Are wands even enough anymore?!

Prettier When Angry

A few weeks later and we still haven't found the girl.

Even Alicia was helping us by distracting the librarian so we could sneak into the Restricted Section. No spell from any forbidden book was able to properly help us locate Viktoria's body. Some of them showed it all over the world. Impossible. Even if she were to have been burned alive and her ashes left to caress the wind. Those ashes would have still been hers. It would have showed. Others outright refused to work, saying she was nowhere at all.

"I do not understand." Nicholas spoke, eventually, looking down in desperation at the revealing spell in front of us and on the floor of this wretched cottage.

"When do you ever?" Sebastian spoke, low yet sarcasm dancing around his tongue in a familiar tango.

"Does that mean she's been dismembered? How could she be in forty five places at the same time? She couldn't have died yet, she still owes me forty galleons!" Ignoring Sebastian, Nicholas continued.

"No..." I said, looking down at the map puzzled. "It just means she's not in this world anymore."

"What?!"

Sebastian hummed. "The thought did cross my mind... but it makes so very little sense I cannot properly wrap my head around it. One cannot just travel to the land of the fae without a hefty price."

"So what... is she dead?" Nicholas asked again, totally lost. It was a good thing he had an objectively reasonable looking face, otherwise he'd be stupid and ugly.

"No... if she'd be dead, we'd be able to track her body, wherever or however it would be. It means she's gone. Completely. No trace of her body or essence left on this earth. Like she never existed in the first place. Like she had never been part of it at all."

The thought was more uncomfortable than I cared to admit.

"But that is impossible." Alicia spoke from beside me, her angelic face having a creepy glow due to the spell's last dying light. "Nobody can just vanish from this world. Even magic leaves traces behind."

"We've already gone through every corner of that blasted house, there's nothing there." Spoke Nicholas, head in his palm. "Nothing but metal-skinned freaks stealing Stephan's shit."

After a pause, Nicholas continued, in an disinterested tone: "Beside, spells like this cannot properly work 100% of the time. Don't you guys remember when we tried to track down Carmilla's ashes? It basically did the same thing it does now."

"What if Viktoria went to another world instead, after all?" Alicia spoke, blue, cerulean eyes lifting to meet mine. "What if she's trapped?" Her gaze met next the ones of my brothers'. "What if she's trying to get to us, but cannot?"

"You mean like... Hell?" Nicholas whispered. "Do you think she's in Hell?"

"Nobody's in Hell, Nicholas." Sebastian spoke, as if dismissing an idiotic child. "Give me that!" He snatched the cigar from between my fingers and took a deep breath before the sea of smoke left dancing out of his mouth. Well, I'll be damned.... He must really be at his wits' end.

Alicia spoke: "If her body cannot be tracked... then what about her soul?"

This made us all pause. Truth is, we haven't thought about that. Even so... there was a reason of why we didn't even think of starting to track down Viktoria's soul: "Soul magic requires an unfathomable amount of attention to detail. Depending on the spell, we might even need to consider making a sacrifice. Who knows what it'll demand? A dementor's presence? A human heart? Another soul , as in an 'eye for an eye' kind of deal?"