“Partly the way they’re looking at everything, and partly because I know one of them,” Darien grinned. “He retired from the agency in good standing, just didn’t like all the paperwork.”
“I don’t blame him in the slightest,” Mitch grumbled.
Caroline laughed and was still smiling when the door swung open.
“Good afternoon, agents.” The woman who stood in front of them was human, but Caroline suspected she was a mage with enough skill to handle most major problems on the estate. She was likely the one who was in charge of maintaining the wards Mitch mentioned. She stood tall and professional in her suit with her hair pulled up into a fancy updo that Caroline couldn’t even hope to understand.
“Good afternoon. I’m Agent Darien Webb, from the FPAA this is Agent Davisson one of our lab mages, and this is Caroline Peters, agent-in-training.”
“Pleasure to meet you all, I’m Rebecca Mistlethwaite, the mage in charge of security.” Caroline didn’t need to hear the disdain in her voice when she glanced at the agent in training. It was clear in her eyes as her gaze flicked over Caroline’s student-during-finals outfit of rumpled jeans and a hoodie over her t-shirt.
Sure, it wasn’t the khakis-and-a-bowtie that Mitch wore, and it also wasn’t the stylish dark jeans and a business casual jacket and tie that Darien wore, but still. She had literally been yanked away from writing a paper to come here.
“So tell us about this theft?” Darien asked, grabbing her attention again.
“And show us where it occurred?” Mitch added.
Rebecca nodded and led them into the mansion. “This way to the library. We have a small exhibit area set up there that pulls pieces from the collection to display. The theme of this exhibit is Ages of Enchanting and contained artifacts that carry some sort of enchantment from various periods of magic use. There are several very rare and extremely valuable objects in the exhibit, so security has been taken very seriously and we are extremely concerned about this breach.”
She led them past the curving staircase that swept up the left side of the entry hall, and through a doorway underneath the curve. “The original mansion was built in seventeen forty-three and was later enlarged twice, in seventeen ninety and eighteen fifty-seven. This space is from that last construction effort and was renovated and repaired extensively in the first half of the twentieth century. It was originally a library, and when the current owners bought it thirty years ago, it was renovated again to adapt to more modern and varied uses. The archives are in the other wing, and are on a separate security system, as well as climate control to preserve some very delicate texts.” Ms. Misslethwaite rattled off facts in a way that would make any tour guide proud as she strode forward to one side of the room.
The library was dominated, as expected, by tall shelves full of books. There were two floors, the second level wrapping around the outside walls of the room, leaving the middle of the space open to the sparkling rainbow of lights that spread out from the enormous stained-glass skylight that dominated the ceiling. Caroline gasped as she gazed up at it and was a bit surprised at the warm chuckle that sounded at her shoulder.
Ms. Misslethwaite came back and stood there next to Caroline, looking up at the skylight as well, with a small smile on her face. “It is rather stunning, isn’t it? It tells the story of man’s discovery of magic.”
“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Caroline had to admit it. “It looks a little bit like a Van Gogh.”
“Good eye!” Rebecca’s voice betrayed how impressed she really was. “It is, in fact, based on a sketch he did when he was in the Saint Paul Asylum. He gave it to one of the people who attended him, and after some time it made its way here, where my employers commissioned the skylight.”
“Wow.”
They stood there in silence for a long moment before she sighed. “Well as much as I’d rather not be here for work, I’m really glad I got to see this.”
Ms. Misslethwaite shifted and looked at Caroline for a moment before smiling again, this time it reached her eyes. “I am as well. Not everyone who comes in here thinks to look up, but it was one of the first things you did.”
“Yes, well. I’ve been trained to pay a lot of attention to my surroundings, even though I’m still practicing.” Caroline shrugged, but she was pleased to have apparently won the woman over, despite her own unprofessional attire.
“Hey, Darien?” Mitch called from the far side of the exhibit. “I’ve got something odd over here. Ms. Misstlethwaite? Can you think of any reason why there would be a clump of hair here in the corner?”
“Not a single one, unless it got pulled there by the air return.” Rebecca stepped over to peer at the corner in question, and there was, indeed, a small vent.
“Well, unless our thief is a snake, they didn’t get in this way,” Darien grumbled, but he handed an evidence bag over. “Now, what can you tell me about the missing artifact?”
3
They peered at the photo on Darien’s computer screen. It was a small, hexagonal clay jar, maybe three inches tall at the top of the rounded lip. Made of a light grey pottery with a slight greenish tinge, it had alchemical symbols carved into each of the six sides with the remains of a darker glaze or paint in the grooves.
“According to Ms. Misstlethwaite, it is a traveling alchemist’s jar, dated to the eleventh century,” Darien said. “It was displayed as part of the exhibit of magic though history, and she was somewhat surprised that it was taken since it is by far not the most valuable piece in the exhibit.”
“Interesting,” Greg said, leaning over Darien’s shoulder. “And there was no obvious point of entry?”
“Nope. None of the cameras caught anything bigger than a raccoon that night.”
Greg stood up and grinned. “I dunno. Raccoons can get pretty big!”
Caroline laughed. “Do you think that a trained raccoon stole the jar?”
