Spell Broken

9 - The Crime Scene

I reach up and touch the spot. I don't know what I was expecting but it's smooth.

How many times had I stood there? In front of the mirror practicing ko'rinmas? The spell for invisibility. It had taken me weeks to accomplish it, and when I had looked in the mirror to see nothing but the wall behind me I was ecstatic.

"Is this where you found her?"

I turn and find Amber standing outside the room. "Yes," I whisper.

She tears her gaze from the room and looks over at me. "I'm sorry."

I shrug and turn to the stairs. "Let's get the files."

The top floor is brighter than the downstairs. The windows at the end of the hall are letting in the sunlight.

There are three doors. Each closed. One is the bathroom, one is Madam Mara's room and one is her office.

Amber comes up the stairs and stands beside me. "Each pick a door and hope it's one of them?" she suggests.

"Sure. You take that one and I'll take this one."

I walk over the one door on the left side of the hall and Amber takes the first one on the right. "One," she says.

"Two."

"Three," we say together and swing our doors open.

"Bathroom," I say.

"Woah."

I look over at Amber, who has frozen in the doorway. "What?" I ask and come to stand beside her.

I understand why she said woah.

This must be Madam Mara's room but it's a jungle.

Literally.

The space is as green as it could be, with trees that cannot possibly fit in a bedroom and bushes that line the edges of the wall and furniture. The floor. The floor is actual dirt with steps stones. There's even a little waterfall with a pond in the corner of the room.

It's not quiet either. There's chirping from crickets and chirps from birds. Even the croaking of frogs.

I knew Madam Mara's main magic had been earth but I never would have thought she would do something like this with it.

"It's amazing," I say, moving absently into the room.

"You didn't know about this?" Amber asks.

"No. I wasn't allowed in here."

"It must have been her own little hide away."

"It must have been," I agree.

"Her magic is beautiful."

I nod. It is. But that's not what I'm awe-struck about. I'm surprised that the plants haven't withered and died, and that the animals are still alive.

When a witch dies does their magic not die with them? Or is it like energy? Where it's not created from nothing and cannot die?

There is still so much that I don't know. And I have no one to teach me all of it.

"Let's get out of here. This should be the one thing that doesn't get touched," I say.

Amber turns to me. "Of course," she says. She walks over and wraps her arms around me. "This must be hard for you."

I don't need to talk or to nod to tell her she's right. She knows that.

We leave the room and I close the door behind me.