“Well, if he’s telling the truth, there goes his motive,” I said as the three of us walked back towards the path that would lead us back to town. The Hotaru were out now, like little glowing fireflies guiding us back towards the path. In the darkness I was thankful for their spirits guiding us.
“I don’t think he was lying,” Sara said. “He seemed like he was telling the truth.”
“I can believe that,” Ellie said slowly. “After all, it was just so unlike Lorondir to really lose a trial like that and then have the verdict overturned on a technicality. He’s been a lawyer for like, thousands of years. He knows the technicalities inside and out.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I agree. I think Black was telling us the truth, which means that he’s now off our suspect list, and we need to look at Farawir more closely.”
“Good, because the potion should be ready, so we can go have a look in the law offices right now.”
Half an hour later, the three of us made it home, and I opened the freezer door to discover, to my surprise, that the potion I had left had turned into a delightfully yummy looking shade of purple. It looked more like a smoothie than an invisibility potion.
Taking the cauldron out of the freezer and placing it on the table, Ellie nodded happily.
“Good, it looks perfect.”
“So how does it work?” I asked.
“For every spoonful you take, you’ll be invisible for a full hour,” Ellie replied. “I don’t think we’ll be gone more than an hour, but we should play it safe and plan for two just in case.”
“I agree,” Sara nodded. “After the last time, when we almost got caught by the janitor, I definitely would rather err on the side of caution.”
I nodded my agreement; using a potion to become invisible was definitely a good idea.
“Ok. Since the law office is just a couple blocks from here, I vote we walk instead of taking the brooms. It’ll be easier.”
“Agreed,” Sara said, digging three tablespoons out from the cutlery drawer and handing them to me. While I had been made invisible with magic before, it had been with a spell, not a potion.
“Why aren’t we using the spell again?” I asked, curious.
“Much like with anything else, every witch has her preferences and her skills. Amy prefers spells because she excels at them, while I’ve always been better with my hands than with a wand, so potions are more my thing.”
“So do we take the potions and then meet there?” Sara asked.
Ellie nodded. “I think that’s the best idea. We’ll all go together, but if we get separated, we should meet at the rear entrance to the Law office.”
“What about me?” Mr. Meowgi complained, jumping up onto the counter.
I had totally forgotten that I promised to take him with me the next time I went somewhere.
“You can come, but you have to stay out of sight. I don’t think we can give you any of the potion,” I said, looking over at Ellie with question marks in my eyes.
Ellie shook her head. “No, potions work slightly differently for animals than they do for humans.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Mr. Meowgi said with a swish of his tail. “I have ninja-like skills when it comes to staying out of sight.”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I decided that it would probably be fine for him to come, even while visible. After all, cats were pretty well-known for being sneaky.
“Do you know where we’re meeting?” I asked him.
“I do,” Mr. Meowgi replied. “Don’t worry about me. If you let me out that front door I’ll meet you at the rear entrance of that law office as well.”
“Okay, but I’m telling you, if you get into any trouble you can’t come with me again in the future,” I warned as I made my way towards the front door and let Mr. Meowgi out.
“Says the witch who’s about to do something totally illegal,” Mr. Meowgi muttered as he darted out through the open doorway and into the night. His black coat was definitely good camouflage; within seconds I had lost track of him.
Making my way back to the kitchen, Sara handed me one of the tablespoons she had taken from the cutlery drawer, and gave the other one to Ellie.
“So, we all know the plan. Once we’ve taken a sip of the potion, we’ll be able to hear each other, but we won’t be able to see each other. Here goes nothing,” Ellie said, dipping her spoon into the potion, and taking a sip.
Instantly, Ellie’s curvy frame disappeared from view, and the only thing I could see was a mark in the potion as she dipped the spoon in for a second sip.
“Looks like it worked perfectly, as always,” Sara said with an approving nod. “Good job.”
“Thanks,” Ellie said. It was weird hearing her voice as though she was standing right next to us - which, I supposed she was - but not being able to see her. “Who’s up next?”
“I’ll do it,” I replied. Taking my spoon, I dipped it into the bowl and came up with a heaping pile of smoothie-like invisibility potion. “Is this the right amount?”
“Sure is,” Ellie said. “Besides, if you mess it up just a little bit, the only thing that happens is you stay invisible for a little bit longer.”
Confident that the amount on my spoon wasn’t going to screw something up, like turn me into a three-headed monster or anything, I held my nose just in case - I knew what ingredients had gone into this, and no matter how good it looked, I knew it shouldn’t taste very good - and drank.
To my surprise, the potion didn’t really have a taste, but it felt pretty fiery on the way down, like taking a shot of whiskey. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling, and when I looked down a moment later, I couldn’t see anything.
That was definitely weird; some of the spells I was definitely going to have to get used to. I poked with my invisible fingers where my legs should have been, and luckily, they were still there. I might have been invisible to the sight, but I was definitely still around.
“Have you taken your second spoonful?” Sara asked, and I shook my head before realizing a second later that she couldn’t hear me at all.
“No, give me a sec,” I replied, dipping my spoon into the potion once again and taking a second sip. “Okay, all good.”
