by Susan Harper
By the time they finally found an office door with the name Madam Warz written in gold lettering, Holly had been complaining about the abundant number of stairs they’d had to climb thanks to the confusing direction. “Sorry, I’ve never been to Madam Warz’s office before,” Monica said as they stood outside the door. “The building is more or less designed to where you can’t find your way around unless you’ve already been to a specific room before.”
“That is just crazy,” Holly said, panting after having gone up and down multiple staircases already. “How are you supposed to find anything this way?”
“Comparatively speaking, the mystic world does not get a lot of break-ins or violent incidents at the courthouses. Sort of silly to try to fight a member of the council here if the whole building is going to fight back,” Monica said, and while she could tell this statement was likely to prompt Holly to ask a lot of questions, she said it nevertheless.
“The whole building fight back? What on earth does that even—”
Before Holly could start asking much more, though, Monica interrupted her by knocking quickly. While she enjoyed the excitement that Holly had about the mystic world, there were some things that just seemed so miniscule, she oftentimes didn’t feel like explaining herself such as the security measures of a courthouse. When Monica knocked, the door creaked open. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Madam Warz, are you still here?” Truthfully, Monica had not expected anyone to answer.
“I think she just left her door cracked,” Holly said as the door slowly finished opening.
“Should we…” Monica asked somewhat nervously. This was a private office of one of the head members of the C/A/P Council. Simply waltzing into it was probably a terrible idea. While Monica could not be certain, she imagined that invading the private office of one of the highest-ranking officials in the land was definitely some sort of crime.
Holly grinned. “Maybe?”
The two women stood in the doorway for what felt like an eternity before Holly accidentally removed a coin from her pocket and dropped it, letting it roll inside. “Oh, dear,” Holly said. “I seem to have dropped my money…”
The two women entered the office. Madam Warz had what a witch like Monica would have described as a very old-fashioned design. A bookshelf on one side of the office was filled with ancient spellbooks and lawbooks alongside old potion bottles. There was a cat’s skull sitting on top of one of the books as well. There was a quill writing away on its own on a parchment, enchanted to take care of a bit of paperwork on behalf of its owner. There was a large cauldron bubbling by the fireplace, and the woman actually had a crystal ball set up in the center of the room.
“Is that what I think it is?” Holly asked, pointing to the crystal ball.
“That’s some seriously old magic,” Monica claimed. She looked curiously past the crystal ball towards the window, where a telescope was set up by various star charts. “Looks like she does a bit of astrology as well.”
“Old magic?” Holly asked.
“Very old,” Monica said. “Though, I half-expected it. Madam Warz is known to be a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to spellcasting. Now, let’s hurry before she gets back.”
The two women began looking around, and Monica warned Holly to be careful what she touched. A woman like Madam Warz likely would notice if anything was moved. It looked like she hadn’t redecorated her office since she had settled in. It was Holly who braved the desk, and Monica warned her not to bother the quill still scribbling away.
While Monica was a bit transfixed by the crystal ball, she could hear Holly rummaging around in the woman’s desk. Monica couldn’t resist. She tapped the crystal ball, but nothing appeared but a bit of colorful smoke. “Do you know how to use a crystal ball?” Holly asked as she continued rummaging.
Monica sighed. “Can’t.”
“Never learned?” Holly asked.
“No, I mean I physically can’t. I’m an unnatural witch. Won’t work for me,” Monica said. “Takes too strong of magic.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Monica. I didn’t know,” Holly said. “What about your sister?”
“She has dabbled with some before,” Monica said. “Never interested her much.”
“Hey, look what I found!” Holly exclaimed, hurrying over to Monica to share her find. She was holding a very small horseshoe. “Why would she have a horseshoe in her desk?”
“I don’t know,” Monica said. “Why would she have a cat’s skull propped up on her books?”
“Good point,” Holly said as she handed the horseshoe off to Monica. “There’s nothing magical about horseshoes, is there?”
“Nothing I know of,” Monica said. “There might be something with advanced magic, but that is going to go beyond my expertise. I’d have to research it.” Monica examined the horseshoe while Holly took a moment to examine the crystal ball.
Slowly, Holly reached her hand towards the ball. Monica, from the corner of her eye, noticed the smoke starting to travel about somewhat quicker. For a moment, Monica thought that something was actually going to appear. But, before they could see much more than swirling smoke, Madam Warz cleared her throat. “What do you two think you’re doing?!”
In surprise, Monica dropped the horseshoe. Madam Warz’s eyes went straight towards the horseshoe, and the short and stout woman seemed to grow twice her size. “How dare you two go through my desk!” she shouted, slamming the door behind her and suddenly whipping her wand out and pointing it in their direction.
“I am so sorry!” Monica exclaimed. “You’re absolutely right. We shouldn’t have come into your office at all. You just seemed upset earlier, and we only wanted to check in on you… The door was open, so we thought we would wait here until you came back, and it took longer than expected…”
Madam Warz slowly put her wand up, glaring at them both. Monica reached down and picked up the horseshoe. “I’ll put this up for you,” Monica said, bringing it towards the desk. As she did so, she noticed that the little wastebasket next to her desk was holding an abnormally large amount of tissues. She glanced back up at the older woman, whose eyes were still quite red. “Are…are you all right, Madam Warz?”
