Chapter Twenty-nine

Buckle Up

MILA

Mila was exceedingly nervous as she waited outside Judge Templeton’s office. True, the judge’s office was in an entirely separate wing of the DMJ building with respect to the police station. But that didn’t stop Mila from worrying she’d run into Riley. This was his turf, after all.

Even if he had most probably gone home after dropping her off, one could never know. He seemed a bit of a workaholic.

Finally, after long, interminable minutes in the waiting room, a clerk called her name and showed her inside the judge’s office.

It was a large room with an impressive mahogany desk at the center, covered in scattered papers and writing implements of different sorts, a contrast to the otherwise tidy room lined with filing cabinets and neatly organized bookshelves. The office smelled like a combination of expensive leather and old parchment, with a hint of sandalwood.

Judge Templeton sat behind the desk, her head bent over a thick file. As Mila entered, the judge looked up, her sharp eyes analyzing Mila from head to toe before she motioned for her to take a seat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

“Ah, Miss Bennet.” Judge Templeton reclined in her leather chair, lacing her fingers over her lap. “I admit I was surprised to find you in my appointment book today. What can I do for you?”

Still rather nervous, Mila thought it best not to circle around the issue. Judge Templeton seemed like a direct witch, with no patience for niceties. “Hello, Your Honor. I’ve come to ask to be assigned to a different community service for my sentence.”

Judge Templeton tilted her head and let the request hang in the suddenly suffocating silence of the room for a while. “Investigative work doesn’t suit you?”

“No, I like the work. I enjoy it a lot,” Mila said truthfully. The last few days had reminded her why she’d gotten her private investigator license. “It’s not the job. It’s my partner.”

Judge Templeton’s eyebrow disappeared under her bangs. “Chief King isn’t acting like a gentleman?”

“No, no, of course, he is.” Mila pushed her hands forward in his defense. “He’s been nothing other than a gentleman, Your Honor, truly.” Well, except maybe for that time he’d pressed her against the wall and kissed the hex out of her. Or when he’d then carried her to his bedroom and pressed her even harder into the mattress underneath him. Or that time when his air spells had gotten a little handsy. Mila blushed and forced her brain to stay focused on the matter at hand. After all, none of those reactions on Riley’s part had been voluntary. “Riley has been a brilliant partner, really,” Mila insisted.

“Riley?” Judge Templeton seemed taken aback at her use of his first name, but she moved on. “Then what’s the matter?”

“I might’ve accidentally cursed him?”

“Miss Bennet.” The judge gave up all appearances of coolness and dropped her elbows on her desk, taking her head in her hands while massaging her temples with her fingers. “I met you not two days ago, after you’d involuntarily cursed half the town’s elementary school with an illegal love elixir. As penance, I’ve sentenced you to help Salem MPD solve the attempted murder your potion has coincidentally thwarted, and you mean to tell me that, in the two days since I’ve last seen you, instead of reflecting on your mistakes, you’ve also managed to accidentally curse our Chief Inquisitor?”

Well, when she put it like that, Mila’s character came out a little worse for wear. But Mila had her response at the ready. “Judge Templeton, believe me, in the last two days, I’ve done nothing more than reflect on my poor life’s choices. But Inquisitor King’s curse is still part of the original mistake.”

Judge Templeton dropped one hand and kept massaging her forehead with the other. “How do you mean?”

“See, the potion I brewed was supposed to make me fall in love with the first man I saw, and for that love to be reciprocated. I made the cupcakes, ate one, and then I went to take a bath and fell asleep in the tub…”

Judge Templeton made a twirling gesture with her fingers as if to say, I already know all of that. Please move along, so Mila came to the conclusion, “And, well, when I woke up, Riley was arresting me. He was the first man I saw, you see, which of course triggered the effects of the potion, and so… umm… working with him these past few days… err… things have gotten a little… mmm… complicated. Riley is attracted to me, and he can’t help it because I’ve cursed him into it, and I feel the same, obviously , but still only because of the potion… so, err, it’d be better if we were no longer bound to work together. Mostly for Riley’s sake. He didn’t ask for this, but we can both agree I had it coming…”

The judge was now sitting straight in her chair. “Miss Bennet, how did this attraction between you and Chief King manifest, if I may ask?”

Mila thought of all the wall pressing and mattress pressing, of the handsy air, and stolen glances, and Riley wiping froggucino foam off her upper lip and then licking his thumb, and blushed. “Is it really relevant?”

