A Life for a Life

Karen was once again the inspector on duty and Jess gave her a brief nod hello as she passed. The cells were mostly empty today, the previous occupants either released or moved on to other, more permanent, accommodations, as Jess moved down to the last cell on the right. Inside was a young woman, thin as a rail with spiky brown hair and big brown eyes that blinked slowly at Jess when she opened the door.

“Hi Sara. I’m Inspector Jess Baker. I’d like to talk to you for a minute if that’s okay?” Jess said softly. At Sara’s nod, Jess walked into the cell and sat down on the edge of the cot. Sara’s knees were drawn to her chest and she rocked slightly. Jess got the impression of a frightened bird when looking at her and gentled her voice even more to not spook her further.

“Sara, can you tell me about your day yesterday? Start at the beginning, even if it was completely normal. Just walk me through what you did.” Sara didn’t respond immediately, but Jess waited patiently until eventually Sara started speaking.

“I woke up at my usual time not feeling very well. It was mostly in my stomach, kind of queasy, you know? At first, I thought maybe I was pregnant even though I’m on birth control so I was kind of freaking out a little. I had a few hours until my shift, so I went to the store and got a pregnancy test and it was negative. I was so relieved, but I still didn’t feel good and it got worse throughout the day.”

“Where do you work?” Jess asked.

“Mo’s Diner. I’m a waitress there.”

“Okay, then what happened?”

“I figured I must have caught something so I called in sick. The problem was that it didn’t really feel like being sick, you know? The symptoms were there but something just felt wrong to me, you know what I mean? I wasn’t sure what to do, I couldn’t afford to go see a healer or even a regular human doctor, so I tried to ignore it. I figured rest would fix it so I laid around on the couch and watched TV all day.” Sara’s voice rose in pitch, becoming panicky and harder to understand as she spoke faster.

“By the time Johnny got home, I couldn’t stop shaking and it felt like thousands of ants were crawling over my skin. My memory is a little fuzzy from there on but I think I must have been pulling my hair out—my scalp is still sore today. I remember the wrong feeling was getting worse and worse, but I don’t remember what actually happened. It’s like a white fuzz in my mind when I try to think about last night, full of the wrong feeling but with no pictures. Does that make sense?” Sara reached out and grabbed Jess’s hand, squeezing it in desperation and fear.

“It’s okay Sara, you’re safe here,” Jess assured her. She could feel slight trembles in the woman’s hand and gave it a reassuring pat. Comfort wasn’t her strong suit but giving Sara a moment to compose herself seemed to help.

Jess opened the vines that made up her shield and took a peek at Sara’s aura. It was a normal shade of yellow with a single patch of dark blue deeper in, close to Sara’s body. Sara’s medical records were released to them, with her permission, after she was placed in a cell last night. Having looked them over, Jess had a pretty good idea where the orange spot came from. Two years ago, Sara gave up her newborn daughter for adoption while Sara was in high school. It was probably the best thing for the baby given the turbulent home Sara was living in but something like that marks a person forever.

Backing away from those thoughts, Jess broadened her view. She was a powerful witch but these jail cells were made to suppress magic. Even with the cell door open, which Jess had left that way on purpose to keep the circuit from closing completely, it was still hard in the magic-dampening cells for Jess to get a good reading on Sara. She thought she could detect a faint black haze around the young woman, barely there out of the corner of her eye. It was like with Chloe, but Jess couldn’t tell why these two women were attracting the haze when no one else was.

When Sara seemed calm again, Jess continued with her questions.

“Do you recall anything strange happening to you in the past several days? Did you feel anything or see anything out of the normal?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, do you recognize this woman by chance?” Jess pulled up a picture of Chloe on her phone. Sara cocked her head as she considered it.

“I think she came into the diner where I work once, a few weeks ago. She ordered a slice of pie, peach cobbler I believe. I’m pretty sure she was homeless but she still left me a dollar tip. I thought she was nice.”

“You remember all that?”

“I never forget a face, even after only one time. It makes me an excellent waitress.” Sara gave her a small smile.

“I bet. That sounds like a very useful skill to have for many different jobs,” Jess replied, impressed. Sara sat up straighter and when she spoke, there was a small amount of pride in her voice.

“I hope so. I like waitressing but I don’t want to do it forever. I’m taking some evening classes at the community college to get my degree. I want to do interior design someday.”

“And I’m sure you will,” Jess said with a smile. The kid was young but she was strong and smart. She’d make it, assuming whatever was going on didn’t get worse. Jess’s smile faded. There were more than the dead victims at stake now. Sara seemed to have similar thoughts.

