Wizard Hall Chronicles Box Set

by Sheryl Steines

  Annie smiled. “Good.” There wasn’t time for more, as Jack’s car pulled up to the curb. She sat in the front seat, leaving Ryan to sit in back of the SUV.

  “Nice car,” Annie said.

  “Better for traveling. So based on the time, I expect we’re teleporting from somewhere,” he said as he pulled from the curb.

  “Yeah. Drive here and I’ll teleport us to Indiana.” She gave him a location and he headed toward the highway.

  “What’s the goal for today?” Jack asked.

  Annie was searching her tote bag for items pertaining to the Fraternitatem. She glanced at Jack. “I need Rathbone to give me as much information about the Fraternitatem as possible. He killed my dad for them, so he should know something useful.”

  “Is he going to ask for something in return?” Jack inquired.

  Ryan chuckled from the back seat. “Probably. I’m here for that.”

  “Follow along that way,” Annie directed as Jack pulled into an industrial area. “There’s a space through the trees. We’ll take it from there.”

  Jack did as instructed, pulling into a hidden spot along the trees. He held on to the steering wheel with a tight grip. Annie glanced at Ryan, placed her hand on the console, and teleported them several hundred miles away.

  While the process took less than a minute, it felt like hours as the world flew past them in multiple colors. When they landed beside another industrial complex in a thick swatch of trees, Jack was pale green and confused. He pushed open the car door and slipped out. He bent over and sucked in air, waiting for the dizziness and nausea to abate.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” he said when he re-entered the car and glanced at Annie. Her eyes were closed; she had sweat along her forehead.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s exhausting using so much magic. But I’ll be fine.” She offered a wan smile. “You would get used to it if you hung out with us more. You okay to drive?” Annie asked.

  He nodded and started the car again.

  “Take that road,” Annie said, pointing.

  He nodded but made no motion to move. He took several deep breaths before he was able to pull out and follow the road toward the highway.

  “Why is that still so hard?” he asked.

  “You have no magic. You’re doing a great job dealing with it though,” Ryan said.

  Jack glanced quickly at his GPS, it was taking time to reload after the teleportation. When it finished, he found they were twenty minutes from the prison. “I checked. He hasn’t been visited since he’s been there. He’s been well behaved, reads a lot,” he said.

  They continued in silence as Jack followed the signs to the federal prison.

  He showed his FBI badge to the officers at the gate and they were waved inside. Jack drove until he found a convenient parking location where they exited and followed him into the building. They each showed their FBI badge and were asked to relinquish any guns. Jack signed them in.

  “We’re here to see Wolfgange Rathbone,” he said.

  The guards looked at each other before turning back to Jack. “We knew you were coming which is why we hadn’t called. He was murdered in his cell last night,” said an officer with a nametag identifying him as Justin Smith.

  Annie felt her heart pound when she looked at Jack and Ryan.

  “That’s unfortunate as we’re here on another case that he had information on. May we look at his cell and his things to see if it can help?” Jack asked.

  “Yes. We were told you can have the time you need,” Justin said.

  They were led through the corridors, past the first security desk, and down a corridor of cells. The doors were thick metal with small, dense windows in the upper half of the cell door.

  Rathbone’s cell door was left ajar. Annie and Ryan glanced inside; the bed was covered in blood, and a handmade shank lay on the floor.

  “It’s been gone through with a team?” Annie asked.

  “Yes. We left it for you to see,” Justin said.

  “Do you mind if we have some privacy?” Annie asked. “The case is restricted.”

  Justin nodded and left them to examine the room.

  Annie saw the camera in the top corner of the small cell and discreetly shut it down before summing a crystal for Ryan. “I’ll take pictures,” she said.

  Ryan traversed the small room capturing magical signatures as Annie took out her phone, snapping pictures of the bed and the blood pool, the knife on the floor, the blood spatter across the wall. When she finished, she donned rubber gloves and perused the books he had been able to keep in his cell, many of which were antique, dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There were books on philosophy, horticulture, the occult. She opened each, scanned the pages, and found several sticky notes in Rathbone’s script. He seemed to have settled in the past year, according to several notes proclaiming his guilt and his wishes for things to have been different. She showed Jack.

