by Lily Webb
As I stood there drumming my fingers on what I assumed was the reception desk, I couldn’t help wondering the same thing. Raina had tried to caution me against coming, but as usual, I refused to listen. Nothing annoyed me as much as having to admit she was right, even if it wasn’t to her face.
At last, the receptionist slammed the receiver down on the counter and glanced up at me.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his voice as small as he was.
“Yes, I’m here for a meeting with the president,” I said, and the warlock raised an eyebrow at me.
“Do you have an appointment?” he asked as his fingers continued sailing across his keyboard.
“My campaign manager insists I do,” I said.
“Oh, you must be that appointment,” he said, smirking. His computer screen flashed in the reflection of his glasses.
“I’m sorry?”
The warlock shook his head. “You’re Zoe Clarke, right?”
“The one and only.”
“Mr. Darkmoore’s in another meeting that’s running long, but I can take you to his waiting room,” he said without once looking at me.
“Waiting room?” I asked. What sort of person had a waiting room for their meetings? “How long are we talking here?” I asked as the warlock stepped out from behind the desk.
“Only twenty minutes, from the looks of his schedule,” the warlock said and turned in a whirl of robes to sprint down the hall. When he glanced over his shoulder and realized I hadn’t followed, he rolled his eyes and gestured for me to get moving.
We strode down a curving hallway and came to a nondescript elevator; its doors were so polished that they nearly blinded me. The warlock pressed the up button and a beat later the door dinged and opened.
Inside, the receptionist pushed the button for the top floor and the doors whooshed shut.
“I bet I can guess why you’re here,” the warlock said with a smile.
“Yeah, probably. It’s easy,” I said. The more he spoke, the less I liked him.
“Admit it, it’s a good ad,” he said. I glared at him and he chuckled and shrugged. “Hey, I just run the front desk, what do I know?”
I answered with a shrug instead of repeating the question — because I seriously doubted he knew much of anything. The ride, and the awkward silence, ended moments later when the elevator dinged and the doors reopened to a long, narrow hallway that led to a single door. Two plastic chairs sat on either side, leaving just enough room for passersby.
“This is the waiting room?” I asked. The warlock nodded.
“Have a seat, I’ll let Mr. Darkmoore know you’re here,” he said. He knocked on the door once and let himself in before slamming it closed behind him. Muffled voices drifted outside from under the crack at the bottom of the door, but I couldn’t make out the words.
The receptionist burst out of the office again in a flurry of robes and left without saying a word to me. Judging from the looks of the chairs, they weren’t designed for comfort, so I strolled the hall instead.
A blue line ran along both walls, split at random intervals by red dots and underlying text. I walked to the first dot, situated closest to the elevator, and leaned over to read the text underneath. It was a timeline of the NWA’s history:
Established in 1700 by Alastair Darkmoore, the National Wand Association is nearly as old as Moon Grove itself and has always existed to protect the rights of ordinary witches and warlocks to own and bear a wand.
“Alastair Darkmoore, huh?” That explained Rowley’s ties to the group. Had the NWA always been a family-run organization, or was that a coincidence? I moved on to the next dot on the timeline to find out.
Formed as the Moon Grove Council expanded its powers and reach, the NWA has always stood as a beacon of liberty amongst the tyranny of government.
Evidently, their narrative hadn’t changed in over three hundred years. The more of the timeline I read, the more it sounded like propaganda — especially when I came to a dot marked by the year 1830:
1830, The Year of the Wand. During a period in which the Moon Grove Council was weakened by the unexpected murder of both the Head Witch and Head Warlock, the Council decreed that all wands be temporarily confiscated until the murderer was found, but the NWA and its members rose in revolt and successfully defeated the tyrannical measure.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a familiar, silky voice asked, and I jumped. When I turned, Rowley Darkmoore stood in a deep blue, pinstriped suit, his hands jammed into his pockets.
“Well, it’s at least informative,” I said, and Rowley chuckled, his toothy, too-white smile flashing in the fluorescent light. He pulled a ring-laden hand out of one of his pockets — the jewels on display on his one hand were probably worth more than my life — and approached me with it extended.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Clarke,” he said, still smiling as the warlock he’d been talking with slipped around him and headed for the elevator. Rather than put me at ease, Rowley’s friendliness made me worry he might try to sell me a used car.
Reluctantly, I shook his hand just to get it over with, and he gave me a forceful squeeze. He wasn’t the first one to try intimidating me with a handshake, but it didn’t work for him any more than it’d worked for those who’d come before him.
“Likewise,” I said, though I doubted he believed me.
“I think I know why you’re here,” he said, bobbing on his heels. His gelled blond coiffure bounced with the motion and his eyes twinkled.
“Guess three times,” I said, and Rowley’s crows’ feet crinkled as his smile widened.
“Is it because of the ad?”
“Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner,” I said.
“Please, step inside my office, we’ll talk it over,” he said, gesturing. I followed him inside and he kicked the door closed behind us. For all his personality, his office was as boring and functional as could be. An unremarkable wooden desk took up most of the floor space, and even his view outside wasn’t anything to write home about.
