Chapter Four

Matt mixes a tracing spell.

There was nothing else of me to do until I got that item from the kid, so I went back to the shop. I chose not to bother with opening up that day, and kept the sign swung around so close written in bright red letters would greet anyone who came by. I didn’t think I could deal with the customers today, and it would just feel too mean to be going about a normal day while there was a terrified kid out there who needed my help.

I went back up to the loft to see that Edwin was sitting in front of the computer, tapping at the keys with his beak and moving the mouse about with one, dark foot. It amazed me how ductile that bird could be when he needed to be.

“Find anything?” I said as I tossed my keys on the coffee table and flung my jacket over the back of the couch.

Edwin looked up at me as if he hadn’t noticed me come in. “Oh, Matt, you’re back. Well, I can tell you, myspace is a most interesting place to play on. I’m thinking of starting an account there myself. Wonder which of my pictures I should use there.”

I glared at him, finding his sense of humor a bit inappropriate at this time. Then again, maybe he had been serious about it which would have helped ease the burden on my phone bill if he really did. Maybe I should encourage it. “I meant about the boy.”

Edwin looked as indignant as a raven can, and said, “I have been checking on the boy. He has an account at myspace, and I’ve been reading over everything he’s posted there. He’s quite an interesting, young man. Not only does he take an interest in magic, he has posted a number of poems. Many of them are very well written. I find myself envying the boy’s talent, and think he might actually come close to comparing to Shakespeare. Granted, I said close, but not quite as good. No one will ever compare to the talent of Shakespeare.”

“Edwin,” I called out, interrupting his thoughts. I already knew what he thought of Shakespeare, I needed to know about the kid.

Ruffling his feathers, the bird said, “Yes?”

“Tell me about the kid’s interest in magic? How sincere was he about it?” Maybe this would help me get some sort of idea on who could have taken the kid. The internet could be a fun place for kids to play, but it could also be as bad as a bar, maybe even worse, for them. You could meet a lot more predators on the net than you would meet on the street of a large city. It was like a playground for such people, and I never could understand why a parent would let their kids on without constant and complete supervision. Guess it’s the trust issue thing, but man, the world could be a scary place now-a-days. Sometimes, I think Edwin has a point when he compares our times, and says that his day and age was much better than mine.

“Pretty serious about it. He’s got a number of potion recipes that would actually work, and there’s a lot of information about actual magic here, not the crap most people post. He knows his stuff, and he’s not afraid to state it.” Edwin looked up at me with concerned eyes. “Matt, we may have a problem here. You know how our kind feels about this sort of thing getting out.”

I nodded my head, chewing on my lower lip. This did change things. Most of us wouldn’t think of hurting a soul, in a normal situation, but this was no longer a normal situation. If they kid was telling the world about us, and telling the truth instead of fanciful lies, then he would be a threat to all magic users, and we sort of had this pact among all the groups. Silence anyone who would give us away, no matter what the cost. So this had gone from a bad guy getting the kid, to any magic user who took him as a serious threat wanting him quiet. Granted, there were more ways than one to keep a kid quiet, and I just hoped that whoever might have snatched the kid had decided that just keeping the kid away from people was the solution. If they had decided that killing the kid was the only way to keep our secret safe…

Well, I really didn’t want to think of that.

I honestly have no idea how I would have handled the situation myself. It would be my responsibility to keep the secret of our kind a secret, if I had been the first to notice the kid, but I would like to think that killing is completely and totally against my nature. I would like to think that just sitting down for a nice chat would fix things, but even I wasn’t naive enough to believe that would work every time. Perhaps threatening the kid and his family would be a way to go, but I’m not exactly the most threatening looking of people, what with my scruffy, light brown hair and cheerful, light green eyes. Besides, my lips always had a ready smile, and that would have just blown the whole thing.

“So, what are we going to do now?” Edwin asked, a note of concern coloring his odd voice.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I said with a conviction I hoped I would soon be feeling. “We still find the boy, and bring him home. We might have a long talk with him first, but we still take him back, safe and sound.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” the raven wanted to know.

“I asked Michelle to bring me something of his, something important to him.”