  “Sometimes they grow a conscience,” Jack said as he read the notes.

  “I wouldn’t have expected it from Rathbone, though. He’s without magic, living like a commoner,” she joked.

  “Is that what we are?” Jack asked.

  “Not really.” Annie picked up the final book, a new edition of Dante’s Inferno. The front page had the world ‘Fraternitatem’ scribbled across the top. She shuffled through the pages. Some had letters circled or squares drawn around them.

  “That mean anything?” Jack asked.

  “The Inferno? Not sure.” Annie shrunk the book and pocketed the tome.

  Ryan tapped Annie’s shoulder and showed her the crystal, which was now full of multiple magical signatures. She pocketed the crystal and texted Bucky asking for a list of prison employees.

  “Damn, what a mess. The guy deserved life in prison. Not this,” Annie said. She sidestepped the blood and pulled up the thin mattress. On the underside, she found a slit and dug inside, pulling out an envelope addressed to her.

  Beyond the door, footsteps clacked against the cement floor. She pocketed the letter as a second security guard passed by. She glanced around the small cell; Rathbone had very little to remind him of better days. “He didn’t keep much.” Ryan finished a search of items on Rathbone’s shelf and checked the toilet tank.

  “Anything?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing. Maybe he was repentant,” Ryan surmised, but neither wizard guard believed that.

  “If you’re ready, we can leave,” Ryan said. Annie nodded and discreetly reset the camera. Jack led them from the room to the security desk.

  “I think we’re good. We didn’t see anything.” They were buzzed through. “Let me know what turns up from the investigation,” Jack said to the security guard.

  They remained silent as they were escorted back outside. “Thanks for your time,” Jack said. At the SUV, they slipped inside their seats. Jack pulled away. It was then that Annie finally felt comfortable.

  Jack said, “Well?”

  “There’s magic inside the cell. We’ll search for the signatures in our magical database and compare them to anyone who recently got a job at the prison,” Ryan said.

  “He wasn’t killed with magic, was he?” Jack asked.

  “I did not capture a kill spell. Without the body, we won’t know for sure. I did find teleportation spells and what looks like a freeze spell of some kind. He was probably murdered with the shank,” Ryan said.

  Jack pulled out of the parking lot and followed the quiet, empty road to the highway. The car bounced and the engine hummed.

  “I found a book with the word ‘Fraternitatem ‘on the front page. He left me this.” Annie held out the letter.

  “He must have known who it was and what was going to happen,” Jack surmised.

  Annie opened the envelope.

  Annie Pearce,

  I recognized him as soon as I saw him. Benjamin Baker. At least that is what I’ve known him to be called. You put me in here, and while I am s
ure you would do what you could to get me out of here and back to Tartarus Prison, it will be too late. They will kill me because they do not want me to talk. I have left you a book. Read it. It will help you stop them.

  You were a worthy adversary.

  Wolfgange Rathbone

  *

  Annie sat in her club chair across from her desk, placed her legs up and stared at the note from Rathbone. “I left you a book,” he had written her. She assumed she pulled the correct book, as it was the only one with his handwriting in the margins.

  I hope it’s the right book.

  She sighed, placed the note inside of the book, and opened it to the title page.

  Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

  She found his choice of books telling as she began skimming page one. He clearly wanted her to know something. Each time she found a letter circled, she noted it on a pad of paper. There had been no other notes in the margins, and after an hour, she found one word: September 1.

  September 1?

  It was a day known through the magical world: the Day of First Sun, the anniversary of the day the portal between the magical and nonmagical worlds was closed permanently. On that day, demons and magical creatures that were already on Earth were trapped there, and other demons and magical creatures wanting in were no longer able to enter. All wizards across the world knew that magic was the strongest on that day, when all magicals had a power boost. Annie shuddered.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” she murmured.

