Shannon looked at me for a moment before saying softly, “What if Mariana and Ember and I end up having to go to Cavaliers and we get caught too… and then it's just you. Alone.”
I nodded, swallowing hard at the thought.
“Believe me, that crossed my mind too. But there's no use in worrying about it right now. Maybe the information we got from Dani will be enough to help us somehow. At least we know that he and Thomas are okay. For now. That means that TS and Charlie probably are too.”
“Yeah, that's true.” I was still fiddling with my phone and the motion turned the screen on.
Shannon glanced down at it, then back up to me. “You missed a call.”
“Rachel.”
“Oh,” she said softly. Then with a wince, she murmured, “Christmas.”
I nodded sadly. I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I managed to weasel my way out of going home for Thanksgiving; there was no way Rachel was going to willingly let me miss Christmas as well. Especially when she still hadn't come around to the fact I was living in New York. But I just couldn't imagine doing all of our usual Christmas Eve activities – watching movies and baking cookies and reading holiday books – any of it while Thomas and Dani and now TS and Charlie were gone.
Rachel would certainly ask about Thomas. It was hard enough lying to her over the phone, telling her everything was fine, that Thomas was fine, New York was great…
“Has your mom said anything?” I asked hopefully.
Like her sister, my Aunt Ruth was an interior designer, but my stepmother stayed close to home, mainly doing staging for real estate agents and some design here and there for contractors she had arrangements with. The moment Shannon went away to college, Aunt Ruth started accepting jobs with clients for vacation properties and distant hotels. You never knew where she would be next. But over the years, even though she worked odd, long hours in faraway places, she somehow always managed to be home to celebrate Christmas the same way we had for as long as I could remember.
I hoped that maybe this year, with Shannon and I both living out of state and the fact we were both in our late twenties, would have been different. I could tell immediately from the way Shannon's lips thinned what the answer was.
“She knows that I'm taking an extended vacation to be with you,” Shannon said softly. “I think she’s convinced I’m moving to New York and just haven’t told her yet… so she sees no reason not to expect me home for Christmas, with you.”
I sighed, not the answer I was hoping for, but not all that surprising.
“Maybe,” Shannon began, in a tone that clearly said she didn't believe it, “it'll be a nice mental break from all this.”
I snorted softly.
A small feeling of hope stirred in Rak. “Maybe we’ll find them before Christmas.”
Not likely, considering it was next weekend. In fact, I realized with a groan, given that it was well after midnight, Christmas Eve was in exactly a week and I was supposed to fly back the day before.
“Let’s hope so,” I said grimly.
Shannon put an arm around me, giving me a small half-hug. “You should try to sleep. With any luck, it'll be a busy day tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Shannon.”
“Anytime cousin,” she said, squeezing a little harder.
After she was gone, I curled up in the bed, with Rak on my pillow. I fell asleep to the sound of him purring.
Chapter Three
Jen
I thought the day after Thomas and Dani disappeared was one of the worst ever, but the day after Charlie and TS did easily surpassed it.
Jon had reluctantly helped us plan for the night Thomas and Dani tried to infiltrate Cavaliers and was able to arrange a cover story for them at work. Since TS and Charlie elected to do things without Jon this time, it fell to us to break the news that not only were Thomas and Dani still gone, but now TS and Charlie were too; this time against his express wishes. Jon didn't seem surprised, resigned maybe, as if he had expected it to happen, but he was certainly upset.
We spent the better part of the morning in his office. He took a short break to make arrangements so it looked like Charlie and TS were simply taking an early Christmas vacation. Unfortunately, it did nothing to quiet the whispers I heard throughout the day from people who thought it was somewhat suspicious that four, generally inseparable, agents were all gone, especially now that it had been six months since anyone heard from Dani and Thomas. I just hoped that if anyone involved with Cavaliers was in our office or connected enough to MES to hear what was going on they wouldn't make the connection between their recruitment dates and the absent agents.
Once that was dealt with, Jon sat with us and we analyzed every word of Dani’s message, which Ember had recorded on her phone.
I thought maybe the message would get easier after hearing it fifty times, but I was wrong. Just to make matters worse, even after analyzing it with Jon, we were no closer to answers. He told he us remembered hearing about two agents who had been turned, but confessed that since it hadn't happened in one of our neighboring field offices and he had only been responsible for our office at the time, he hadn't paid much attention to it.
I spent the afternoon trying to work, while stealing glances at my phone for updates from Shannon. Since she wasn’t trapped at MES all day with us, she had decided to go back to the campground and hang around – with the promise she wouldn’t do anything reckless – to keep an eye on the bus.
My relief when it was time to go home faded quickly when I got into the car with Ember and got a good look at her face; it was clear she hadn’t turned up anything in her search of the database. Mariana joined us and we started a quiet ride home.
Soon, the three of us were gathered in the living room in a silence just as oppressive as the car had been.
“Well?” Mariana finally said when it became apparent Ember was reluctant to speak.
