"Did she disappear? Like a shade? Was she a shade?" I asked frantically pointing where Dan had struck down the witch. The look of complete confusion on Sarah's face compelled me to attempt to explain further, "After I passed out, I mean. The witch. She was here, right?" When Sarah jumped to her feet and approached at a speed just short of running, I knew there was a problem. Sarah had been a fair distance away, crouched near the edge of the chalked magic circles around the table with spider eggs underneath. I knew the witch had not been a magic construct; she had been a human. Did we just walk directly into a trap? "Did one of you move her after I passed out?"
"What are you babbling about?" Sarah said as she approached. As soon as she saw the empty spot on the floor, words spilled from her mouth, "Shit, shit, shit." She spun and pounded back up the stairwell. I was momentarily dazed at her abrupt departure and had to scramble to catch up.
When we were both outside Sarah said, "We have a problem." Her voice was much too loud for the stillness outside. I nervously glanced at the nearby houses, but they were all far away.
"Let me finish this last screw," Dan said as he fumbled in his pocket. I pushed on the plywood to hold it in place while he focused on retrieving the screw.
"She is not there," I said in a steady quiet voice despite my terror. Dan drove the screw home but still went for another screw, so I repeated myself in a strained more urgent tone, "She is gone." At last, he seemed to hear me and gave me an incredulous look.
"Okay, let me just finish with this. We'll talk inside," Dan's eyes bounced uneasily between Sarah and me. "I'll be done quickly, okay?"
After a moment of hesitation, I retreated into the house and was joined immediately by Sarah. Her eyes darted around the room; she flipped a few more light switches and began pacing on as we waited for Dan and Chris to join us. "Did he not understand what you said?" Sarah said in an exasperated tone as she dropped heavily onto a seat near the shattered and now partially plywood-covered window. The loud buzzing of Dan screwing in another plywood anchor made her jump. "Fuck!" She put her head in her hands. "Why the hell did we even come back here again?" I did not know what to say so I just sat down next to her and stared down at the coffee table in front of me.
Eventually, Dan and Chris joined us after their work was finished and we led the two of them downstairs. The witch's body was still missing. We quickly checked the entire house looking for clues as to what might have happened. The only thing we discovered was that the back door was unlocked and not fully closed.
"Dan, you made sure to lock that door when we left, right?" Sarah asked as we walked back to the main seating area at the front of the house.
"No, I think I just grabbed her keys and locked the front door from the outside yesterday. I didn't even think to check the back," Dan replied, his brow furrowed. "We came in the front, remember?"
"We should leave," Chris said. "She might come back at any time."
"She was dead," Dan said quietly. "I checked her pulse."
"So, something or someone showed up after us and moved her. That means they might come back," Chris said nervously.
"We do not have any other leads though," I said uneasily. "We should look around for any information we can before leaving."
"And then we can't come back here. Ever," Dan added.
"Good, I agree. We'll just have to find out whatever we can now," Sarah said. "Someone should find her mail, I'll look for record cabinets or whatever files she has, and someone else should look for hidden compartments."
"Why would she hide anything?" I asked, confused. "She has a whole room and about half of her basement filled with magic circles."
"Well, the circles are why I brought this," Chris said holding up the camera. "I figured I should document them. Maybe with Laura's mom's spellbook we can figure out what she was doing. Maybe copy some of them. Shooting lighting sounds fun."
"I bet a lot of the circles are for summoning shades," Dan said. "Well, I'll go grab her mail."
"Which room had them all?" Chris asked. I pointed to the room opposite the witch's bedroom. "Ah, I'll start taking pictures there and move to the basement after."
"I bet her files are in the bedroom. Hopefully I didn't torch them," Sarah said with a hollow laugh.
"That leaves me to look for hidden stuff in the other rooms and basement, I guess," I said. "We'll meet back here with anything we find, okay?" With a shrug, Dan left by the front door first before we all set to work on our tasks.
I headed for the hallway and glanced into each of the rooms quickly: bedroom, empty room with wall-to-wall circles with Chris taking pictures, bathroom, another bedroom, and an office. The quickest place to check would have been the circle room, but I did not want to interfere with Chris's photography. The 'magic circle room' at first glance was completely empty except for a closet, so I doubted there would be anything in there and if there was Chris would take care of it.
The best bet had to be the small office. I guessed it could contain some paperwork that might give us some background information on her. As I scoured the room, I found it was rather austere save for an expensive wooden writing desk that did not seem to fit with the rest of the décor of the house. It seemed too old and fancy compared to the rest of her furnishings. The desk had two bulky side drawers and had a locking retractable lid that could cover the entire top of the desk. Thankfully the lid was retracted, and I was glad that I did not have to go hunting for the key. The desktop was bare except for a stapler, a reel of clear tape, and a worn notebook. I flipped through the notebook, but the college ruled pages were blank. Moving onto the drawers, I was lucky to find that they were also both unlocked.