“What do I do now? I can’t stay here and I’m afraid to go back out there,” she whispered.

“I’m hoping this will help.” Jess pulled out a short, silver chain from her pocket. It was a thin bracelet with a single small stone hanging on it. The stone was a piece of fluorite, charmed to protect the wearer from outside energies as well as dampen their own powers. It was designed for people like Chloe, who felt magic but couldn’t control it very well. Jess handed it to Sara.

“This bracelet will block your powers but also block other powers from affecting you. As soon as we get this figured out, you can take it off, but until then, I’m hoping this will be enough to protect you from any future incidents like yesterday.” Sara clasped the bracelet around her wrist. Together, they got up and walked to the cell door, where Sara paused and took a deep breath before stepping through.

After a moment, Sara nodded and let out a sigh of relief. Jess peered through her shields and didn’t see the black haze anywhere around Sara or her aura. It made her wonder if the haze was ever there at all.

“Sara, I hate to ask, but would you mind taking the bracelet off for a sec? There’s something I need to see with your magic,” Jess asked. Sara looked terrified and pulled her wrist close to her body in protection.

“Please? Just for a second. I’ll be right here if anything happens.” Reluctantly, Sara undid the clasp and handed the bracelet to Jess.

As soon as it left her hand, Sara dropped to her knees and moaned, clutching her stomach with her eyes closed. Jess watched as a dark shadow converged around Sara, making the edges of her yellow aura pale, like it was eating away at her. As quickly as she could, Jess slipped the bracelet back over Sara’s wrist and helped the woman to her feet.

“I’m so sorry Sara! I didn’t think it would be so bad.”

“It’s okay. Did that help?” Sara asked between gasps.

“Yeah, it did, thanks. Just keep that bracelet on from now on until I tell you it’s safe.”

“No worries there.” Sara was leaning against the wall on shaky legs, but she took a deep breath and stood straight, patting Jess’s hand.

“I think I’m okay now. Thank you for the bracelet, it really helps, though it feels weird not being able to sense magic. I don’t like it but it’s better than that wrongness. It was even worse today,” Sara added. If that were true, Jess hoped that Chloe was wearing her bracelet like she promised she would.

“I’ll let you know as soon as it’s safe for you to take it off,” Jess promised. They made their goodbyes as Jess handed her off to Karen for the release process. Her boyfriend Johnny was already waiting to take her home.

Jess was thoughtful as she made her way back to her desk. The blackness she had seen around Chloe and Sara wasn’t something she had heard of before and she didn’t know what to make of it. The idea of something feeling so wrong but not having any other definable characteristics was a novel one. Jess felt out of her depth.

It might be time to ask for help.

If there was a single person in Seattle who could be said to have the most knowledge about magic, it would be Murphy Sanchez. He was an eighty-five-year-old wizard in charge of the Library of Magical Collections and Awakening. Most people just called it the Magic Library. It was located right there in Seattle, but it was the biggest library collection of magical artifacts and history in North America. There were other, smaller branches scattered around the country, but they all deferred to the one in Seattle as the oldest and most important.

The problem with Murphy was that he preferred books to people, and the past to the present, so getting information out of him could be difficult. First, you had to convince him that you were worth his time for a meeting. Then, prove your problem was important enough to warrant his help. Jess clearly remembered the first and only time she had encountered the man.

She was twelve or thirteen years old, on a class trip while at boarding school. Their tour guide was showing them a secret doorway hidden behind a bookshelf when a large pixie ran right through their group, followed by an enraged old man who was yelling obscenities at it the whole time.

Pixies came in all shapes and sizes, but this one was on the larger side at two feet tall, with bright green skin, pointy ears with tufts of brown hair sticking out of them, and translucent faerie wings. He was also butt naked. The pixie was carrying a glowing blue rod, waving it around as he flew up towards the ceiling. Wherever he pointed it got doused with a stream of water, including the now screaming children who ran for cover. The old man stopped running and stared up at the pixie, yelling for him to give the rod back. The pixie just laughed and turned around to moon everyone down below.

“You asked for it,” the man yelled. Then he raised his hands, said a few words, and called up a gust of wind so fierce it knocked down any children still standing nearby, including Jess. She landed hard on her wrist and cried out in pain, but the man didn’t notice. He was focused on the pixie as it spun in circles in the wind, coming closer and closer until he grabbed him out of the air, pulling the rod from his hands. One way to subdue pixies was to make them so dizzy it took hours for them to recover and that’s exactly what the wind storm did to this one. He stayed still in the man’s arms, fists clenched against his eyes.

The room calmed and Jess got up, cradling her wrist to her chest.

