by Mara Webb
The parking lot outside had enough cars to suggest that the rest of the council had beaten us here. I couldn’t remember what jobs they all had but apparently it was easy enough for them to all just disappear in the middle of the day at short notice. We parked the car, grabbed the clothes we had taken from Sophia’s office and walked through the giant wooden doors of the council building.
The hallway towards the central room was lined with hooks that carried our cloaks, each with an engraved name plaque. I placed the bag of clothes onto the ground so that I could put my cloak on as Jennifer did the same. It was a uniform of sorts, something we all wore at these council gatherings. I wasn’t sure when the cloaks had been implemented but we all took it very seriously.
The rest of the council were waiting for us around the table in the main room. I took my seat, tucking the bag of Joseph’s things underneath my chair as we performed our opening ritual. We held each other’s hands forming a circle, and all closed our eyes. I concentrated on the significance of the work we often did here and our responsibility to uphold the ethics and dignity associated with our position, we all had to think about this at the beginning of every meeting. Our collective magic lit a blazing fire underneath the cauldron that lay a few feet from our table. We let go of hands and Amber, the head of the council, spoke first.
“Jennifer, fill us in. I believe our gathering is required for an important task, yes? We all got here as quickly as we could,” she said. I glanced discreetly down at my watch. Jen had only called them all about seven minutes ago, I had no idea how they had managed to get here before us.
“Yes,” Jen began. “As you know, my nephew Cody has not been seen for three weeks now. A journalist that I was speaking with has now been killed by dark magic. I believe that these events are connected. Joseph Hawk had written a few articles about missing people in Sucré. He knew that the missing people were witches and wizards, but he couldn’t say anything about that in the newspapers or on TV. He said he had something important to tell me, he was trying to help me figure out what was going on with all this and now he is dead.”
I looked at each face around the table as Jennifer spoke. They were all surprised at the situation unfolding before them.
“Wait,” Ryan said. “I’m confused. How long has this been going on?”
“As far as I know, about four years,” Jen replied. “Cody is the most recent disappearance. I have gathered a lot of information through an online community that I joined. There are dozens of magical families that are desperate for answers and I don’t know how to even begin with all this, but I think Joseph did. He was beginning to look in different places for clues, he was trying new approaches. I think he must have gotten too close to the truth because someone has killed him.”
“How do we help?” Amber asked.
“Nora?” Jen said, prompting me to lift the bag of Joseph’s clothes from the floor and put them on the tabletop. “He had a charm on his clothes to act as voice recorders. I don’t know how he did it and I don’t know how to play it back, but Nora said she saw him arguing with a man the day before he was found dead. We need to figure out what was said and if this guy, the organizer of that dog show or whatever it is, is related to his murder. He was always working on a few investigations at once so it could be nothing, but it might be related to my nephew. We need to work together to listen to that argument somehow.”
I tipped the bag out and the clothes tumbled onto the table. He had shoes, socks, trousers, underwear, a white shirt, a blazer, a waistcoat and a tie. Any of these things could be under the recording charm, or none of them. We had to figure out which ones had magic first of all, then how to listen to the recordings. Did they record the whole time? How often did he ‘wipe the tape’? Might we need to sift through months of sock messages? Urgh.
We looked at each other, I suspected that everyone else was wrestling with the same questions. I picked up the shoe closest to me and turned it over in my hands. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find, but a giant ‘play’ button on the heel would have been a real time-saver.
“I think I’ve heard of this charm before,” Justin said. “Some of the other students at the University have tried it to help with revision notes. I think I gave it a go myself once in my first year, it’s a tough one but if I remember correctly…” he trailed off. He leaned over the table to grab the other shoe and said ‘Evolvo.’
The shoe started to play the sounds of a man’s voice. “That’s Joseph!” Jen said. He gave the date before recounting some information about an article he had just read. The date was a month ago. I audibly sighed. We would have to listen to a lot of this before we got to the night of the argument. Or would we only have messages that were recorded on the days he was wearing these shoes? I had no idea what to expect.
“Silentium,” Justin said. The shoe stopped playing. “I think we should break off, take an item each, listen to what is on them and then regroup and share what we’ve heard. I think it’s the quickest way to get through it.” He was right. I grabbed the shirt, Ryan took a sock, Amber took the other sock, Jen took the blazer and Justin kept hold of the shoe.
This was such an odd thing to be doing, but having been a witch for almost a year, I had come to realize that I could never predict what might happen next. This was only going to be truly helpful if this is what he had been wearing during the argument and I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t noticed his shoes or his blazer. It had been dark, and the glimpse had been so brief. This could be a waste of all of our time. At the very least I hoped that it might shed some light onto what Joseph Hawk had been planning to tell Jennifer.
I took the shirt into a small room that branched off from the main meeting area. It was barely large enough for a table and one chair, I couldn’t guess what a room this size could possibly have been designed for, even broom closets are usually bigger than this. I closed the door and sat down. “Evolvo,” I said, holding the white fabric. It began to play.
