Selena searched through desk drawers and folders, careful to put every item back in its exact place, but found no sign of the envelope. Her father was wary of outsiders and incredibly secretive, so she reasoned he must have a hidden compartment somewhere.
Examining the desk yielded no hidden features, so Selena moved to the closet. A safe stood against the back wall and a smirk lifted one corner of her mouth.
"Oh, this is too easy. Father can't have thought a safe would keep even Mom out, much less me."
No, he wouldn't have thought that. With a frown, Selena raised her hand to run her palm over the safe. Her eyes widened as her aquamarine glowed an unfamiliar yellow.
When she channeled her magic into her kamea, it usually glowed green, so this was strange. Some rare spells, she knew, could interact differently with the birthstone and cause it to glow a different color, black for dark curses, a deep red for attraction spells, or yellow for protection.
This served as a spell detector, in a way, but Selena had never encountered such a thing before.
Great martyrs of Salem. Was this...protection magic guarding it?. Selena probed it with her magic, a gentle, feathery touch, and it did not attack her. When she pushed harder, however, it responded by blocking her magic from opening the safe door. A yellow-gold, buzzing shield surrounded the safe.
Perhaps she could break through.
She was a watermage, with water being her strongest affinity, so it came naturally to her to try this element first. Her kamea glowed its customary green, and a flowing, undulating river of aqua light spilled from her birthstone and surrounded the shield. Her magic brushed against the yellow-gold light, seeking cracks to flow through, but found none. The shield persisted.
Over the years in Elements class, she'd gained mediocre affinity to the other elements, earth being her strongest. If water magic couldn't dissipate or infiltrate the protective barrier, maybe the brute force of earth magic could.
Calling on her earth magic, she released green, spiky tendrils of light from her kamea. The tendrils prodded, searching for weak spots in the barrier to pierce, before striking. The thorny spikes at the ends of the tendrils bounced off the shield. Selena glared at it and tried again, but it grew longer spikes than hers and lazily batted her magic away as if it were no more than an annoying fly.
Not earth magic, then.
Maybe a subtler approach was required. The stealth of air magic might slip inside the barrier unnoticed. This time, she released her magic in a pale mist that held the faintest tinge of green. The vapor wafted over the shield and attempted to breeze its way inside. To Selena's shock, the mist solidified into crystal granules and dropped to the floor before fading into nothingness.
She waited a moment to see if any of her magic had made it through, but the barrier remained. Selena sighed. That left fire magic, Selena's weakest element by far.
Her final onslaught of magic unleashed flames of green laced with red. It roared over the barrier, crackling as it did so, ravenous to consume. Instead, the barrier absorbed her fire spell. Its yellow light glowed brighter, with flames of red flickering inside. It had fortified itself with her magic.
It was unyielding to any element, which meant that a rare mage with a high degree of skill in all four elements had crafted the spell.
Fine, then, she'd need the combination. Father was cautious. He would never write the combination down for anyone to find, so what would he use?
Selena tried first his birthday, then Mother's, then her own, with no success. Her parents' anniversary? Doubtful but worth a try. Again, the safe lock remained stubbornly shut against her. His work badge number? No, it had too many digits. Besides, he would use something far cleverer.
Of course, he'd use the date of his greatest accomplishment — landing his job three years ago, when his boss Cunningham opened up the Bureau to nonmagicals like Father. Selena tried the date. To her surprise, it worked. The safe door swung open to reveal the manila envelope.
Her hand trembled as she reached in to grab it. She undid the string and withdrew newspaper clippings of missing men and women, presumed to have fallen victim to some elemental curse.
What struck Selena as odd was that several of the victims had been members of the Bureau themselves. Could somebody be targeting them specifically? Might Father be next?
Beneath the newspaper clippings, Selena found a large folded piece of construction paper. Unfolding it on the floor, she discovered a handmade crime board of sorts, with pictures of the victims, some of which were taken with Father or his boss Cunningham, along with information written in Uncle Franklin's loopy cursive such as names, dates of apparent transgressions or infractions labeled, threatened to harm Cassius over the Inclusion agenda, snooped through Cassius' files on the Special Defense Project.
In fact, Father personally knew every one of the victims. Every one of the victims had done something against him.
So, the Bureau's controversial agenda and special project had drawn scrutiny, even ire, from others. Those others met with unfortunate ends. Uncle Franklin suspected Father of murdering them, what, to silence them? Keep them from getting in his way?
Had Uncle Franklin been trying to say Father's name when she asked who had cursed him? After all, he, too, had done something against Father by planning to reveal this evidence. But no, that was impossible, at least not on his own. A powerful watermage would have needed to provide the cursed object, and her father had no magic to speak of.
