Page 23 of Whispers of the Magical Forest

"Stumbling on that was awful," Aislinn lamented. "We're just here for the wine tasting and came across that tragedy."

Matthews raised an eyebrow. His weathered face creased with suspicion. "Do you know anything about the strange marks in the snow that vanished before our forensics team could photograph them? The witnesses who saw them seem to have forgotten crucial details. Althoughthey all mentioned speaking with you three? They also mentioned you wandered into the woods where we found faint traces of blood. Those are just coincidences too, are they?"

"Memory can be tricky in traumatic situations," Aislinn pointed out. She was the picture of confused concern. “That’s why eyewitness accounts of an incident can vary, right? As for why we wandered into the woods, I thought I heard someone calling out. We didn't find anything.”

While she spoke, I wove a subtle forgetting charm into the air around us. I wanted to make our presence seem less noteworthy with each passing second. I doubted he would let this go otherwise. The magic settled like frost, delicate but persistent.

"There's something not right about all this," Matthews insisted. It was difficult to bite back my smirk when his voice had lost some of its certainty. He pulled out his notebook, flipping through pages of observations. "The strange marks in the snow, the witnesses who can't quite remember what they saw... and these temperature fluctuations that no one can explain."

"I know from the hospital I worked at for twenty years that people see all sorts of odd things when they're stressed. It might be nothing," Fiona insisted.

I reinforced the forgetting charm and watched as Matthews' expression grew increasingly vague. But something caught my attention. One of the officers behind him, a young woman, was fighting the magic much harder than she should have been. Her resistance wasn't natural. It felt more like... "Fi," I whispered and nudged her slightly. "The one in the back. By the second car."

Fiona glanced over and narrowed her eyes. "Well, shit," she muttered. "That's not what we needed right now."

The officer's eyes had taken on a familiar purple tinge when she looked directly at us. It was the same shade we'dseen in the wine cellars. Someone had gotten to her. Just like they'd gotten to Peterson. The binding magic practically radiated from her. Would she be a shade soon? My gut told me the leader wasn’t telling his minions everything because this woman looked like she was well on her way.

"Perhaps we should continue this discussion down at the station," Matthews was saying when I turned my attention back to him. Though he seemed to have forgotten exactly why he wanted us there. His notebook had disappeared back into his pocket, and his stern expression had softened into mild confusion.

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary," I said, pushing more power into the forgetting charm. The magic swirled around him like invisible smoke. "We've told you everything we know about the accident. I'm sure you have more important things to do. Probably loads of paperwork waiting, yeah?"

Matthews blinked slowly and looked around as if he'd forgotten where he was. The charm had taken full effect. "Right... yes... carry on then. Enjoy your wine tour." He turned and walked back to his car.

My gut twisted into a knot when I noticed how the female officer remained. She was watching us with those unnaturally purple-tinged eyes. She didn't move until Matthews called her name. Even then, her movements were too smooth, too controlled. Exactly, like a puppet being guided by invisible strings. When the other officers began clearing the scene, she drifted away from the group. Unlike her colleagues, who headed west toward the station, she slid into her patrol car and turned east. Her movements were still unnaturally precise.

"Ten quid says she leads us to something interesting," Fiona murmured as she opened the driver’s door. "Come on, while she doesn't notice."

Aislinn grabbed her sleeve. "Following apolice officer who's acting like a marionette? That's somewhere between stupid and suicidal."

"Exactly why we should do it." Fiona grinned. "When have the obviously bad ideas ever steered us wrong?"

Aislinn snorted. “I’m not going to answer that.”

I chuckled. "Good choice. Though perhaps we should follow with a bit more subtlety than usual?"

"I'm always subtle!" Fiona protested as we piled in. The ancient texts in the boot rattled ominously as she started the engine.

"You challenged the evil Fae Queen at Pymm's Pondside before we even had a proper plan," I reminded her. "In your own garden, no less."

"And won!" Fiona's eyes gleamed at the memory. "Though having home-field advantage helped. All those years of my family laying protective wards paid off when I took her out. But really, she was asking for it. She was threatening me and everyone I love."

"You kicked off a war with the Fae King in the process," Aislinn muttered from the back seat. "He put a price on your head, and you had to close the portal for a time."

"But we beat him in the end, too. Which opened the spot for Argies’s brother and saved all of Eidothea from destruction." Fiona grinned.

The police car ahead of us turned onto a side street. Fiona carefully followed at a distance. "Anyone else wondering why there's another possessed police officer in this quaint little town?"

"Having two of them is too much to be random," I mused. "It has to be connected to the reason the leader chose this area."

"Agreed. Nothing's random," Aislinn added quietly. "Whatever's happening here, that officer's involvement isn't a coincidence."

"Story of our lives," Fiona sighed, keeping her eyes on the vehicle ahead. "We just wanted a nice wine tasting holiday. Was that too much to ask?"

"We already know the answer to that." I smiled grimly as we followed Carter's police car at a discrete distance.

Magic slithered toward us. It was oily and wrong and had me fighting the urge to gag. Aislinn was already reacting. Magic poured from her hands as it grabbed the falling snow like it was her personal toy box. The flurries thickened into a miniature blizzard behind Carter's car. They did double duty. They kept our asses hidden while marking her like a giant ‘follow me’ sign.

The effect was like something out of a weird Christmas movie gone wrong. Carter's patrol car pushed through the darkness with its own personal snow cloud. It was like a demented version of Rudolph. This glow was more ‘potentially lethal’ and less ‘festive holiday cheer.’

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