  Annie placed Rathbone’s note in this spot. She would pick up the search later. In the meantime, she stood and stretched, put the book in her field pack, and headed out.

  *

  Annie watched the traffic below Ryan’s office.

  “We assume they’ve been watching you for years. So why wouldn’t they put someone in the prison to watch him?” Ryan said.

  Annie leaned against the wall. Hundreds of people streamed out of the surrounding office buildings. None of them would ever know of the situation within these walls.

  Wouldn’t it be nice to be them?

  She loved her life, her magic, knowing what creatures hid in the dark. But now, with the stress near its breaking point, with the strange magic coursing through her, she wondered what it would have been like had she not known, had she gone to college and done something else. She sighed.

  “I asked Bucky to search for Benjamin Baker.” She continued to watch people leave the building across the street.

  The office door opened and footsteps shuffled against the short, weaved carpet. Milo, Cham, Spencer, Lial, Brite, and Shiff took a seat across from Ryan. They were closely followed by Eddy and Isaak; neither man had ever had occasion to be in the Grand Marksman’s office and they shifted between looking at his office in awe and in terror of being there.

  Annie sat beside Brite and gave a rundown of the events at the prison.

  “It makes sense that they kept an eye on him,” Cham said. “He must have known a lot of information. I’m sorry I hadn’t thought to ask him what he knew beforehand.”

  “Rathbone let me know he knew Benjamin Baker, so we’re starting there. If this Baker received orders to kill him, he either knew Jack was going to speak with Rathbone or someone told the Fraternitatem we were coming and had him offed, so to speak. Is there any other point in this process where we could have a mole, someone watching Annie at Wizard Hall?” Ryan asked.

  “I didn’t have time to fully vet Joseph Agrante from the market, though South Africa did verify him. Fabien Arnault was here, as were all the American wizard guards, plus I’ve been in contact with Mortimer and Arrowhead at the market. But I never told any of them what we were doing,” Annie said.

  Ryan, keeping things informal when he could, stood and leaned against his desk, crossing his arms. He looked at Annie briefly and said, “Let’s look at this rationally. Mortimer and Arrowhead weren’t here in the building, so rule them out for now. Everyone else on your list could have, at one time or another, placed a bug in your cubicle. I suggest you ask Graham to debug Annie’s cubicle.”

  Annie tapped her fingers against Rathbone’s tome.

  “All the satellite offices have been in this week. It could be any of us,” Eddy said.

  “I chose the two of you for this because you’ve been here for over a year and your records are clean. Do I have a reason to question that?” Cham asked.

  “No. Not with me, Cham,” Eddy said.

  “Nor I,” Isaak answered next.

  Milo said. “You need to think farther back. They’ve been watching Annie for years.”

  “Having said that, are you in cahoots with them?” Annie asked Milo.

  He laughed. “No, but I’m glad you’re not ruling anyone out. Gibbs was the only older member beside Ryan.” He stared at the Grand Marksman.

  “Really, no.”

  “The rest of the team from back then is no longer in the Guard. I haven’t seen anyone come in. I’ve been here all week,” Spencer said.

  “It stays in this office. Do not discuss with anyone. I’m serious about that,” Cham said. He typed on his phone. “I will handle the leak. Eddy and Isaak, you were at Gloriana’s house today. Anything?”

  “Nothing to report,” Eddy said. “We’ll go back and stay through midnight if that works for Milo and Lial.” Both men nodded.

  “I have something I need to take care of. I think we’re done for now.” Cham dismissed the meeting and watched until everyone left except for himself, Annie, and Ryan. He closed the door. “I’ll have Bucky pull all Wizard Guard employee records for employees who have been hired in the last year, including their background checks. I want to make sure we didn’t miss something glaring.”

  “Pay attention to Starla. She likes you,” Annie said.

  “I’ve noticed. She spent thirty minutes in my office trying to keep an inane conversation going.” Cham grimaced. “It’s a weird way to get rid of her competition.”

