Spellcaster series #2: The Acolyte

Two Realities

TRISTAN

I decided to continue the investigations without a partner.

Jessie was overlooking the Academy while Wynona followed her husband, Dr. Pierce, to a gathering of diplomats and governors. She was to represent the Spellcasters and try her best to propose a fairer judgment towards Spellcasters and Vampires.

Sergeant Bells and her new partner, Sergeant Hammett, questioned eye-witnesses in regards to the reports of a possible djinn in the town area. One of the eye-witnesses was Mrs Tabitha, the matron of the Lucky Orphans. I volunteered to ask her the questions myself.

I was welcomed by the Mrs Tabitha herself. Her stout figure curtsied when I entered. Without hesitation, I was shown into a drawing room where a fireplace and lounge chairs were placed. Two other young women who worked with Mrs Tabitha joined us and one of them brought us some tea.

"Thank you..."

"Alicia, and that is my sister, Beth," the young woman said as she handed me a steaming cup of tea.

I nodded, "Thank you, Alicia. Well Mrs Tabitha, talk to me about the night you saw the djinn. Spare me no detail."

The two girls sat themselves beside each other on the parquet floor, right by Mrs Tabitha's feet. Mrs Tabitha began.

"I had just put the last girl to bed when I felt a breeze from the window. I shut it, thinking it must be the draft. I left the bedroom and the window slid open again."

"Perhaps it was Lucy, Mama, you know how playful she gets," Alicia looked up to her mother. Then she turned to me, "My mother is very paranoid, sir."

Her sister, Beth, remained silent, her eyes glued to the floor.

"It certainly wasn't," Mrs Tabitha rebutted. "Lucy was having a fever that day and slept through the night after her medication."

"What did you do after you saw the window open again?" I asked.

"Well, I shut it again, sir. That was when I felt goosebumps right before I saw a tall dark silhouette lurking about in the bushes. It moved and rustled the leaves before running off, inhumanly fast."

Alicia, I assumed was the older one, patted her mother's knee. "I think you were too tired, Mama. I have never seen any djinns around here. Remember? That's what Dora said. She has placed a protection in this place. We're safe."

That thoroughly piqued my interest. "What did Dora do?"

Beth's small frame moved, the first time since we settled in the drawing room. She planted her pale finger to her lips, eyes wide at her sister.

"What? Sir Tristan is asking, we have to tell him. Spare no details, remember?"

"Alicia, what was that about Dora?" I asked again.

"She came by two weeks ago for her monthly visits. We told her that we are scared of the djinns so she carved something on the wall of one of the rooms. She said it will protect us."

I stood up so quickly it startled the ladies. "Show me but do not alarm the others."

Alicia led me up the stairs and to a locked bedroom of the second storey.

"Who stays here?" I asked as the teenager unlocked the door with the master key.

"It's empty now but it used to be Dora's room. When she started working with us after she turned eighteen, we gave her her own room."

"It used to belong to Heidi too, a few months before she left the orphanage," Mrs Tabitha added. Beth held her mother's hand, pale green eyes watching me warily. She looked away when I smiled.