A Case of Magic: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Wildes Chronicles Book 1)

by Dominika Waclawiak

  Another coyote yipped and the crickets grew louder. I didn't know of many people that actually lived up here anymore. I hoped the coyote packs were getting enough to eat. They were scavengers that had always gone after people's trash but now that the Hollywood Hills were being taken over by nature again, human food had to be hard to come by.

  We hit a bump and Leslie groaned next to me. This truck held the two of us and Damian and Felicia were in the car ahead of us. I had decided it would be a good idea if Damian and I were separated and I could see Leslie agreed with me

  "That was painful, wasn't it?" I remarked. I felt her shifting next to me.

  "Tell me again why we can't just use a cloaking spell?" she asked.

  "Because they most likely have a spell that disarms all magic within its walls. It wouldn't make sense to have a secret prison without that kind of spell. Any old Joe could sneak inside. Wouldn't be much of a secret."

  "You're right, you're right. What exactly is going on with you and Damian?" she asked. Shocked she'd bring up that at a time like this, I had no idea of how to respond.

  "Nothing, uh, is going on. He's a way to get to Chance. Nothing else. He's the mage's son. Do you know what's up with his magic?" I asked her.

  "I was going to ask the same thing. There had been rumors going around that he was the most powerful wizard in the United States. Even President Dixon didn't have a candle to hold to him. But the man claiming he is Damian Nottingham is not the most powerful man I've ever met. In fact, he's barely magical."

  "Yes, I've noticed the same thing. He is almost human. Fully human, enough that he should have disappeared as well except for the fact that he is the most powerful man's son."

  "Here's to discussing your love life instead of our potential deaths," Leslie said.

  "Well, we have to talk about something. I'm scared too, if that helps you any." I had been having reservations about this operation since we left Greystone Manor. It didn't feel right. I worried we were going straight into a trap and our need for answers would get us killed.

  Our truck turned right and I knew we were only minutes away. I focused on what Chance could tell us about Marcus's death and what was happening to the humans in Area 27. I was certain that the information could help bring down this administration. We just had to find it and get it out in the open. The magical folk were not bad people but like other groups of people in the past, they were willing to turn away from the horrors because they themselves were safe. It had happened before and it would happen again. This time it was just us.

  The truck pulled into a stop and I waited with baited breath for the gates to open. I could hear a low murmur of voices and then the screech of metal on metal and the truck began to move again. The first part of the plan had been set in motion and had worked. I daren't peek out of our hiding place but when the truck's wheels made a sound shift, I knew we had arrived. The magic spell that stripped us of our power as we drove through the rest of the gate was ugly on my skin. It felt like a thousand, maniacal ants crawling up and down my arm. The feeling was there even after the trucks stopped but in a much muted form. I took Leslie by the hand and waited for Henry's signal to sneak out.

  I heard the click before I saw the light.

  The click was wrong. It wasn't part of the plan and it wasn't a sound that should be in a courtyard in the middle of the night.

  The click came and then more clicks came and then the trucks were bathed in a stark, harsh light. We had fallen right into a trap that began with a small click and ended with a blaze of light, sealing our fate. Henry and his men turned into werewolves but it was of no use. Our hiding places had been discovered immediately and Leslie and I had been yanked unceremoniously out of the hidden compartment and thrown onto the ground in front of the howling werewolves.

  Damian and Felicia were already there. One of our little crew had betrayed us and had no idea who it was.The clicks belonged to guns holding silver bullets and the four members of the pack that had come along on our little mission stood with silver chains burning their wrists and ankles as they howled into the sky.

  "We meet again, Mabry Wildes." Detective Caruso said and I stilled. If he was involved, I was most surely dead. He had been trying to take me out for the last six months and this time would succeed. I refused to give him the pleasure of looking at him, however I did manage to spit on the ground before I got kicked in the side. I had healed from the vampire's beating but the kick hurt and badly. I was still tender around most of my rib cage and the next kick that came made me eat dirt.

  "This is why I never understood women like you. I told you I would get you and you didn't listen. In fact, you delivered yourself to me on a silver platter. And the treats that you brought for me? Spectacular. Another leader of the resistance as well as the alpha of the Hollywood Hills werewolf pack? Has Christmas come early for me today? Mabry, I'm flattered that you liked me enough to give me such bounty."

  "Fuck off, Caruso," I managed to say through the dirt in my mouth. The expected kick came swiftly. His lackey was wearing some sort of pointy shoe and I heard my rib crack on that kick. I was surprised to hear that no one was coming to my aid and when I turned my face to the right I noticed that Damian was glamoured again. The dense look in his eyes told me that there were vampires in Caruso's crew. Felicia, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  She ratted us out, I thought.

  I knew it.

  But, Chance had vouched for her, I thought, as my mind raced to figure out where I had missed the clues.

  And then the clues came to me. Felicia had told me that she was his right-hand man. Chance had never said anything like that to me. When I had first met him, Felicia had tried to out me as the magical anomaly that I was and he had quieted her down.

  But she wasn't at the head of the table. She was nowhere near. She was just part of the crowd. I'd been stupid and taken her for her word.