“No.” Judge Templeton shook her head. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t. I assume you’ve shared this theory of yours with Chief King?”

Mila nodded.

“And out of curiosity, how did he respond?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Just humor me, please, Miss Bennet.”

Mila wrung her fingers, feeling all the more mortified. “He agreed we shouldn’t act on a potion-induced attraction and should keep things professional until we could solve the case and move on with our lives.”

“I see,” the judge said, once again reclining in her chair. “I probably shouldn’t share this with you, Miss Bennet, but you’re about the same age as my daughter and sometimes you remind me of her so much. Therefore, I’m going to go out on a limb for you and let you in on a little secret.”

Mila waited with a beating heart, ready to discover the secret meaning of life.

“All magical law enforcement officers,” Judge Templeton continued, “are warded against all kinds of wayward spells and courses, even black magic. Their special protective gear shields them from about anything short of Dragonfire. It’d take a truly powerful witch or wizard with a lot of intent to breach through that kind of safeguard. And I don’t mean to question your potion-making skills, but I seriously doubt that your incantation affected Chief King in any sort of way.”

“But, but… he didn’t tell me any of this. Why?”

Judge Templeton sighed. “I might not be the person you want to ask that question to.”

Mila was still a little stunned. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but my potion must’ve still worked at least on me because then how would you explain my side of the thing ?”

The judge gave her a long stare. “Miss Bennet, do I really have to spell it out for you? You’re young, and Chief King, in case you haven’t noticed, is a really attractive wiz—”

“No, that’s not it,” Mila protested, not even caring that she was interrupting a judge. “I could feel the magic between us, I swear. The potion must’ve worked at least on me, or his gear must’ve malfunctioned and let the magic through.”

“That’s highly improbable.”

“But not impossible, right?”

Judge Templeton seemed to be losing her patience fast now. Any goodwill Mila might’ve had with her was quickly evaporating. The judge started rummaging through the various court files on her desk until she presumably found the one she was looking for and started sorting through the pages with curt, annoyed flips until she clicked her tongue and stared down at Mila with an air of victory. “Miss Bennet, how well did you pay attention in your defensive magic classes in school?”

Mila had never been to the top of her class, but also not at the bottom. Still, right now, she felt like she was being interrogated for a test she hadn’t prepared for. “I did okay, I guess.”

“All right, it says here that on the night of your arrest, you were accidentally stunned. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And that happened before you saw Chief King.”

Mila nodded again.

“Then as you surely can remember from your studies, the primary effect of being stunned is to have one’s magic temporarily tempered, but the shock doesn’t stop just at the power of the witch or wizard who has been hit, it also wipes all other enchantments or curses. In fact, stunning is one of the most used techniques in counter magimedicine.”

Mila pressed the heels of her palms over her eyes and shook her head. “That is not possible. There must be another explanation.”

“Miss Bennet, why are you so hellbent on denying a simple attraction between a witch and a wizard? I know Chief King must not seem like the most approachable—”

“Because we share a mental bond,” Mila shouted, lowering her hands from her face and confessing the secret she hadn’t dared tell anyone, except for her familiar. That was enough to finally shock the judge into silence. “And I know witches can’t share mental bonds unless they’re related. So, unless you’re about to tell me that Riley is my secret brother, there must be some other explanation. Magic is connecting us somehow, and the only logical explanation is that it must be because of the love potion. My stunning wasn’t thorough, or Riley’s gear somehow failed to protect him, but it must be something.”

After her tirade, Judge Templeton sat so still for so long that Mila wondered if she wasn’t, in fact, a gargoyle who had momentarily turned to stone.

Then the judge made Mila jolt in her chair as she abruptly stood up to scan the magical manuals on her bookshelves. She scanned the spines of the old tomes until she settled on the smaller, most-ancient-looking one.

She brought the book back to her desk and, flipping to the section that presumably interested her, Judge Templeton started reading.

Mila tried to elongate her neck and peek at the text, but the writing was too thin for her to decipher. What wasn’t hard to interpret was the increasingly more prominent look of consternation on the judge’s face.

When the other witch finally looked up from the book, the judge’s expression was inscrutable. “In the magical community, I suspect we don’t publicize this fact because it’s so rare that it might have people waiting all their lives for something they might never find.” Mila blinked, confused, but the judge’s next words couldn’t have been clearer. “All right, here it is, Miss Bennet. Buckle up because I think you’re in for a little shock.”