Sentry of the Arcane: Befall

Chapter Fifteen: Sophie

I shake my head in disbelief as the five of us make our way down to the conference room. With everything happening, I completely blanked out on the name Fitton Galster until Mr. Wallace brought it up again. Is it really bad that I kind of wanted to get away from all of this? Honestly, I don't think so.

The five of us burst into the conference room to see Donovan looking at something with a confused expression. Laurel bites her lip to restrain her laughter when we see one of Donovan's hands off to the side, holding Audrey back as she attempts to tackle him. Benen and Fitz smile, and I can't help but giggle softly. "Where's a camera when you need one?" I ask.

I see Laurel take a photo before smiling at me. "Done and done!" she exclaims in a whisper, making Benen laugh audibly.

Mr. Wallace, on the other hand, rolls his eyes at the six of us. "Anyways," he suddenly says, causing the two Sovereigns to look up. The middle aged man grabs the file out of their possession and hands it to Fitz. "You two look at that while I make the other four look at a set of photos I've managed to recover from Leila's attic," he tells us.

We sit down at our seats, not wasting any time in looking through the file.

The thing is, there's only two things in the file.

A meticulously hand-written marriage license. And a death certificate.

Frowning, Fitz picks the death certificate up first and says, "Fitton Ethan Galster. We know that he's a married man; died the age of 56 three years ago..."

As his voice trails off, I pipe up, "Then he can't be the killer- he's dead."

Fitz reluctantly nods. "Yeah, but we can learn some things about him. For example, if he were alive, then he'd be fifty-nine years old. And he's said to have reddish-brown hair, with brown eyes. Slightly tan skin, but Caucasian. He died from..."

"A car accident?" I interrupt, reading ahead. "When?"

"Hold on, let me see... um..." Fitz's teal eyes scan through the certificate. I find myself smiling softly at his focused expression. Suddenly, Fitz straightens up, startling me. "He died on October 14."

"And that was three years ago," I muse. I then take the marriage certificate and look down at the date. Looking at the date, I blurt out, "This was a few months over thirty-three years ago!"

"What?!" Fitz exclaims. "Are you seriously telling me that Arien eloped with this Fitton person when she was sixteen?!"

"Was she really in love with him?" I ask absentmindedly, still trying to picture a younger Arien running away with a man her parents didn't think fondly of.

"Who knows?" Fitz retorts. He's about to say something else, but Laurel's loud gasp makes both of us to look up in curiosity. In front of us, we see a photo of car in the air after veering off of the side of a bridge.

"Is that the car crash that killed Fitton?" I ask.

Mr. Wallace nods. He then switches to the next photo, which is the car on the freeway below the bridge, the hood completely crunched from the impact.

I frown. "There's something missing," I say.

"Yeah," Fitz coincides. "The actual person."

Mr. Wallace flips between the two images. "He's here when the car's falling," he notes. "But he isn't here when the car actually crashes. You're right."

"Then why the death certificate?" Donovan interjects. "Were people trying to be dramatic or something? Since they totally win an Oscar for 'Fakest Death Ever'."