“Got it,” I said. “But don’t worry, that’s not going to happen. People in this town can dislike me for whatever reasons they want, but I’ve gotten in trouble over more things than who I associate with in Western Woods.”
“Yeah, I guess getting almost murdered by people trying to hide the fact that they’re killers will do that,” Kyran said. “Speaking of, how close are you to finding Professor Lei’s killer?”
I shrugged. “We have a whole bunch of leads, but nothing solid yet. We don’t know if her murder is linked to the gambling ring in Desert Plains that Chief Enforcer King was investigating.”
Kyran raised an eyebrow. “Aquila’s gang?”
“How on earth do you know about that?” It seemed like any time I needed to know anything about the magical world, Kyran had the answer.
He smiled. “I make it my business to know what kind of unsavory activities are happening in this world. After all, it leaks into crime in the human world a lot more than you might think.”
“Do you know who Aquila is?” I asked.
Kyran shook his head. “No, I didn’t even know it was someone from Western Woods. It has to be, otherwise why would Chief Enforcer King be investigating it?”
“No one seems to know who Aquila is,” I said, the frustration evident in my voice. “I’m sure whoever it is, they are linked to Chief Enforcer King.”
“Maybe you need to look at things from a different angle,” Kyran said. “If no one knows who Aquila is, figure out what the link is between Professor Lei and Chief Enforcer King. That link might be the key to solving the identity.”
“Do you know more than you’re telling me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at Kyran.
He shook his head. “No, I’m just giving you general advice. While I know about Aquila’s gang, it’s not currently a priority for me and I don’t have the time to try and figure out who Aquila is right now.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said. I looked back towards the tables where everyone was eating, and realized that this was actually a great opportunity to look for information while coven headquarters would be basically abandoned.
“You’re thinking of going back into town?” Kyran said, and I sighed as I remembered that elves had this uncanny ability to not read exact thoughts, but definitely to be able to sense what a person was thinking.
“That ability is super creepy, you know?”
“Well, I think it’s super creepy when you cast spells, so we’re even.”
“Fair enough.”
“You’ve probably got about an hour before the witches start making their way back into town and coven headquarters is manned once more,” Kyran told me. “I have to go. Stay out of trouble.”
He gave me a little half bow, then turned and headed back towards Western Woods. I pulled out my phone and texted Sara, Amy, and Ellie. This was our chance.
Chapter 19
Sure enough, Kyran had been right. When we got to coven headquarters, there was absolutely nobody there. It was completely deserted. There were a couple of wards on the doors set to stop unwanted intruders, but Amy made quick work of those and we found ourselves in Professor Lei’s classroom, with no one else around, and the ability to finally look through her things to see if we could find a hint as to who murdered her.
I was specifically looking for anything that might have linked Professor Lei to Chief Enforcer King’s investigation. After all, maybe Kyran was right. Maybe trying to uncover Aquila’s identity was the wrong way to go. It hadn’t really gotten us very far so far, but coming at the problem a different way might have been the key.
Ellie began going through some cabinets at the back, while I sat down at Professor Lei’s desk and found a large binder full of classroom summaries. Maybe the answer lay in something she was teaching?
“Hey Amy, tell me about the class you are taking with Professor Lei. But don’t use your super smart words, tell me about it in a way that I would understand.”
“It’s about the mathematical theory used in astronomy,” Amy explained. “Basically, we use math to calculate the trajectory of various celestial objects and how they impact one another.”
“Wow, that was surprisingly dumbed down,” Ellie said with a smile. “Normally, when you ask Amy a question, even when she factors in the fact that we are mere mortals who don’t understand half of what she’s talking about, it’s still incomprehensible.”
“Maybe the math stuff is the link between Professor Lei and Chief Enforcer King,” I mused. “After all, gambling is basically math, right?”
“Well, as far as I know, cheating at gambling is,” Ellie said. “In the human world, don’t you have games like poker where people have a tendency to count cards to try and beat the odds?”
“Sure,” I replied. “I imagine a lot of gambling in the magical world is the same?”
“Yeah.”
“But, the problem is, Professor Lei’s math skills weren’t necessarily the sort of thing that would be used in a practical sense,” Amy argued. “She was very much a theoretical mathematician, and most of the math we did in her classes related to astrology.”
I flipped through the binder containing all of her coursework, and had to admit, it did look fairly complicated.
Navigation on earth by following the stars.
Constellation name origins.
Orbits of moons in relations to their planets.
Predicting the death of stars based on mass and growth rate.
Even the names of Professor Lei’s lessons seemed complicated. And I had to admit, Amy was right: there was nothing here that would have indicated that Professor Lei did any sort of math that might relate to gambling. It was definitely all astronomy-based.
I let out a sigh after about twenty minutes. This was really going nowhere.
“Hey, Sara, have you thought some more about whether or not you’re going to try out for that new broom flying competition?” Ellie asked, and Amy perked up.
“What broom flying competition?”