Still, it appeared that Father sought out the freezing curse to use against those who wronged him.
Selena stared numbly at the crime board, willing it to not mean what she suspected it meant, because that would make Father... a murderer. Yes, he was strict, demanding even to the point of setting impossible standards, but a murderer?
No matter how many different angles she viewed the situation, no matter how many ways she tried to puzzle it out to arrive at another plausible solution, Selena couldn't deny the truth printed in black, white, and red. Perhaps she was indeed her father's daughter.
After all, she, too, now longed to take revenge. Could she take that revenge against her father?
With a frown, she sat with that thought, an uncomfortable worm of guilt or shame wriggling in her gut. She shook her head to clear it and set down the crime board. Right now, she could not afford to let right and wrong hold meaning for her or allow herself to be distracted by questions of who she was and who she wanted to be.
Moral and existential questions aside, Uncle Franklin deserved justice, and she doubted the police would grant it to him.
Father is involved, her mind whispered.
"Enough of this! I need more to go on than theory and suspicion. Yes, this looks bad, but I need actual proof."
Before Selena could continue her investigation, heavy footsteps came from her parents' bedroom above. Selena stiffened as they drew closer to the staircase. If he came downstairs, she'd have maybe ten seconds to cover her tracks and quit the room. She could sneak in again once he'd left.
Father had acquired a protection spell for his safe, so he may also have an additional mage spell to reveal hidden intruders. It would be best not to use stealth air magic while in the study. She would have to step into the hallway before hiding herself in the invisibility of an air shield.
Heart thudding in her chest, Selena replaced the evidence and locked the envelope back in Father's safe in the exact order she'd found it. She had already tidied the rest of the room as if she'd never been there.
Father's footsteps continued downstairs, faster now. She raced for the door, her sneakers silent against the plush carpet. She turned off the light. As she reached for the handle, Father's footsteps reached his study and paused outside it.
Selena hardly dared breathe as she retreated to an out-of-the-way corner of the room behind a tall potted plant. The lock turned. Now, her only option to avoid getting caught was to cloak herself in air magic and pray she didn't set off an alarm.
She had just enough time to summon the magic to hide herself before the door creaked open, and Father stepped in. His gaze swept the room, landing for one heart-stopping moment on Selena. Could he see her? Did he sense something amiss?
Brow furrowed, he shook his head, his body relaxing as if he'd decided to dismiss his paranoid thoughts, and strode toward the desk. He retrieved a file, then shuffled over to the safe.
Selena closed her eyes, unsure whether to feel relief or panic. She'd had the foresight to return the envelope, so he wouldn't know she'd been here, but he might take it with him, and she'd never know what else was inside.
Father knelt in front of the safe and opened it. He checked the envelope, nodded in satisfaction, then stood and searched the room.
With every step, he drew closer to her hiding spot. Selena wished he would leave the study already. The strain of maintaining her air magic was starting to make her lightheaded. Soon, she'd lose her grip on the magic, and he would see her.
Then, he stood in front of her. Selena held her breath, going stock-still. Father gave a sniff as if detecting her presence. Selena's pulse raced. Could he smell her lemongrass hand lotion?
Father shook his head again. He turned away from her and strode to the door, pausing once to glance back into the room. Several agonizing moments later, he left the study and locked the door behind him. Selena could hear him heading toward the kitchen for a late-night snack.
With a sigh of relief, she dropped the cloaking magic. A whoosh of breath left her. That was a close call.
Alone in the study once more, she rifled through the remaining contents of the envelope, ears keenly attuned to listen for telltale footsteps or creaking boards nearby. What she found next chilled her to the core.
A document stamped CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET CLEARANCE ONLY across the top in bold red, below which lay a stark command to cease reading immediately without the proper clearance or risk jail time. Uncle Franklin hadn't had this clearance. That alone was reserved for Cunningham as the department head.
Could stealing this document have been what got him killed?
Her eyes flew over the words on the page, drinking in the details of the Special Defense Project.
"They want to reassemble some ancient weapon as a deterrent to violence on both sides? Those relics were lost long ago. What makes Father's boss think they can find them, much less figure out how to make them work together to create a weapon?"
Selena remembered the stories in her History of Magecraft class. The lost relics of Oberon were the stuff of ancient legend. Nobody knew for sure if they ever existed, or, if they had, what sort of magic they called forth.
Some believed it was an ancient weapon, a dark creature. Others said it was a tool that brought peace. Whatever the case, the few fragments of accounts from that time recalled a great destruction.
Not that Selena believed this, but why would her father, or his boss, get mixed up in fantasy and fairytales?