The Legend of the Eight: The Charmed (Book 4)

28: Vanishing Acts

TWENTY-EIGHT: VANISHING ACTS
NOVEMBER 6
PHOEBE DOMINGO

"I KNEW YOU'D COME BACK." 

Finn Parker had a menacing grin on his scruffy face when Phoebe met him on the edge of campus. It was Friday morning and normally, Phoebe wasn't even up that early for a run. But it meant no one else would be awake either so it was the perfect time to meet Finn without anyone knowing.

"So what was it, love? My timeless charm? My magnifying good looks? My irresistible personality?"

Phoebe folded her arms across her chest and raised a brow. "You know what? I think it was your overwhelming humility. That one's pretty big in my mind."

Finn wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"You just called me big."

Phoebe rolled her eyes, doing everything she could to avoid his. "I knew I was going to regret this."

"Oh, I'm just teasing you, love. Where's your sense of humor?" Finn laughed, that accent of his almost as magnetizing as those good looks he spoke about. "Now, you said you had questions for me. How can I help?"

"Have you heard about this guy going around talking about creating a better Realm? He calls himself the Doctor."

Finn shrugged casually. "Been a few whispers around the Hunters. Few weeks back, there was a break-in at the Lockup. Two Thieves went missing. I suspect this Doctor bloke had something to do with it. He's in your neck of the woods now?"

Phoebe nodded. "Some people at my school have gone missing and when they turn up, there's an arrow through their chest and they're not exactly human."

'Technically, we're not exactly human," quipped Finn. "No one in the World of Magic is."

Phoebe rolled her eyes at his technicalities. "I meant not human in the scales and claws and fangs way. The Doctor is turning them into Beasts and then he's killing them. Do you know anything about that?'

"He would need a pretty massive amount of magic to get that done," Finn said before he thought for a minute. "Linc said there's been some strange activity around the Veil lately. Think that's him?"

"The Veil?" Phoebe's small, freckly face lit up. She almost spilled the details of her plan but stopped before she did. She probably shouldn't have been telling him her top-secret plans. She'd only just met the guy—something she easily forgot. He was already the kind of annoying that only came after knowing someone for a while.

Finn nodded. "I don't know what they teach you in that fancy Academy of yours but there's this big, magical barrier that divides the Three Realms and—"

"I know what the Veil is," Phoebe interrupted, ready to roll her eyes again. "What strange activity are you talking about?"

"Lincoln, a Hunter from the North, was dropping a Thief in Lockup a little bit ago. He told me he caught the Thief trying to sneak to the World of Magic through a dead spot in the Veil."

A dead spot.

"What does that mean?"

"It means someone figured out a way to cut off parts of the Veil. They're big enough to allow someone to slip in and out through them but small enough that they go undetected to the untrained eye."

"It's the Doctor," Phoebe said. "It has to be."

"Quite the confidence for someone who, up until ten seconds ago, had no idea what the Veil was."