Magical Night

The room is average size, the walls are bookshelves overflowing with books and journals and papers. There’s a table in the middle of the room with herbs, plants and animal parts as well as beakers and vials on it. The floor holds piles of more books and loose pieces of paper are scattered on it. Against the wall opposite the door there is a standing cupboard. The one door from the cupboard is closed tight, the other is open just a crack, just enough for someone to peek through. Hailey was crouched down in the cupboard looking through the crack at the two people who had wandered into the room. They weren’t talking. They were a boy and a girl, teenagers, from what she could tell, probably around her age. They were standing at the table reading out of a book they grabbed off the selves and periodically adding things into a beaker and a vial. The girl holds her vial up in both hands - it looks like she’s praying with it then lowers it and pours it into the beaker the boy is holding out towards her. There was a puff of smoke when the two concoctions mixed. The boy lifted the beaker to his chest and faced the girl. She placed both her hands on the beaker with him and started mumbling something in another language she didn’t recognize. When they put the beaker back on the table the stuff that was in it started to rise out of it and flew from the table out the door. The boy and girl looked at each other smiling. They looked proud. Hailey leaned forward subconsciously, in shock, trying to see where the beaker's contents went. When she did this the cupboard’s door creaked. Hailey leaned back instinctively as the boy and the girl looked around the room for the source of the sound. She stayed perfectly still, barely even breathing, until the boy and girl turned to each other, shrugged and headed out of the room. Hailey remained still, watching the room and listening intently, when it was clear they were gone and weren’t coming back she stepped out of the cupboard. What had she just seen? Liquid flew out of a beaker and out the door? Who were those people? What did they do? She makes her way to the table and looks at the book the two teenagers had been reading from. It looked like a recipe, a really strange recipe, with some writing in another language at the bottom. She flips through the book, gently turning the pages - it’s old, the pages feel like they could fall apart if she touches them wrong - it appears to be just more recipes and sentences in an unknown language. She closes the book and grazes her fingers down its leather cover as she reads its title. Advanced spellbinding potions by Gazarick Welding. Spellbinding potions? Did she just witness someone casting a spell?

Hailey walks out of the room and starts heading down the hall, her head spinning.

“Hailey, there you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

She spins around at the mention of her name, Venessa is standing at the other end of the hall waving vibrantly at her. She smiles weakly at her friend.

“Where were you?” Venessa asks.

“I was looking for a bathroom, this place is a maze.” Hailey tells her. When she turns to point in the direction she just came from she spots the boy and girl from the room standing in a doorway further down the hall, watching her.

“Oh, did you find one? I saw one while I was looking for you.”

“Oh, good,” Hailey sighs. “ Lead the way.”

Venessa grabs Hailey’s hand and lifts their intertwined fingers in the air as she leads her through the halls.

***

Hailey kept dancing even after Venessa left her to go flirt with some guy and as she’s spinning around someone grabs her arm. Hailey jumps and spins around to find the girl from the room holding her arm and the boy who had been with her standing beside her.

“We need to talk.” the girl says and leads Hailey off the dance floor through a hall and into what appeared to be a study.

“You saw didn’t you?” the girl asks.

Hailey looks at her confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We stayed in the hall after we left the room, we saw you come out, but we didn’t see you go in. That means you must have been inside when we were.” the boy says.

Hailey looks at them then sighs, there was no use lying. “I don’t know what I saw.” she tells them.

“Don’t you?” the girl asks, not maliciously.

“You were reading a book about spells and potions? Your mixture flew out of the room? Who are you?” Hailey asks.

The boy and girl exchange a look of pity and sigh.

“I’m Nick, this is Christy…” Nick hesitates.”We’re witches.”

Hailey looks at them blankly. She doesn’t know how to respond. Her initial reaction is to laugh, to tell them there’s no such thing… but then she thinks of the mixture, the words in another language and the flying liquid.

“You can’t tell anyone what you saw. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Hailey huffs a laugh.

“There is someone here trying to poison people through the drinks. We don’t know who it is, we can’t have them figuring out we’re onto them.” Nick says.

“Why would someone want to poison a highschool party?” Hailey asks.

“Because most of the people here are witches, probably.” Christy says, shrugging. “That spell you saw us cast, eradicates all poisons in the building.”

“How do you know someone is trying to poison the party?”

Christy and Nick exchange a look.

“Come on.” Nick says.

They lead her to another room further in the house, a bedroom. On the floor on the other side of the bed are three dead bodies, their lips are black.

“Why would someone do this?” Hailey asks, tears running down her cheeks.

Nick and Christy put their hands on her shoulders.

“Because there are people who are afraid of witches and they’d do anything to get rid of us, even if it means killing a bunch of innocent kids too.” Nick tells her.

Hailey’s silent for a moment, processing everything. Her mind wanders to Venessa who is somewhere in this house, who might be the next one whose lips go black.

“Your potion spell worked right? So we’re safe now?” she asks.

“Yes, it worked, but we’re not safe yet.” Christy tells her.

“Whoever did this locked us in this house, we have to find a way to get out, who knows what else they have up their sleeve.” Nick says.

Hailey turns to face them. “How can I help?”

Nick and Christy smile at the determination in her eyes.

“This is a witches house, in case you haven’t figured that out on your own, according to rumours there is an attic in this house and that’s where the witch who lives here keeps all their protection and ward enchantments. We need to find it.” Christy says.

“An attic, Venessa said she saw one earlier tonight.”

“Great, let’s go see Venessa.” Nick says.

She finds her best friend right where she left her, flirting with some guy. She walks up behind her and flings her arms around her shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt, can I borrow you for a second?”

“Oh hey Hailey, of course.” They walk away from the guy. “How can I help you?”

“You said you saw an attic here right? Do you remember where it is?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I met some potential new friends and they said the attic has some cool stuff in it, so we want to go see if it’s true.”

Hailey looks over to Nick and Christy and Venessa follows her gaze. She smiles at Hailey.

“Well, in that case…”

Hailey leads the way to the attic following Venessa’s instructions. They find the door, pull down the ladder stairs and make their way up.

“Okay… Now what?” Hailey asks as they all stand at the attic entrance looking over the space.

“There.” Nick points to a collection of crystals on a stand in the left corner.

“We’re going to need some Cristasthyne and Clover leaves to purify the wards.” Christy says.

Hailey makes her way over to a jewellery box being used to hold herbs and grabs some clover leaves while Christy gets the Cristasthyne - whatever that is.

Nick grinds the two together and then puts the mixture onto the crystals and begins saying something in that same language he spoke when the two made the mixture fly. When he finished the crystals turned from red to white. Whoa. Nick and Christy high fived and Hailey assumed their plan worked. She follows as they run down the ladder stairs and to the closest exit they can find and watches as they open the door and walk out of the house.

“Now how do we get everyone to leave before we can be locked in again?” Christy asks.

Hailey laughs. “That’s the easy part.” She takes her phone out of her pocket and dials 911.

Minutes later sirens can be heard and everyone from the party is running out of the house. Nick and Christy give her a disbelieving look.

“Most effective way to shut down a party. Especially when said party involves underaged drinking.” Hailey gives them a mischievous smile. All three of them burst into laughter.

Once they were sure everyone had left the house, the three of them said goodbye and made their ways home.