  “That’s not funny,” Ryan chastised.

  “I don’t think it is. What if it’s someone we trust?” Cham asked.

  “Keep it to the smaller group. Just be careful,” Ryan said.

  *

  Annie landed behind a chimney on the roof top of Samantha and John’s townhouse. She adjusted the placement of the table and chairs and patted down the cushions and pillows on the outdoor furniture. She leaned against the half wall at the edge of the rooftop and stared at the amazing cityscape before returning her attention to the courtyard below.

  Townhouses wrapped around the courtyard, a lush, green lawn with six-foot-tall trees lining two sides. Even in the middle of the day, it was filled with young families, older couples, and teenagers. Children ran with wild abandon, families tossed balls back and forth, and people sat on blankets reading or eating, generally enjoying the beautiful summer afternoon.

  As much as she tried to not look at the corner townhouse, Annie couldn’t help but stare at it. It was the same as all of the others in this development, nothing exceptional about it except for the secret inside. She caught Brite’s gaze. He nodded and returned to his hiding spot as they waited for the family to make an appearance.

  Annie returned to viewing the courtyard and took notice of a young boy around twelve or thirteen walking along the sidewalk that trailed around the townhomes. There was nothing unusual about his backpack as he slung it over his shoulder or his colorful shorts and T-shirt. What made Annie stop and hold her breath was the shocking curly, red hair that fell into his eyes.

  He’s curly like me and Sami!

  As she watched, Shiloh King-Solomon casually strolled home, pulled open the gate, and entered the house. Within minutes, he reemerged without his backpack and carrying a skateboard. He headed back toward the road where he stepped on the board and pumped his arms as he moved. Annie teleported behind the garage, hit the sidewalk, and followed the boy.

  He maneuvered his skateboard through the human traffic along the sidewalk and stopped at a corner
convenience store, just as Shiff and Brite had reported. Annie caught up, entered after him, and stopped along the first aisle. While she casually examined the junk food, she occasionally glanced up quickly, taking note where he was, and watched him pour himself a fountain drink. Annie picked up a box of crackers and read the ingredients list before looking up again. Shiloh was now at the donuts, choosing a chocolate-covered cake one. With his items, he patiently waited in line to pay for his snack and thanked the cashier when it was his turn. Annie noticed his thick accent.

  He’s definitely not from here.

  After paying, he left the store and started up on his skateboard. Giving him a five-minute head start, Annie paid for several candy bars before exiting. Shiloh was already a block and a half from her. He appeared to be acting responsibly, looking both ways at the stop sign, picking up his skateboard as he crossed and started again, slowing down to pass a mother with a baby.

  Clearly already acclimated to his life here, the boy found a spot in the courtyard against a thick tree in the center and pulled a book from his jacket. He found his page and began to read while enjoying his snack.

  Annie strolled across the lawn to Samantha’s house, entered the gate, and let herself into the foyer. She watched the boy for several minutes. He did nothing suspicious, just acting like a perfectly normal thirteen-year-old. She held her breath when Emily crossed the courtyard and met her son. Their mother knelt beside the boy and offered him a hug, Annie chuckled when Shiloh pulled away.

  “Mom,” he complained. Annie didn’t need to hear what he said; she could read his lips.

  Since she had grown up with her father, Kathy, and Ryan, this exchange seemed foreign to her. In a way, she envied her half-brother because of the time he had time with Emily.

  But was it happy with the Fraternitatem?

  More than envy, however, she felt anger at the Fraternitatem and hoped that was what would sustain her after she finally met her mother.

  Chapter 16

  Annie dropped her bag on her desk. While she waited for her computer to load, she pulled out a picture of her and her mother taken about six months before Emily’s recorded death. After seeing Emily with Shiloh the day before, Annie had spent the evening searching through her early baby pictures, looking for any sign of when things had changed for her mother. She stared at each picture with a magnifying glass, asking herself if Emily’s smile had changed, if her eyes were growing wide with fear, if she was pulling away from the family.