by Mara Webb
“Nora, you’ve got it all wrong. I think—”
All three pairs of eyes turned to something behind me. I turned to look too. Someone was walking through the crowd of frozen people towards us. How could they move? I recognized the face immediately.
13
Walking towards us was the creepy receptionist from that horrid motel, the woman that had slipped a business card under my door offering her psychic services. It appeared that Ms. Zoe Rose was about to give me some advice, whether I asked for it or not. As she got closer, I could see that her eyes were totally white, no color at all, no pupil, just perfect white orbs aimed at me as she spoke.
“Nora you should have asked me. I saw what happened to Quin, I was there when he was taken. You are looking in the wrong place, for the wrong person. I don’t know who murdered me, but I know who has Quin. Who is missing?”
Once Zoe stopped speaking the color slowly returned to her eyes, giving them back their sapphire blue. With the color restored, she was frozen just like everyone else. What just happened? Was that Edith speaking to me through her? The psychic? She had given me that card, passed on a message from her for me to return to the house. Why hadn’t I called her?
My cynicism had prevented me from even considering it, yet here was this person channeling my dead aunt, powerful enough to break free of the spell Amber had put on every other human here. I hadn’t even thought to check with Edith. She saw someone break into our home and take Quin and I was in this stupid bar shouting at Ryan when I should be somewhere else saving my cat. Who was missing from the group? Benjamin.
I felt like Amber’s spell had overpowered me too as I stood staring at Zoe, my body paralyzed with thoughts. Jennifer grabbed my shoulders, “You go, he’s your familiar. We will take care of the mess here. Call us as soon as you’ve found Quin. Go,” she said.
There was no need for shouting now as we were the only ones able to speak. I wove through the frozen bodies and looked back across the bar so see Ryan and Amber inspecting Zoe’s eyes and Jennifer pointing her wand to the ground and moving it in small circles as green ribbon-like fluid flowed from its tip.
I got back onto the street and raced to the car; it was idling. The power from within me must have started the engine before I was even close enough to see it. I frantically scanned my brain for anything I knew about Ben and where his house was. Rooper! They have that road on the north side, Rooper Road, I’m sure that’s what Quin had told me. I searched my brain again. Quin! That gloriously chatty cat, he had talked for over an hour about Ben the day after the wine incident once he had established that he was forgiven.
From what I understood, the Rooper’s were wealthy, or at least they used to be. A family of beautiful rich people that owned land and had a respectable name, they had a ranch at the far end of Rooper Road and Benjamin lived there with his mother. The money started to disappear right around the time Ben’s father, Robert, started gambling. They weren’t sure what tipped Robert Rooper over the edge, but he stopped caring about wealth and material things, he squandered their fortune and then disappeared, leaving his mother to raise Benjamin alone. Quin said some of this was rumor but he loved to gossip, so to him it was fact.
Turning onto Rooper Road I caught my first glance of the house. I pulled over, put the car in park and continued on foot so that neither the engine nor the lights would attract attention. The property was huge. There was a giant wooden house, a barn and a separate building. From the looks of it the smaller building was intended for their staff. But something was off.
The wood was damaged, the decking of their porch was peeling. It looked neglected. Had they truly lost so much of their fortune that they couldn’t make the repairs to this place? Lights! I gasped and dived behind a shrub, ouch, a spiky shrub. I saw a silhouette moving past the window. Benjamin was home. I needed to distract him long enough to get Quin out of there. All that stood between me and my feline friend was an unpredictable wizard. Great.
The events of the day were swirling through my mind.
Think Nora, think.
The barn! I could get Ben outside by creating an explosion in the barn, I had just read an article about the explosion at Ryan’s place, I could do that here. I crept over the lawn, keeping low and making sure I didn’t lose sight of the house windows for more than a second, I didn’t know how visible I was out here. My pulse was pounding in my forehead. I didn’t need to get inside the barn, I could do what I needed to do from round the back of it. I could sense that Quin was near, but not in the barn. My powers had grown.
What if something else was in there?
I used my new sense to search for life inside the barn, there was nothing. My plan could work.
I pushed my wand into a hay bale leaning against the back of the barn and whispered ‘ignis mittent.’ Tiny droplets of flames trickled out at first, then my wand began to shoot great cables of fire into the hay. In seconds the blazing bale licked up against the barn walls, tempting it to burn. It was time to run.
I sprinted to hide behind a hedgerow and listened to the crackling sound of burning wood. When would he notice? What if he doesn’t look out of the window? I needn’t have worried. There must have been a car or truck parked inside the barn, as the heat built up around it an alarm started going off, I whipped my head back to look at the house. Twitching curtain, silhouette, sudden movement. Benjamin came rushing out of the house with his wand raised trying to furiously extinguish the fire. I had to move.
My window was likely narrow, I didn’t know how quickly magic would fight the flames, so I had to run quickly through the unlocked door Benjamin had just use to exit the house and find Quin. An explosion rang out with a deafening sound of collapsing beams crushing metal, the gas in the vehicle must have blown. I didn’t know if that gave me more time or less. I took advantage of the noise either way.