Ember sighed. “I don't think I found anything useful,”
she said grimly. “Both Victor and Reave for sure have had their files altered, anything related to MES is long gone. I had to go through all of the personnel records in New York and it took me a while, but I finally found a log of a Reave and Victor who worked in the same field office. There was nothing useful in their files though or anything like a clue to where they are now.”
“That’s it?” Mariana asked sadly.
“Unfortunately,” Ember said with a nod. “All I found was enough to confirm what Dani told us. Now, thanks to Dani, we do know that witches and wizards are involved, so I took another look at the employees at Cavaliers.”
“And?” I asked, even though her eyes were slowly smoldering with dark shades of red.
Unsurprisingly, she shook her head. “None of them have anything in their files that has been altered or looks in any way suspicious. Either they're hiring normal witches and wizards who have no idea what's going on or they're hiring people specifically who work there and have nothing to do with the castle. And then…” Ember glanced over her notes, then shrugged. “I tried to find this Adaira witch that Dani mentioned. I couldn’t find anyone with that name.”
“A fake name?” I asked.
“Fake, deleted, or I'm spelling it horribly wrong, but I tried several different combinations and search criteria and didn’t find anything even close.”
“What now then?” Mariana asked.
The three of us looked at each other wordlessly. Nobody knew. I could sense Rak was thinking hard, but he didn’t have any suggestions either. He jumped up onto the couch next to me and rubbed against me.
Even though I wanted her to be safe, I found myself hoping that Shannon would call with news that something was happening at the campground. Instead, I woke up hours later to the feel of my phone buzzing from a text from Shannon. Everything at the campground was quiet and she was heading home.
~~~***~~~
The rest of the week was strange and torturous. Every day moved at a snail's pace, minute
s ticking by like hours as I toiled away at work, sneaking glances at the files on the people who vanished from Cavaliers, looking for anything I might have missed.
Shannon spent her days and some nights at the campground but wasn’t having any luck; the bus was always parked in the same place and smelled exactly the same every time she checked it. One day she even put a couple of acorns under the wheels, so that if the bus moved at all she would know. By the time the week ended the acorns were intact and Shannon had yet to see or smell anything suspicious.
A couple of nights after work we drove all the way to Cavaliers to look for familiar faces like Victor or Anthony or the fire elemental woman, but we never saw them.
Ember hadn’t found anything new in her files either.
We were just as clueless and frustrated as we had been for six long, agonizing months. Except now it was worse; none of the information from Dani had led to anything, the campground was proving useless, and instead of just two friends, now four were gone. Our group – people I thought of as family – was cut in half. Sometimes I wondered if they felt as helpless and hopeless as we did, other times I decided I didn’t want to know.
Then of course, there was the fact we didn’t know if any of them were okay…
As awful as it had been missing Thomas and Dani all of these months there was always some measure of comfort that TS could sense Thomas enough that he was confident he’d know if something happened to either of them. Now we had nothing; all four of them could be dead now for all we knew. None of their fake profiles had been updated to deceased, but we also had no idea how regularly the files were updated.
We just had to keep hoping and trying.
As slowly as the days passed individually, I felt as if I blinked and it was time to go to Maryland for Christmas. So many wasted days and now the entire weekend would be a loss. If nothing else, I tried to take comfort in the fact Shannon was going with me. At first that made it worse, stressing that something would happen at the campground while she was away, but after an entire week with no movement we decided the bus likely wasn't going anywhere. If the bus was going to leave at all, we suspected it would be Friday night again, so we all drove to the campground together after work and waited until the early hours of the morning, taking turns sleeping in the uncomfortable car seats, before concluding that the bus was there to stay.
We drove back home, tired and miserable. There was just enough time to take a quick shower and grab my suitcase, then Shannon and I had to get on a plane to go to Maryland. It certainly wasn't how I wanted to spend the weekend, but there really wasn't anything else we could do. Even though it would only be for a couple of days I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something major would happen while we were away.
I hated this struggle, balancing my magic with my non-magic life. Granted, it wasn't usually for reasons this extreme but it was still unpleasant. If I could just tell my stepmother the truth about what was happening, I wouldn’t be in this position, I’d be in New York trying to find Thomas and the others, not dreading what should have been a fun Christmas and lying to my stepmother about, well, everything.
Then again, in all honesty, I hadn't been entirely truthful with my birth mother either. I told her that Thomas was on some sort of extended undercover mission for MES and left it at that. It was enough information that I had a sympathetic parent, asking how he was and checking in on me, but not so much that she would worry, especially when I knew there was a possibility that I was going to try to go after him. Even though we always made time for each other during the holiday season, around my non-magic obligations, she understood that I wasn't really in the mood to celebrate this year, so we settled on meeting for coffee. That was before TS and Charlie vanished, when I was in a bit of a better mood. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to convince her everything was all right the next time we saw each other. Bad enough I wasn’t sure if I could even keep my stepmother from being suspicious for the entire weekend.
It wasn’t as if I needed anything else to bring me down, but then I got a painful reminder about the grim reality of having a non-magic family as soon as we knocked on the door.
