Page 54 of Sugar, Spice, and Magical Midlife

A troll as tall as a pine walked past us, nearly stepping on my toes. This must’ve been the head janitor whose toilet smelled like it was possessed by a diarrhea poltergeist. He frowned down at me, his furrowed brow nearly sagging over his crossed eyes. I whispered a confusion spell in case he realized Des and I weren’t real janitors.

He scratched the back of his head with meaty fingers, each as big as my thigh, then grumbled, “Get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, bowing my head and squeezing my mop handle.

I instructed Des to keep his head down as Frederica escorted us through the crowd, the wheels on our mop buckets squealing the whole way. Once we reached the tunnel on the opposite side, I heard a squeak coming from my pocket.

“I have to pee!” Ethyl cried.

Of course she did. She’d only downed three coffees while we’d waited for Frederica.

The minotaur took us into a bathroom with low light and no mirrors.

Ethyl poofed into her bigger self and kissed Frederica’s cheek. “Thanks. I always pee more when I’m nervous.” Then she slipped into a stall.

I spun a slow circle, noticing the spartan sinks and stalls. I gave Frederica a questioning look. “No mirrors in the bathroom?”

“Mirrors can be used as portals,” she said gruffly, “and no unauthorized portals are allowed in the Tribunal.”

Mirrors also revealed succubi,I thought to myself. Coincidence or convenience that they were absent in the Tribunal headquarters?

Des tugged on my sleeve. “I have to pee, too, Mama.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling kind of helpless. The longer we wasted time, the more risk of getting caught. “Do you need help?”

Des shook his head and disappeared into a stall.

Frederica let out a groan when Des slammed the stall door. “Wait here, and pretend you’re cleaning,” the minotaur said gruffly before slipping out the door.

Wait. She was leaving us? A knot twisted in my gut when two witches came into the bathroom as Frederica was exiting. I turned my back on them, pretending to be mopping the floor.

I mopped that same corner, listening to the witches gossiping as Ethyl and Des, thankfully, remained in their stalls.

“Stay away fromMagaSagredo,” a much older witch with a crackly British voice said. “She’s in a foul mood.”

I tensed.MagaSagredo was the sorceress in charge of Ric’s fate.

The other witch laughed, a keening squeal that made me want to shield my ears. “When is she not?”

Her accent sounded different. Possibly Spanish? There were striga from all seven continents here, so there was no telling.

“Two of the Insurgi were killed in an accident,” the British witch said in a hushed whisper.

The Insurgi? I’d heard about them. A rebel group of outlaw striga who caused chaos for the Tribunal. They were no more than bandits and drug dealers from what I’d read in theStriga Times.

The Spanish witch gasped. “That was no accident. Have they identified the bodies yet?”

“No. If one of them is Serena, our sorceress will never recover.”

Serena? Why did that name sound familiar? I recalled that shell of a car we’d seen on the freeway and got a sickening feeling that had been no accident. I wondered who this Serena was. Someone important toMagaSagredo.

“I know, though it hardly matters to us when she’s just her advisor’s puppet.”

“SignoraOscura might as well be theMaga.”

The door opened and the witches left without using the toilet. They’d simply come in here to gossip, and I guess they figured me being a lowly custodian, I wouldn’t report what I’d heard. Interesting.MagaSagredo was the matriarch of a very powerful magical family and head of the Roman Tribunal, kind of like an empress for Italian striga. To imply that the empress was being led bySignoraOscura, her advisor, could land the gossips in some seriously hot oil. Not that I’d tell. I had enough problems right now, and there was definitely the possibility that they were right, especially after the corruption I’d already witnessed in the striga government. I just hoped this advisor wasn’t a succubus.

My heart sank to my gut when Frederica returned, a panicked look in her eyes. “I just found out some news,” she said as Des and Ethyl came out of their stalls.

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