Chapter 4

  Yuki didn't even look at the address until she got on the bus.

  It was a standard summer morning, a little bit misty but not too cold. The sun was just starting to come out. As she stood under the bus stop, her plan was to get on the first bus that came. She didn't have to wait long; in only 10 minutes, number 13 bus came by and Yuki got on it and bought a day ticket without even thinking about it. The bus was a little bit warmer than outside, and in spite of the early morning, there were quite a few people in it. She supposed that a lot of people started early, especially those who worked in the hospitality industry.

  While warming her hands she took out the piece of paper with the address on it and smiled to herself. Her instinct had been right. The address was a small warehouse located at the outer part of the city near an industrial estate that was now mostly empty. This bus number 13 was the only bus that went there. That just proved her instincts had been right, and she would be the one to free the little girls. She smiled to herself.

  The bus emptied completely in the city centre. So much so that Yuki was the only one remaining on the bus. When it reached the industrial estate, the driver announced that this was the last stop and that the bus would turn around at a nearby roundabout. Yuki thanked the driver and got off.

  She looked at her watch; it was still only 7 in the morning. While her intuition had been right, had her timing had not; she was sure she could have come back here in a few hours when the sun was out fully. But she decided to trust her instincts and walk to the deserted estate where she was supposed to look.

  It looked like a standard warehouse, except it was surprisingly well maintained. The shiny blue paint on the outside was brand new, and the large company name “Jordan House Finance and Investments” was clearly fake—certainly no financial or investment company would set up offices in a dump like this. But the name was boring enough to not draw any attention to itself.

  The front doors were made of shiny glass that looked like it was cleaned daily and there was a well-manicured garden near the entrance.

  As she got closer to the place, she heard a few security guards talking and hid behind some trees to listen to their conversation. It seemed her intuition had been correct again; the guards were complaining that their night shift was over and they wanted to go home, but that the next shift hadn't arrived yet. She saw that they were tired and irritated and grumpy which meant they would be less alert and more easily manipulated.

  Her first challenge, of course, had been how to get into the building, and an idea came to her. She took out one of her charms and focused on the two security guards. She put a curse of illusion so they would either not see her or if they saw her they would ignore her. Confident in her skills, she walked straight up to the guards who, as she hoped, ignored her. They actually turned to look away from her at the same time. That was great! She was inside in 2 seconds.

  That's when she got her surprise. There was another security guard sitting inside, revolver strapped on his hip. “Who the hell are you?” he challenged her.

  She had to think quick. Luckily, the charm was still in her hand, and she put the same curse on him. Obviously, he had seen her, so she couldn't pretend to be invisible.

  “Meow,” she said. “I'm just a stray cat. Nothing to see here.”

  His eyes went blank and turned upward, a bit like those sci-fi movies when an alien virus takes over the human brain. A few seconds later his eyes went back to normal and he looked at her. “Stupid cat, go away, shoo shoo, nobody wants you here.”

  “Okay,” said Yuki, “meow, meow, I'll be on my way.”

  She entered the main office and was blown away by how fancy it was. The carpet was thick and luxurious and clearly brand new. There were no cubicles or open spaces; all the people got their own room with fancy sliding glass doors and security locks on each door. Each of the rooms had expensive iMacs and a huge 42-inch screen high-definition TV. As well as a lot of other fancy gadgets.

  As she walked forward, she found the canteen and it was stocked full of the most expensive coffee machines she'd ever seen. It would put even the local baristas to shame.

  She paused: Had she made a mistake? This clearly looked like the office of a well-off and really rich financial firm and not some death cult that was kidnapping little girls. She had been so confident that she would be the one to find the missing girls and her instincts or intuition had been helping her till now. But had it been false?

  Maybe this place was linked to the cultists indirectly. Like they used it as a place to launder their money but she was sure they weren't keeping any young girls here. This looked like a proper office, a place where really rich people worked and had lots of high-power meetings.

  A bit unsure of herself, she decided to look for another two minutes. If she didn't find any clues, she would accept defeat and leave. It was entirely possible Mirabelle would be luckier.

  There was a locked room at the end and her stomach suddenly started hurting like somebody was drilling a hole in it from the inside. She just knew she had to go through that door. But how? Her magic didn't work on technology and there was no way she could force open the door without causing alarms and risking arrest.

  There was a clear and logical answer. Go back and come back with Lady Mirabelle. She could easily charm her way into the office with no issues. But in a rare moment of weakness, her pride took over; she was still stinging at Mirabelle's comments that she didn't have sympathy.

