Magnificently Malcontent

Chapter 8

JJ rushed out of his hiding spot as soon as his brothers disappeared. He sprinted down the hallway without pausing at the site where his family used to be. He knew that if he stopped to mourn everything he lost, he would fall and never get back up. The time for his tears was over. It had to be.

He quickly made his way over to Marvin's door. JJ hesitated only a moment before he opened the magician's door. He thought back to his static filled eyes and felt only rage. Anti took everything from him. No, it was worse than that. He forced Marvin to take everything from him. His desire to save his family and get revenge on the glitch fueled his next steps into the darkened room.

If there was going to be any way to track down the demon, it was going to be in Marvin's room. JJ had been in Marvin's room plenty of times, but it felt different this time. He felt like he was trespassing. This wasn't the same place where he had once spent hours with his best friend planning a way to put all of the furniture in the house on the ceiling for April Fool's. It was darker, corrupted.

JJ could still see the messes left over from spells gone awry, but there were also new burn marks on the floors and walls. All of his old tricks were cast aside and his mirror laid on the floor, broken. JJ knew from his own experience with Anti that this was all from the glitch testing out his newest puppet.

He turned around and started to sign what he observed, but then he remembered. There's no one there. He's all alone. His hands fell limply to his sides as he stared out the door into the empty hallway. He has always been a silent man, but this has never been a silent home until now. JJ wanted to run. He wanted to go dive under his covers and pretend that this was all just some bad dream. He wanted to wake up to Chase's assurances that everything would be alright and Marvin using his magic to recreate constellations on his ceiling. But wishing wouldn't bring them back.

JJ took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Back to the task at hand. There had to be some clue as to where they went, some scrap of information that could lead him to Anti and the others. He needed to prove that he wasn't useless. He could save them, if only he could find them.

He kept sifting through Marvin's papers looking for even one little hint. There were still some papers from previous plans for tricks meant to impress the brothers, but there were also pieces of parchment describing dark enchantments that JJ could only guess at what they do. He tried not to dwell on the scroll that contained an illustration of hazy eyes.

As JJ flipped through the pages of a book that he didn't remember seeing a month ago, a scribble in the margin caught his eye. Upon closer inspection he could make out the word disaster written in Marvin's handwriting. JJ glanced at the spell outlined beside it. He could tell from what little magic Marvin had taught him that it was a binding spell. Marvin had performed a similar spell once before to bind Henrik's hand to his coffee for a few hours. This one looked more complex, almost like it-

JJ jumped back from the desk, knocking over the chair in the process. He pieced the puzzle together in his mind, and he was terrified of the picture that came out of it. It was a soul-binding spell. One that would make Marvin Anti's puppet forever, or at least as long as Anti found him useful. JJ took a moment to compose himself again before inching his way back to the desk. He knew what the spell was, but that still didn't explain what "disaster" meant.

JJ thought at first that Marvin wrote it as a way of warning against the spell, but Marvin was smarter than that. He wouldn't have taken the time to write something so obvious. No disaster had to mean something else. JJ wracked his brain trying to come up with something, but not a single idea stuck.

He walked over to the bed and toppled onto it, not caring as his face hit the mattress. Fatigue washed over him as he pushed himself to roll onto his back. For the first time he let himself feel how tired he was. He wished he had time to just sleep and forget about the mess he was in for a little while, but he knew he was under a time crunch. A silent, bitter laugh emanated from JJ. He was out of time in every sense of the phrase. Too late. Too early. Anything but on time. Even his own style was pulled from a different era.

If he closed his eyes, JJ could pretend like he was in his own room, and Marvin would burst through his door any moment with some new scheme to get back at Jackie for using his personal hair conditioner. There was always some new plan with him. Chase often called them the disaster duo because of all the chaos they caused for their older brothers.

JJ's eyes snapped open. They were the disaster duo. Anti wouldn't know that. In fact, every March they would go to an abandoned building downtown to plan out their pranks for April Fool's. They named it Disaster HQ. It all started clicking in his head. Anti and Marvin had to have gone there.

Triumph swelled within JJ's chest until one realization dwarfed everything else in comparison. Marvin was the one to leave this breadcrumb trail. Anti hadn't ordered him to. Marvin was still fighting deep down. Which meant JJ still had a chance to save him.