“QUIN! QUIN I’M HERE, WHERE ARE YOU?” I shouted up through the house, hoping desperately for a response that would give me the exact location and save me time searching. A sound upstairs caught my attention. It is either Quin or someone that will hurt me. I had to take the chance.
I ran up the staircase. Each step groaned under my weight; this house was falling apart. It seemed to have been so beautifully decorated, but years had faded the color of the painted woodwork and patterned wallpaper. Scratching. I ran to the first door and twisting the doorknob pushed it open forcefully, knocking Quin over in the process. He bounced back up.
“Nora! It’s Ben Rooper! He took me, he’s a bad guy, I have so many things to tell you right now! I should probably speak really, really, quickly to get all my ideas out fast, okay, so have you ever noticed anything weird abou—”
I scooped him off the ground and turned to run out of the room, but he shouted.
“No wait, the paper. Grab the paper, it’s important!”
I picked up the rolled paper and ran down the stairs. Out of a hallway window I could see Ben coming back towards the house, he was going to come through the door right ahead of us. Find another way out.
I spun on my heels on the bottom step and changed direction to run through the back of the house. The lights were off, and it was so hard to see, I told Quin to stay quiet, but it would have been useful to have him guide me using his cat eyes in the dark.
He whispered, “We’re in the kitchen, there’s a door back there.”
I hurried towards it. I tripped, stumbled but didn’t fall. There was something all over the floor, boxes of something I couldn’t see. They were small but everywhere.
“Laundry soap keep going!” he whispered again, this time a little more enthusiastically as we were by the door, my hand pulling it open. I could see the street. I sprinted now, my feet landing heavily as I ran. I couldn’t hold my wand in either hand as I was carrying a cat and holding some sort of scroll. I didn’t look back; he could be right behind me and I was too afraid.
The car was in view now. All I needed was to get into the car and get us away from h
ere, quickly. The car burst to life 30ft ahead, accelerated towards us and the driver’s door flew open. I didn’t have time to question it, I jumped in and Quin leapt onto the passenger seat. The door closed by itself and I took off. Where can we go? Where is safe?
Fear was such a powerful force inside me I could almost taste it. By now it had been several minutes since I stopped running but my breathing hadn’t recovered, I was taking short, sharp breaths. “Are you ok Quin? Did he hurt you?” I tried to scan his body in the dark while keeping my eyes on the road.
“I’m fine, don’t worry. Do you have your cellphone? I need it.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and tossed it onto the seat. “Take us home Nora. I know what to do.”
14
I unlocked the front door and Quin ran inside with the paper between his teeth. I ran up the stairs to the bathroom mirror, just as planned. I stared at my reflection as Edith appeared over my shoulder.
“Quin said you can protect the house. Can you? We need to stop Ben getting in, we know it was him.” Edith looked shocked; she didn’t know who had murdered her but I’m sure she never imagined it could be someone she knew so well. Her expression changed from disbelief to determined fury. Her arms raised slowly from her sides and a pulsing blue light radiated out from her hands, the air wobbled as the light moved through it.
I looked over my shoulder and there was nothing, only in the mirror could I see the power of the charm Edith was placing over the house. She locked eyes with me and nodded, it was done. I explained to her what needed to happen next and then grabbed a compact mirror from a drawer so that she could interact with us in the kitchen as Quin and I went over the plan.
Downstairs Quin had finished spreading out the roll of paper and weighing down the corners. We both stared at it in amazement.
“He wasn’t filthy when he got to the house, he must have already used a spell to clean off any dirt from fighting that spider but he said ‘nothing but the best for my skin, can’t beat the real thing’ and locked me in a room while he showered. That gave me enough time to find this!”
Laying out on the counter was Benjamin Rooper’s family tree, his first assignment from his time as an O.W.L. student. Falsifying information on this assignment constitutes as cheating, this prevents students claiming that their father is a famous warlock or their mother the inventor of the animated wand technology. We were looking at the truth of his bloodline.
“They thrive on the nobility of their name Nora, this is huge.”
Quin and I had discussed how image was everything for the great house of Rooper. So, what an enormous embarrassment this was. Ben Rooper was not the son of Robert. His mother had a dalliance with a river troll, although the most handsome of all the troll species, they are still trolls.
Ben was only half wizard.
I couldn’t believe it. Quin might be right; all we could do now was to see how it played out. We might have some of the details wrong, but it was worth a shot. We looked at Edith and she nodded in the compact mirror, lifting the protection charm from the house. Almost instantly Benjamin materialized in the entryway behind us, his wand raised. His trusty suit was singed from the barn fire and his face looked older and more crooked; anger radiated from him. He took a step towards us.
Silently and suddenly Amber appeared behind him, then Jennifer and Ryan appeared together behind him also. He was so focused on making moves towards us that he didn’t hear the faint footfall of his fellow council members.
“Now!” I shouted. At my command the wizard and witches he was unaware of fired an unravelling spell at his blazer, the stitches burst, and the disconnected fabric pieces fell to the ground.