“I found a brochure for it when we were at the duels the other day. The company that runs the professional duels is starting a new sport, which involves broom flying. But Sara doesn’t seem to be as enthusiastic about it as I thought she would be.”
“Oh, that sounds interesting,” Amy replied.
“I know! That’s what I thought, too,” Ellie said.
“I’m interested,” Sara said. “I’m just trying not to get my hopes up.”
“Hey, I’m going to go have a look around the rest of coven headquarters, ok?” I said. I wasn’t sure I could add much to the current conversation, and I felt like maybe a little bit of a walk to clear my head would be a good idea.
“Sure,” Amy nodded. “Just make sure you’re out of the building in forty minutes, since the spells I’ve used to make sure our presence can’t be detected will have worn off.
“Will do,” I replied, leaving the three of them to keep looking around the office. I made my way out into the hall and sighed. I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of being overwhelmed, like no matter what I did I was never going to solve this case. It felt like no matter what angle I came at it from, it was never enough. I wasn’t getting any closer to the answer.
Making my way down the hall, towards all of the other classrooms, I looked at the pictures on the wall. There were some of former coven leaders, some paintings of Jupiter, and a number of others as well.
I didn’t really look at them too hard, or read the descriptions with any great detail, but I stopped suddenly when a single word underneath one of the paintings caught my eye.
It was a picture of a constellation, in sort of a T-shape. Underneath the picture, was the explanation. Aquila is a constellation on the celestial equator which represents the eagles which carried Jupiter’s thunder in coven mythology.
Aquila. That couldn’t be a coincidence. There was absolutely no way. I stared at the picture, thinking hard about things. Aquila was the name taken by
the leader of the gambling ring in Desert Plains. Chief Enforcer King’s disappearance was right around the same time as Professor Lei’s death. The professor had known a lot about both astronomy and math. Even if her math was more theoretical and didn’t deal directly with gambling, what if we had it all wrong? What if Professor Lei was Aquila? After all, it sounded like no one knew who Aquila really was. It was possible that if Aquila had died, a few days would pass without anybody noticing anything had gone wrong down in Desert Plains.
I let out a long breath. This was definitely not what I had expected to find out when I considered looking at things from a different angle. And yet, it all made sense. Aquila may very well have been Professor Lei.
Chapter 20
Making my way back to the others, I immediately explained my theory. Amy shook her head slowly.
“It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve known Professor Lei for years, and she’s never seemed to me to be the type that would do something like this.”
“You think that about all of our teachers, though,” Ellie said.
“That’s because it’s true,” Amy said, crossing her arms. “I’ve spent so much time with Professor Lei in this room, I can’t imagine that she was running a gambling ring.”
“There’s an easy way to find out,” I said. “Why don’t we go back to Desert Plains, and ask Anton when he left the money to be picked up for Aquila? If it turns out that the money was being left while she had a class or something, then it’s easily solved. We will know that it couldn’t have been her. Seeing how secretive Aquila is about his or her identity, I can’t imagine that they would have sent someone else to pick up the money and then have it delivered to them; I’d imagine they picked it up themselves.”
Sara nodded. “That makes sense, I can definitely see that.”
“Fine,” Amy said. “Let’s do it. I want to clear Professor Lei’s name as soon as possible. She was a good professor, and if she was involved in this, I’m certain it was to help Chief Enforcer King, and that she was not the target of the investigation.”
“Now?” Sara asked. I looked outside at the sun beginning to make its way towards the horizon. Sunset was maybe two hours away.
“Why not?” I asked. “After all, it’s not going to be too long before the sun sets and the vampire bar opens. That’s where we’re going to find Anton.”
The four of us made our way to the portal and quickly found ourselves transplanted on top of the Desert Plains pyramid. We climbed the steps down to ground level, but instead of grabbing a chariot, Amy pulled us aside.
“Why don’t we walk to town, and on the way there, I can give Tina a lesson on desert plants? Ellie, you can help, since I know you know the plants very well also.”
“Good idea,” Sara said. “I’m always happy to tag along when Tina gets a lesson in the hopes of being able to pick something up myself.”
With that settled, the four of us began to walk along a desert road, and I couldn’t help but notice as I walked along that there really wasn’t all that much here in terms of flora. A few succulents dotted the desert here and there, but that was about it.
“All right,” Amy said, tearing off the path and towards a small clump of cacti. “The first thing you need to know about succulents is that even though they look like nothing, they almost all have magical properties.”
“Kind of like how the aloe plant is good for sunburns?” I asked.
Ellie nodded. “Exactly like that, but in the magical world, you’ll find that most of the succulents have more uses than just those. In fact, while it can be difficult to find certain plants in the desert, they can actually be life-saving. Like this one here.”
Ellie reached down to show me a small plant with thick, greenish-blue leaves. “This is a blue star. As far as I know, in the human world, it’s decorative only. However, the species that grows here can help with heart problems. If you ever find yourself running into somebody who’s having a heart attack, feed them one of the leaves from this plant.”