  And then another thought came to me. What if Chance wasn't missing at all?

  She was the only one that we had spoken to that day. I remembered the girl that kept talking about Chance being missing for 24 hours. Maybe he had been laying low to see what the fallout would be about the whole Marcus situation. I had made the wrong assumption and had brought us all to this moment in time, to the brink of our deaths.

  15

  The ringing sound of the meditation bell woke me from a deep slumber. I rubbed my eyes to help get the sleep out of them. The morning light streamed through the barred French window. That was not normal, I thought. Why were there bars on the window?

  I lifted my head from the pillow and groaned at the pounding inside of it. That was a headache if I've ever felt one, I thought.

  Where was I?

  The room held a single, wooden chair at a plain wood desk and that was all the furniture in the room. I'd never laid eyes on this room before. The meditation bell sounded again and a woman wearing a nurse's uniform stuck her head into the room.

  "Mabry, it's breakfast time. You need to get dressed. Go to the meds station first this time. You know the rules," she said.

  "What do you mean by meds? I'm not sick, and I don't need meds. Is this a hospital?" I asked, searching my mind for any indication of where I was.

  "Again with this," she said and sighed. "You are at the Littlebriar Mental Institute, you silly lady." The nurse was no longer smiling. Her voice was not unfriendly but it wasn't the friendliest either. "You need to get dressed and get into the dining hall. You don't want to have another demerit. One more and you lose your TV privileges." She walked away and I looked down to see myself wearing an old-fashioned flower nightgown.

  I was Mabry Wildes, a private investigator working in Los Angeles. But if I was an investigator then what in the world was I doing in a mental hospital? Was I on a case? I had no recollection of how I got here.

  Frightened and disoriented, I slid out of bed and opened the only other door in the room. I found several sweaters, a couple of shirts, and slacks hanging neatly in an
otherwise empty closet. I put on a blouse and slacks and tried to remember what day it was.

  Nothing came to me. Panic rose to meet my fear as I stepped out of the room and walked down the hallway. Having no idea where the dining hall was located, I picked a direction and hoped someone would find me. A few steps in, the door to the left of me opened, and a similarly disheveled Damian walked out.

  "Mabry, is that you?" he asked me. I knew who he was. He was Damian Nottingham. How did I know that?

  "Yes, Damian. Did the nurse wake you up for breakfast as well?"

  "She did. She also said that there would be meds?" He scratched his head." You have any idea what day it is?"

  I shook my head no.

  "Have you been to the dining room yet? I don't remember ever going there and picked a direction to walk in." He looked up and down the hall.

  "Your guess is as good as mine," he said. I shrugged and fell into step with him. We turned the corner, and the clicking of cutlery on plates drifted towards us.

  "We must be on the right track," Damian said.

  "Do you find it odd that neither of us knew where the dining hall was? Or that we don't know the day?" I asked.

  "I know who I am. I know who you are. I also know that we are in a mental hospital per what the nurse just told me." He explained but his voice told me he wasn't convinced. By the look of the cream-colored walls and nondescript carpet, we could have been anywhere. It didn't necessarily mean we were at a mental hospital. The bars on all of the windows was disconcerting though.

  "They don't want us to escape from here," I said, working hard to keep my panic at bay. I'd never been good in enclosed spaces.

  "They have meds to keep us under control. Who needs bars when we have dope," he said as we stepped into a large room filled with people dressed like us. Several orderlies circled around each table, holding trays of little paper cups, and handing each patient their very own set of happy pills. A buffet took up an entire section of the room, and I smelled scrambled eggs and porridge. Colorful boxes of cereal sat on the end of the hot food.

  "I know people here. There's Henry, Leslie, I don't know that person, that man, and those other two men look familiar but I can't come up with their names" he said.

  "I know him. His name is Chance." Something clicked in the back of my head. Chance was important to something but I couldn't quite place my finger on it.

  "And those other three people. Larry, Mike and Jason, right?" Damian said. They did not look as familiar as Henry, Leslie and Chance did but their names popped into my head when I registered their features.

  "Am I a witch?" I asked with no idea where that came from.

  "I don't know, are you?" Damian asked. The look of confusion on his face told me that my question wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded. Both the question and my reaction to it disturbed me enough to send me towards the table of people we knew without commenting any further. There were four other tables filled with people but they didn't look friendly and I was too confused to start asking complete strangers odd questions.

  "Hi, everyone. You all remember me right?" I asked.

  "Hi Mabry, did you sleep well?" Chance asked without looking up from his eggs. I nodded.

  "Am I a witch?" I asked him.

  He sighed and shook his head no. "Don't let them hear you talk like that. They will up your meds." His warning sent warning palpitations to my heart. I could barely catch my breath.

  "You've been here the longest, haven't you?" Damian asked.

  "I came in spouting that same nonsense, too, and they shot me up so full of thorazine that I slept for days. I've learned to go to the sessions and work through my delusions. The one on one therapy has helped tremendously with that. Give them what they want to hear."