“Ah, yes. If anyone could get away with stealing from someone without worrying about the consequences, it would be a cop.”

I didn’t even try to hid the ire out of my stare as I glared at him. Michelle and Edwin didn’t exactly get along all that well. It didn’t help much that she thought he was just a strange pet I kept, making rude comments in front of him almost every time she saw him. I had to be impressed with how well my friend held his tongue around her, making sure to keep up the pretense that he was nothing more than a normal raven. I knew how badly that ruffled his feathers and irked his 400 year old soul. She might have known I was a wizard, and that there were magic users out there, but part of me still thought she might not be ready to find out that there were such things as 400 year old alchemist living their lives out in modern day in the form of birds. “She’s the only one I could trust to do this. I couldn’t very well go there myself and say ‘Hey, you have no idea who I am, and I can’t tell you that, but could you give me your missing son’s favorite possession. I promise to bring it back.’ They’d be calling the cops in no time thinking I was the sicko who had run off with their kid. Sorry, Edwin, I need Michelle’s help on this one.”

“You could have asked me to go and get something for you. I would have happily obliged you.”

I harrumphed at this suggestion. I only let the raven out on assignments for me on very few occasions, due to the fact that he could easily get side tracked. That, and I always worried that someone would take it into their head to shoot him out of the sky. He was a pain in the a*s, but he was my pain in the a*s, and I did care about him…a bit. “You wouldn’t have known what to grab, and there’s no guarantee the mother or father wouldn’t have chased you down with a broom.”

Edwin looked off in the distance for a while as he thought that over. “True enough. Still, do I have to be here when she gets her. You know how much we hate each other.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“She called me a two bit feather duster last time she was here.”

“She meant it affectionately.”

“After she flipped me in the beak. I swear I will peck her finger one of these days if she keeps that up. You should warn her about that.”

“I’ve tried.”

“Well, try harder,” Edwin insisted, glaring at me.

“Well, I need you to stay here.”

“Why?” he squawked, a very bird-like sound for my friend.

“One, I don’t need her asking about my bird if you’re not anywhere to be seen, and two, she might have some new information on the kid. I want you to hear everything so you know as much as I do on the case. I might need your help, and I need you up to speed.”

The raven sighed dramatically. “Fine, I’ll do it, but I don’t have to like it. And if she flips me in the beak, I will take off one of her fingers this time. I swear it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

After that was all said, there was really nothing else we could do, so we both puttered about the apartment, doing some minor cleaning and trying to keep our minds off of the kid, knowing that would get us nowhere. We just had to wait for Michelle to do her part, and then do what we could from there. It was hard, those few hours, but we managed to get through them. Edwin even cleaned his nest while we waited, letting me know he was more upset about this than he wanted to let on. His cleaning habits when it came to his part of the loft were usually that of a teenage boy. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times I found scraps of clothe laying about, just because he had taken a fancy to them the few times I let him out. I couldn’t believe at times he had once been a powerful alchemist. Apparently, cleaning was not one thing an alchemist was very good at. Neither was social graces.

Finally, there was a knock at the door. I waved a warning finger at Edwin, knowing it would do no good if Michelle messed with his head too much, and let her in.

“Sorry that took so long. We had a lot to go over with the Tryvor family. They’re pretty upset over all this, but that’s only to be understood, isn’t it. I mean, who wouldn’t be a nervous wreck after losing their only son.”

I didn’t want to sound like an uncaring jerk at that time, but I really had to get the ball rolling on this if I was going to hope to be of any help to this kid. “Did you get it?”

She nodded, holding out a baseball card with a player on it I didn’t recognize. I was a football man myself. “They said that was his most favorite thing in the world. They didn’t even really have any questions on why I was taking it, just saying they would give it to me forever if it would help get their son back.”

I held the card out in my hand, knowing that they would not have to do that, but hoping that it would be able to help me find the kid. I turned it around and around several times, hoping it was not too late for the kid who had valued this card, probably more than just about anything else in the world.

“Is that what you needed? Will that really help you find the kid, that one, little card?” she asked with so much hope in her eyes it was almost painful to look at.

I nodded my head. “This is exactly what I needed. Thanks,” I said as gratefully as I could, really meaning it. I wanted to find this kid as much as she did now.

“How long is this going to take, do you know?”

I looked at her, feeling like the schmuck again, but needing to tell her to get out. This was a private thing, and it wouldn’t work if she was distracting me in any way. “It’ll take a lot less time if you leave.”

“You want me to leave?” she asked in disbelief. I had helped her out a few times before on cases, but she had never been as driven as she was this time, and she also had no idea on what my methods were, and I intended to keep it that way.

“Look, it’s nothing personal, it’s just how this is done. I need to have complete and total solitude for this to work. I can’t have anyone around me, or it’ll screw this up, and I’ll just have to do it all over again.”

She turned her head, and glared angrily at Edwin, who just so happened to glare angrily back at her. Thankfully, she hadn’t been around the bird enough to realize it was giving her such a human stare. “Are you sending that nasty bird somewhere else, or does he get to stay here?”

“He’s different.”

“Yeah, sure,” she snapped angrily as she walked by him, reaching out to flip him in the beak. I just barely caught him in time to keep from putting a hole in her hand, clapping my thumb and forefinger over his beak to keep it shut.

“I’m sorry about this. I know finding this kid is important to you. It is to me, too, but I really need you to do this for me. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got anything.”
“You better,” she grumbled as she slammed the door behind her.

“Why did you have to stop me for?” Edwin demanded as soon as he thought she was out of ear shot.

“So she wouldn’t break your neck when you pecked her. I might still need you for this case, and she seemed pretty pissed off when she left. I don’t want to have to channel another spirit into another animal. Besides, the only things that are easy to get a hold of here are rats and pigeons, and I can’t picture either one making a good familiar.”

Ruffling his feathers, and finally seeing things form my point of view, he wisely dropped the subject. “Well, let’s get to it. This tracking spell isn’t going to perform itself.”

When you think of a spell, I bet you think of chanting and caldrons, colorful sparks of light and colored smoke. It’s not really anything like that. For a tracking spell, one of the easiest spells to do by the way, you just need a few leaves, roots, a crystal and a small bowl to mix them all in. You put the leaves and roots from various plants into the bowl, heat them and stir well. After the mixture has turned a rather sickly shade of mustard yellow, and is producing a smell that could knock out an elephant from fifty feet away, you tie a string around the crystal, I prefer to use quartz, but any clear crystal will do just fine. I’ve heard that some magic users actually prefer to use diamonds in their tracking spells, but I don’t have the money to keep myself in such things, as you have to get a new crystal each time you perform the spell. You lower the crystal into the mixture, let it soak for a while, drawing the power of the plants into it. After that’s done, you lay the crystal on an object that belonged to the person you‘re wanting to track, and let it rest there for about ten minutes as it draws in the residue left over by the person who had owned it. This is why it’s important to get something of value to the person. You need something they have been in contact with a lot, so that there is a lot of residue on it. When all that is done, you’ve got a crystal that is sensitive to the aura of this one person.

It took me over an hour to do all of this, and I was nearly a nervous wreck by the time it was all said and done. I went over all the steps to make sure I had done everything right. I could have done the entire thing over again if I had screwed anything up, but I didn’t want to have to take that time. I wasn’t even sure if the kid had that much time, and didn’t want to waste a minute.

I now had the perfect tracking device to find the kid, or at least I thought so.

I took out the map of the city I had sitting on a shelf, and held the crystal over the map, hoping the kid was still in town. I would have hated to have pulled out the old globe I had sitting on my desk, have to find the city he was being held in, and then take down the map for that place. I had been asked to do location spells enough times that I had a map of just about every major city in the world, and a number of small towns. I didn’t think I had a map to every place in the world, but it was close.

The crystal spun about at the end of the string for several minutes, a good sign that I wasn’t going to need any other maps, before it finally jerked out of my hand to land on the map. I wrote down the address, and checked it twice to make sure it was right before I dashed off to my Camero, Edwin calling behind me asking if he should call Michelle. I didn’t have time to answer him. I had a kid to find.

Author's Note

First Draft