I quickly pulled out the drawer on the right side to find it filled with folders stuffed with loose papers. The drawer on the right side of the desk had unused supplies: blank lined paper, pens, pencils, erasers, empty folders, and more. I pulled that drawer out as well, but only to check for a false bottom or any other hidden compartments which would be visible only after the drawer was taken out. Groping around with my hand into the desk's internals, I could not find anything in, along, or behind the two side drawers.
The middle of the desk also had a very shallow drawer which held a few pens and pencils as well as a large square eraser. This drawer did not seem like it matched up with the external dimensions of the desk and pulling on it seemed to engage some sort of mechanism to retain it, unlike the other two drawers. I was slightly tempted to go fetch a hammer to speed up this process. Instead, I emptied the tray of items and started trying to pry along its edges. My gloved fingers eventually found a small peg in the back of the drawer which could be pushed downward. As soon as I fully depressed it a small pop issued from the drawer and the entire bottom of the drawer easily lifted out.
Below the cover were rows of agate marbles set firmly into felt. Each of the holes for the spheres had tiny gaps to keep them from rattling even when one sharply pulled on the drawer. Curiously, the names of each of the various types of agate immediately jumped into my mind when I saw them. There were a variety of colors and types: light green, yellow, and even blues of iris agate, dark greens for the moss agate, black rings for onyx, pink rings on laguna, blue thunderegg, red condor, and more. Each stone was a fragment cut from a geode, set in clear epoxy, and polished carefully into a smooth sphere. This information poured in from Aurora's memories. Either she had been a big fan of minerals, something I suspected was highly unlikely, or these somehow had an arcane use. Could they be useful in guardian-based magic as well as witch-based magic?
I reached into the drawer, drawn to the alternating bands of soft blues and whites of a thunderegg marble, and pulled it out. There was a dull thrum in my fingers that felt like the echoes of a false vibration as I held the sphere. It must have contained some kind of magic, but I could not gauge if it was a huge reserve or a faint trickle, only that it was there. From a cursory glance at the other stones there were no outward signs of the power that could be contained within them. As I stared at the small stone, a strange feeling of fear came over me and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. What if this object was cursed or dangerous? I pushed the sphere immediately back into the felt and as I did the feeling of phantom resonation stopped. I tried to relax and took a few deep breaths. To see if the magic object affected me, I focused inward. Nothing felt off, but then again, my dual set of memories and multiple lifetimes of memories from Aurora had made me feel 'off' from when I first awoke. There was no way to be certain that touching the stone had done something to me. As I forced myself to calm down, I decided that there was nothing more to be done except to keep looking.
Near the edges of the hidden compartment on both sides of the drawer were another set of buttons. These plastic tabs were spring loaded and when pressed allowed the tray to slide past a stop and free of the rails mounted to the desk. I set the full tray on top of the desk to keep it mostly out of the way and continued my search for more hidden storage. A quick appraisal of the remaining desk structure gave me some confidence that there were no further hidden sections unless something was inside the wood itself. Completely destroying what remained was tempting considering that witch had nearly killed two of my friends, but I decided against it since it would be a clear indication we had robbed the place. After searching the rest of the room for another twenty minutes, my search yielded nothing other than more papers which I added to the front of the paperwork cabinet.
I moved onto the bathroom which did not seem to have any hidden compartments. The only hiding space would have to involve taking tiles off the walls, which sounded like a great way to grow mold, and I discarded the possibility quickly. The sink cabinet held extra toilet paper, a razor, and skin care products. The other bedroom, possibly a guest bedroom, seemed to have been unused for a while. The drawers were all empty, the side table was clear, and the closet only held empty hangars. Even though it was unused, the room had been dusted relatively recently. I doubted anything would be hidden in here, especially if the witch had let guests use it. I left the witch's bedroom for Sarah to search and also figured by now she was already done. I returned to the office and moved both the tray and the drawers from the office into the front room.
Sarah was already sitting down and sorting through a pile of papers when I arrived. I placed the tray out of her way and began skimming my own pile of papers from the desk's pull-out drawer. We were still slowly working our way through the paper pile when Chris and Dan rejoined us. A perusal of the witch's mail and documents from her office confirmed her name as Kimberly Ashford. They contained receipts, notes, various bills and the mortgage on the house; it seemed that she had bought the place two years ago.