“No, no, no!” Ben scrambled across the floor desperately for the silk lining of his jacket and held it against his body, but it was too late. His brow bone started to swell, his arms stretched out so that his hands swung about below his knee, his nose bulged. His eyes remained the same but knowing what he had done to maintain this illusion made them seem less like new fern leaves to me now and more like dirty moss on a rock.
There he stood. Benjamin Rooper, half troll. Ryan used his wand to bind the giant troll hands in glowing handcuffs, Amber turned to Quin and I. “You were right Nora, but what is happening here? I don’t understand.”
“Quin found his family tree; his father is a troll. A secret that his family couldn’t risk getting out. He isn’t a true heir to their fortune, not that there is any of that left now though from what I heard.” I looked at Benjamin. “You enchanted silk and had it sewn into your suits and cloak. The silk transforms you into a handsome wizard that your family can be proud of.
“When Quin knocked wine over you in this kitchen it damaged your suit jacket lining and your face started to change. We tripped over all the boxes of laundry detergent in your house, you were trying to get the stain out so you would look chiseled again. Am I missing anything so far?” I looked at the tearful creature slouching in my kitchen, his arms bound behind his back.
All of our eyes were on him waiting for a response.
When he spoke, his voice was slower now, and deeper.
“Almost Nora. It wasn’t me that made the charm, it was mother. She was so sad having to always pretend I was ill so that no relatives would look at this face. My dad, the real one, was the best-looking troll she ever saw she said, smart and charming, Robert Rooper was horrible. She enchanted that silk and had my suits tailored with the silk inside. But she is old now, started to lose her memory about 18 months ago. She spends most of her time yelling at traffic on the high street.
“Wear and tear meant that the lining of the enchanted suits started to disintegrate, and I don’t really have enough wizard in me to recreate the charm myself, and mother can’t do it now. Can’t remember how she did it in the first place, she said. So, I was down to one suit and my council robe. Every year we talk about replacing the robes and I always talk everyone out of it, this year I couldn’t.
“Amber talked about new fabrics with better protection, all this modern magic that we couldn’t put into the old cotton. Edith was the council head; she got the final say. I begged her but she had already decided. I managed to cast a hex a few months back, but it didn’t work out like I planned. Not enough magic in me to pull it off. It made her paranoid and afraid of an imminent attack. I thought she might get us all involved in some protection spells and that it would distract her from all the mundane stuff with our clothes.
“I messed it up though, she was too paranoid to trust even us, so she tried to carry on with normal business while writing letters to people outside Sucré looking for help. I followed her to the lake one day, I was so angry. I didn’t even touch her, she was facing the other way and I reached out my hands, the wizard half of me was strong enough to fill her blood with so much poison she dropped dead immediately. I didn’t mean to. It was all over before I realized what I had done. I had to threaten the coroner so he would rule it as a drowning and just left her by the lake.” Tears were flowing down his bumpy cheeks.
I stood there in disbelief.
“Sorry, did you just say that you murdered my aunt because she was going to take away your beauty cape?” He opened his mouth to defend himself, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. “You are the most arrogant, narcissistic lunatic I have ever met. You care so much about how you look that you would kill to defend it? What is so bad about being half troll?”
He tried to speak through great heaving sobs “You don’t…under…stand,” he sniffed, “my family...all so...I can’t be part of that looking like this.”
“Your family sounds awful, but you are a murderer so maybe you all deserve each other.” The handcuffs started to glow brighter. Two uniformed wizards appeared either side of Benjamin the half-troll and then they disappeared as a trio, the officers holding his arms on either side.
“What happens to him now?” I asked the remaining three.
“It depends on what the justice department decides to do with him,” Ryan
answered. “But murder of a powerful witch like Edith, she was well known and loved in our community. It probably won’t be good for him.”
We sat at my dining table discussing all of Benjamin’s red flags that we had missed that we were able to see now. How snappy he would get if you almost took his robe at the meetings, his complete refusal to drink anything other than clear liquids on most occasions, his hatred of soup and Bolognese.
We laughed a little and then they each shared stories about my aunt Edith. How she used to speak about me with such excitement and say what an amazing witch I would make one day. They said that inherited magic can be wonderful but the person that inherits it all rarely gets to enjoy it with the witch or wizard that made it possible. What a privilege it was to have Edith living in the mirror, silently guiding me. Ryan helped me move a floor mirror down the stairs and pulled it up to the table, moving a chair, so that Edith could be with us.
Amber shook her head in disbelief. “I’ve known him for years; I can’t believe I didn’t realize that this was all happening right under my nose. I should have been able to see, he always wears those outfits like he is going to a state dinner, but it didn’t seem suspicious in any way, just a bit weird. He was getting so angry about the vote on changing our council robes and I didn’t understand. It was my idea and he took it all out on Edith, this is all my fault.”
Amber looked across at me with glossy eyes. Jennifer leaned across the table and held Amber’s hand; I did the same.
“There are plenty of people to blame but you are not one of them. Ben thought he wasn’t worth anything if he didn’t look the way he did with magic, his family made him so self-conscious that he got violent. The whole Rooper empire is built on lies and cruelty.” I squeezed her hand a little tighter. I didn’t blame her, the full-length ghost of Edith in the mirror reached her hand towards Amber to signify that she didn’t blame her either.
