by Logan Byrne
“No, you don’t need to do that. That would just be doing to them what happened to you, remember. Really any blood will do, I think, and there are services here in the magical realm that will get you blood without you having to hunt it down. There’s even an app for it, if I recall,” I said.
“There are apps here?” she asked, puzzled.
“Sure, just like in the mortal realm. This realm is kind of interlaced with the mortal one. They aren’t like different dimensions or anything like that. Just like a closet part of the world that’s a little different. You’ll come to learn a lot more about it as time goes on,” I said.
“Well, that doesn’t sound as bad then. Hopefully I’ll be able to leave soon and go home,” she said.
“If you do, you have to keep all this a secret. You cannot expose yourself, or even bring somebody from your old life into this realm,” I said.
“What will happen if I do?” she asked.
“Bad things, to you. We rely on secrecy, it’s ingrained in us from birth until the day we die, and you could be imprisoned for exposing magic to mortals,” I said.
She sighed. “Well, thank you for helping me. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to all this,” she said, looking around the room.
“I know it won’t always be easy, but I think you’ll be fine. Like I said, being here can be pretty cool, with magic and all. I’ll let Xelia know to talk to you. I think she could be of more help,” I said, with a little smile.
I saw something of myself in her, unable to shake the thought of that night Mirian came to my motel room to tell me about my powers. I was so paranoid, walking home from that bar as I felt a presence behind me somewhere. I was barely scraping by there—some would even say I wasn’t scraping by at all—before I ran into him in my motel room.
I’d had little trinkets and cheap items strewn about, not yet selling any of them or bartering them for food or clothes, and yet he didn’t care. He was a cop, a powerful one at that, and he didn’t care about where I came from or the things I’d done to survive. Instead he offered me a chance, a chance to become something I’d always wanted to be. A chance to make my parents proud, even if they weren’t on this Earth any longer.
I thought about them as I walked away from the infirmary and back towards Charlie, who was finishing paperwork on our motorcycle club raid so I could talk to the girl.
I hadn’t dreamt about them in a while, my parents, or the night that they were murdered. My mother begged me to go to my old place and hide, my special hiding spot inside my bed, before she was struck down by a homicidal maniac. M.A.G.I.C. officers found me, rescuing me, and then my story began. It was crazy, looking around here, and down at my uniform and wand, knowing that all this might not have happened.
What if my parents hadn’t been killed that night? I knew now I’d always had the mark, and the accompanying magic, but there was no way I would’ve joined this force had I not been in the position I was. My parents would’ve lost their minds if I told them I was going to hunt criminals all over the world and put my life on the line like this. They were a little overprotective, especially when they thought I was a pilt, and they felt they needed to smother me and help me because I would be at a disadvantage when I got older.
Even though they wouldn’t have been too crazy about me risking myself, I knew they would be proud of me and what I’d accomplished, let alone what I was setting out to accomplish. I knew they would stand on the side of right and justice, and taking down Kiren and his administration was going to be the justice I strove for. I wanted my name in the history books not for having the mark, not for my magic, but for what I was going to do to topple a dictator and bring peace and justice back to a generation of magical creatures, as well as the mortals that Kiren sought to enslave.
I was going to do it all, and I was going to do it with them watching me. I knew they had to be out there somewhere; I hoped so at least. It was what got me by during these dark times.
•••
I couldn’t shake the thought of my parents later that night as darkness settled in when work was over. “What are you thinking about?” Britta asked, obviously seeing how unsettled and antsy I was as we sat in our room talking.
“It’s my parents, I can’t stop thinking about them. I thought about them today, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, and now it’s like the floodgates have been opened,” I said, pacing around our room.
“That’s normal, I think, to have these kinds of feelings. What are you thinking about them?” she asked, setting down her book.
“I just feel like there’s so much I don’t know about that night,” I said.
“The night they were murdered?” she asked.
“Yeah. I just remember fragments of it happening, like my memory is shielding me from the horrific parts, or the parts that hold clues that could lead me to finding out who did it and why. I just want to find out more,” I said.
“Have you ever gone back? To the house, that is,” she asked.
“No,” I replied, biting my left thumbnail.
“Why not?” she asked. “Maybe that would help you.”
“I’m not sure I can go there. What if people live there now?” I asked.
“What if people don’t? I feel like you could drive yourself mad thinking about the ‘what ifs’ with this situation. I think it would best serve you to visit it, at least to get the peace that would accompany visiting. Think of it like a gravesite. You haven’t been to the house since you were taken away. Maybe it will help,” she said.
“Then let’s go,” I said, grabbing my coat.
“What? Now?” she asked. “We can’t go now.”
“Why not? When is a better time to go? I’m going,” I said, slipping on my socks.
“What? Wait, I need to go with you. You can’t go alone. God, I can’t believe this is happening,” she said, getting her shoes and coat on.
“Ready?” I asked, before she nodded and grabbed onto me. I thought of the outside of the house in my head, the street, before we ripped through space and time and were dropped on the street in front of my old house.
“Rough area,” she said, after we landed.
“I don’t remember it this way,” I said, looking around. Many houses were abandoned, with plywood covering the windows and doors, as dogs, or maybe shifters, barked and howled in the distance. Trash was lying about, and as I walked up to the busted iron gate that guarded our front entrance, I felt a surge of memories come over me.
“I remember my dad playing with me out here,” I said. The gate squealed as we opened it. Memories flashed before me, cheerful sunny days with my dad letting me ride him like a horse around the front yard. I smiled, like I was there again, before the bitter, harsh reality of the moment came back to me and I was in front of a dilapidated old house that hadn’t seen any memories in ages.
Britta waved her wand at the door, unlocking it, before she pushed it open. There was a hole in the ceiling to the next floor, the wood planks ripped and splintered, and a thick layer of dust coated everything. The furniture was still here, most of it, anyway, though it had been waterlogged and ripped apart by both time and animals that had probably nested in here over the years. It smelled musty, the smell giving me a little bit of a headache, but I didn’t care that much. I needed to press on.
“Is this you guys?” Britta asked, wiping sludge off a silver photo that sat on the credenza in the living room.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, breaking open a smile, a tear running down my cheek.
“You three look beautiful,” she said, looking over at me before wrapping her arm in mine. I stared at the picture. Our smiles were glistening and bright as I sat in my dad’s arms.
“I must’ve been four here, I think, I don’t know. I barely remember this,” I said, with a tiny almost guilty feeling for not being able to recall the memory of that day.
“You were young, you don’t remember a whole lot from when you’re that young. Don’t beat yours
elf up,” she said, before she set the picture down and we moved on.
The glass in the window above the kitchen sink had been shattered, the small pieces crinkling and breaking underneath our boots. I swore for a moment I could smell my mother’s cooking, her grandmother’s recipe for saffron bread, before the smell escaped me.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said, and Britta nodded.
The stairs felt a little wobbly and uneasy as we walked up them, neither of us on the same step for fear our weight would be too much for the stairs to handle, until we made it to the top. “This is where it happened, at least for my mother,” I said, from the top of the stairs.
“I’m sorry to hear that. You saw it?” she asked.
“Pretty much, yeah. I had to hide,” I said, before turning left and walking towards my parents’ room. The bed was still there, still made, like no soul had disturbed it all this time. I touched the post of their bedframe, the way I used to, my hand now engulfing the circular wooden ball, unlike when I was young.
“My hand never used to fit over this. My mom used to tell me that one day it would, when I grew up, though I don’t know if I ever believed her. I think I wanted it to happen so quickly, so I could be a big girl, but it never came, for obvious reasons,” I said.
“You should take this,” she said, handing me a necklace that she picked up from my mother’s dresser.
“Wow,” I said, walking over and taking hold of it. “She wore this all the time.”
The necklace wasn’t anything special, just a thin silver chain with a sapphire pendant dangling from the middle. I put it in my pocket, saving it for a proper moment, before the nostalgia got to be a little too much and I left the room.
“This was my room,” I said, as we went the other way. “It’s a lot smaller than I remember.”
“You’re a lot bigger now. It’s a nice room,” she said, looking around at all my toys and books. “Too bad you didn’t keep up on your reading.” She smiled, trying to lighten the mood and tease me, until I sniffled, laughing a little. I knelt down, opening the frame of my bed and seeing my tiny little hiding space inside, my fort, as I liked to have it called. I remembered peering out of it to see my mother murdered.
“Is this where you were?” she asked.
“Yeah, this is it. This is also where the auditors found me hiding when they rescued me,” I said.
“It was smart of you, to hide in here,” she said.
“My mother made me, it wasn’t my idea,” I said.
“Well, she was a smart woman for making you go in here. She wanted you to live,” she said.
“At her expense,” I said.
“That’s what a mother does, Lexa. She sacrifices herself for her children, so that they may live a better life than she did. If you could talk to her, I’m willing to bet that she wouldn’t regret the decision at all,” she said.
The two of us walked back downstairs, ready to leave, before I caught a glimpse of something from earlier. “Wait,” I said, as she took out her wand. I picked up the photo she’d found before coming back over. “I’m good now.”
“Good choice,” she said, before teleporting us back to our room.
I wiped the photo off, restoring some of the silver frame’s sheen, before setting it on the nightstand next to my bed. Britta went to sleep, but my mind was racing too much to settle down, so I lay in bed and stared at the photo of us all smiling.
With a heavy heart and a big yawn, I closed my eyes, my eyelids unable to stay open any longer, before I drifted off to sleep in hopes of seeing them again. I hoped they’d be proud.
18
“You wanted to see me?” I asked, walking into Faus’s laboratory.
“Yes, come over here,” he said, motioning me towards a computer in the corner of the room. “I have what you asked for.”
“The blueprints?” I whispered.
“Yeah. I’ve looked them over a few times, and I’ve been trying to come up with the best way for you to get to the penthouse,” he said.
“He’s all the way up there? This doesn’t sound like it will be easy,” I said.
“No, it won’t be. His office is at the top of the building, and there will be security buzzing all over the place, especially because of the gala. There are five elevators in the building, but I’m going to guess you can’t just get in one and go up to the top floor. Maybe that would work in another situation, but not with the gala taking place,” he said.
“What about the stairs?” I asked.
“Not going to work. There will definitely be cameras and guards everywhere,” he said.
“I forgot about the cameras. Those are really popular with mortals, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Yeah, especially in big corporate buildings like this. You need to go up here,” he said, pointing at the screen.
“Is that?” I asked.
“The elevator shaft,” he said, looking up at me.
“Okay, but how do I even get inside it? Not only that, but how am I supposed to climb up like fifty stories?” I asked.
“Forty-seven, but who’s counting? You need to access it here. There’s a door that goes into the shaft for workers to access for maintenance and that kind of stuff. Once you get in there, you’ll have to use a weightless spell and thrust yourself upwards,” he said.
“Do you have one in mind?” I asked.
“I’m not a witch, remember?” he said.
“Well it’s not like I can ask Mirian or Britta, can I?” I asked.
“You’ll need to go to the library, then, and look through a spell book. It shouldn’t be too advanced. Didn’t you say you and Britta used one outside the club?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure if it works going up like it does going down. I’ve never tried that sort of thing, but I’ll figure it out. What’s after that?” I asked.
“Once you make it to the forty-seventh floor you’ll need to exit through the metal elevator doors. They should open with a little pry, or there might even be a release lever in the shaft. There might be a guard up there, though they may just put that person on security downstairs, maybe even guarding the entrance to the elevator,” he said.
“Okay, so I make it up, I get in the hallway, maybe take out a guard, then what? Is there security on his office?” I asked.
“No, not that I know of, at least nothing in the blueprints or documents I’ve hacked seems to point to that. It looks like just a normal office door. They probably aren’t expecting anybody to get up there, ever, so I doubt they went that far,” he said.
“I sure hope you’re right. I don’t want to get all the way up there and have to give a fingerprint or something,” I said.
“Once you’re inside, you need to move swiftly and not move things around, either. He might notice if something is moved, and that will only cause suspicion for you. Sure, he doesn’t know you, or know that you want to go to his office, but he might bring in a CSI squad and find fingerprints or a hair or something like that. You’ll get back down the same way you got up, get back to the gala, and that’s that,” Faus said, brushing his hands together.
“Sounds so easy, almost too easy,” I said.
“Just be smart and have your wits about you, and I’m sure you’ll do fine. Don’t stay too long, and take this,” he said, pulling out a flash drive. “I almost forgot about this.”
“What do I do with this thing?” I asked.
“Plug it into his computer and press this button. It will clone his hard drive and allow us to see whatever files he has on it. Maybe it will give us some good information,” he said.
“I thought you did this already,” I asked.
“Not with this particular computer. He has it on a closed network without Internet access, so I couldn’t get in. You need to do it manually to access the data, which is why it’s crucial to get this done if you want to take him down,” he said.
“Sure, another thing to be added to the growing list, I suppose. No problem at all,”
I said, sighing.
“I can be in your ear if you’d like, and maybe hack into the security cameras. I don’t like you going in alone, even if Charlie will be downstairs,” he said.
“How did you know that?” I asked.
“He told me. He was worried, and besides, he has a big mouth sometimes,” he said, laughing.
“Yeah, you could say that. Well, the gala is tomorrow night. I’ll find out the spells I need today, and you just make sure you stay in my ear tomorrow with something small enough that they won’t see it,” I said.
“Already on it. Good luck!” he said.
The library at the precinct was large and full of information about everything you could think of in the magical world. You could look up spells, past cases, reports on dangerous creatures, including how to take care of them, and anything else you could think of. I knew they had a plethora of spell books inside, and I planned to use every resource at my disposal to figure out how to best break into this office.
I walked into the witch section, seeing leather-bound spell books from centuries past. They were stacked high, every single culture and ethnicity accounted for, from African tribal witches to the Essex witches in England. They had books from South American shamans and aboriginal wizards from Australia. You could find anything here.
I knew what I was looking for would either come from a combat spell manual, or just a basic spells book. The levitation and weightless spells weren’t particularly hard to cast or learn the incantations for, but they still weren’t something I was very familiar with. Britta had used one as we escaped the club, but I wasn’t sure if it would work the way I wanted it to. All it did was make us slow down on our descent, but if I jumped really hard would it work the same way going up? I couldn’t ask her without giving away my intentions and what I was planning on doing with this gala, so I was on my own.
I picked up a book, A Witch’s Guide to Combat Survival. It looked promising. A plume of dust billowed out from the pages as I opened them for the first time in what looked like decades. This library was expansive, but the books must not all be used too often. I went to the index, seeing a list of spells and what they were used for.