Sara nodded and repeated the same process as Ellie and I had done. Instantly, she disappeared as well, and we were ready to go.
“We have two hours, ladies,” Ellie said. “Sara, you know the drill, but Tina, just make sure when you’re walking through town that you don’t run into anybody. Otherwise, the game is up.”
“You say Sara knows the drill? Is this a potion that you use regularly?”
Ellie laughed. “Not so much since we graduated from the Academy, but back in the day this potion came in really handy when we wanted to score some illegal herbs from the herbology storage room. Of course, because we always had professors around, we had to be careful not to run into them while we were running the potion. Otherwise the game was up.”
“Let me guess, this was exclusively an Ellie and Sara thing, because Amy wouldn’t have a thing to do with you guys?”
“You got it,” Sara replied. “Ellie would make the potion, and then we would work together to get into the storage room.”
I laughed; it was funny to hear how teenage antics existed regardless of species.
The three of us headed out, deciding to meet at the Law offices. After all, if we ran into anybody in town, we would easily get split up as we had no idea where the others were.
Yeah, there was definitely no way anything could go wrong. Not.
Chapter 14
“Where were you?” Mr. Meowgi asked accusingly as soon as I got to the Law office.
“Wait, you can see me?” I asked.
“Of course I can, your puny human potions are nothing compared to my superior feline instincts,” Mr. Meowgi replied.
“Am I the only one you can see? Or can you see the others as well?”
“It’s more of a sense than a see, to be honest,”
Mr. Meowgi replied. “But yes, I can sense Sara coming up behind us now.”
“Hey, is anyone else here yet?” Sara asked in a soft voice.
“I am,” I replied. “Hey, Mr. Meowgi says that he can sense where we are, even with the invisibility potion. Did you know that? Is that normal?”
“Yeah, it is,” Sara replied. “That was why, at the Academy, even though we had the invisibility potion we had to be careful, because we didn’t want any of the professors’ familiars to notice us sneaking in to steal supplies.”
I made a mental note to remember that, then scolded myself for even thinking about the fact that things like this could become a regular occurrence here. This was definitely an exception; we were only here because we needed to know who killed Lorondir to clear Sara’s name.
“Hey,” Ellie said. “Am I the last one to arrive?”
“Sure are,” Sara replied.
“Sorry, there were a couple of vampires blocking my route, and I had to take a bit of a detour,” Ellie replied. “I assume I’m the one doing the spell to check for wards?”
“I feel like that’s safer for everyone,” Sara replied. I had to agree with her; Sara’s magic had a history of being, well, creative. The spells she used didn’t always do what she expected.
Ellie muttered some words I couldn’t make out, and all of a sudden, the back door to the building glowed a deep red color.
“Great, there is a ward on it, and the red means it’s fairly advanced.”
“Can you break it?” I asked.
“We’ll see. This is the disadvantage to Amy working tonight; she’s a lot better at this sort of thing than I am.”
I watched as Ellie muttered some more words, and then repeated the ward detection spell, but once again the door glowed red.
“I don’t want to try too many times,” Ellie said. “A lot of these wards are set up so that if you try to detect them too many times, an alarm is set off.”
“A silent alarm?” I asked.
“Yeah. We won’t know until all of a sudden one of the Enforcers show up to arrest us.”
I bit my lip. “We have to get in there somehow.” Making my way to the side of the building, I noticed a bunch of smaller windows.
“How do the wards work? If the door is opened from the inside, will they still activate?”
“No, they’re only set to activate from the outside, generally,” Ellie explained. “So if the door was opened from the inside, it would be fine. But of course, there’s the question of how to get inside.”
“I think Mr. Meowgi might be able to help us with that,” I said with a grin I knew the others couldn’t see. “Come over to the side of the building.”
I heard the shuffling of a few steps as the others made their way over as I’d asked. “See those windows? Are they warded?”
“Let me check,” Ellie said, muttering the same spell again. A few seconds later, they glowed blue. “Nope, no wards.”
“Good. Mr. Meowgi, can you go in through the window if we use an unlocking spell and then open the back door for us from the inside? I know it’s hard since you don’t have opposable thumbs.”
“Please, I’m a cat. I’m inherently a more capable being than any of you.”
“Right, other than the part where you don’t have opposable thumbs,” I muttered in reply as Ellie cast an unlocking spell on the window. A moment later, it was open.
“Watch and learn, witches,” Mr. Meowgi announced, jumping straight up off the ground and onto the windowsill, and disappearing inside.
“Do you think he’s going to manage it?” Ellie asked.
“For sure, his pride won’t let him fail,” I replied with a grin I knew the others couldn’t see. I was quickly growing quite fond of my snarky little familiar.
The three of us went back around to the back door, and a couple of minutes later there was a click, and the door opened, Mr. Meowgi hanging off the handle with his front paws as it swung open towards us.
“You did it!” I said. “You saved the day, Mr. Meowgi.”
Dropping to the ground and landing elegantly on all four paws, Mr. Meowgi calmly sat down and began licking one of them.
