Spells in Silence

Chapter 17: Surprises

"Was that just a statue of Merlin, or was that really Merlin?": That would be telling, wouldn't it? ;-) In all honesty, I haven't decided. We'll see where the story decides to go.
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The day was warm today, and Jean Luc and Hazel had moved from his cabin to a table outside to enjoy the sunlight. In a shocking turn of events, Jean Luc had even finished going through the previously never-ending stack of receipts they had been adding to his ledger, so they were not even doing work outside. Instead they had grabbed a couple of books from his small collection and were reading in the daylight.

Or, really, he was reading while she constantly glanced back and forth between the book in her hands and the dictionary that was being helpfully held aloft by her ghost hand so she could flip through it and looked up all the words she did not know. There were a lot of those.

Loud cracks, three or four of them, came from the other side of the commune, and she looked up to find Jean Luc looking that way with his eyes growing wide. "Damn. I forgot. Hazel, I need you to hide. Now."

Rubbing her fingertips together to create her sparkler, she wrote out, 'Why? What wrong?'

"Wizards from the government are here. They normally come around this time of the month, I just got a little distracted this time and actually have something to hide from them. Go hide in the trees until Grégoire or I come to get you." He looked back at her, his expression still one of worry and fear. "If they find you, none of us are going to like the consequences."

She bit her lip. On the one hand, she did not want to cause the werewolves any trouble, not after how kind they had been to her despite their fear and misgivings. On the other hand, anything that had even Jean Luc panicking like this was something she needed to see, if only so she could be on the lookout for it in the future.

Closing her two books with the three hands, she stuffed them both into her satchel and climbed up the side of the tree until she stood on her feet. She gave him a nod and stepped backwards. As soon as he turned around and started walking towards the sounds, she blew out a cloud of smoke and followed along. Not right behind him, but about fifteen feet away. A couple of times that meant she went around the other side of a cabin and broke her line of sight, but it was easy enough to find him again afterwards.

She had never really pushed the limits of what this spell was capable of, she considered as she crept along. She knew people ignored her, which was the entire goal, but what all she could get away with doing in front of people without the spell breaking she was not sure. At some point she really needed to experiment with that, but this was not the time for that. Instead she was going to do her best to stay just far enough away from Jean Luc and whoever these wizards were so she did not risk the spell breaking.

It turned out to be four wizards who had shown up, all of them wearing bright blue robes that came down to their knees with baggy sleeves cinched tight at the wrists. The sleeves themselves were emblazoned with a repeating pattern of the fleur de lis design that the French were so fond of. Another emblem sat over their hearts, but at this distance she could not tell just what it was other than it was something different. More important than their clothing was their expressions; none of them seemed particularly happy to be here, one of them even sneering at the admittedly plain-looking cabins and kicking a rock with the toe of his tall brown leather boots.

If they were not happy and did not want to be here, she wondered, why had they come in the first place?

"Lieutenant Lemaire, we weren't expecting to see you so soon," Jean Luc called out in greeting. Hazel could tell that his voice was tight, and between that, his command to her, and the thoughts she had heard from a few of the werewolves about wizards, it was not hard to tell that he was just as unhappy about their presence as they were. "Normally you show up closer to the full moon, almost as if you like seeing us in pain as the transformation gets nearer and starts gnawing on our bones."