“Okay,” I nodded, making sure to remember what the plant looked like.
“They use it at the hospital all the time,” Sara added. “I know this one too.” She pointed to a succulent next to the blue star that was similar in color – perhaps more turquoise than the blue star - but whose leaves were different. It almost looked like a whole bunch of small bananas were growing out of it. “This is an elegans blue. If you’re ever bleeding profusely, chew up its leaves into a mash, and place it on the wound. It will stop the bleeding almost instantaneously.”
“Okay,” I nodded, getting a good look at that plant as well.
“One of the most important things to remember when it comes to desert plants is that the flowers of all of them have the same healing properties,” Ellie said. “The flesh is different for each plant, but flowers from any desert plant that are ingested will cure stomach ailments.”
“So like, nausea?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Amy nodded. “Also heartburn, ulcers, and anything else that can affect the stomach. To a lesser extent, they can help with intestinal issues as well, but because most of the healing properties have left the flower by the time they reach the intestine, it’s not as powerful as using them for stomach ailments.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “So in general, succulents have magical healing properties?”
“In general, yes. They’re very useful for people who are sick, and you will often find that various paranormal communities send some of their Healers here from time to time to refill their stores of succulents. Opinions on this differ based on the paranormal, but some Healers believe that the plants that grow naturally in the desert have stronger healing properties than the ones grown artificially in laboratories in each town.”
“What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” Amy said with a small shrug. “I’m not a Healer, and I haven’t done extensive study on the topic, so I’m afraid I can’t say either way.”
“Personally, I think there is something to it,” Ellie said. “I can’t speak for the succulents exactly, but I’ve definitely grown certain herbs and spices in the house, and they never seem to be quite as powerful as the ones that I get from the forest.”
It was an interesting topic of conversation, but as the sun approached the horizon, the four of us realized it was time for the lesson to end, and for us to try and get the information we needed.
Right on cue, one of the golden chariots appeared. The four of us climbed into it, and a few minutes later, it dropped us off exactly where we needed to be: Caesar’s Palace, the vampire bar constantly frequented by Anton.
“I really don’t like it here,” Amy said, looking up at the seemingly abandoned building.
“You can stay out here if you want,” Ellie said. “But I think the more of us there are, the more likely we are to scare him into telling us what we want to know.”
“Fine,” Amy said. “But I’m only doing this because I’m sure that Professor Lei was not involved in the gambling ring at all, and I want to clear her good name since she is no longer here to do it herself.”
The four of us squeezed into the entrance room and let the door close behind us before opening the second door that led into the vampire bar.
Sure enough, Anton was sitting exactly at the same table as he had been the night before. When he saw us enter, he scowled, making no effort to hide the distaste he felt in seeing us.
“What do you want this time?” he asked as we sat down across from him, letting Ellie do the talking. After all, she was way better than us at this sort of thing.
“When was the last time you spoke to Aquila?” Ellie asked.
“Why’s that any of your business?”
“It’s important.”
“I don’t care what’s important to you.”
“So you haven’t spoken to him recently.”
“I didn’t say that.”
This was obviously getting nowhere. Ellie obviously felt the sam
e way, because she leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms.
“Fine. Doesn’t matter anyway. The thing is, we are pretty sure we figured out who Aquila is. And Aquila is dead.” As Ellie said the words, I looked carefully at Anton’s face, and I might have imagined it but I thought his eyes widened a little bit for just a split second, before that same self-assured grin crept back onto his face.
“Like you would know.”
“So you’re not going to tell us when the last time he spoke to him was?”
“Absolutely not. I already told you more than I should have last time.”
“Fine. Doesn’t matter to us. Just this one over here wanted some proof,” Ellie said, jerking a thumb towards Amy. “So, we figured we would ask you. Doesn’t change a thing as far as we’re concerned. We know who Aquila is. And he’s dead. Just in case you start wondering why you can’t get in touch with him.”
Ellie got up from her chair and the rest of us immediately followed suit after her. As soon as we were outside, I turned towards her.
“Why did you do that? Now the conversation’s ended.”
Ellie grinned. “That was on purpose. Now he’s been told Aquila’s dead, what’s the first thing he’s going to do?”
“Try and find out if that’s true or not,” Amy said, nodding. “He’s going to call her, and try and drop off some money for her, or something.”
“Exactly. If the money goes, then Aquila is still alive. If it doesn’t, then Aquila is dead, and his entire stream of income has dried up.”
“So we are going to follow him?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Ellie said. “Amy, help me make everyone invisible. As soon as he comes out of that bar, we need to go after him and see where he goes.”
Between Amy and Ellie both casting the spells, ten seconds later the four of us were invisible. It wasn’t a moment too soon; about fifteen seconds after that Anton suddenly left via the bar’s front door, looked around for a minute - probably making sure he wasn’t being followed - and began walking down the street to the right.
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