Madam Warz huffed. “I’m fine!” she insisted, more strongly than necessary. “I just need you two to get out of my office.”
Monica placed the horseshoe back on the desk. She looked back up at Madam Warz with a blank expression. “It’s you,” she said. “You’re Trapper’s mother, aren’t you?”
Holly’s eyes widened and jerked her head in the councilwoman’s direction. Madam Warz’s shoulders seemed to relax upon hearing this statement spoken aloud. “Yes,” she said.
“This was his?” Monica asked, tapping the horseshoe that now sat on her desk.
The quill stopped moving, jumping up and placing itself inside the jar of ink. Madam Warz nodded and slowly made her way towards the desk, sitting herself down. “That’s right,” Madam Warz said, snatching up the horseshoe and holding it in her hands for a moment. “When he was just a little thing.”
Holly seemed to be shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “What happened… I mean… Why did you…”
Monica shook her head. “Holly,” she said firmly.
“No, it’s quite all right, Ms. Montoya. The world is probably going to be finding out about it soon enough anyhow. Too many people know already,” Madam Warz said. “Boots and I had a rather brief affair in our youth. I became pregnant. I had hoped he would…well…look like me…”
“You had hoped he could pass for a warlock,” Holly said, and Madam Warz nodded.
“Did Boots know you were pregnant at the time?” Monica asked.
“No, not at all,” she said. “I kept it from Boots until after Trapper was born. I…didn’t even name him before I dropped him off with his father and ran. I was embarrassed. Things were very different back then.”
“So, you just abandoned your child?” Holly asked.
“Holly, that’s
enough,” Monica said firmly.
Madam Warz nodded. “Something I’ve regretted terribly. I reached out to him recently.”
“Boots told us that Trapper’s mother had been talking with him,” Monica said. “That’s why you were at the game?”
“He was…very excited for me to come watch him play,” Madam Warz said. “I had come to visit him with Nud a while back. Boots was not particularly pleased to see me talking to Trapper. Not that I could blame him. I had been awful to them both. But we spoke a bit. Wrote letters. And when I found out his next match was here in Wysteria, I asked Imelda and Nud to go with me to the game to watch him.”
“They know?” Monica asked.
“Yes,” Madam Warz said, her face somewhat flushed. “They are the only ones on the council who know, but everyone is starting to ask questions. Like I said, it’s only a matter of time before everyone learns the truth. I wrote to Boots today.” She touched the parchment that the quill had been scribbling on when they had first arrived. “Used an old spell that would write down what I was feeling for me. I have a hard time with sentiment. Would have taken me a month to write this letter without the spell. This whole thing has been…” Madam Warz pulled a tissue out from her desk and wiped several tears. “It’s just a lot. I was finally reaching out to him. I had stopped being…so stuck up…so worried about what others would think. I was going to get to know him. Get to know my son. He embraced me so quickly. Such a good boy. No thanks to me, of course. His father, I can’t believe how well he did with him on his own. Trapper welcomed me with open arms after I reached out to him. Already was calling me ‘Mum.’ I just wish we had had more time. I wish I had never abandoned him.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Holly said.
“Thank you, dear,” Madam Warz said. “I feel so selfish to get such condolences. Boots is the one who stayed. The one who took care of him despite him being a hybrid. When I was young and foolish, the thought of being the mother of a hybrid scared me far more than I ever loved Boots. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized what a mistake that had been. I didn’t even have love for that child of mine…not until recently. What sort of mother…” Her voice trailed off.
“You were young and scared,” Monica said, trying to reassure her. “I think it must have meant the world to Trapper that you had reached out to him.”
“He was so…so sweet,” Madam Warz said sadly. “I keep replaying it over and over again.” She looked up towards the crystal ball. “But each time, I am unable to see what happened.” She stood up and approached the crystal ball, waving her hands gently about its surface.
Monica cringed to see Trapper within the crystal ball, falling from the podium. “I prefer watching this,” Madam Warz said, waving her hand across the orb. Suddenly, a little centaur appeared galloping through some field with a younger, friendlier-looking version of Boots. “I used to keep watch of him on here. There are some memories stored… I just wish Trapper had had memories of me.”
“You were watching out for him the whole time?” Holly asked.
“He’s my son,” Madam Warz said. “Of course I was watching out for him… I just wish I had been watching more closely the day he was killed.”
10
After leaving the courthouse, Monica and Holly decided that they needed to once again pay a visit to the scene of the crime. They took Monica’s broom, zipping through Wysteria until they at last arrived at the Romp-A-Roo playing field. The field was mostly abandoned now. The police had cleared out, but no one was currently using it for practice, either. Monica imagined that the Wysteria Werewolves were currently a bit crippled with one of their star players on house arrest during the investigation. Morale, she was certain, was low so it was no wonder that no one was using the field.
They landed next to the podium, the bottom half still in the ground. “I’m going to look up top again,” Monica decided after dropping Holly off. She jumped back on her broom and flew up in order to get a better look at where the podium had split. The cut was smooth as it had been before, clearly done in a single swoop. She flew in closer, this time landing on top of the broken podium piece.