“I always told you I would,” he said casually, as if he broke into office buildings and helped his witch get inside on a daily basis.
“You’re the best,” I said as the three of us slipped into the dark building.
“Ok, I think we should split up,” I announced when we got inside. “After all, we’re looking for a will that could be anywhere. It might be in Lorondir’s office, it might be in someone else’s office. I mean, it’s even possible that the original isn’t here anymore, since he’s dead and all.”
“Agreed. Besides, even Lorondir would have needed a different lawyer to sign off on the will. Lawyers can’t sign their own documents when a lawyer’s signature is required,” Ellie said.
“Ok. We meet back here in say, forty-five minutes and see what we’ve got?”
“Sure,” Sara said.
I took my wand out from my back pants pocket. I had learned this spell with Amy; it was the only spell I really knew how to do. I focused my energy on my wand, trying my best to make the wand feel like an extension of my body. The energy built up inside of me, my magical energy I now knew, and I focused it on the wand.
“Jupiter, with all your might, I beseech you to fill this room with light,” I announced, and the tip of my wand glowed white, giving off about as much light as my phone’s flashlight would have.
“Not bad, for a witch from a different coven,” Ellie’s voice called out from down the hall, and I smiled.
“Thanks!” Because we didn’t know which coven I belonged to, I had to use the spells from this coven, which didn’t work as well as they would for someone who actually did belong to the coven of Jupiter.
Ellie did the spell as well, and her wand emitted a much brighter glow than mine. Then Sara repeated it as well, and to my surprise, her spell actually worked. Her glow was slightly brighter than mine, although not much, and certainly less bright than Ellie’s glow.
“Good job,” I told her with a nod.
“This is the one spell I can actually usually do without anything going wrong,” she explained. “It’s probably why Amy chose it as the first spell for you to learn; she probably figured that if even I could do it, then there was no way for you to mess it up.”
The three of us split up; I could tell where the others were now thanks to the light emitting from our wands. Making my way down the hall, Sara tried the door to Lorondir’s office. Locked.
“Can you check for a ward and unlock this for me?” Sara asked Ellie.
“Sure,” Ellie replied. “I doubt there will be wards in here, but you never know.”
A few seconds later it was confirmed that the door wasn’t warded, and Ellie unlocked it for Sara.
“How about you, Tina? Where do you want to look, since I’ll have to unlock that door as well?”
Next to Lorondir’s office was the one which belonged to Manarwa, who Amy and I had visited the other day. She had seemed close to Lorondir, and she did say she was a civil lawyer, so maybe he would have used her to do his will? Plus, hadn’t Maria said that Lorondir spoke to “the female elf” about his will? That had to be Manarwa.
“How about this one?” I asked, and Ellie nodded, repeating the spells. The door clicked open, and I slipped through, thanking Ellie, who said to find her if I needed anything else unlocked.
I was in.
Chapter 15
Manarwa’s office looked a lot creepier in the middle of the night, with the small light from my wand casting shadows everywhere.
I immediately made my way to the file cabinet on the side, and wasn’t surprised to find it was locked. However, Manarwa being an elf and not a witch, I had a feeling that this wasn’t a magical lock, and sure enough, in the top desk drawer I found a key which unlocked it, saving me from interrupting Ellie.
As I scanned through file afte
r file, I quickly found my eyes glazing over. How on earth anyone managed to find being a lawyer interesting, I would never know. Manarwa seemed to mainly deal in corporate law and contracts; there were a ton of files about building permits, contracts, land parcel transfers, and that sort of thing.
It was comforting in a way, to see that even in the magical world, red tape was definitely a thing.
As time passed and my boredom level grew, so did my frustration level. There was nothing in any of the files relating to Lorondir, and I hoped that the others had had more luck than I did in finding something – anything – related to his will.
Putting everything back exactly as I’d found it, I sat back on my haunches and wondered what the next move was. There were still twenty minutes to go before I had to meet the others by the back door again, so I could probably check someone else’s office.
As I went to put the key to the cabinet back where I had found it, however, something caught my eye. In that same drawer was a single manila envelope, and when I opened it, I found exactly what I was looking for.
Last Will and Testament: Lorondir of the Elves
Sitting in Manarwa’s chair, I pulled everything from the envelope and placed it on her empty desk. Looking more closely, there were in fact, two copies of the will. I flipped to the end to find that they were dated differently, however.
One of the wills was dated less than a week earlier. The other, however, was dated March 17th, 710 Ab urbe contida.
“When on earth was that?” I muttered.
“Hey, do any of you know what ‘ab urbe contida’ means?” I shouted out into the hall.
“It’s how they used to calculate years a long time ago,” Ellie shouted back. “What year exactly?”
“710.”
“Hold on, let me do some napkin math.” A moment later, she called out again. “44 BC in our years.”
My eyes widened. Lorondir’s last will had been made two days after Julius Caesar had been assassinated.
Raising an eyebrow slightly, I turned to the contents of the will.
The new will left everything to Farawir, Lorondir’s son, as we had suspected. Farawir did inherit everything, which gave him an excellent reason to want his father dead, especially if he was getting in over his head with the gambling stuff once again.
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