“This seems understated, all things considered,” I said, remembering the over-the-top decor in the lobby. Rowley laughed and sat down behind his desk, his hands linked on the surface.
“Out of necessity. I don’t think the members of the organization would look too kindly on me otherwise,” he said. “You know, it’s rare that I clear my schedule for people, Ms. Clarke.”
“Given the circumstances, I assumed you’d make an exception,” I said as I sat down across from him.
“And here we are. So, what can I do for you?” he asked, leaning forward.
“Kill that ad, for starters,” I said and Rowley let out a little laugh.
“Now why would I want to do that? It’s getting great results,” he said.
“Because it’s slanderous,” I countered.
“How so?”
“Never once have I threatened to take away anyone’s wand,” I said.
“Maybe not, but the Crowes have, and I heard from a little bird you’re aligned with them. Guilty by association,” Rowley said.
“Who told you that? Not even my campaign manager knew.”
“I’d like to think you of all people know how quickly and easily word travels in this town, Ms. Clarke,” he said, flashing me his pearly whites again. Did that mean there was a mole in my campaign somewhere? Or was he just trying to get inside my head? Well, two could play that game — and maybe I really could get inside his.
“That cuts both ways. Do you care to explain how one of your staff photographers got seated next to Lydia Crowe the night someone murdered her?” I asked.
Rowley’s smile vanished, replaced by a steely gaze that cut through me like a sharpened blade of ice.
“Pure coincidence,” he said, his face barely moving as the words left his lips. I locked eyes with him and concentrated, trying to force my way into his thoughts, but I might as well have been trying to will blood from a stone. Whatever else Rowley might be, he was also a powerf
ul warlock — or he’d prepared for my arrival by casting preventative spells on his thoughts.
“Do I have something on my face, Ms. Clarke?” he asked, never breaking eye contact.
“Other than a smug expression? No, not really,” I said and one corner of his mouth curled upward.
“Don’t mistake my amusement for smugness,” he said.
“How did you get the footage of me falling off my broom?”
“Oh, that was easy enough. Some members will do anything for the right amount and a promise of recognition within the organization,” Rowley said.
“So you admit to hiring someone to spy on my campaign?”
“Why should I deny it? The proof is out in the public domain now, though I’d argue it seems to be helping me more than you,” he said.
Though I hated him for it, Rowley was right. Even if I publicly accused him and the NWA of infiltrating my campaign, next to no one would believe it — and those who did would no doubt ask for proof, which I couldn’t provide.
At every turn, Rowley was several steps ahead of me. This wasn’t his first time in the ring.
“Would they murder someone for the right price?” I asked. Again, Rowley’s expression betrayed nothing.
“I’m sure some of them would, but as a political organization, it would hardly be good for our reputation if we became the group known for organized murder,” he said.
“Then how do you explain this?” I asked and reached into my robes for the smoking gun — the NWA membership coin. I laid it on the desk and pushed it toward him. Rowley picked it up, turned it over in his hand, and made it spin on the desk like a top.
“A membership coin. What is there to explain?”
“Why it fell out of the robes of Lydia’s murderer,” I said. Rowley slammed his hand down on the coin, making me jump out of my skin. I’d found a nerve.
“If that’s true, how did you come into possession of it?” he asked, staring me in the eyes.
“I tried to hit the murderer with a binding spell, but he dodged it and ended up running into someone else. He fell, and the coin dropped out of his robes, so I picked it up,” I said.
“Do the police know about this coin?”
“They do.”
“And they let you keep it?” he asked, an eyebrow raised.
“For now. They thought it might help me scare up some information.”
“You must be good friends with Chief Mueller,” he said.
“I wouldn’t go that far. Tell me about the coin. What does a member have to do to get one?”
“Join the organization,” Rowley said as he picked up the coin to re-examine it.
“And what does it take to join?”
“That depends on the person’s level of interest and how much they’d like to give to the NWA, but the entry level is a one-year membership.”
“Given the wear on that coin, I’d say it’s older than a year,” I said. Rowley nodded.
“Absolutely, not to mention the old design.”
“There’s a newer version?”
“Yes, but it’s not different. The only meaningful change is that we stopped individually numbering the coins,” Rowley said, and I nearly jumped across his desk.
“Wait, are you saying you can look up who this coin belongs to based on the number?”
“Possibly, but that doesn’t mean I will,” he said. “6018, I wonder who that could be?”
“Mr. Darkmoore, with all due respect, whoever owns that coin is a murderer. If you won’t tell me who it is, Mueller will get it out of you eventually,” I said.
“That’s not necessarily true. Coins change hands, after all. That it’s with you now is the proof, so who’s to say the original owner of the coin is guilty?” Rowley asked.
“Who else would’ve been carrying a coin like that and why? It wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Perhaps it was planted,” Rowley said with a shrug.
