“Tell me about it,” I sighed.
“So you don’t think she had any reason to run away, even after you told her all of that?” Hunter asked, still completely business-like. It was pretty cute, admittedly. He was so excited about this job that he clearly didn’t want to accidentally ruin it.
“No, of course not,” Bruce replied. “We were working through it. I was going to hire a therapist. A magical one, so they could really understand everything we’re going through. And then two nights ago, she just didn’t come home. I called her assistant, and her Board of Execs and no one had seen her all day. She left for work, but never even got there. That was when I knew something was wrong.”
Once again, Bruce started to sob into his hands, heaving and gasping for air like he was about to drown himself in his own tears.
As soon as we were able to get Bruce to calm down enough, he managed to tell us the rest of the story- the one he hadn’t told the police.
Magda had started to ask questions, the same kind that I had started to ask Mom and Grams when they’d been acting suspiciously. He’d decided it was better to just come right out tell her the truth which, after twenty-twenty-three years of marriage, maybe wasn’t the easiest thing for him to do.
And it definitely wasn’t easy for her to hear. Magda had kicked him out for the night, sending him to the Hilton a few blocks over. But, like the doting husband Bruce was, he came back in the morning hoping that he’d be able to make good with Magda. She’d left in a hurry, though, taking the Tesla, and had promised him that they would talk that night, over dinner, and her favorite bottle of red wine.
Only, Magda had never come home. She’d never even made it to the office, according to all of her employees. Which was highly unusual for a businesswoman like Magda, someone with a good head on her shoulders. Her assistant had known about the fight and assumed Magda was just taking a persona day.
The police, of course, thought that she had just run away, needing some time and space from her husband. As much as it pained Bruce, I could understand the detectives’ point- this kind of thing happened all of the time. Marriage was hard. Sometimes, people just needed a break.
“You’ve tried spelling her, to see if you can find her, I assume?” Hunter asked once Bruce had finished his extremely detailed retelling of the events.
“Absolutely,” he nodded. “But I’ve found nothing. I’ve tried three spells, and none of them have worked. Which makes me wonder if something else happened to her, you know? I mean what if she…”
Bruce choked up again, struggling to breathe as he wondered the worst thing imaginable.
I couldn’t blame him, though, If he was competent with magic at any level, three spells and zero answers was not a good sign.
“We’ll take the case,” Hunter told Bruce gently, kneeling in front of him like a dad does to a crying child. “We’ll do everything we can to find your wife, Bruce. I promise.”
I swear, the way Bruce looked up at Hunter at that moment reminded me of a lost child looking up at an angel. It was like Hunter was his savior, and that idea alone warmed my heart.
Despite his rather rocky past, Hunter was truly a good guy. I could see it in moments like this, and they just made me want him all the more.
Maybe Hunter was my second chance.
6
“Anything?” I sighed, backing up from Magda’s bookshelf and glancing over to where Hunter sat in front of her computer.
“Not a damn thing,” he groaned, slamming his flat palm down on her beautiful wooden desk. “Damn!”
Sometimes, I forgot that Hunter didn’t have as much experience with this side of things. In the past, he’d been the one to make people go missing, arresting those he thought were the bad guys and putting them in jail.
Searching for the good guys, the victims, was a whole different ball game.
“We’ll find her,” I said reassuringly. I felt like Hunter needed just as much comfort as Bruce did an hour before.
It wasn’t that he knew Magda and Bruce, or had any stake in her disappearance beyond being a concerned hired hand, but I could tell there was something deeper to this for him. Hunter would have been loathe to admit it had I brought this up, but ever since he’d figured out that the Council was really just a group of angry, deceitful old men who didn’t actually have the best interests of the magical world at heart, it was like he was trying to make up for the man he once was. Like he blamed himself for falling victim to the mental trappings of a group that I would happily liken to a cult.
“My gut says something’s off,” Hunter growled, frowning at the computer. “Everything’s so normal it’s almost… too normal. There are no skeletons in her closet, no threatening emails, not even a set of venting texts to her sister about Bruce’s lies. It just seems too… perfect.”
“Maybe she really was,” I shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t ready to vent yet. Think about trying to tell a human that your husband is actually a witch. Her sister probably would have thought she was nuts.”
“Yeah,” Hunter sighed, rubbing his temple.
I stepped away from the bookshelf, where I’d been looking to try and find some sort of hidden safe or hollow book. In my experience, high powered people like Magda often had some sort of little black book, with all of the secrets they could use to stomp out their enemies if necessary. My working theory had been that she’d threatened the wrong person but, of course, I’d found no little black book.
Magda and Bruce seemed to be just as perfect on the inside as their house appeared on the outside. Which, unfortunately, led me to wonder if the cops were right. Maybe Magda just couldn’t face telling her husband that their marriage was over.
“Let’s see if I can find anything,” I murmured, leaning over Hunter’s shoulder to glance at Magda’s calendar. “Meetings, meetings, meetings… wait, what’s this one?”