"Has she been creating shades for two years?" Chris muttered when he saw the mortgage origination date on the loan payment schedule Sarah had plucked out of the pile.
"Jordan disappeared about six weeks ago," Sarah said.
"I think the last time I saw Jessica was about two months ago," Dan said, but he sounded uncertain.
"What about William? I think he has been gone even longer." I said after a long pause.
"Near half a year now, yeah," Chris muttered.
"So, she has been snatching people for at least six months, but it's likely longer," Sarah said with a frustrated tone. Then quieter, "At least she paid for what she did to him."
"Anything else in that pile jump out at you?" I asked as Sarah riffled through the sheets of paper with a renewed sense of urgency.
"There was a weird receipt that I saw from your pile, and I noticed you only glanced at it," Sarah said as she pulled out a pink carbonless paper receipt and pointed at the top of the page which was labeled in all capital letters as the finance copy. "Shouldn't she have the white copy for the customer receipt? Why does she even have this?"
The document listed the company name as 'Threaded Fasteners', but it was crossed out a few times with a pen and above it written in a neat hand was 'Esoteric Storage LLC'. The address listed was not crossed out and was on the same street as Plume, Tony's, and The Video Zone. I was not sure if this address was in the middle of downtown like those other stores, but it was certainly possible. The receipt number was in the high thousands, and the customer was listed only as Ann. The first and only line item was 'pallet', with a quantity of twenty and a price of $2, but the total was $480. The receipt was dated for Feburary and signed in a very pretty and stylized signature that sort of looked like it started with 'An', but the rest of the letters flowed into an indecipherable curve. It was certainly a much longer scrawl than three letters would require.
"Is this a store downtown?" I asked pointing at the address. "What's with that total? Are they cooking the books for some reason?"
"I don't remember seeing that name on any of the stores I've ever seen," Dan said.
"Me neither," Sarah said.
"Well, we can at least check out the address," Chris shrugged.
"Not tonight, it's getting late," Dan said. I glanced around for a clock and spotted the display on the microwave: six-thirty. Dan was right. I had school tomorrow too! "Laura, what's the story with the tray of marbles?"
"They felt magical, but I have no idea what they are," I said with a shrug. "Chromos and Corona do you have any ideas?"
"Our friend Laura, these stones are brimming with arcane energy. I do not know what they are for, or how one would use them, unfortunately," Corona said through Sarah. As control returned to Sarah, she looked momentarily surprised but said nothing as her expression turned to a smirk.
"Take them and we will investigate later," Chromos said. I was momentarily surprised that Dan allowed him to speak, but I did ask after all. Then after a pause Chromos added, "Don't touch them."
"Oh," I said, staring at the tray. "I did, already."
"Usually, blighted objects try to maintain contact with their victim, though this is not always the case so do not take it as dictum," Corona replied and Sarah barely restrained a giggle.
"Blighted?" Chris asked, a hint of worry creeping into his voice.
"Malicious or cursed," Dan replied flatly. Evidently, he was done allowing Chromos to speak directly.
"Curses are real?" Chris's eyes widened in surprise.
A brief feeling of weightlessness washed over me, so I grabbed the arm of the couch to steady myself. My vision swam, blurring into incomprehensibility. Suddenly, there was a figure before me standing over a large stone slab. The grey stone was fully covered in intricate shapes and circles. Chanting filled the now much more cavernous room and a small object in the middle of the slab began glowing a warm bright yellow. The source of the light was circular, but too large to be a ring, but too small to be a necklace. As I spun about looking for my friends, the chanting crescendoed, reverberating across the vast room, and the glow suddenly turned a deep crimson. Just as suddenly as the image came to me, I was slammed back into Kim's living room.
"Those wielding the arcane have created implements and arms even they do not fully understand," I muttered unbidden as I attempted to regain my composure. I barely even realized that I had spoken.
"Laura... what was that about?" Sarah asked hesitantly. My eyes jumped to her face and found a mix of worry and fear swirling in her expression.
"A fragment of Aurora? A memory? I am... unsure. There was a chamber, a stone slab with arcane symbols, and a bracelet. Possibly something Aurora witnessed a long time ago," I said, grasping at words to explain as my body decided that gravity did indeed still rule over me. "I think I need some water."
I clambered to my feet, wobbled over to the kitchen in search of a glass, and Dan asked, "Was that Aurora speaking?" As I rounded the counter and entered the kitchen I glanced back at Dan's face. I was glad to find his expression was only of concern, not anger. I expected that a mention of Aurora would have set him off again.