  "What do they want?" I asked and sat down, my stomach queasy and filled with acid. That wasn't right. There was magic in the world. I knew that and remembered casting spells. I was something else as well. Fae sprang to mind. What was a fae? Was that a fairy? I didn't want to say that out loud because of what Chance had said. That kind of talk would get me into trouble.

  "According to them, magic does not exist," Chance reiterated in such a matter-of-fact voice that it sounded like fact. Leslie's head snapped back.

  "That's not true," she said.

  "Yes, it is. If you go in talking to the shrink about how you can cast spells, they're going to diagnose you as a paranoid schizophrenic," Chance explained. I could see he was trying to be helpful but it wasn't calming any of us down.

  "I had a husband, Marcus Shale. He was a werewolf. I am a powerful witch. They can't tell me that I'm not that," she said, her voice rising.

  "You're in here for a reason. You're not going to get out of here with talk like that," Chance said.

  "I don't know how I got here in the first place," Leslie said.

  "Anyone remember yesterday because I don't. Can you catch the same delusion?" Henry asked dryly. I couldn't help but nod in agreement. Damian caught my eye and held it.

  "This isn't real," a voice whispered in my head. My eyes widened as Damian gave me an imperceptible nod,

  "That's what I am, a werewolf," Henry said and Leslie nodded.

  "You are the alpha of your pack. You brought us here," she said. The entire room fell still. I turned to my left and saw a homely man striding towards r our table.

  "You all are late for the daily morning session," he said in a kind voice.

  "But the nurse sent us to breakfast," I said.

  "Mabry, breakfast ended an hour ago. Didn't you notice the room clearing out?" he asked.

  When I scanned the dining room, it was indeed empty save our table. I tried to clear my head. That wasn't right. We had just been listening to the clatter of forks on plates, little rumbles of discussion coming from all around us from the other patients. How in the world did it empty out so fast without none of us noticing?

  "I expect you all in the meeting room in five minutes," Dr. Jeremy said. "Otherwise I will be giving each one of you demerits and no TV for a week."

  "How long have we been here, Doctor?" Leslie piped up. She was watching the man closely.

  "You've been here two years, Leslie," Dr. Jeremy said, frowning. "That's very concerning to hear you losing your grip on reality. I'm going to have to prescribe something for that. But, please, come to group session right now. We can discuss this troubling incident there." He waited until all of us had gotten up from the table and we trooped behind him like ducklings following the mama duck. The therapy session room was just off the dining room. The room had large bay windows and smelled of disinfectant. Seven chairs sat facing each other in a circle. I had never been to one of these meetings, but I had seen enough movies to recognize a therapy session room.

  The chairs scraped against the black and white tile as everyone took a seat. Dr. Jeremy took the last available chair and placed his hands in front of him.

  "Who else does not remember how long they've been here?" he asked and studied all of us. I saw Henry lift up his hand.

  "I'm positive I've only been here a day," he said and I couldn't help but nod. I felt the same way.

  "So, this is what I would like to call a mass delusion," Dr. Jeremy started with. "Mabry, you have been here for three years and four months. Henry, you came to us over four years ago. Damian, you came here six months ago. Leslie, as I've mentioned previously, has been with us for several years and Larry and Jason you both have been here nine months."

  "That's impossible," Leslie said, her voice heating up.

  "That's your delusion talking," Dr. Jeremy said in a patronizing tone.

  "I'm not delusional. I had a husband. He was a werewolf and I am a powerful witch," she said, her cheeks flushing as if she didn't believe the words coming out of her mouth.

  "We can go over everything again. This is what we're here for. You were never a witch. You did have a husband who died from a fall. His death sent you into a tailspin of delusional and suicidal thinking. Can you tell m
e what incident triggered this current episode?" he asked her.

  The confusion on her face told me everything I needed to know. She had no idea what he was talking about. There was no way I'd been in this place for so long. I tried to picture the layout of this floor in my head. If I'd been here this long then I should know all the ins and outs of where each patient lived, where the general room was, or the dining hall for that matter. But, nothing was coming to me. I stared down at my hands and before my eyes my skin turned to shimmering scales. They appeared as if they were coming from the depths of my body and straining against my skin and then crossing that barrier as well. I ran my fingers over them. They were real. This was happening. I leaned closer into Damian.

  "You seeing the scales on my hands?" I asked, tapping my fingers on my knee to show him which hand I was speaking of. When he looked over though, the scales disappeared and my fleshy hand appeared like any other human skin.

  "I'm seeing skin, Mabry," he said.

  "What was that, Mabry? Would you like to share your discussion with the group?" Dr. Jeremy pounced on me.

  "It was, I mean," I looked over at Damian and I looked over at Leslie, who had tears running down her face. I couldn't tell him what I was seeing. It wasn't safe.

  "I'm having very itchy skin. I just asked Damian if he had the same," I lied.

  "Is that what she said to you, Damian?" Dr. Jeremy asked him. He nodded the affirmative. At least I knew that Damian was on my side. I had seen those scales though. And if I had seen the scales then that meant magic was real. I was something other than human.

  "You seem to be constantly staring at your hand," Dr. Jeremy said.

  "I just told you it was itchy," I said, my anger rising towards him.