Emily Oramis Fenglade, better known to her friends and family as Em, was sitting impatiently on a cushion in The Acorn Café, an empty mug on the low table in front of her, fidgeting from side to side. Not that she wasn’t glad to be there—she won the race, and getting to sit down and enjoy a hot mug of cocoa while Alex struggled through the last of a small mountain of parchmentwork was her reward. But she really hadn’t expected him to take quite this long when she first arrived, and even though she tried to make that mug last as long as it could, she still found herself waiting around for him.
It was at times like this that Em wondered how she had even ended up with a partner like Alex. The guy was nice enough, of course, but he was too serious, and sometimes he got so caught up in his work that he would almost seem to forget that she was even there. It could be a bit difficult, to work on an investigation like that. More than once she’d accidentally found herself working on some evidence that Alex had already checked over, without telling her, and he’d snap at her for wasting their time. It had taken her a long time to get used to his quirks, that was for sure—but then, she knew he was probably struggling with her own habits, and she tried not to get too mad at him.
He was a good investigator, though. A damned good investigator. And she might not trust him to tell her everything she needed to know at a crime scene, but she’d trust him with her life if a situation turned nasty.
That, she supposed, was what being partners in the Adstra was all about.
She started when she heard the little bell above the door ring, but refused to look up, or even glance, in that direction. If it was Alex, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction; if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t want to give away that she was waiting for someone. It was getting quite late, and though Canterlot had once made her feel safe, the remnants of the ritual they’d found that morning had her on edge. There were some elements of Adstra training that one did well not to forget.
She’d studied ritual magic before—for a term, at the Arcana. She had dropped it as quickly as she could, since it didn’t hold her interest, but she knew the basics. All rituals needed a sacrifice, and that sacrifice powered a spell. Usually a far simpler spell than most unicorns would imagine, given the kinds of tales that ritual magic was associated with, but a spell with far more power behind it than even the most practiced of mages could achieve with mere hornglow.
The course she’d taken only studied legal rituals, of course, and even though the principle was the same, she didn’t even want to think about how one might start to sacrifice a unicorn’s magic…
“Evening.” Alex’s familiar voice, accompanied by the gentle thud of a cushion. Em smirked and looked up at him.
“Have a good one so far?” she asked, as innocently as she could manage. “Get much work done?”
“I’ve got the parchmentwork done, Emily,” he said, and she shot him the dirtiest look she could muster. One day he’d remember to call her Em. It wasn’t as if they weren’t close, after all. “Hopefully we’ll hear back tomorrow about the library.”
Em nodded, and floated her empty mug back to the bar with a small pile of bits. “Aren’t you just so excited to spend day after day browsing through the most restricted section of the library to look for illegal magic?”
She’d meant it sarcastically, but Alex’s nod was genuine and enthusiastic.
“Of course,” he said, grasping one of the mugs that had floated over to their table in his amber hornglow. “I have absolutely no idea how this kind of ritual could even be carried out. It’s horrific, of course it is, but wouldn’t it be so much better if we knew how it was done?”
Em wasn’t so sure that knowing anything about how the ritual was performed would be good for them. It seemed like the kind of knowledge that would inevitably go wrong, once it was out of the safe confinement of the Starswirl Wing, and the idea that they would be the ones retrieving it didn’t sit well with her.
But they did need it to solve this case. And if someone had already cast such a ritual, she supposed the knowledge wasn’t really well-confined at all.
“I suppose it can’t do any more harm than is already done,” she agreed, grudgingly. “And it’s not as if we’re likely to catch the bastard behind it without knowing how it’s done.”
Alex nodded again. It was less vigorous this time—just a single nod, really—but his eyes were set in grim determination. The hornglow around his mug flared up in brightness, rippling in waves of shimmering gold, like fire and water, all in one. She watched as he took a deep, slow breath, and his hornglow settled to its usual, gentle glow.
“We will catch them, Alex,” she said. “I’m sure we will.”
Alex smirked. When he spoke, his voice was deeper than usual, dark and determined: “And when we do, they’re going to pay for what they did.”
Em raised her mug in a mock salute of agreement, and smiled before lowering it to her lips. Alex was right—they were going to ensure that whoever was behind this would receive the justice they deserved. It wouldn’t be pretty, and she couldn’t think of any unicorn who would want it to be.
She just hoped they caught the bastard before they lost anyone else.