“I think it’s sprained,” Jess said, showing her wrist to her teacher. The old man overheard.

“Ha! You’re lucky not to get worse than that, little girl, in this library,” the crazed man cackled.

“Really, Librarian Sanchez!” the tour guide exclaimed. “They’re just kids!”

“Whatever, I don’t have time to babysit,” the Librarian said. He adjusted his hold on the pixie and the rod and left them without another word.

Overall, it had been a memorable experience for Jess. She had been to the Magic Library a handful of times since, but never ran into the Librarian again, as much by choice as by happenstance. He couldn’t run the whole library by himself and he had plenty of staff who could help the average Joe with normal searches. But somehow Jess didn’t think this situation was going to be solved from the common stacks.

As Jess pondered the problem of how she could get a meeting with the head librarian, her attention shifted abruptly as a young boy walked into the pen. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen and was scrawny with filthy clothes, possibly a runaway. But it was what he was holding that got the attention of every witch and warlock in the pen.

The boy carried a simple cardboard box, roughly 8 x 8 x 5 inches maybe, with the flaps folded down rather than taped. It would appear innocuous enough if it weren’t for the waves of dark magic radiating out from it. Any smuggler who dealt in black magic artifacts would cloak such a thing with a masking spell to prevent detection, but there was no such cloak on this object. Clearly whoever sent this box didn’t care how many people could sense it. Or they didn’t have the skill to cloak it.

Either way, whatever was inside that box was very dangerous, possibly even deadly. And it had just walked into the WISP headquarters.

The boy cleared his throat nervously at the attention suddenly fixed on him.

“Um, I was told to deliver this here. The old lady said you would know what to do with it,” the boy stammered. Jess was already up and walking slowly towards him. The kid had to be a Norm to be handling the box so easily. Even as Jess got closer, her skin crawled and her hands shook slightly. Opening her shield would make the effects worse, but she knew she was going to have to if she wanted to see what she was dealing with. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John also walking towards them.

“Okay buddy. Thank you for bringing it in, but could you please just set it down on the floor in front of you? Carefully now,” Jess directed. The boy looked scared, but he didn’t drop it, which Jess gave him credit for. He slowly put the box down and took a step backwards.

“Did I do something wrong? She was a sweet old lady, she said it was a treat for her cop friends. It shouldn’t be anything bad.” His gaze pleaded at them, darting between Jess and John.

“It’s okay, you’re not in trouble or anything. I think the old lady may have been lying to you, though. My friend over here is going to take you somewhere safe and ask you some questions while we take a look inside this box. It’ll be okay, I promise. We just really need your help right now, okay?” Jess assured him. He nodded and went willingly when John gently grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

The rest of the room had cleared out except for Jess and the two other most senior Inspectors present, per protocol. Jess knew the rest of the building was also being evacuated. She glanced at the other two with her, Michelle Daniels and Alex Turner, both good inspectors.

“Can you tell what it is, Jess?” Alex asked her. They were both standing back, waiting in case something happened to Jess and they needed to take over. It was standard protocol in a situation like this that only one person be at risk and evaluate the situation further. The idea being, if anything happened to Jess, there were two other witches around to take over or give Jess aid. WISP’s motto was to protect as many people as possible, no matter what might happen.

“I don’t know yet, but it’s bad,” Jess answered. She twisted one of the rings on her hand three times to activate a general protection spell before kneeling in front of the package. Another invoked spell caused her hands to start glowing, creating a glove of magic so she could touch black magic without it affecting her. She placed her hands on the box, feeling for the spell that was inside it. There were no other spells on the box itself that she could detect so she opened the flaps and peered inside.

It was a bomb.

To be clear, it was a magical bomb rather than the kind you see on TV, but the principle was the same. Instead of wires and a red timer counting down, there was a glowing yellow sphere sitting like a trophy on top of a black metal box.

“Looks like a class 3, guys. A sphere bomb.” Sphere bombs were a lot like their non-magical counterparts in that they caused an explosion. One the size she was seeing here would likely take out an entire building. Jess could sense the spell surrounding it now, but there was no timer. Anything could theoretically set it off﹘ a spoken word, a shake or tremor, the proximity of a certain object, anything.

It was a two-fold spell, meaning there were two spells woven together that would have to be undone at the exact same time to prevent the bomb from going off. Tampering with one and not the other would end in disaster.

“I’m going to need one of you to help me. Which one of you is better with magical devices?” Jess asked. They glanced at each other and Alex tipped his head. Now was not the time for ego.

“I am,” Michelle answered, getting closer while Alex got out his phone to let their superiors outside know the situation. It was up to those already present to make the call whether to send someone else in or handle it themselves. Given the precarious nature of the sphere bomb, Alex would be telling everyone to stay back since they didn’t know what might detonate it.