“I’ve heard weirder things.” Greg turned his grin to her, and Darien laughed, too. Once they settled down a bit he shrugged and added, “But no. I don’t think it was a raccoon, and it does sound a lot like the theft Zanna and I went to poke around in.”
“That’s what we thought from the few things you’ve said about it,” Caroline said. “Anyway, we bagged a few things, Mitch scanned the whole area for magical tampering and is going over the wards for possible loopholes or what have you. I’ve got the security footage and the logs to go through since al the boring jobs are mine.”
Greg and Darien both grinned at her mild complaint. It was not a new argument.
“Well, when you stop getting kidnapped or blown up by bad spell casting we’ll talk,” Greg said.
“And when you stop bringing shady guys into our cases just because they’re cute,” Darien added. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you wearing Lucas’ hoodie sometimes.”
“What? It’s a perfectly good piece of clothing, and it’s warm!” She protested. It was just big enough on her to be snuggly, too, but she was never going to admit that to the guys. Or that she liked remembering when she got it.
“Anyway,” she huffed in fake irritation. “Apparently, at six am when the guards were doing their next rounds, they heard a scuffling noise in the corner by the display cases, which is why they went over to investigate closer and discovered the theft in the first place.”
Caroline shrugged and walked around to her own desk chair and open her own laptop to the dreaded paper again.
“So the thief was interrupted? Small favor, huh? And you, young lady? Slacking off now?” Greg raised a brow at her in mock seriousness.
“You can’t pull off stern unless you’re actually angry, G. Stop pretending. I’m going to finish my paper. I’m not even on duty today, I was just in the room when Point came by, and you know how he is.” Caroline slumped back in her chair. “How I’m supposed to get six pages out of this prompt, I don’t know. And the TA is obviously not new. The required font and spacing are all very clearly lai
d out for us, so we can’t get any extra pages out of playing with those either.”
“Ooooh, tough luck. Have you looked at the kerning?” Greg leaned forward, eyes like an excited puppy.
“Down, boy. Don’t be teaching her bad habits.” Darien smacked the back of Greg’s head with the file he’d just picked up. “Don’t you have a stakeout to get ready for?”
“Ugh. Yes. I don’t think it’s going to turn anything up though. I think the buskers with the dolls have gotten wind of the scrutiny at that park and moved on. Zanna’s trying to catch a rumor or two about where they’ve gone now, but Point wants us to at least look busy on this case.”
“Well, Ms. M down at the mansion thinks it’s likely that the thief made a mistake and meant to grab the medallion next to the jar, or maybe one of the bowls at the other end of the exhibit. They’re apparently incredibly rare stone-age examples of early magic use by humans.” Darien dropped the file folder onto his desk. “I might have a stakeout in my own future. I’m going to go over these files and see how likely it feels to me.”
“That file is full of medieval artifacts gone missing from various collections. Half a dozen thefts in two months is definitely a pattern.” Greg shrugged. “Two of them only got kicked over to us because magic was used in the commission of the crime. There was a trace of a ward-breaker at one scene strong enough for one of the museum guards to feel it when it activated, and he admitted that he hasn’t got a drop of magic in him. He might have stopped that theft, but he was halfway across the museum, and went around checking every room he reached since he didn’t know where the spell was focussed.”
Darien flipped through the file. “And three of the missing objects were enchanted in one way or another. An inkwell, a comb, and a coin.”
“Sounds like whoever this thief is, is looking for medieval magic stuff.” Caroline leaned over the desks to squint at the file, though the pictures were all upside-down to her.
“It surely does, doesn’t it?” Darien murmured. He started shuffling through the photos and skimming over the descriptions of what they were. She and Greg waited a moment for him to continue, but he sank deep into his own thoughts, instead. Greg shrugged, and stood up again, stretching his arms over his head.
“Well, it looks like you’ve got the chance to concentrate on your own project for a bit. How many more do you have?” Greg asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small rubber ball with sparkly rainbow swirls and started bouncing it between his feet.
“This is my last paper, then I have a couple of exams and a meeting with my advisor, and I’m done with my first year. Assuming I get through this paper.”
“Whining about it won’t help.” Greg grinned at her scowling reply to that wisdom. “Come on, you basically just have a few pages of academic nonsense between you and freedom for the summer. You can do it!”
“Thanks. Didn’t know I had my own cheer squad,” Caroline grumbled. “And I don’t know how free it will be when I’m here full time.”
Greg laughed. “There is that.” He bounced his ball a few more times and wandered off towards the break room. He did, after all, have a stakeout to get ready for. Caroline suspected that it was less how deeply illegal the enchantment was that he and Zanna were investigating that had caught the Deputy Director’s attention, and more the fact that Greg had been chasing this guy since before Christmas when they made the first arrest.
Some street vendor had included a couple of the golem dolls in his inventory as ‘dancing elves.’ Caroline had helped Greg bring the guy in, and he had said that he found the dolls tossed in the trash. He hadn’t even known they danced until he was cleaning them up for his blanket-based shop and had joked with his buddy about the best way to sell them. He must have accidentally activated the enchantment and caused the dolls to perform a very cheerful jig on command, and after some intense scrutiny by the lab mages, the dolls had been disenchanted and broken down, and were now safely stored away in the evidence lockup until bureaucracy only knew when.
