Page 43 of Monster's Mystery

“Isn’t that the witch who keeps accusing people of murdering Richard?” he asked, indicating a girl walking toward us.

“Paige,” I replied. “And, yes, that is her. We’ve got a potential lead on the missing people.”

“Really?” Bruce replied, suddenly very focused on me. “That’s great. What is it?”

“We’ll tell you together. We came up with it in Herbology, and don’t forget our mini breakthrough when interviewing Valerie.”

Paige sauntered up to us and toasted us with her beer bottle. “What’s that you’ve got, Siobhan?” she asked me.

“Mead. It’s amazing,” I replied. “Apparently, it’s brewed here.”

“It is,” Paige said authoritatively. “The founder loved it so much that he created a unique recipe. It’s still used to this day.”

Bruce choked and Aiden thumped him on the back.

“You must be somewhat related to him,” Paige continued, staring at Bruce. “I hadn’t noticed it before, but the firelight is shading your features and you look very like the portrait of him.”

“I’ve never seen a portrait of him,” Bruce said.

“Oh, well, there isn’t really one. That’s weird, isn’t it? You’d think there’d be a portrait of the founder of the academy. The one I saw was a scan in a history book. I wrote a report on him in my first year here.” She leaned closer. “His true love died tragically only a few years after they started the school. The statue out front was erected in her honor.”

“Oh, that’s so sad,” I said with a frown. I squeezed Aiden’s hand tightly. “Was he a witch or a monster?”

“A witch, I believe. Why?” Paige answered.

I looked up at Aiden, eyes wide. “Is that a secret or something?”

Aiden shook his head. “No, of course not.” To Paige, he explained, “Once we find our soulmate, we don’t survive very long without them, literally.”

“Oh. Right. I knew that. Well, he vanished not long after, so maybe he died. The book didn’t talk about him again. I didn’t find a death date, so maybe he died somewhere else.” Paige shrugged. “He’s dead now, I’m sure.”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Can we hear about this new hunch? Siobhan was very tight-lipped about it.”

Paige explained the theory that the missing memories might be stored in a body of water, like the school’s well.

Bruce looked skeptical. “Wouldn’t the memories be filtered through the school, then? Not sure I want to think about the idea of shitting into someone’s memory.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Descriptive. There might be a reservoir or something for overflow. That would be the ideal place.”

“Or perhaps, it isn’t in a well. Maybe there’s a pond or something in the dark forest. That’s where we think the missing people are,” Paige said.

“Can you re-explain your thought process on that?” Aiden asked.

“For one, there isn’t really anywhere to hide a bunch of people without someone coming across them,” Paige pointed out. “For another, we’ve mathematically linked the rate of decay of the magic at the edge of the forest to the number of people that remain missing.”

“I still haven’t had time to find a spell that will track the flow of magic,” I said with a sigh. “I feel like we should be able to look at something that is actively being drained of magic and see where the magic is going.”

“That would be really helpful,” Bruce agreed with a frown. “Where do you think you might find a spell like that?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” I shrugged. “I’m hoping my grimoire will have it, but if not, I’m going to try to create one in Qualitative Spellcraft. That might take some time, though, because I still don’t really understand how to build a spell, let alone find the time to test it under supervision.”

“So what, a couple hours?” Bruce teased.

“More like a couple weeks,” I countered. “If I’m lucky.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Bruce hip-checked me.

“I was thinking of something,” Aiden said, frowning. “But then I got distracted and the thought’s gone.”

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