“Maybe, but we’ll never know if we don’t track down the owner. Like you said, maybe the killer stole it from them. Maybe the member it belonged to originally doesn’t even know it’s missing. There’s only one way to find out,” I said.
Rowley smashed the space bar on his keyboard to wake his computer and my heart lodged in my throat. Was he really going to help me, or was this another of his games?
I watched his fingers glide across the keyboard, agonizingly slow, and tried not to let my anxiety show.
“Let’s see now, six, zero, one, eight,” Rowley said, announcing each number as he pecked at it on the keyboard. As quietly as possible, I let out the burning breath I’d been holding. “Here’s our man, and Lilith below, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
Rowley turned his monitor for me to see. A young warlock with disheveled brown hair and sunken eyes stared back at me from the screen. I couldn’t tell if the sallowness of his skin was real or an effect of the blue light, but either way, the warlock looked disturbed.
“Brendan Norwood,” I read aloud, and quickly scanned the rest of the profile for his address before Rowley could hide it again. He lived a block away from Veilside Stadium. According to the profile, he’d joined nearly two years prior.
“A name I’ll never forget, though I wish I could,” Rowley sighed.
“Why?”
“Never in all my time as president of this organization have I met such a difficult young man,” he said.
“Difficult how?”
“Brendan was never one to follow, nor one to moderate himself,” Rowley said. “He’s what some might call, well, an enthusiast for the cause.”
“You mean an extremist,” I corrected him, and Rowley flashed me a wry smile.
“Semantics,” he breezed, waving me away. “Brendan’s behavior wasn’t what we expect from a model member.”
“What did he do?”
“Calls for violence and spreading fear and misinformation,” Rowley said. “Brendan insisted we were moving too slow and not taking things seriously. He often said that it was up to people like him and others in the organization to create their own justice.”
My stomach frosted. Mueller had said almost the same thing when he questioned me after the attack: the killer had taken the NWA’s problem with Lydia into their own hands. Knowing what I knew now, I couldn’t help thinking he was right. Frustrated with the lack of action — or what Brendan considered appropriate — he did what the NWA itself couldn’t: kill their biggest enemy.
The only question that remained was whether the NWA itself had encouraged him to do it and used him as their scapegoat.
“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s been months. We expelled him six months ago or thereabouts,” Rowley said.
“And you didn’t think he might be dangerous?”
“We’re not in the business of policing the actions of our members, current or former.”
He was trying to distance the NWA from Brendan. Did that mean he thought Brendan was guilty, or was he determined not to let the organization’s name get dragged into the mud along with Brendan just in case he was guilty?
“Okay, but shouldn’t you have warned someone he might harm others? Like, I dunno, the police?”
“And draw undue scrutiny to our entire organization? No,” Rowley said. “I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Clarke, I don’t have the faintest idea whether Brendan is responsible for Lydia’s death. But I know the NWA isn’t.”
“I guess I’ll have to ask him myself,” I said as I pushed back from his desk and stood. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Darkmoore.”
“Of course. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. Best of luck with your campaign,” Rowley said and offered me another handshake.
I left him hanging.
Chapter Nine
“Look at that swagger,” Helena laughed as I entered Veilside Stadium with my broom in hand, more determined than ever. “I take it you’ve been practicing?”
“Not exactly, but I got a m
ajor confidence boost,” I said. Helena frowned but didn’t give me any grief.
“Well, you are running for Head Witch, so I suppose I can let it slide,” she said. “But if you were anyone else, I’d make you polish every broom in this stadium three times over.”
“Harsh,” I said.
“It’s no less than slackers deserve,” Helena said with a wink. “Anyway, what’s got you feeling so sure of yourself?”
“A lot of things are moving in the right direction,” I said, thinking only of what I had to do after my flying lesson ended: visit Brendan Norwood’s house.
“That can only help you fly better,” Helena said.
“Yeah, let’s hope. If I can’t get the hang of this by election day, I’ve got bigger problems.”
“You will, don’t worry,” Helena said.
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re not the one learning.”
“You know, the more I talk to you, the more I think what’s holding you back is you,” Helena said. “Don’t you want to learn how to fly?”
“Not really, no. I’m only doing this because I have to.”
“That’s no way to look at it, not if you want to be successful. So let’s try to reframe it,” she said, her hands on her hips. “Flying isn’t something you need to do to get it out of the way. It’s something fun, something that will make your life easier. Why do you think it’s one of the first things every witch learns how to do?”
“You mean it isn’t because they’re all masochists?” I asked, and Helena snorted.
“Well, some of them might be, but I doubt that’s why they learn to fly. They do it because they enjoy it, and honestly, because it’s cool. No other group in Moon Grove can fly a broom,” Helena said.
I hadn’t really thought about it like that, but she was right.
“That’s a huge part of the reason it’s so important for your campaign. Like it or not, our brooms and wands bind all of us, witches and warlocks. Some of them might overlook your lack of skills in magic, but none of them will vote for you if you can’t fly a broom,” Helena said.
“That’s exactly why the NWA is attacking me for it,” I said, and Helena’s eyes went wide.