They’d found a couple of other dolls being used by buskers over the months, dancing to amuse the crowds and give the musician a bit of an edge over the competition, but never found the enchanter. The musicians all claimed that they bought the dolls at various bars and clubs, and while they seem to have all bought from the same guy, nobody knew how to find him on purpose.
Since animation spells of this sort were extremely complex they also tended to be somewhat short-lived. A few months, maybe a year and the enchantment would start breaking down, often with disastrous results. There were records of everything from explosive disenchantments to random movements to creepy uncontrolled zombie-like movement of whatever had been enchanted. This was definitely one area best left to science and not magic.
Mitch had explained the whole thing to her in great detail after that first arrest over the holidays, and Caroline felt like she retained enough of the information to be useful since she wasn’t a mage and would never be able to understand the finer points of the spells involved.
Point’s voice cracked out over the bullpen like a boulder splitting in half, and the general rumble of chatter died down while the object of his irritation slunk towards his office. When the door shut behind the poor guy, the volume returned to normal levels and Caroline sighed and flipped her laptop open again. This paper wasn’t going to write itself. Too bad there wasn’t a good spell for that.
4
“Well, I’ve turned in the last paper. Now it’s just a couple quick exams and my Freshman year of college is officially over.” Caroline slumped onto one of the lumpy sofas in the break room. She technically had about ten minutes before her shift started, and she was going to spend it enjoying the coffee in her hand. It was from the shop down the street that had once employed a would-be vampire hunter, and once in a while, someone expressed surprise that she still went there. She kept pointing out that they’d arrested the woman and also had sorted out an antidote for the poison she had laced all the food with anyway.
And honestly, there was a limit to how much break room coffee a girl could take.
“How do you think you did?” Stevie Goodleaf asked. The H.R. brownie was flipping through a fashion magazine, looking for new trends to incorporate in her costume work. It wasn’t easy being one of the people who had to help glamour the more non-human paranormals in the office when they had to go out. Point may know how to wear a suit well enough, but the slate-blue skin and needle-like teeth were a bit off-putting to folks who didn’t know about the existence of trolls.
“I have no idea,” Caroline huffed. “It’s tough to write a serious paper that sounds like I mean the whole thing even though I know better about certain subjects. Like, I can’t just conveniently forget that humans and elves aren’t the only sentient beings that might get prosecuted, you know? Even if my professor doesn’t have any idea.”
“I hear you. I spent my whole school life pretending that I didn’t exist,” Stevie rolled her eyes. “And don’t even get me started on the history units we had to study about the Mad Mage Wars. I mean, I know that we paranormals very deliberately erased ourselves from historical texts for our own safety, but jeez. Some of the nonsense that we made up to cover our own existence is kind of ridiculous.”
Caroline laughed. “I can’t even imagine.” She sighed and drained the last of her coffee. “Well, I guess it’s time to go show my face out there. We’ve got some thefts to sort out.”
“Good hunting!” Stevie waved and turned back to her magazine.
Caroline tossed the empty cup into the trash and wound her way through the desks in the bullpen, greeting a few folks as she went. Greg and Zanna were heading towards the door, and she waved to them as they left. Darien’s desk chair was empty and his computer screen was dark, so Caroline assumed that he hadn’t come in yet for some reason. Or maybe he was in another part of the building.
With a small shrug to herself, she sat in her own chair and booted up her work machine. A stic
ky note sat upside down, leaning on the corner of her keyboard as if it had fallen off her monitor. When she picked it up, it was a note from Darien saying that he was going to stake out the museum at the same time as the original theft since Rebecca Misstlethwaite felt strongly that the thief didn’t get what they wanted. The guards remembered seeing the jar on their rounds at 5 am, and the display case was wide open at 6 am, so Darien had likely been there for hours already. Assuming he was still there. He must have stuck the note to her monitor before heading out last night.
Caroline sent him a quick text as her desktop loaded up, just to check in with him, and then turned her attention to her email. That odd message from the other day caught her attention again. Lucas, asking after their health.
Lucas… Caroline frowned for a moment then banged out a quick email reply.
Lucas,
Greg and Darien are both doing fine. Stakeouts and paperwork, so pretty normal life for us here. We’re working on a series of recent thefts of magic-related artifacts (artifacts that either were enchanted or were once owned by mages) across about four states. Aside from the fact that they all fall into our jurisdiction, we can't seem to see a pattern.
You seem to have a knack for knowing things. You wouldn’t know anything about this, would you?
-Caroline
Her cursor hovered over the send button for a long moment before she clicked it. Lucas was definitely the sort of person who would adopt the definition of the law to his own ends. He could pick locks and was perfectly comfortable breaking and entering places, she knew those for the fact they were, having seen him do both with her own eyes.
She also knew that he had a pretty serious personal moral code. She just wasn’t entirely sure where on his personal good-to-evil spectrum this sort of crime spree would fall. After another minute of staring, she shook herself and stabbed at the mouse. There, sent.
Legacy of the Mad Mages Page 2