“Well, it’s Tuesday. I’ve just changed shirts and read an email from Derek and he agrees with me, based off the spreadsheet I sent him. I’m worried that this email trail is vulnerable to hacking so I need to cover my tracks somehow. I need to check a few more dates before I contact Ms. Watts as I don’t want to get her hopes up, but this is promising.
I need to check the Shevton records, they are on my office desk now hopefully. Tollin and Scarlett Creek are sending over some more clippings today too. I think creating a digital archive of all this might be better, easier to connect the dots. But it is adding up. A missing person, then they show up within weeks. There is a link there and I think I can prove it.”
8
The rest of the recording on the shirt had contained a very complicated coffee order to Joseph’s assistant, the sound of him slowly eating an apple and then just the clicking of a keyboard. It was the longest ASMR audio I’d heard in a while. Just when I had lost hope, he spoke again.
“Hello? Could I get a tuna melt with fries? Yeah. Yeah. Large please. Cakes? Sure, what have you got? Uh huh. Hmmm, I think a choc- ERROR: MEMORY FULL”
Great. I supposed that this was why he wore so many different recording charms. I wanted to know what was in the emails, he had named three places and said that they had sent clippings and records over. He had made a connection between the missing people and something. Now I needed to find out what. Before I considered breaking into his office, it would be wise to see what the others had heard on their recordings, and what the rest of the clothing on the meeting room table was able to reveal. I walked out of the small room and saw Ryan as he disappeared behind a door carrying the remaining shoe. I grabbed the trousers and returned to the small space.
“Evolvo,” I said again.
“If at first you don’t succeed, trou, trou, trouser again.” This was followed by laughter. “No seriously, your trousers are in desperate need of repair, we have nothing further to report.”
It seemed that the trousers were faulty, apparentl
y that it is something that can happen to trousers now. I felt the urge to look up how this whole thing worked because I couldn’t understand. Were they recording all the time? Did he need to actively start and stop recording? How much data could they hold? How did he clear the memory? It seemed like a deeply flawed system.
I hoped that there was something useful in all this. We would have to take the clothes back to Sophia soon, before she got into trouble. I didn’t want all of this to be for nothing. I lay the trousers flat on the table and rested my head on my hands, my elbows on the edge of the fabric. There was something uneven underneath my left arm. There was something inside the pocket.
I reached my hand inside and pulled out a neatly folded handkerchief. There was a small shape embroidered in one corner, when I squinted and brought it close to my face, I could see that it was an infinity symbol. It looked incredibly clean, the white of the cloth was immaculate. It must be new.
“Evolvo,” I said. I clutched in in my fist and hoped that it contained something useful.
“Mr. Hawk, your infini-fabric device has THREE days’ worth of recordings since purchase on the SEVENTEENTH of MAY. Please state the date you wish to hear played back.”
I thought for a moment. He had bought this handkerchief this week, it was only the twentieth now. It had recorded for three days, that meant that it might have the argument, providing that he was carrying it last night. I wished I had been paying more attention to what he was wearing when I’d seen him.
“The nineteenth,” I replied to the fabric.
“A time frame? Or the entire day, Sir?” the handkerchief asked.
When had I arrived at the venue yesterday? It had been after the café had closed, I had loaded everything into the car and there was the travel time to get across town too. I hadn’t looked at the dashboard clock when I had been driving, or if I had, it hadn’t stuck in my mind as important.
“Nineteen hundred hours?” I said, unsure. I wasn’t sure if it wanted twenty-four-hour time or not.
The playback began with the sound of muffled footsteps. This continued for several minutes. He must have just been walking around with this in his pocket, I didn’t know how long this would go on for. Maybe I had the time wrong. Urgh. I wish I’d remembered the time. Maybe I should ask Quin if he knew. Suddenly, I heard a voice in the recording.
“Hawk get out of here. This whole place is none of your business, I think you’ve caused quite enough trouble.” It was a man’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it.
“How long are you going to carry on with all this?” Joseph replied. “You will lose your status, the customers will stop showing up, and then what are you left with? You have to stop this; I am giving you the chance to stop this. I will take my findings to the authorities; I am giving you the chance to do the right thing. It will look better for you when this all comes out. I am trying to help everyone walk away from this situation unharmed. I mean that.”
“Ha!” the other voice responded. “You think you’re so smart don’t you, Hawk. You won’t walk away from this unscathed, that’s a promise. Go back to busting bankers, leave us small business owners alone. This is our livelihood; this place puts food on the table. This is a community; you have no idea—”
The man’s voice stopped suddenly. That must have been when I had walked in and seen them arguing. Even with this recording, I wasn’t sure what the argument had been about. I would have to listen to more of the information on this handkerchief.
“Silentium,” I said, the recording stopped. So, Joseph had found something out about the animal show, but what? He had something he wanted to tell Jen, something about Cody. Where these two cases related to each other? How could they be? I heard movement coming from the main meeting room. I opened the door to see what was happening.
The rest of the council had regrouped at the table and looked over at me.
