She probably thinks we’d never suspect her.”
“I don’t suspect herrr.” Barkwell laid her ears back and muttered, “Sometimes I wonderrr how you everrr got prrromoted.”
“Come on. Let’s search Bedfellow’s office. I bet we’ll find the emerald
and everything else that’s gone missing lately.” He set off at a brisk
pace out of the gallery.
Barkwell jogged after him, complaining that there wasn’t time for
chasing leads based on feelings. “The Hoo said that we’ve only got till
dawn, and that its frrreedom was ourrrs.”
“Guardian spirits always say mystical things like that,” Pripp said
with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You can’t take them too seriously.
Ah, here we are.”
They had arrived at Babs Bedfellow’s office suite. They each pressed an
ear to the door and heard the giggling of two voices, Babs’s and a
man’s. “See?” Pripp whispered. “I told you something’s afoot. What’s
she doing here in the dead of night after she told us she was busy?”
“She does sound busy,” Barkwell agreed. She tried the door
handle and found it to be locked. “Stand back.” She steadied herself
and landed a strong kick next to the latch. The lock gave way and the
door swung inward with a terrific slam. The detectives rushed through
the reception room and into Bedfellow’s office shouting, “Freeze!” and
“Put your hands up!”
When Pripp and Barkwell broke in, they found Babs Bedfellow and the
Viscount Darling, a lad no more than half her age, canoodling on her
davenport. The couple untwined and put up their hands.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Babs gasped. “Why aren’t you guarding the Behemoth Emerald?”
“It’s been stolen,” Barkwell said. She began sniffing the air and scanning the room.
“Stolen!? You were supposed to stop that from happening, you... you...
ninnies!” Babs stomped her foot in protest even as she kept her hands
in the air.
Pripp sauntered up to the davenport and said, “Look, let’s do this the
easy way. We know you’re responsible for the thefts. Just tell us how
you captured the Hoo and where the stolen goods are and we won’t have
to, oh, I don’t know, tear apart every bit of this office looking for
them.”
Viscount Darling said, “Hoo?”
“Her,” Pripp said. “Unless you care to confess as an accomplice?”
“Not ‘who’,” the viscount said. “What’s a Hoo?”
Barkwell sniffed all around the desk and shelves as Pripp said, “Don’t
play dumb with me. Just because you’re a viscount doesn’t mean you’re
above the law. Besides, isn’t it a school night?”
Viscount Darling jutted his youthfully smooth chin out. “I’m in my gap year.”
Babs stood up and put her hands down. She pulled the viscount’s hands
down and said, “You have some nerve busting in here accusing me of
stealing! You’ll find no proof because I had nothing to do with any of
the robberies. I don’t even know what a Hoo is and I am certainly no
criminal. I have half a mind to report you to the mayor!”
“That won’t be necessarrrry,” Barkwell said, shutting one of the desk
drawers. “Therrre’s not a whiff of magic in herrre, Hoo or otherrrwise.
Only perrrfume and... teenagerrr.” She hurried to the door and grabbed
Pripp’s arm on the way. “C’mon, detective...”
Once out in the hallway, Barkwell growled sarcastically, “That went well, I thought. Yourrr intuition is spot on.”
Pripp scratched his head. “I could have sworn…”
“Bedfellow was rrright. You arrre a ninny.”
“Don’t be so smug. Thanks to me, she thinks you’re a ninny too!”
They made their way out of the Fretty Museum. Barkwell sighed and said,
“Trrry to use some prrroperrr detective sense. You’rrre a Law Mage.
Think about who in this city is strrrong enough to trrrap a Hoo.”
Pripp twirled his moustache and starting pacing the pavement. “Let’s
see. There’s the Witch of Washing Street, but she prefers to make
trouble with poxes and hexes. The Carnaby Twins stick with illusions.
Braggmort Strangwish was experimenting with necromancy until we sent
him away on will fraud.” He stopped pacing and threw up his hands.
“Honestly, the only people remotely powerful enough to control a Hoo
would be at the Conservatoire, but I can’t see an academic taking a
risk like that.”
“It’s the only lead we’ve got,” Barkwell said. “Let’s head overrr and I’ll trrry to pick up the trrrail.”