It was a fact of life as a magic that someday I would have to drift apart from my non-magic family and friends as I stopped aging and they didn't. I always thought the main reason was so that they didn't notice, but I was starting to learn that there were plenty of potions and things we could use to alter our appearances to keep them from getting suspicious. The problem was that when you got too attached to non-magics it was really hard to remove yourself from them. It was made easier by the fact that magics had an innate sort of defense mechanism which gradually erased us from the minds of non-magics we encountered, depending on how well they knew you.
As long as you stayed in regular contact with them, you were fine; you could also jog their memory if you wanted to. In all the chaos with Thomas and the others it never occurred to me that it might happen with Rachel. But these last few months were the longest I had ever gone without seeing her since becoming a witch. In fact, I was pretty sure it was the longest we had ever spent apart since she married my father. It also didn't help that I was avoiding her calls because I wasn't sure how well I could keep her from suspecting something was wrong.
Even though I knew the whole forgetting me thing was an inevitable fact of life as a magic I was completely unprepared for when Rachel opened the door, frowned at me a moment and then turned to my cousin, who was related to her by blood and thus easier to remember.
“Shannon!” Rachel cried, holding her arms out. “I'm so glad you could come! Merry Christmas!” As they hugged Shannon turned slightly over her shoulder, shooting me a look of alarm. I forced a smile as they started to break apart and Rachel's eyes landed on me again, slightly narrowed as if she recognized me but couldn't place me.
“Merry Christmas, Rachel,” I said, with as much cheer as I could muster. “It's me, Jen. I'm home.”
The frown was immediately replaced by a broad smile. “Of course you're Jen,” she said with a laugh. “Who else would you be?” Then she threw her arms around me joyfully. “Merry Christmas, Jenny! I've missed you so much.”
“Are the girls here?” I heard Aunt Ruth call from the other room, as my stepmother ushered us in.
“Hi, Mom,” Shannon said.
“Hi, baby,” Aunt Ruth called back. “I've got flour all over me, but come on in.”
“Go say hello, then why don’t you take a few minutes to get settled and then come bake with us,” Rachel suggested.
Still lugging the cat carrier, I followed Shannon into the kitchen and found Aunt Ruth and my half-sister Emily, both covered in flour.
“Hey Jenny,” Emily said with a grin.
“Merry Christmas, Em,” I said, giving her a hug.
She bent immediately to examine the carrier I was holding. “You did bring Whiskers! Hey, buddy.” She poked her fingers into the crate.
I set it down and opened the door to let him out. He took a few sniffs of the kitchen and then poofed up his fur.
“Oh.” Rak said disdainfully. “There are other cats here now.” He sniffed again. “Two of them.”
The fact there were two cats was news to me and I very nearly blurted it out, before remembering that Emily couldn't hear my familiar. Fortunately, I was spared when Emily groaned and said, “Oh, no, I didn't get a chance to lock up the new kittens!”
“Kittens plural?” I asked.
“Early Christmas gift,” she laughed, before turning a concerned look to Rak. “I know Whiskers is sweet, but do you think he’ll be okay? I can find them and put them in my room.”
“I’ll stay out of their way,” Rak promised.
“He’ll be fine,” I said.
“Okay.” Emily gave him a couple more strokes, leaving a dusting of flour on his inky fur. “I'm glad to see you're taking good care of my cat.”
“I think at this point we can safely say he's mine,” I chuckled.
She playfully stu
ck her tongue out at me, gave Rak one last scratch behind his ears, and then stood and returned to the cookies.
For the first time in a while I felt a genuine smile as I remembered meeting Rak for the first time. He showed up at my house while I was away; by the time I was back he had Emily and Rachel wrapped around his proverbial finger. Unbeknownst to them, of course, he was my familiar and would have been living with us either way, but it was much easier to have him already accepted and settled in as part of the family without having to pressure them into it.
Rak padded over to the cat bowls and took a sniff. “They don't have anything weird like medicated food, do they?” he asked.
“Is it okay if, uh, Whiskers has some?” I asked, stumbling over the name Emily had given him years ago. I was out of practice.
“Yeah, it's just regular cat food,” Emily said. “I don't think Norma and Betty will mind.”
“Sure, they get normal names,” Rak muttered, before curling his tail around his feet and settling in to eat.
“Well, they aren’t royalty,” I chuckled, smiling again; a much-younger Emily had dubbed him Lord Whiskers Fluffington the Fourth.
“What?” Emily asked.
I winced at the question; I had replied to Rak without even thinking.
“I asked you if the kittens are royal too,” I fibbed. “Like Lord Whiskers.”
“Oh.” To my relief, she laughed and flushed a little. “My cat names have gotten a little less… grandiose.”
“So, what are you hoping Santa brings you?” I asked, quickly changing the subject while looking around the kitchen for something to do to contribute to the cookie making. I could have stopped to settle in, but I figured the sooner I was immersed in the annual Christmas traditions, the sooner I could try to get my mind off of what was happening in my magic life.
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 55