“Oh good, you’re done too Nora, come on over, let’s share what we have so far,” Jen said.
I stood up, stuffed the handkerchief into my own pocket and brought the trousers out to the meeting table and sat down in my chair. Eyes were all pointed in my direction, so I began to present what I had found first.
“Okay, well I have a few things. The trousers had nothing, some sort of fault. The shirt seemed to suggest that he had information on his computer that would be worth looking at, emails and a spreadsheet. He didn’t say what they contained. He also mentioned that he had documents on his desk. Long story short, we will need to break into his office.” I laughed and looked around to see that everyone else was smiling.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, “we were just talking before you came out. He had maxed out the memory on most of these things, so they stopped recording a few days ago, but everything we have heard is making us think that we need to check out the office.”
I sighed with relief. I didn’t want to be the person that was always suggesting breaking and entering private property, but thankfully they agreed with me.
“It was all a bit useless really,” Justin said. “Everything he was talking about seemed to refer to something he could see in front of him, so it made no sense as just audio. Joseph must have figured out a shorthand with himself, but yeah, like Ryan said. It’s break-in time.”
“When are you thinking we do that then?” I asked. “We need to get all this back to Sophia too.”
“It’s the weekend, so his office should be pretty quiet right now. I think tonight would be best, I’ll come with you,” Jen said. I tried to track backwards through the conversation to see if I had actually volunteered for this task at any point, but it didn’t seem to matter now. Volunteering had happened on my behalf.
My eyes flickered over to Ryan and I met his gaze. I had been on a couple of late-night crime fighting adventures with him and it was strange that we wouldn’t be teamed up on this one. I think I had been avoiding him intentionally though. I wondered if my magic might have caused Jen to suggest that she come with me. Probably not, she just wanted to help look for Cody.
Since Ryan had blurted out that he was in love with me, I had been unable to properly respond. I had decided that just not addressing it at all was the easiest option, so having another night of not needing to speak to Ryan alone was a relief.
“I’ll take these clothes back to Sophia,” I said. “Jen, I can take you home and then I can pick you up tonight? Or do you want to meet at his office, I mean, I don’t know where that is…”
“I’ll drive to you, Nora. Just be ready to roll at eleven. Let’s go!” Jen said, standing up and folding Joseph’s clothes neatly before returning them to the plastic bag from the Pathology office.
I was sitting on the couch staring blankly at the TV when Quin jumped on me. I hadn’t been paying attention to anything, just lost in my thoughts, but the weight of his body landing on my chest jolted me back into the room.
“Nora! Echo said that Delphi heard Jinx saying to Howl that Mark spoke to Chomps and that Chomps said that the dog that went missing from the show today isn’t the first one. Apparently, it happened to another animal about a week or so ago, or maybe it was yesterday, or maybe it—”
“Quin,” I interrupted, “slow down please. Just, all of this, stop. A dog went missing today, and you’re saying that this has recently happened with another animal at the show too?” When Quin started talking rapidly about the gossip train he had with the other cats in the house, my brain just played white noise. It wasn’t even worth asking him to repeat himself.
“Yeah! I think it was a rabbit, or a chimp or something. Details! Who cares, right? So, I was thinking Pad Thai for dinner? But I am not a fan of noodles. Can you make us all one without? I think it’s best that it’s best that you make it instead of me using my magic because…I’m sure there’s a great reason. Can I change the channel on here too? My dance show will start any minute.” Quin jumped over to the remote control I had bought him, it had buttons large enough for his paws to operate.
“First of all, I d
on’t know what ‘Pad Thai with no noodles’ would look like. Secondly, do you know anything useful about this other missing animal? Why didn’t anyone mention it this morning when that dog disappeared?” I asked. I don’t know why I expected him to say anything helpful, no harm in asking though.
“No idea. I think Chomps spoke to someone at the café this morning, they are like a roadie for the show. It’s all very hush hush, the staff were told not to tell anyone.”
If Chomps was speaking to someone, then they must have magic. The cats wouldn’t be speaking to a human, which meant there were wizards and witches involved in the animal show.
Two of their animals had now disappeared, an investigative journalist was looking into something shady that the organizer didn’t want him to look at, and now that journalist had been killed.
This was a huge mess.
9
I poked at my dinner as the cats noisily inhaled their food. I had ignored Quin’s request and had given them some leftover roast chicken that Brent had left for them after their café shift. I didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. I dwelled on a story that my mom had told me, and I couldn’t shake it out of my mind. When I had been a baby, we had travelled a lot. My parents, when they were still married, would stay in various hotels across the country and one night had been woken by screams.
The family in the room next to ours had a baby that was around the same age that I had been, that baby had been snatched from the room while the parents were sleeping. It had meant that I was heavily guarded by my mom’s gaze at all times. Even in our own backyard, she would always be very close by, terrified that the baby snatcher had intended to take me instead and that they might try again. At the time I had hated it, I was never allowed to play out in the park with friends or stay over somewhere before my mom had scoped it out. Now I understood.