I pointed to a very thin blue line at the top of the calendar for Tuesday, two days before, when Magda had gone missing. The line was so skinny it would have been very easy to miss. The meeting couldn’t have been for more than five minutes.
“I didn’t catch that,” Hunter said, sounding a little more surprised than I would have liked. “Good eyes, Shannon.”
“I have had some practice,” I joked.
I clicked on the line to bring up the event, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much information.
“A22,” Hunter read. “What does that even mean?”
Thankfully, I only had to spend a split second in confusion before I felt a vision come on.
“Vision,” I spat out at Hunter before the room disappeared around me and a new place reformed.
I was in a hallway, following a tall, willowy blonde. She turned a corner, and I managed to see her face.
Magda.
“Yes.” I murmured to myself.
Magically, I sped down the hallway, following her without even having to use my feet as my vision did all of the work for me. I could tell from the numbers on the door that I was in a hotel, on what seemed to be the first floor.
Rooms 24 and 23 flew past before I came to a screeching halt right in front of Magda, who stood before Room 22 with a twisted, pained expression on her face. She paused for a moment in front of the room, seemingly needing to take a moment to decide.
Something was wrong. I didn’t even know the woman, and yet, I could tell from her face that she was unsure. I watched as the thoughts flickered across her features before she finally came to some sort of decision. She raised her hand to knock, but then snatched it back, just as quickly as she had brought it up.
The silence was deafening. I could literally feel her hesitation, and somehow, I knew that this was a defining moment for her. If she did this, there was no going back.
And then she did.
She raised her hand a second time, more firmly now, and banged it two times against the pale blue door of Room 22.
At once, it swung open, as if the person on the other side had been sitting n
ext to it, just waiting for her to knock.
“Aaron,” she breathed. It was a tight breath, the kind of sound someone makes when they’re suddenly so sure they’ve done the right thing for themselves they can hardly stand it.
“Magda,” a deep, smooth voice replied, with precisely the same tremulous surety she’d held in her own.
And then the man stepped out of the shadows and embraced her. The second I caught a glimpse of his face, I thought I might faint.
The chiseled jaw. The clean-shaven cheeks. The smooth, aquiline nose. The soulful brown eyes that looked as if they could write a thousand songs.
The embrace between Magda and Aaron turned into a kiss, but I could hardly even register this new piece of information because I was far too stuck on seeing a face I’d thought I’d never see again.
“Aaron,” I breathed.
There’s something about a woman’s first love. I’m not quite sure it’s the same for a man, or at least, it didn’t seem to be the same for Kenneth. But a woman’s first love will always hold a special place in her heart. Memories come rushing back at the moment she even thinks his name, grand ones and small ones, happy ones, and sad ones.
I had worked hard to stuff those memories away. I’d even convinced myself I’d managed to forget his name for a little while. Because, even through all the years I’d been with Kenneth, and even through all the times I’d loved him with the fiercest parts of me, I’d never been able to outrun the piece of my heart that still belonged to Aaron. I’d clever it with a massive knife, and smashed it with a giant boulder, and tried to throw it away like yesterday’s trash, but that still had not accomplished what I needed it to.
Seeing his face, even if it was just in a vision, reminded me of that.
I didn’t still love him that way. I didn’t even want to be around him. I’d choose Hunter over Aaron at any time of any day.
But that didn’t stop me from stuttering his name and remembering just what it was to be loved by him.
I was so deep in that, in fact, that I didn’t even notice I was back in Magda’s study, standing in front of a very confused Hunter.
“I just had a vision,” I told him, unsure why he hadn’t put those pieces together just yet.
“Who’s Aaron?” He responded instead, looking at me from under eyelids so narrow his irises were nothing more than slits.
That was the moment I realized I’d said Aaron’s name out loud. Not just said it, either. The sound I’d let out had been one of shock and surprise, but a little bit longing, as well.
I grimaced as I looked at Hunter and tried to figure out a way to explain to him that whatever sort of dark man thoughts were swirling around in his mind, they were not the truth.
“Someone I knew in high school," I replied evenly.
“Just knew?” Hunter replied, raising a brow.
I didn’t want to build our relationship on a foundation of lies, so I sucked in a breath, and told him the truth. “Not exactly. We dated. For three and a half years.”
My heart ached as I watched the expressions flicker across Hunter’s face.
“I see.” He nodded casually as if it was no big deal.
“We’ve both got a past, right?” I shrugged. “It’s not like we’re sixteen.”
“Of course,” Hunter replied, shaking himself out of it. “I just hadn’t expected you to have a vision about your ex.”
“This wasn’t just about Aaron,” I assured him quickly, catching on to why he was so upset. “It’s Magda. She was having an affair. With Aaron.”
Hunter’s eyes widened in shock for just a moment before he got control of himself once more. The knowledge that I hadn’t just had some sort of random vision about my first love managed to calm him and the confusion that knitted his brow was now a product of the case, instead of me.
“So, it looks like Bruce might not have been the last person to see his wife alive,” Hunter responded darkly.