“It’s a two-fold, one to activate and one to set it off, but they’re entwined together. Can you sense them?” Jess asked. Michelle was muttering under her breath with her eyes closed, but finally she opened them and nodded.

“Okay, I’ll do the activation one and you do the other. Unravel until the very last, then wait for my signal. We do it together, got it?” Too nervous to speak, Michelle nodded again and held out her own glowing hands over the box. Jess did the same.

The concept was simple. As trained members of WISP, they could see the incantation that made up the spell and all they had to do was chant it backwards to reverse it. The tricky part was visualizing the spell. Every witch and warlock visualized magic slightly different and Jess, of course, used plants.

In her mind, the bomb looked like a sickly rose flower. Most of the petals were gone or brown and the stem drooped to the side. Once the image was firmly in her mind, she saw words embedded into every part of the flower, revealing to her the exact spell used. It started at the base of the stem and stretched into the petals in a spiral. To reverse the spell, Jess began at the petals and chanted each word in reverse. As she went, the flower got healthier and bloomed. Jess stopped before saying the last word and opened her eyes to stare at Michelle.

Michelle was sweating and her eyes were closed tightly in concentration. A few seconds after Jess, she opened her eyes. Jess used her hand to count down from three and as she folded down the last finger, they both said the last word out loud.

Instantly the yellow glow in the sphere died, leaving a gray ball of glass. Jess blew out a breath and sat back on her haunches.

“Damn, I haven’t been that stressed since the academy,” Jess said. Michelle gave a shaky laugh.

“Yeah.”

“Good job, both of you,” Alex said to them as he walked closer to inspect the bomb. “That was some nasty shit.”

“No kidding,” Jess replied as she got up and backed away a little to call it in. “We must have really pissed off...”

Whatever she was going to say next was abruptly cut off as the small box exploded, throwing all three of them backward. Jess was knocked off her feet and onto her back atop the nearest desk. The breath was forced out of her and she laid there for a moment in shock.

With her ears ringing, Jess managed a sitting position with her legs hanging over the side of the desk. Alex was on the floor nearby but he was struggling to sit up. Michelle, who was closest to the blast, wasn’t moving. Jess stumbled over to her.

There was a bleeding gash on Michelle’s forehead but she was breathing. Her hands and face were a bright red, like from a sunburn, and Jess touched her own face to feel a similar effect on her. She glanced at Alex and saw the same thing.

“There must have been a light bomb,” Jess told him. “A masked one because that’s not what Michelle and I disarmed.”

“Is she okay?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, we need a healer to look at her. I think she hit her head but she’s still alive.” The light bomb must have released a concussive force as it exploded, which caused them to be forced backwards, but the real damage was the intense UV rays that blasted outwards. They were lucky, light bombs generally weren’t lethal, but they would be hurting tomorrow.

After Alex gave the all clear, there was a flood of people as medics and first responders rushed in. They zeroed in on Michelle and quickly got her situated onto a gurney. A healer was already chanting a spell over her and Jess breathed a little easier when she heard Michelle moan.

Alex and Jess were getting looked over when Captain Fontaine walked in, closely followed by Charlie.

“Are you two alright?” he asked.

“We’re fine, Teddy,” Jess answered while Alex gave a thumbs up.

“Good, now tell me what the hell happened,” Teddy demanded. Jess summed it up for him and when she got to the part with the second bomb blowing them backwards, he and Charlie winced in sympathy.

“It’s my fault, Captain. I should have checked to make sure there was only one bomb after we disabled the first one. If I hadn’t backed off or if I had noticed it, I might have been able to push Inspector Daniels out of the way,” Jess confessed. For a brief moment, all she had felt was pride and relief that they neutralized the threat so quickly, but that cockiness could have gotten them all killed. As the senior investigator, she should have made sure the package was safe before walking away.

“There’s no reason you should have expected a second bomb in the same box after disabling the first one. Don’t beat yourself up, kid,” Teddy told her.

“Captain Fontaine is right, Jess. You did a good job. I heard the technicians say the first bomb looks like it was a lot bigger and would have done a lot more damage if it had gone off,” Charlie added.

“The second little light bomb was minor in comparison, I’m not entirely sure even what the point was,” Jess said with a frown.

“Well, one thing at a time. We’ll get a team of investigators on it to start figuring it out. In the meantime, I want you and Turner to finish getting checked out and then go home for the day,” Teddy ordered. He held up his hand when Jess started to protest so she closed her mouth. She didn’t feel like working right now anyway.