I hoisted myself up to the window opening and fell through face-first, doing my best to be as quiet as possible. After all, if Raoul was in the basement, he might hear me if I made too much noise. But while the top part of my body made it through the gap pretty easily, I very quickly realized I didn’t have the upper body strength to pull the rest of myself through the opening with ease. I pressed hard against the wall, trying to force the rest of me through the gap. Eventually I got through to my hips, which I had to wiggle aggressively, but they finally fit through and my legs slid through the opening. I fell to the floor with a louder-than-I’d-hoped-for thud, and lay motionless for a moment, my ears on high alert in case I could hear Raoul coming back up the stairs.
When after at least thirty seconds passed and there was no sign of life anywhere, apart from my own heart pounding at about two thousand beats per minute, I stood up and closed the window behind me. My eyes were adjusting to the low light inside the shop, and I could just make out the outline of the trapdoor that led to the basement in the floor behind the counter.
My stomach grumbled, trying to convince me that now that I was in here and had already broken the law, I might as well go all the way and get a scoop of ice cream for the road.
As much as a late-night scoop of ice cream even in winter would have been very welcome – and probably part of the reason why I had so much trouble fitting through that window – breaking into a place to prevent a crime was one thing, stealing ice cream from it was another entirely.
Besides, I wasn’t here for ice cream; I was here to look for a killer. Putting my dreams of a scoop of brownie explosion behind me, I carefully pried open the door to the basement, willing the hinges to move silently. That was where the storage freezers were – every paranormal child who grew up in Mt. Rheanier had seen the owner go down there to get a new tub of ice cream to bring up. You knew you had made it when you were the witch who got the first scoop of the new tub, and I was hit with a wave of nostalgia as I peered down the dark hole leading to the basement.
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved that there was no sign of anyone digging a hole down there or disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to catch Raoul in the act. If I was completely honest, I was definitely more on the disappointed side of things.
Then, I realized: if I went down there, I could wait for Raoul and grab him while he was busy digging towards the bank next door. I took an extra minute to make sure I really couldn’t hear any sounds coming from the basement then began walking down the steps leading underground. The low hum of the walk-in freezers reached my ears, but that was the only sound. Raoul wasn’t here, and I was safe.
Or so I thought. As soon as I hit the bottom step, something came out of nowhere and slammed against me, pushing me against the wall.
I was knocked completely off balance, pain searing through my shoulder as I hit the wall. There was so little light I couldn’t see exactly who had hit me, but I could make out deep-set eyes, a long nose, and a lupine face. It was a wolf shifter. Raoul was here after all.
“Where are you?” he snarled at me. Right, I was still invisible. That was my biggest advantage.
I ducked down, falling to the ground as I grabbed my wand and pulled it from my pocket.
I rolled away from the wall, crashing into Raoul’s feet as I did so. He let out a yelp and fell with a thud next to me. He took advantage of his position to jump on top of me. I was pinned to the ground, my wand hand trapped under his foot. I closed my eyes and pointed the wand towards him as best I could as I muttered a spell.
“Saturn, god of freedom, freeze this shifter, so he can no longer move some.”
Every muscle in Raoul’s body tensed, and he slowly fell to the floor, his body landing with a thud. I jumped up and quickly reversed the invisibility spell on myself. As soon as he saw me, Raoul’s eyes widened.
“That’s right, you weren’t expecting a witch to catch you, were you?”
Then, a noise came down the stairs.
“Sebastian?” a familiar voice called out. “Are you okay?”
“Jack?” I called out.
“Ali? Is that you? What’s going on?”
Jack muttered something and a moment later the whole basement was illuminated with the glow emanating from the tip of his wand.
“I caught Raoul,” I said, looking down at the frozen shifter. To my horror, however, it wasn’t Raoul at all. It was another shifter that I vaguely recognized from the Enforcer’s office.
“No, you didn’t,” Jack said. “You caught Seb, one of the Enforcers here in town.”
“Oh… well, that’s not good,” I muttered.
“Do you mind unfreezing him?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” I said quickly, pulling out my wand and pointing it at the shifter. I reversed the spell, and he immediately jumped to his feet, stretching out his legs.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked.
“Hey, you’re the one who attacked me.”
“Because I thought you were Raoul.”
“Well I thought you were Raoul, too. You’re only mad because I won the fight.”
“Because I wasn’t supposed to be up against a witch with magical powers. If