We left Bruce still sitting on the bottom step of his enormous staircase, working up the energy to put a stop to his tears. Of course, we didn’t mention a thing about Magda and the affair just yet, knowing that it would probably do more harm than good. The best thing we could do would be to bring her home and let Magda herself tell her husband all about her illicit activities.
Being a logically minded woman, when it was possible, I didn’t think this case would be all that hard, after all. In fact, I assumed we’d knock on Aaron’s front door and find her there, laid out on his couch, angry at her husband for his lies, and justifying the affair that way. People were complex, but also simple, and the bones of that story were ones I’d seen a million times before.
“So, how do you know where Aaron lives?” Hunter asked me curiously as we drove toward Portland’s center.
“I heard that his mom died a few years ago,” I replied. “He loved her house. We used to talk about… actually, that’s not important. The point is, I knew Aaron, and he wouldn’t have sold that house if someone had offered him three million bucks for it.”
“Hmm,” Hunter hummed, nodding like this was all no big deal. But I could see the dark flash of anger in his eyes whenever I mentioned Aaron’s name.
Admittedly, the hint of jealousy was a bit of a turn on for me. Of course, I didn’t want to push it too far, but I knew that if I happened to meet one of Hunter’s exes, I’d feel the exact same.
Knowing he had a past and coming face to face with it were two completely different things.
I glanced out the window, watching the sloped streets of the city pass by, quiet save for a few stragglers, and work from home moms. Most people were in the office by now, but Aaron wouldn’t be.
Okay. This was probably the time I should have admitted to Hunter that I’d done a little bit of internet stalking when I first moved back to Portland. That was before the whole witch thing, and before Hunter and I had even met.
I’d had to. A part of me had wondered if there might still be a flame with Aaron, and what it would be like to come face to face with him. I’d ultimately decided not to reach out because, well, I found out I was a witch and my entire family had been lying to me for years, but I’d kept up with his Instagram feed.
In this new world of social media, Aaron was a personal trainer for the rich and wealthy elite of Portland, and he had a following of over a hundred thousand people. Which, I’d discovered, wasn’t actually that much, comparatively. But, since my social media presence consisted of five friends on a Facebook page I’d made years ago, the number had still shocked me.
The man had built a business from himself, and trained people in his newly renovated backyard, courtesy of his inheritance. And that was how I knew he lived in his mom’s old house.
The newer parts of Portland faded away, turning into familiar streets I remembered from my childhood. Thankfully, these streets all looked mostly the same.
That is until one of them didn’t.
“Stop the car!” I screeched, scaring Hunter so much that he slammed on the brakes, thrusting us both forward and slamming our midsections against the seatbelts.
I’d hardly waited until Hunter had stopped the car before I leaped out of the seat, slamming open the door, and running across the street to the sidewalk to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.
And of course, they weren’t. The portal had appeared again, right in the middle of the sidewalk. For a moment, I wasn’t sure why the strange shadow world hadn’t appeared this time, but as soon as I got within twenty feet of the portal, the real world fell away. I was once again in a dark, shadowy place where the wind blew and kicked up tumbleweeds.
The portal just floated there in the center of the sidewalk, bobbing up and down with the wind. I ran toward it, getting just a few feet away before I pulled to a stop.
What are you doing, Shannon? I thought. You can’t just run right through it.
I stopped, peering inside and trying to discern what was beyond the opening of the curtain. The wind blew across
my face, warm and tinkling like wind chimes.
It was almost as if I was watching T.V. the portal was a window into this entirely new world, and beyond it, I could see people moving about. The portal led into a long, dirty hallway. I could see a tiny sliver of a window at the opposite end, the kind that is built into the top of basement walls so people don’t feel as if they’ve been locked underground. Cells lined the hallways, giving this place the ominous feeling of a very dark prison.
Without thinking, I took another step closer. The whole thing looked so familiar as if I had seen it before.
“Shannon!” Hunter’s cry pierced the air, bringing me away from my thoughts. The world wavered for just a moment, and reality flashed before my eyes. I could see Hunter standing in front of me, his brow creased with worry.
But I didn’t have time for him just then. I needed to figure out if this prison was the same one that Laslow had been in in my vision.
As soon as I had I switched my focus back to the portal and the shadow world I felt a hand grab my wrist, tugging hard. I knew it was Hunter, but I still fought, trying to stay in the world of the portal and figure out why I recognized the prison.
But Hunter was too strong, and his hand on my wrist managed to ground me once again. The dark world fell away, taking the portal with it, and I was once again standing on the streets of Portland.
“Did you see it again?” Hunter murmured in my ear. His lips were so close I felt them brush the outer shell, and for a moment shivered in delight before I recalled that we were on a street in the middle of Portland and, once again, I had managed to cause a slight scene. Two ponytail wearing, iced coffee drinking moms were standing just down the block, each holding a jogger in one hand and their coffee in the other, staring at me like I was a crazy person.
Which, to them, I probably was.
“Uh, yeah,” I whispered back. “I think it’s trying to tell me something. I think it’s trying to take me to Laslow.”
Paranoia, Pixies and Prophecies Page 5