Witch's Bell Book One

quickly extricated herself and finally managed to make it to work – only a tiny ten minutes late.
    But then her odd day, well it just kept getting odder.
    She was stopped on the stairs by Frank. It was Ebony's father's birthday coming up, and Frank wanted to know what to get him.
    'What does he want?' Frank said to her, his frail frame somehow managing to lithely stand on two steps without the strain crumpling him in two. 'What does he really want, Ebony Bell? I've known your father for some time, but I can't keep getting him pens for his birthday,' Frank had laughed in a way that summed him up perfectly – through his nose in rounded hiccups, that pulled at his aged skin like rain hitting plastic wrap.
    Ebony had shrugged. 'Get him... a book, or a watch, or a pen – he likes pens.'
    'Come on, Ebony Bell,' Frank shook his head, 'you can do better than that. There must be something he really wants?'
    Ebony just shrugged. 'I guess, but I don't know what it is. I always just give him a basket of random books so he can pick and choose, or find something he didn't know he wanted.'
    The conversation had quickly petered out, and finally Ebony had been allowed to ascend the stairs to her new peaceful lair. She really was starting to think of it as a home away from home. The equivalent of a comfy jacket she could climb into to escape the weird, cold world around her.
    She'd dusted on Tuesday sometime – going down to the cleaning closet and dragging a broom (even though she hated them), a mop, and various other cleaning implements up to her new office. Even though she was technically meant to be reading the files, and not cleaning them, she'd justified it by pointing out to Ben that there was enough dust in the room to kill an entire convention of asthmatics. Ben had grumbled, but she'd done it anyway.
    By Wednesday, when Ebony had actually sat down to start reading the files, as her actual job specified – she found them quite interesting. She wasn't a history buff, and she hated paperwork – but these spoke to her in a different language – the language of stories. Each and every cold case was like an unfinished novel, crying out for a poignant resolution that usually left Ebony completely invested in it by the end. How did they all fit together, who had been responsible for the crime, what had happened to the victim afterwards?
    Ebony pulled file after file out from their silent slumbers in the shelves. Tenderly opening each, and leafing through the case-summaries, reports, and photos inside. Once upon a time, as a witch, Ebony would have been able to sense the magic coming off them, and she would have read it like you would the files themselves. The magic would give an added layer of meaning to the situation – revealing previously hidden details, motives, and themes – as if the person were able to actually step into each photo and search the scene on their hands and knees with a looking glass in hand.
    But now, without a drop of magic at her disposal, all Ebony had was her memory, her intuition, and her imagination. She looked at the pictures in each case, looked at the suspects, and victims – and tried to see if she could remember any of them. She tried to draw patterns between the crime she'd experienced in her own tenure, and the crime she was reading about now. Perhaps there was an underlying cause, maybe the same family was responsible for the lot, or maybe the same people were selling illegal magical wares, or maybe it was even the same person (or creature) who was the true culprit.
    She started to make three piles on her desk. One for cases she simply had no clue about; one for cases that seemed to fan her interest, but that she didn't really have any leads on; and one for cases she had a strong feeling about. There were only two cases so far that she was sure she could give worthwhile information on. But, that being said, she'd only managed to sort through a single file on the cold cases shelf, so far.
    The day was beginning to wear on, once again, even though it took Ebony some time to notice it. It wasn't until the long beams of light struck her desk, illuminating her glass with a soft sparkle, that Ebony realized the sun was setting. She looked up to the windows before her desk, and watched for several minutes as the dusk seemed to seep down from the mountains, as if the dark were a liquid pooling into the city from above. It was beautiful, haunting, and silent.
    It was a strange but true fact: