Twenty-Two - Evangeline
“You are more than welcome to leave the resort,” the Dame said as she stood in front of us in her office. “But you won’t be allowed back and no refunds will be given.”
“But this is an emergency,” I said as I stared at her. “I’ll be out and back in less than an hour if Erin takes me.”
“Sorry, but those are the rules. Until the retreat is over, no one is allowed to leave and return for the safety of my other clients.”
I wanted to tell her if she didn’t let me leave, I was abandoning my previous plan of just talking to Ashema and instead would be roughly kidnapping her and making a fool out of the security of her resort. But I didn’t. She’d learn of it soon enough.
“Fine. We’ll stay,” I snapped. “It’s only two more days.”
“I’m glad to hear it; the therapy session is starting right after breakfast, and I think you two could really benefit from it.”
“What is it?” Redric asked.
“Hide and seek.”
“You are so not a real therapist,” I muttered. Grabbing Redric’s hand, I pulled him out.
But although hide and seek was bullshit, it would give me a great opportunity to kidnap Ashema.
After a quickly eaten breakfast, having arrived pretty late through it, Redric and I gathered with the others in reception. Chris and Shaina were holding hands, though they looked a bit stiff, but Noah and Lynton still seemed to properly hate each other. Ashema and Remi looked just as disgustingly happy as always.
As soon as we were all together, Lucas led us outside and around the building. We stopped at a red mushroom-shaped shed just as the cream door in its ‘stalk’ opened. The Dame stepped out, followed by two of the servers from last night, carrying a large wooden box between them. After placing it down in front of us, they reentered the ‘mushroom’.
“Today, we’ll be playing a game of hide and seek,” she said as she smiled at us. “And while you play, I will ask you to be aware of why you might be getting frustrated with your partners and look at how you can better express your emotions in a positive way. Now, you will be given one hour to hide your body before the sniffer rats are let loose. This is not a win or lose game though. This is to get you to deal with any frustrations in a controlled manner.”
The two men stepped back out of the shed, and I did a double take when I saw what was draped across their shoulders. After depositing the two male corpses onto the ground, they then went back in to grab two more – one for each coupling here.
“You may hide your body anywhere in the retreat and use any of the tools in this box to do so. I will leave you to it. The hour starts now,” she said, then headed for the log building, along with Lucas and the two servers/corpse carriers.
“Come on,” I said to Redric, hoping he didn’t break character and start resurrecting these people like the noble man he was. He glanced at me, his jaw tight, but then he nodded and grabbed the nearest corpse. Slinging the man over his shoulders, he carried it towards the large meadow.
The flowers towered over us in a variety of colours, and we were soon hidden from view inside the stalks.
“I hope you weren’t attached to anything you brought here because we’re going to have to leave it all.” If we’d gone back into our room to pack, the Dame definitely would’ve suspected something was up.
“I’m not,” he said. “Are you planning on leaving today? I thought you wanted to talk to Ashema?”
“I do and I will be. We’re going to kidnap her. Dump the body.”
“I could resurrect him.”
“You do that, and he’ll just be killed again when they find him. Or he’ll escape and get eaten by a rat or bird or spider or any one of the numerous things that like to eat us as I doubt we’re anywhere close to civilization.”
His jaw tightened, but he dumped the body. “So what’s the plan?”
“The barrier we’re inside is most likely stopping the use of most magic too. It won’t be a hundred-percent limit as she’s using a lot of scry mirrors.” Entwining my fingers, I spread my arms out and cracked my joints. “So I just need to figure out how they’ve cast the spell so I can counter it. Keep an eye out, and if you think someone’s coming, go intercept them.”
“How long will you need?”
“Not sure. But given how tight all her other security is though, it might take a while.”
Sitting down on the ground, I focused my senses to feel the hum in the air. Magic could be concentrated into shapes like a dome, but it wasn’t solid. It existed as waves of energy that was constantly moving, just stuck in its confines. And it hated that.
Most witches thought they had to fight that magic with their own in order to break another’s spell. Well, ‘most’ being all of them, basically. My ideas about magic being alive were seen as nothing more than crazy talk. But it made sense to me given all its ‘mood swings’ and how it worked better for me if I found us a common goal. Usually that common goal was causing chaos.
But right now, I needed to trick it. Once I discovered the weakness of its confines, so would it, and it would try to break out immediately. I needed it to stay trapped until I killed Ashema and drew a transportation circle. As soon as the barrier around the resort went down, I was certain the Dame would be notified and her backup security, whatever that was, would be activated.
So closing my eyes, I slowly opened myself up to the magic swirling around me. The hairs on my arms rose as a chill swept across my skin despite the warmth of the day already starting to heat the meadow. There wasn’t a lot of magic where I was, so I opened myself up a bit more, drawing it to me so I could ‘speak’ to it.
After a few minutes, goosebumps broke out across my skin and an indescribable sharp smell of energy filled my nostrils. More magic swirled around me, running across my body as it studied me as much as I studied it, looking for a weakness it could exploit.
Magic didn’t like being controlled by anyone, and if it found a way to kill me, it would.
I paid attention to how it moved against me, how the confines of its prison –or ‘restrictions’ as the scholars would say– stopped it from doing certain things. It ran along my clothes quickly but avoided direct contact my skin. It turned in left-rotating circles. It felt angry, the air crackling like two armies about to charge each other.
Having found what I needed, I pulled back, closing my senses to its presence.
Opening my eyes, I stood and dusted off my bottom. I looked around for Redric and found him with his back to me. He turned as I stepped towards him.
“You figure it out?” he asked.
I nodded. “How long was I out?”
“I’d say about half an hour.”
“Right. We better move quickly then.” Launching into the air, I spread my wings and flew above the flower tops. I scanned the meadow for any disturbances inside it, and saw one not too far from us. Gesturing to Redric, we both flew towards it. The sound of voices drifted towards us.
“The hole isn’t big enough.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not! It has to be six feet deep!”
“That’s for earth humans, Chris! Why would it need to be that deep for us? We’re tiny.”
“It’s about smell! Look, I love you, but sometimes you are really stupid.”
“I’m stupid?”
Passing over them, we carried on looking for Ashema and Remi.
We found them far away from the log house, almost as if their entire strategy was to have everyone else’s bodies be discovered first. Rats had fantastic noses and there wasn’t a lake to drop to use. Plus, digging a hole was a pain and easily uncovered considering the disturbance of dirt. Some people thought you could hide a dead animal on top of it, but that was bullshit. There were different types of dirt at different depths, and when you dug, it all got mixed together, making it clear how far down the disturbance went. Even a detective without magic could figure that out.
“You think this is far enough?” Remi asked as we got closer.
Ashema started to answer, then stopped and turned towards us. Her stance hardened as paranoia crept it. I didn’t even bother going through all the bullshit lies Redric and I had come up with on the way here about her and him getting into business together. I simply released the magic barrier around the resort, then hit the both of them with a blast of my magic in a streak of red energy.
They flew backwards, slamming into the rock I’d aimed them at. Their heads cracked against the stone. Remi was knocked out in an instant, maybe even dead, but Ashema tried to climb back to her feet. Pouncing on her, Redric grabbed her hands and twisted them the wrong way, breaking both of them at the wrist so she couldn’t use her magic – her family being well known for being strong users. Then he wrapped an arm around her throat and squeezed until she died.
Drawing a black circle in the ground, I then stood in it and waited for him to join me, Ashema’s corpse slumped over his shoulders. He would resurrect her later, after we bound her hands and deposited her at FI-9 HQ.
Standing beside me, he nodded.
Interlocking my fingers in a steeple, I then slammed my palms together. In a flash of energy, we vanished.