6 Hello Kitty Scrying Mirror

I ambled after him, making my way towards the central courtyard area. There, I found a stone bench tucked in a shady spot between a dwarf willow and a clump of bamboo.

I sank down onto the bench with a grateful sigh and released the weight of the heavy bag. In the shadows of the tree and the grasses, the stone was cool to the touch, a nice welcoming contrast to the miserable scorching day.

I hated to admit it, but that book was starting to burn a hole in my bag. Not literally, of course, even though it was a book about demons.

The sad truth was, the Demon book had piqued my curiosity to the point where I wanted to know more about it, not as a favor to Simon but because it gave me a delicious thrill to be in the possession of such a bizarre object.

Everything about it thrilled me to the core of my being. I felt as if I had been born in the wrong body. All of my being screamed out to do magik, but no matter how hard I tried, I could barely do anything above what a kindergartner could do.

I really needed to find someone to help me figure this book out, but the rest of my day was completely filled with work assignments. If I didn't take advantage of this little bit of free time, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it until tonight.

My fingers fiddled with the bag until I could no longer stand my own cravenness. I could not stop myself from puling out the book. Once it was in my hot little hands, I turned it in all directions inspecting it in close detail.

It was a solid sealed tome of questionable literary caliber and it weighed a ton! My eyes were again drawn back to the gilded Demon symbol. There was the center image with strange symbols embossed into the circular area. 

Upon further inspection, I noticed that the central image was the source from which the green aura was swirling and coiling its limbs about.

It gave me the shivers.

In the middle of a sun-drenched summer day, I felt that odd quiver of cold excitement laced with a touch of fear. If there was anything I was the most scaredy-cat about, it was a demon.

The sound of that word---nay, even the word itself, as written in that ancient mage language used for the evocation of such entity---had the power to give me goosebumps. It was an irrational fear, but I never claimed to be a rational being.

This physical object had been magiked into being, and its raison d'être was questionable at best.

Don't get me wrong. I am surrounded by magiked objects.

In and of themselves, magiked objects were even less fascinating than my mobile phone was (as is obvious by how often I checked my phone), but not all magikally-imbued objects carried the same weight.

A book that claimed to be about demons would have more draw and fascination than a tome about something as mundane as personal levitation, at least in my limited view of the world.

Intellectually, I knew that demons existed, but I did not have a clear idea of what exactly a demon was. I had also never known any classmates who'd had personal experience with one.

I pulled out my Mage's Scrying Mirror and opened it with a one-handed practiced maneuver. It was my very first cosmetic compact, and one of my most prized possessions.

The round plastic pink case had a Hello Kitty image on the outside with a mirror embedded into the inside of the lid. It was held together with a tiny gold latch that was no longer very gold as the metal had begun to tarnish.

This was to be expected. After all, it was just a young girl's powder compact. Once the makeup had been used up, I had asked Mother to turn it into a scrying mirror for me.

She had not been happy about my request.

"Oh don't use that little pink Hello Kitty thing as a magik tool, honey. People will laugh at you!" She tried to dissuade me.

But I was adamant. Who cared what people thought as long as I liked it.

It was small and portable, and most importantly did not look like the typical gilded hunk of metal and glass that Mother had insisted I should have.

In the end, Mother had worked the magik for me, but only after pressing upon me a huge honking scrying mirror--the one that now lived in the back of my closet along with all the other magik paraphernalia that made me cringe.

I swear. I never could understand why adults always insisted that magikal equipment had to be made of heavy curlicued metal inlaid with precious gems.

I personally preferred plastic myself. It was lightweight, portable, and came in every fashionable color imaginable.

I fixed my mind back to the job at hand. The Seek Command to activate the scrying mirror was a simple one, but in my handicapped state, no magik was ever simple.

I focused my intent onto the mirror's surface. All I had to do was think of the person, speak the Seek Command, and then stare into the mirror. If the person was available, he or she would appear.

Here goes nothing!

"Shunzaotahnren"

After ten minutes of squinting and fussing with the makeup compact mirror, I sighed and clamped shut the compact. I needed something more powerful than magik, and it had nothing to do with my abilities, or lack thereof.

The problem was that most of the people I had been trying to locate were all on vacation and had hung up their Do Not Disturb aura. The remaining few who I could even get on scri-visuals were simply not suitable for the job.

I sat back and sighed.

A slight breeze rustled through the reeds like the shuffling of paper dancing in the wind, masking the sounds of laughter and chatter in the distance. It reminded me of how alone I truly was even though I was in the middle of a campus filled with students and professors.

I took a deep breath and put on a smile.

It was so stupid to feel sorry for myself when I was living the life I had always wanted to live.

To be able to land a job at the south coast's only Magikal Academy and rub shoulders with the best mages in the world was a dream job for most people.

Better yet, at the age of seventeen, even hobbled as I was by a serious magikal handicap, I was making enough magefunds to live by myself without the need for any support from my parents. Better yet, I was still able to keep in touch with all my professors.

And as Professor Pomello always liked to say: There is ALWAYS more than one way to skin a bat.

I dropped the useless Hello Kitty scrying mirror back into my bag and pulled out my mobile phone.

Squirrelly magikal devices aside, if high magik did not work, there was always high tech that I could attempt. Although high tech had nowhere near the glamour factor as high magik, it had the distinct advantage of usually working as expected, and with little supervision.

I turned on the phone and beamed the virtual touchscreen display into the space before me. Then I began scrolling through the Academy's entire list of students, comforted by the knowledge that the phone did not care who had hung up a Do Not Disturb aura. It simply listed every single person who had ever gone through the Academy.

There had to be someone I knew who would be able to help me.

I started making virtual calls to random people only to realize that human technology still had its quirks that I had to deal with.

Some of my calls went straight into voicemail. Some calls got blocked while others rang and rang and no one picked up. The two people who actually answered my calls were not even in town.

By the time I had gone through every person I was acquainted with who might have some idea of how to open a book about demons, only two were actually on campus. I groaned as I saw their names and photos flash up onto the virtual screen.

Corwin and Connor Osiris.

I heaved a heavy sigh. If anyone knew anything about demons, it would be the Osiris twins. Their focus of study was wizardry, after all, and they had most likely already studied through the higher levels of wizardry dealing with the scarier aspects of demon conjuring and control.

I touched their names and found their individual Magepage, but a cursory check showed no listed number for either of the twins. It did, however, disclose that they were currently living in the boys' dorm on the west side of campus.

I pushed aside all the angst I had regarding the twins and began to plan out my next moves. Since I could not call them, and I had no idea where they were on campus at the time, I would have to waylay them on their way back to their living quarters.