Spell Maven Mysteries- The Complete Series

by J L Collins

  Her words sunk in slowly, but it scratched at the surface of something new to me. What if it wasn’t a sword at all?

  “You know, you might be on to something there,” I said, pulling my wand back out of my pocket. “The question is . . . if it isn’t some old Fairy-made short sword . . . what is it?”

  Placing the evidence down on a nearby study desk, I waved my wand counter-clockwise over the short sword, whispering, “Reveal to me what you hide, show to me your truest side.”

  Electric blue smoke unfurled from underneath the object, curling upward until it completely covered the sword in a bright blue gaseous swirl so thick, we could no longer see through it. The swirl of magic evaporated as I snapped my fingers.

  I sucked in a quick breath. To my left, Zoya let out a gasp so loud it almost seemed fake. But the expression of horror etched on her face was very convincing. There, lying on the table, was not a short sword but a broken ivy-colored wand. It didn’t take a genius to figure out whose it was.

  “I-I . . .”

  I turned on her, my hand steady on my wand just in case it was necessary. I didn’t want to think it was, but I also wasn’t willing to take the chance of getting my eardrums blown out or worse. “Zoya. Is this your missing wand? Would you care to tell me what it’s doing disguised as a weapon that was found not far from scene of the crime?”

  She drew in a shaky breath, her great big eyes welling up with tears. “I don’t know!” she half-sobbed, her mouth quivering. “This . . . this doesn’t make any sense!”

  “You’re telling me. You told us your wand was missing! And don’t deny it because I just checked your statement. Please tell me the truth Zoya. Please?”

  Her hands tightly squeezed the back of the chair at the table. “I truly don’t know. But . . .”

  I raised a brow. “But?”

  Zoya looked as if she were steadying herself for something. I kept a close eye on her hands, ready to stall any sudden movement on her end.

  “A couple of nights ago . . . I was getting ready for bed. My head started hurting. Even my vision went blurry. It worried me a little, but I thought maybe I was just tired. I laid in bed, but the moment I started drifting off to sleep my head felt like it was going to split open. I hurried to my pantry to find my pain-relieving tincture, thinking that might help. And that’s when they started.”

  It was as if all the bones of her body had disappeared, the way she slumped down into the chair as she pulled it out. She stared down at the broken wand, not daring to touch it.

  “Hazy thoughts that I couldn’t remember. The worst déja vu I’ve ever had. But I don’t think they were just random thoughts.” She quickly shook her head, the dark bun her hair was in threatening to come loose. “They were little snips of horrible . . . horrible memories,” she whispered.

  This did not sound good at all. “You can tell me, Zoya. What kind of memories?”

  Tears fell from her long lashes and she drew her knees up under her chin, reminding me all too well of Fiona-Leigh when she was younger. “Rourke. What happened to him.”

  My heart pounded; my thoughts raced. I couldn’t think of what to do—should I go ahead and stop her there, wait for Uncle Gardner? But I took in the panic on her face and thought it better to find out what I could on my own for now. If Zoya was ready to give me information we so desperately needed, no matter the cost, then I wasn’t about to ask her to politely pause her crying to wait for everyone else to show up.

  “Go on.”

  “My wand. I remembered my wand first. Lying on the courtyard ground, cracked in two. But then . . . I saw them—”

  “Saw who? Sorry, Zoya,” I quickly backed off, realizing I was making things worse. This was suspect interrogating 101 and I was off to a bad start. Some might even say failing.

  “The Renaldi Twins. They’re two Changelings that Rourke’s told me about before. Just the worst kinds of creatures.” She visibly shuddered, and I reached out to clasp her hands in mine, knowing now that she was no threat to me.

  “I remembered them dragging me outside of the back, to the courtyard. And then . . . the worst part of all . . .” there was soft sniffle before she sobbed much harder, her whole face wet. “Rourke was reaching for me. Standing there at the boundary line. He looked terrified. I could tell he was going to step over it, and I think I was telling him to stop.”

  The wheels in my head were already turning. I wanted to ask her why she waited to tell anyone, but her hesitation made sense. If she wasn’t sure of what happened, then how did she know she wasn’t the one responsible for Rourke’s death? No one would ever think Zoya could do something like that, especially given that she was in love with him. But I could see how she’d be terrified of others knowing. We needed to know the full extent of what happened.

  “Zoya? I think I have an idea. I’m trusting you to stay put, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  I didn’t give her time to answer as I raced across the library to the other side, with the exact location pinpointed in my brain. “There,” I said, yanking out the book I’d spent countless hours studying back in my Inner Sanctum days. I tucked ‘Animus Memoriae’ under my arm and ran past the oracle desk, skirting around it until I found Zoya still sitting at the same table by the statue. Well, at least she wasn’t a runner. That made things a little easier.

  “I’m going to do a memory spell, okay? We’re going to need to see everything that’s missing from your memory. It may be . . . unpleasant,” I said, figuring there was no point in sugar-coating the truth. I didn’t know whether she had done the spell on herself or what, but clearly something happened that she wasn’t meant to see.

  Zoya bit her lip. “Do we have to?”

  “I’m afraid so. If not me and right now, then it’ll be the Shadow Hands in the interrogation room most likely. It’s not a terrible place or anything, but I imagine it might be easier to get it over and done with here. With a friend.” I placed the book down on the table by her wand and pulled out the chair next to her for her to sit in. “What do you think?”

  There was a reluctant nod of her head, and I knew this was all she could give me. I studied the index of the book, remembering that the chapter on altered memories was near the back of it. I flipped to it, scanning over the words as quickly as I could. “Okay, here we are. The Retrieval of a Lost Memory.”

  Luckily for us, it didn’t require anything fancy. I asked her to link hands with mine, saying the incantation aloud together. If I wanted to see everything through her eyes, we needed to sync up our magic.

  “Once forgotten, now retrieved. Zoya, your stolen memories are now freed.”

  My arms shook from the energy shooting up and down them, Zoya’s and my powers transferring to one another for a combined power of vision and memory. Her hands gripped tightly to mine, shaking from effort. I only saw her long enough to see her eyes glowing an eerie gold color, until I was suddenly overcome by the hazy image of a hand over a door.

  I was walking out onto the library’s grounds, my voice higher than usual as I called out for Rourke. I stopped short when I saw two ogres standing at the end of the courtyard, wearing matching menacing grins on their faces. A fear built up inside of me that felt foreign. Not my own, but still palpable at the same time. I tried to walk backwards, back into the library where I knew I was safe. But I wasn’t fast enough. Their long strides brought them to me much quicker than I would’ve guessed for two huge, ugly looking beasts.

  I tried to scream, to reach for my wand at the same time, but massive hands closed around my throat before I got the chance, lifting me up off the ground. The wand clattered to the ground and black spots popped in my peripheral, my legs dangling helplessly—all I could do was grab onto the rough hand for dear life, trying to hoist myself up and relieve the strain of gravity. I was vaguely aware of the sound of my wand cracking nearly in half after the other ogre stepped on it.

  The one holding me brought me against his chest in a sort of chokehold, facing me out to
ward the library’s back doors. He laughed. “Pitiful little thing, ain’t ya? Without your weapons, you’re nothing.”

  My vision swam in front of me but I picked out one thing I hadn’t noticed before. Rourke.

  He was standing with his hands raised in front of him, the shimmery defenses of the Athenaeum at his disposal. He was shouting something but I couldn’t hear well enough. I was losing too much oxygen, even with the ogre loosening his grip around my throat. My eyes felt heavier than ever before.

  Rourke’s voiced managed to reach my ears. “Let her go!”

  The other ogre stood beside us; his arms flexed. “Come out. Come get her if you want her so badly.”

  My eyes widened. Something was wrong. The shimmering magic that was like a wall between us made me fearful. Realization hit me like a sick twisting in my gut. Rourke couldn’t leave the Athenaeum defenseless. He had to stay put. And though he had the power to stop them before they got near enough to him to be a real threat, they would kill me. Easily.

  Rourke walked past the boundary line, his hands up in surrender. He kept his eyes on both of the ogres, and tried to talk some sense into them. “There’s no need for anyone to get hurt. Put her down.”

  I was airborne, the grass thankfully helping to soften the blow of my body. Everything hurt. I’d been thrown a dozen feet behind the ogres—or the ogre and a woman? Were my eyes playing tricks on me? The ogre was no longer the huge, looming beast he’d been a moment ago. He was now a woman, a woman who looked just like Zoya…

  Everything was happening too fast to keep up… Rourke was using none of his magic to stop the ogre who’d been holding me from advancing on him. Rourke tried to dodge him to run toward me, but he was too slow. The ogre, whose shape rippled in front of my very eyes, was now a man I didn’t recognize. His hand was around Rourke’s throat now, and he turned to face away from me, while Rourke’s arms flailed on either side of him.

  My voice was dead in my throat and it took everything in me to croak his name as I tried crawling across the grass to him. When his body thumped to the ground, his eyes open but not seeing, I let out a cracked sob, my throat constricting again as I moved faster.

  The first ogre… or Changeling as I understood, was walking out of the library with something in my hand. Its hand? Nothing made sense and everything was wrong. The golden spine of An Leabhar na Ciallmhar glinted under the moonlight. My vision blurred around the edges, becoming darker as the one who had just choked the life out of Rourke stood over me, his face unreadable.

  “We got what we need. Fix her up,” he said to the one who looked like me.

  “What? Why don’t we just get rid of her?”

  The man regarded my double as if he were an idiot. “No need. We have to set it up, make it look like she did it. But…” he turned away for a moment before looking back down at me. “Grab that mangled thing on the ground over there. The wand. If we don’t conceal it the sneaky bastards will probably do some kind of magic on it that leads back to us. I don’t know. I’m not a filthy Witch.”

  He nudged my back with his foot, and I scurried away, trying to use my arms to help me backwards.

  “Time to wipe your memories, girlie. For all you’ll know, you did the man in.” He said this with a vicious smile as my everything faded to black…

  I jumped up as soon as our hands dropped, the excess of energy rushing through me one last time before it vanished. My throat burned and I gasped for air I hadn’t actually been deprived of. The room spun and I blinked hard to regain control of my own vision—it was almost like trying to clear your head after crossing your eyes for too long. Everything swam back into view and as soon as I could see right again, I ran behind the front desk, yanking open drawers left and right until I spotted what I needed.

  “G-Gwen?” Zoya called out, her voice trembling.

  “Right here.” I took my seat again and immediately picked up the pen and put it to paper. “We need to get this all written down before we forget all the details.”

  She nodded and we got to work, going back and forth to make sure everything was a clear picture of what we had both just seen through the memory.

  When we finished, Zoya put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. “I’m s-sorry. This really is all m-my fault. I should have n-never started going to that bar. How else could they h-have known?”

  “Known what?”

  She lifted her gaze, her red-ringed eyes wide. “About the boundary line! I remember . . . a while back I tried to talk some sense into Rourke. We made sense! I was willing to stay within the Athenaeum with him always if he would stop being so stubborn and admit that he loved me back.”

  Even though I’d just seen through her eyes in the memory, I felt oddly weird about being privy to even more personal information.

  “He was the best kind of man. But he told me his first duty was to the Athenaeum, and that he couldn’t expect anyone to live that kind of life with him. Not even me,” she went on, scowling as she wiped at her face. “It was a bad argument. We almost never argued, him and I. But I stormed off because of course I would—rubbing it in his face that he didn’t have the same freedom to do so.” She shook her head, her shoulders caving. “I shouldn’t have. And I sorely paid for it that night when I went to the bar. All I wanted was to get him off my mind for the night. I don’t remember it exactly . . . but a woman was there. We talked about our men problems as one does. She was kind and paid for our drinks. But . . . I think I told her some things that I-I shouldn’t have. About Rourke. About this place.”

  So, it was true. Zoya had accidentally leaked important information about the Athenaeum that compromised its protection. I let out a long sigh, wishing I knew what to say to her. I knew a thing or two about a heart full of guilt. No one deserved that, not after being pushed away like that.

  “I’m sorry Zoya. That must have been hard.”

  She nodded. “And I understand they’ll be upset that I didn’t tell them that part,” she whispered, referring to the Shadow Hands. “They’ll make me leave my position after putting so many in jeopardy with my big fat mouth.”

  Placing my hand over hers, I frowned. “I can’t say for sure what will happen, but you can be sure that I’ll do my best to soften the blow. I have your back, okay?” Everyone makes mistakes. I knew that from first-hand experience. “I’m going to go ahead and send a fire message to my uncle. We should probably prepare ourselves for a long night.”

  I left her to take her time and wash her face, gathering the notebook I’d just written in. This would be enough to put out a warrant for the Changeling brothers. After we’d arrest them, then maybe we’d get some real answers finally.

  22

  Change of Skins

  It took Uncle Gardner all of ten minutes to get everyone rounded up, despite the late hour. His group of Shadow Hands—eight of his brightest and most skilled—were all situated behind him as we approached the foot of a steep hill. At the top of the hill and underneath the protection of one massive tree, was a run-down house. Even from our angle the house looked grimy. It was missing one of its front windows, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the screen door had been torn from its hinges and haphazardly shoved to the side. If this really was the Renaldi Twins’ house, it didn’t bode well for any kind of peaceful confrontation.

  Then again… they were murderers and thieves. So, I wasn’t holding my breath for anything peaceful to transpire here tonight.

  As much as I wanted to be part of the group, I was told to hang back by Uncle Gardner himself. “We don’t want any small detail to possibly invalidate this arrest, Gwen. I’m sorry. You know the rules. Only a member of the MARC’s Law Enforcement Division can detain suspects.” He did look truly sorry though, so at least there was that.

  But the feeling of hanging back left me uneasy. It’s not that I didn’t trust anyone to do their job—there’s a reason why Shadow Hands spend so much time training. The idea of them dealing with two scumbags like the Renaldi Twins just sen
t my skin crawling. They very obviously didn’t care about the loss of life. So I could only imagine what they’d be like when cornered. Changelings were known for being the stealthiest at escaping any given situation.

  Uncle Gardner snapped his fingers and a brightly-lit sphere of energy formed in his hand, lighting the way up the worn path. I waited for everyone else to go first, giving them a few steps ahead before quietly following up after them.

  I knew that they knew I was here, and even though a couple of them threw dirty looks my way over their shoulders, I didn’t care. I was the one who got to the bottom of things with Zoya. If anyone was going to make sure these jerks were locked up, it was going to be me. Even though I was just technically an onlooking bystander.

  The steps up to the mildew-covered porch were unevenly nailed together, and I wasn’t too trusting of them to hold anyone’s weight. The porch itself wasn’t faring much better. The whole place reeked of old, rotten wood. It didn’t help the tension running through my shoulders, either.

  Uncle Gardner stepped up to the door, rapping at it with two of the beefier Shadow Hands on either side of him. He and the taller Shadow Hand on his right—his best guy, Rufio—both held a pair of magicked restraints that would render their ability to change useless. And in human form, Changelings weren’t nearly as dangerous. Or so they say.

  The scurry inside and the hushed voices were unmistakable. Clearly, they hadn’t expected us, and a flash at the window made me wonder just how intimidating everyone looked standing here. They must have known our intention as soon as they saw us. Saw them, anyway.

  An odd falsetto voice echoed through the door, “Just a minute!”

  When the door creaked open a small dwarf woman stood staring between the wide crack, fear in her eyes. “Yes?”

  A few of the Shadow Hands in front of me whispered to one another. Had they been wrong? Did Uncle Gardner have the right place? I couldn’t see quite as well past all the others, but even from my point of view the dwarf looked terrified.