Off they went down the gas lit streets of Crownpont. Few people were
out. Those who did slip through the streets at that late hour kept to
the shadows, being the sorts that would prefer to keep clear of the
law. After walking by the shops along Valeborough Way and down the
renowned Boulevard of the Quartermasters, they came to the gates of the
Arcane Conservatoire, the prestigious university for all manner of
magic.
The detectives were admitted guards at the gates after they showed
their badges. The walkways of the university were more populated than
the city streets had been. Here was a group of students making their
way home from a pub. There was a pair of professors discussing a vexing
experiment that was keeping them awake. Pripp started telling Barkwell
tales about his own heady days at the school, but she kept her
attention on what her nose was telling her.
The school’s grounds reeked of all kinds of magic, from the tantalizing
camphor of transubstantiation near the Alchemy building to the musty
malodor of a séance at the Broom and Cauldron, the campus pub. The
Hoo’s distinctive, otherworldly smell was difficult to find among the
others, but she finally picked it up near the main administrative
building at the center of campus.
“I smell a Hoo,” Barkwell reported as they approached the famous bronze doors of Grisbirchian Hall. “How do we get in?”
“These doors are always left unlocked,” Pripp said, “to maintain the
illusion that anyone can enter the hallowed halls of the Conservatoire
and gain great knowledge. But, as evidenced by the guards at the front
gate, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s actually quite
difficult to get in.” He pushed open the door, which swung silently on
its massive hinges.
Barkwell sniffed, her shiny nose picking up every smell from chalk dust
to dried ink to floor wax. Under it all was the distinct bite of the
Hoo’s magic, and the scent trail was leading upstairs. “This way,” she
whispered and headed up the main staircase. Pripp followed behind,
looking around to make sure no one was sneaking up on them. The trail
led them to pair of dark wood doors.
“Are you sure you followed the right trail?” he whispered. “This is the
office of Chancellor Witherune, the head of the Conservatoire!”
“I’m absolutely surrrre,” she whispered back. “Not only can I smell a
Hoo, but also some copperrr wirrre, a barrr of soap, well-aged whisky,
a pairrr of silk stockings--”
“Fine, fine. I believe you.”
She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “Is this chancellorrr a strrrong wizard?”
“Definitely,” he sighed.
“Then you’ll need to distrrract him long enough forrr me to frrree the
Hoo.” When he didn’t answer, she turned and saw that his face was set
with determined fear. “Hey, I don’t need long. My nose, rrrememberrr?”
She grinned, winked and tapped the end of her snout.
Pripp forced a weak smile. “All right. I’ll startle him with a
percussive spell. Don’t let it distract you.” After a deep breath he
nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Barkwell twisted the doorknob and pushed the door inward enough for
them to slip inside the reception room. She led Pripp past the
secretary’s desk, into the chancellor’s office, and to a closed door
that led to Witherune’s private laboratory. At the door, she mouthed,
“Ready?” Pripp nodded and lifted his hands, priming his spell.
Barkwell kicked in the door and shouted, “Hands up!” Before she could
get her bearings, a purple flame fizzed through the air directly at her
head. She ducked behind a workbench, the magic dart blasting against
the door jamb leaving an acrid smell in its wake. Pripp rolled into the
room and, from his knees, cast a spell that flashed a bright light
throughout the room and clapped the air together in a ferocious bang.
Barkwell forced herself to direct all of her attention to her nose
despite the ringing in her ears and the spots swimming in her eyes. The
smells of fresh magic were overwhelming, but the memory of the Hoo’s
powerful breath allowed her to pick out its distinctive odor. She kept
low to the floor and followed the scent to a mechanical contraption
taking up a corner of the room.
The contraption was a series of jars, levers, pulleys, tubes, and
wires. It had been constructed from items stolen throughout the city.
The sewer foreman’s missing pipewrench jutted off of a spinning pottery
wheel, each revolution advancing a cog stolen from Mighty Mitch, the
great clock atop the parliament building. This drove a belt made from
the viscountess’s silk stockings, which turned a plate on which the
Behemoth Emerald focused a beam of light into a bell jar. Beneath the
bell jar swirled two dozen long, blue-white filaments, thick at one end
and tapering to a fine tip. They absolutely reeked of Hoo.