“What are you seeing?” Holly called from the ground.
“I’m not sure,” Monica said. “Same as before, I suppose. It was clearly done in one quick…one quick sweep…” She knelt down, touching her hand against the podium. “This cut is so smooth. There is no way something like an axe did this.” Looking closer, she noticed an almost shimmer coming from the wood. “Magic!” Monica exclaimed as she jumped back on her broom and flew down to Holly. “Someone used magic to cut the podium. Like some sort of magic blast.”
“That would explain why it was such a smooth cut,” Holly said.
“That’s the part that kept bothering me. If it had just broken, it would have snapped and cracked a bit. Even something as large and strong as a giant would probably have to make a few strikes with an axe… And how else would someone have been able to cut through this thing in the middle of a game without being noticed? We’re dealing with a witch or a wizard—something with control over magic,” Monica said confidently.
“There were a lot of witches and wizards at that game,” Holly said. “The majority of the crowd was made up of witches and wizards, and over half of the teams were wizards and witches. Not to mention the referee and the safety witches.”
“But at least now we have got an idea of what we’re looking for,” Monica said. “We know it couldn’t have been a centaur or onocentaur. Maybe a fairy, though I’m not sure if they would have magic specific enough for something like this. This was probably done with a wand.”
The sun dipped down past the horizon—it was growing late. Feeling somewhat accomplished by this new discovery, the two women headed back to Backroom Books, where Abigail was waiting for them, having already sent Mona and her familiar home for the evening. “Got the shop straightened up, I see?” Monica said as they stepped inside.
“Got her caught up at least,” Abigail said from where she had been sleeping in the window sill. “She still has some new shipments she’s going to have to go through in the morning, but the books are no longer flying around and misbehaving.”
“Thanks for helping her out, Abs,” Monica said, smiling.
“I’m ready for a bit of relaxation,” Abigail said.
“You were just sleeping in the window,” Holly argued. “You are the most relaxed creature I know.”
Monica shook her head. “How about we do a girls night? My place?”
Holly grinned. “That actually sounds like a lot of fun.”
Abigail sighed as they made their way through the back door, reappearing on the Bankstown side of Backroom Books. Holly had her car with her, so since it was a fairly cloudless night, they elected to take the car back to Monica’s home rather than flying. Monica wasn’t exceptionally familiar with what mortals did when they hung out, but she understood enough now to know that providing food and movies was a safe bet.
The ladies changed into some comfortable clothes and then proceeded to plop down on the couch together, going through the very limited movie collection that Monica had gathered since arriving in Bankstown. “I’m feeling comedy,” Holly said as she sifted through the movies. “I think I need a good laugh.”
“Rough day, ladies?” Abigail asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know if we really accomplished much with the case,” Monica said. “We did learn who Trapper’s mother was, but that didn’t really seem to lead us anywhere.”
“Who is the mother?” Abigail asked, jumping up in Monica’s lap.
“Madam Warz,” Monica said, and Abigail sat upright.
“Seriously?” Abigail asked. “She is pretty notorious for being prejudiced against non-humanoid creatures and against half-breeds.”
“I know,” Monica said. “But it looks like that is changing pretty dramatically. You should have seen her, Abs. She was so upset about Trapper. I can tell she felt really guilty for not having ha
d a chance to get to know Trapper.”
“Well, it sounds like it’s her own fault,” Abigail said.
“Yeah, I imagine she was a little scared back in the day. Things were pretty different then,” Monica said with a sigh.
“Did you get a chance to talk about what went wrong with Holly’s test while you two were snooping around the courthouse?” Abigail asked.
“Sort of,” Monica said. “We spoke to Imelda and Madam Warz, but I felt like they were brushing us off.”
“Yeah, it was strange. I had the feeling that they were lying to us,” Holly said. “Did you pick up on that too?”
“Definitely,” Monica agreed. “They said that Holly had so little mystic in her that it just didn’t show up on the test.”
“That’s not how those cauldron spells work,” Abigail countered. “It should have been able to pick it up no matter how far back her mystic ancestry went.”
“That’s what I thought,” Monica said. “I don’t know why they would lie about something like that.”
“Maybe they’re just too lazy to do it again,” Abigail said. “I’d keep pushing them.”
“I probably will,” Monica said. “But right now, we got this whole thing with Trapper looming over us. We have got to get Deimus cleared.”
“Hmm… I don’t suppose you have a board or something? We could put up an actual crime board with any evidence we might have. Sometimes visuals work,” Holly suggested.
“Oh, great idea! It’ll be like one of those crime shows!” Monica said, clapping her hands. “I have a corkboard in the closet!” Monica jumped up, causing Abigail to leap into Holly’s lap. Monica opened a hall closet, digging around for a minute until she was able to locate the corkboard. “Hmm…” Monica said, holding up the small board. “The ones in those crime shows are a lot bigger than this one.” Monica set up the board and then pulled out her wand. “Crescere!” Monica called with a flick of her wand, causing the little board to increase in size. “Perfect,” she said.
