Page 10 of Whispers of the Magical Forest

"Remember when you said at least it wasn't demons this time?"

"Yeah?"

"I rather think I might prefer the demons."

The wind picked up, driving the snow harder. In the distance, I swore I could hear laughter that sounded nothing like human amusement. This laughter made me want to run and hide under my bed with a protective circle and my strongest wards. "Next time," Aislinn said in a voice barely audible over the wind, "we're definitely going to that nice spa in Eidothea."

"Speaking of time," Fiona interjected. She pulled out the business card again. The countdown had reached zero. New text was flowing across the surface like mercury.

"The Midnight Cellar welcomes worthy seekers. The path opens at the witching hour." Below that, coordinates began to appear one number at a time. It was some sort of macabre treasure map.

"Those coordinates," I said, peering over her shoulder. "They're for somewhere in the South Downs. There's an old network of wine cellars there, dating back to..."

"Let me guess," Fiona sighed. "The same period as our friendly neighborhood immortality-seeking alchemists?"

"Got it in one."

The card shimmered again, revealing one final message:The price must be paid.

Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant. The cryptic invitation was almost certainly a trap. But then again, when had that ever stopped us before? "Well," I said, "at least we brought that bottle of Winter's Embrace with us."

"Yeah," Fiona agreed as she tucked the card away. The whispers in the woods had faded to a soft murmur. Their promise lingered in the air like frost. Whatever we'd stumbled into was far from over.

CHAPTER 4

AISLINN

Iabsolutely hate it when Fiona's right. Standing in the freezing cold, watching mundane police officers examine what I knew was far from a mundane crime scene was brutal. My thoughts drifted to my warm, cozy home where Argies was probably trying to convince Kalli that pizza wasn't an appropriate breakfast food. How had our relaxing wine-tasting weekend turned into this mess?

"Ma'am?" The young officer's voice pulled me from my musings. "Could you please describe again what you saw?"

I put on my best concerned-mum face. "Of course, Constable. We were driving along when the weather turned absolutely dreadful. That's when we noticed the accident ahead."

Constable Peterson, according to his badge, scribbled in his notepad while I told him everything that had happened. Fiona and Violet added details here and there as well. My heart skipped a beat when I recognized the subtle shimmer in the air around them. Violet was weaving a spell. Knowing her it was a mild suggestion that would encourage him not to look too deeply into the death.

"And the bodies? Did you notice anything... unusual about them?" Peterson's hesitation made me wonder if he'd sensed something off about the scene. Even if his mundane mind couldn't quite process what it was seeing, he had some suspicions.

"I was only aware of the one victim?" I kept my voice steady, channeling every ounce of motherly concern I could muster. "It was rather dark, and the snow made it difficult to see much of anything clearly. Were more seriously injured?"

Peterson looked over his shoulder. “The couple in the first car claim the reason they swerved into oncoming traffic was because they saw a man in the road. And it wasn’t the woman under the vehicle.”

“That’s terrible but I don’t know anything about a man being in the road,” I said honestly. I had no idea who he had been, or what had killed him.

Violet caught my eye from where she stood, examining the body under the car. Fiona had positioned herself between Peterson and the rapidly forming magical symbols in the snow. The corrupted magic was spreading faster now and creating patterns that no mundane police officer should see.

My phone buzzed. Gadross had finally gotten through to us. "Excuse me," I said to Peterson as I held up the device, "I need to take this. It's about my daughter." He nodded and shifted his attention to Fiona. The mom card worked every time.

I stepped away, careful to stay within sight but out of earshot. "Gadross, please tell me you're close."

"I’m ten minutes out," he replied. His voice crackled as if there was significant interference. Was it the weather? Or something else? "The magical disruption is making travel difficult. What exactly are we dealing with?"

I filled him in quickly about the bodies, the symbols, and everything we’d learned. "And there's some sort of countdowninvolved. The magic feels malevolent, Gadross. Like someone's taken perfectly good spells and twisted them into something they were never meant to be."

"Do not, I repeat, DO NOT let the mundane authorities remove those bodies," Gadross instructed. "The magical signature you're describing matches a series of similar incidents we've been tracking. If it's the same perpetrator..."

"Let me guess. It's going to be a massive headache for everyone involved?" I finished for him.

"Worse. The last time we encountered something like this, three agents ended up shades. It took me weeks to finally find their bodies and put them to rest so they could move to the other side. It was not pretty." I shuddered at the mention of shades. Static crackled across the line, and Gadross's voice became urgent.

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