While Barkwell was making her way toward the contraption, Pripp had his
hands full distracting Chancellor Witherune. The chancellor, a rotund
man with wild, white hair and a full, white beard waxed into flamboyant
loops and curls, had been stunned by Pripp’s spell, but had recovered
surprisingly quickly. He raised an arcane shield fast enough to counter
Pripp’s entrapping bubble and he returned several more purple darts.
One of the darts clipped Pripp’s arm, but was deflected by the
protection spells woven into his robe.
“How dare you come in here!” Chancellor Witherune shouted. “I’ll have
your heads!” He threw more purple darts at Barkwell, who had to duck
behind another workbench.
“Stand down!” Pripp shouted. “You’re under arrest for cat burglary
and... and whatever you’re doing in here with all of that stuff!”
“Never!” the chancellor roared. “You are nothing to me!”
Whatever the contraption was meant to do, it began to do it with more
gusto. Things that were rotating rotated faster, things that were
billowing billowed faster, and things that were pushing and pulling
pushed and pulled faster. A glow began to appear in the middle of the
room, a faint green haze at first which soon became a bright blue
portal. From out of the portal came a writhing tentacle and a cold
howling from another dimension.
Not waiting to see what would come through, Barkwell grabbed a metal
stool and heaved it at the bell jar. With a resounding crash, the bell
jar shattered and an enormous Hoo came leaping out of the contraption,
which hadn’t taken well to having a stool thrown into it and was now
busy tearing itself apart.
The blue portal, the tentacle, and the cold howling vanished in a
violent implosion as the Hoo bounded over workbenches and grabbed
Chancellor Witherune in its mouth. The Hoo shook the chancellor like a
cat does a mouse, shaking and shaking him until he faded away entirely.
As soon as the chancellor was gone, the Hoo sat down on its haunches
and started cleaning its face by licking its massive paw and passing it
over its ear.
Shaken by the implosion, Barkwell crawled over to where Pripp was
leaning against a shelf and catching his breath. She helped him stand
up and they reassured one another that neither was seriously injured.
The Hoo finished its bath and said, “Thank you, mortals, for my
freedom. I am pleased you managed to deduce the whereabouts of my
prison. Chancellor Witherune had committed several serious dimensional
crimes and I had been instructed to bring him to justice.
Unfortunately, I underestimated his cunning and he caught me in a wily
trap. He put my whiskers in a jar and I was required to do his bidding.
Thankfully, in the course of fulfilling his demands, I made enough
trouble throughout the city to draw your attention here.”
Pripp rubbed his arm where the chancellor’s dart had left a handsome
bruise despite his robe, and said, “What did you do with him? We need
to arrest him under our own laws and bring him to justice.”
“Mortal,” the Hoo said, “his greater crimes lie within my sphere. It is
there he will answer to a higher justice. I think you will find all of
the stolen items you seek to be in this room. If you return them to
their rightful owners, there is no harm done to you or them in the end.”
Barkwell asked, “So how do we explain wherrre he went? I’m surrre the Conserrrvatoirrre will notice he’s gone.”
“Why tell a falsehood when the truth shall suffice,” said the Hoo. With
that, it vanished as dawn light broke through a clear sky.
Pripp and Barkwell walked through the destroyed workshop, kicking
copper stands and broken alembics aside as they made their way toward
the ruined contraption. Barkwell dug through the mess until she found
the shimmering Behemoth Emerald. “We should get this back to the
Frrretty Museum.”
Pripp was collecting some of the more valuable stolen items when he
found the viscountess’s hosiery, singed from and rather tragically
stretched out from its experience in the contraption. “I’m not sure the
Dowager Darling will want these back.”
Barkwell grinned. “Might as well brrring them along. We’ll send some officerrrs down for the rrrest of it.”
They walked out of Grisbirchian Hall into the dewy dawn as the
university guards came rushing up to investigate reports of an
explosion. “Late as usual, boys,” Pripp said. “There’s a crime scene
upstairs. Keep everyone out of the building until the constabulary
arrives.”
With that, the two detectives started walking back to the main precinct
as the city woke up around them. The smell of fresh baking wafted
through the streets. “That rrreminds me, Prrripp,” Barkwell said. “You
owe me a dozen glazed doughzels.”
THE END
© 2017 O. N. Boyd
Bio: O. N. Boyd, an individual with great expertise on medieval
art, fancy cats, and hot chocolate, writes speculative fiction in a
small flat above a large solicitor in London, England.
E-mail: O. N. Boyd
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