"I do not think so," I replied as I resumed my search. The first cabinet was full of plates and bowls. "I think it was her thoughts about that memory." The second cabinet opposite the sink held mugs and glasses. I grabbed one and began filling it from the tap. "Looking into her past is like wandering a maze in the dark. And every once in a while, something just jumps out at me." I took a long drink from the glass.
There was a sharp, loud bang at the back of the house that sounded like someone slammed into the back door with their shoulder. I jumped and lost my grip on the glass which fell into the metal sink, shattering with a sharp crack. I clamped my now free hand over my mouth. I shoved down the urge to scream about these stupid gloves before walking quickly back over to my friends as quietly as I could. The hole in the floor gave me pause before I carefully stepped around it. Only after I had done so, did I realize that the small window in the back door had a clear line of sight down the hallway which I had crossed to get back into the living room. My heart was pounding. I might have just given us away.
"What the fuck was that?" I whispered.
"No idea, but we need to get the fuck out of here right now," Dan said as he wrenched open the zipper on his tool bag. "Laura, dump the marbles in here. Chromos said they might be useful. Either way we can't let whoever that is get them. Chris, make sure you have that address. Sarah, put these cabinets back. I'll check out the front of the house. We're going to make a run for the vehicles and get the hell out."
"What about the glass?" I said, glancing back at the sink.
"Leave it," Dan said.
Chris shoved the receipt into a pocket while Sarah stuffed the rest of the papers haphazardly back into one of the cabinet drawers and ran for the bedroom. I set the tray partially into the bag and started smacking the back of it with my hand, dislodging most of the marbles easily. Another loud bang on the back door sounded through the house. For the stuck spheres, I fished each out with my fingers, the gloves doing me no favors, and dropped them into the bag. Each one fell, colliding with the others or the tools, with a sharp ring and thankfully none of the stones shattered. I grabbed the now empty desk cabinet drawer and tray and returned to the office and shoved both into their respective slots. Even though it was wildly dangerous, I took a moment to look down the hallway to the back door. There was nothing visible in the door's window, but as I watched the entire door vibrated in its frame as it was slammed into again. The entire house seemed to reverberate with the sound of the impact.
Dan, Chris, and Sarah were all at the front door waiting for me and I sprinted down the hall and got out of the line of sight of the back door as soon as I could. As soon as I was close enough to hear, Dan whispered, "Get to the Volvo and get out of here, I'll cover you. Also, your car is blocking mine anyway." I felt the familiar tension in the air of a spell being cast and a glowing blade flickered into existence in Dan's hand. He opened the door a crack and locked the door so it would be locked when it closed behind us.
"Go!"
Dan ripped open the door and three of us darted for the Volvo. Dan quickly moved for the truck and threw the tool bag into the cab through the open driver's window. As soon as we were all in, Chris slammed the accelerator and the car leapt backwards into the empty street. As the vehicle lurched around, I saw a large dark shape dart from the side of the house directly toward Dan.
"Stop!" I screamed, diving across the center console from the back seat while pointing at the blur. My outstretched arm nearly slammed into Sarah's face as Chris whipped the car to line up with the lane on the road. As soon as the car came to a stop, I clambered off the console, slammed by entire body into the car's door, and yanked on the handle. The door popped open, surprising me, and I nearly fell out. Undeterred, I scrambled to my feet and jumped the ditch rapidly closing the distance to Dan.
As I approached, I saw an absurdly large spider attempting to wrap its legs around Dan's body. The spider's body was covered in thick bristles and chitinous plates with a large bulb of an abdomen just behind its head. Its mouth seemed to be strange and quite unlike a spider's while still bearing menacing fangs. One of its left front legs was already missing and the only thing keeping the beast's fangs from Dan's body was the flat of his sword shoved awkwardly in what passed for the spider's face. I was stunned at the sight of it and something within me barely managed to spur me to action.
Suppressing the urge to flinch, I pulled on my own magic and brought my own ice sword to bear. A wave of drowsiness crashed over me, and I forced my way through it by digging the fingernails of my free hand into my arm. My estimate of my reserves had been off a bit.
That was the last scrap of magic I was going to be able to cast for a while.
I advanced quickly and struck with my weapon. The blade skated across the spider's exoskeleton before sinking deep into the spider's abdomen at a joint. My strike was aimed for a portion of the spider as far away from Dan as possible because I was terrified of accidentally hitting Dan in my drained state. As the blade bit, the massive spider released Dan with a jolt and jumped at me, but I easily pushed it back with my blade. Now that it was outnumbered as well as seriously injured, it turned and fled, skittering around the corner of the house.
"Are you okay?" I asked, my voice shaking as my blade fell from my hand.
"Yeah. Thanks, let's get out of here. What was that thing?" Dan asked.
"Skin stitcher."