SPELLCASTER [ZATANNA]

[III.] Trouble

ZATANNA always had a knack for getting into trouble.

Mr. Wayne had said it was genetic, that her father had been just the same, back whenever he caught her and Bruce leaping from the roof on makeshift ziplines, or summoning ghosts, or leaving for midnight excursions to graveyards.

Mrs. Wayne had said that it was because she was a free spirit, and that going from living the life of a magician's daughter to that of a sheltered child was like caging a songbird caught in the wild.

And Bruce, Bruce who's eyes had aged a lifetime in a single night, Bruce who's smile wasn't quite the same even now, years after it happen, Bruce said it was because she was angry, that she was angry at her father for leaving, that she was too kind to be cruel, and so lashed out the only way she could.

The point remained that Zatanna knew how to get into trouble.

And that is why at 14 years old, she was hiding beneath the security desk at the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, clutching a book to her chest, while flashlights darted across the room, and police spoke into their radios, searching for her.

She had come here three days prior, with Bruce and Alfred when she had felt it.

Magic.

Real magic.

She hadn't felt magic like that since... since the night her father left her.

As if in a trance, she had walked up to the glass case, and the power... the rush in her veins like crackling electricity. It had almost overtook her, made her fall to the floor.

An Unnamed Old English Book of Spells, the placard to the side had read, and Zatanna had been utterly enchanted.

She hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since, and so, just before midnight, she had slipped out of the Manor, and went to the Museum, where the doors had been unlocked, as if everything had been waiting for her.

It hadn't been, of course, and the second she laid her hands on the glass case, the alarms had begun to ring, and Zatanna had been forced to smash the case open.

She grabbed the book, and oh, feeling it in her hands was almost overwhelming. It was like coming home after a long time away. It shocked her hands, not enough to hurt, but enough to make her hair raise slightly. She felt it, and like a lifeline, she felt tendrils of magic spread out, across Gotham, across the world, across the cosmos, connecting her to thousands of souls for a single moment.

All those who had been touched my magic, and her.

The book had chosen her. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. A book of magic needed to be used. And her, a magician, was the perfect instrument.

That feeling lasted until she heard sirens. And now she was trapped.

She held the book tighter against her.

A sudden crash echoed from somewhere in the museum.

Zatanna heard the pounding of feet echoing in that direction. Slowly, she raised her head. They were gone.

"Psst," a voice said. Zatanna looked up. A blonde girl stood behind the corner, by the hallway that led to the section on Egypt and Greece. Zatanna recognized her. She was in the grade above Zatanna at school, although their paths rarely crossed, and Zatanna didn't know her name. She was wearing fishnets under a pair of ripped black jeans, a leather jacket worn on top of a shirt for a band Zatanna had never heard of.