  I'll show her, she thought to herself. I don't need her help. I can break in myself. But how she thought to herself? How would she get past a locked door?

  Then she remembered the fire training they had gotten at school. In most buildings, if the fire alarm went off all doors unlocked for safety reasons. She hoped this place worked the same.

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  She went around until she found a bin with some paper trash. She didn't have a lighter, but she didn't need one, feeling really overconfident. So much so that even she realised that she was taking stupid risks. She cursed a piece of paper.

  As your fairy godmother, I give you a blessing:

  May you shine as bright as the sun.

  May you shine so bright and burn so bright that your light brings joy to the world.

  It was really arrogant, and really stupid, and really dangerous. She had never cursed an object before and she didn't even know it would work.

  But boy did it work.

  In fact, it worked too well.

  Not only the piece of paper in the bin, but every piece of paper in every one of the two dozen or so offices immediately caught fire. And the coffee machine, the sofa, all the curtains she could see, a small cleaning robot that had been quietly working, and a plastic plant that had been lying next to her. As she jumped back to get away from it, a water cooler next to her burst and boiling hot water sprayed her face, temporarily blinding her.

  Extremely loud fire alarms started screaming at the same time and Yuki ran back to the kitchen until she found the sink. She splashed her face with cool water. Her face still hurt with stinging pain and she saw in a nearby mirror that her face was red. It would be get very painful soon but she had no time.

  She thought to herself, “As usual, I've messed everything up. I'm such an idiot. I'm the most foolish girl in the whole of the planet. What the hell were you thinking, Yuki? Why you're so stupid? I deserve to die for this stupidity.”

  She would have to leave and give Lady Mirabelle the bad news, and she was sure the police would arrest her. As she turned to leave, she saw that the door at the end of the corridor opened by itself. She had a moment of choice: Leave the building and run away, or go in.

  It was still early morning, and she was sure nobody would notice her. If this turned out just to be a normal office with a printer and a fax machine at the end of the corridor, she was a dead girl. She would 100% be arrested, and she would not be able to explain why she was there.

  She saw the door start to close and without thinking, she ran, and before it could close, she was inside. The door locked behind her automatically.

  ***

  It was dark, pitch black. Luckily, before the door had shut, she had seen there were stairs going down. Her intuition told her she was right. There was no reason for a modern building like this to have dark stairs-- unless the owners were just cheap and had turned off the light to save electricity. In which case, she would be in trouble when they found out she was locked in.

  Out of all options she decided to go down one step at a time holding on to the railing. The stairs went deep, really deep. She was sure she had been going down and down for almost ten minutes. This didn't make sense. A warehouse didn't have underground bunkers beneath them; that was the whole point of a warehouse - just one large open floor you could build your office or factory in.

  But whatever she was here, she had to go down all the way. After around ten minutes of walking down very gently one step at a time in complete darkness, her foot hit something - it was a door. She gently pushed it and found herself in a corridor.

  Scratch that, it wasn't a corridor. Within a few minutes after her eyes got used to the bright light, she realised it was a maze.

  Dozens of corridors went left and right and ahead. They were empty corridors with no rooms or any sorts of doors anywhere. She tried a few corridors but very quickly realised she could get lost very easily and never find her way back. The only constant thing was the corridors painted extremely bright white and the even brighter tube lights at the top which bounced off the bright white walls and almost blinded her a few times. She was sure this was deliberate to trick and confuse anyone stupid enough to walk in.

  What do I do? she thought to herself.

  Looking around she found a ball of string sitting in the corner. It had been left there by some worker fixing the wall along with a brush and some paint. She decided to pick up the ball of string and remembered what the Storyteller had told her. She was in a story. What did the story say about mazes? She remembered the story of the Minotaur and tied one end of the string to the door from which she had entered. Unrolling the ball, she decided to go exploring.

  She was glad she had done so. Within 5 minutes, she was completely lost. The corridors turned randomly left and right, and then left and right again, until she had no idea where she was. A few times she entered in a dead end, which made her sure her theory was right. This was a deliberate maze designed to trick people and get them lost. But why? Why put a maze here unless it was to stop the little girls from escaping? That was the only reason she could think of.

  After about half an hour, she started to get frustrated. The corridors led nowhere and almost every time she ended up in a dead end. When she reached the third or fourth dead end, she hit the wall in anger.

  “God damn it! What the hell is going on here? Is this some sort of trick?”

  And that's when she heard something that made her blood go cold. Muffled footsteps behind her. She turned around in a shock, but there was no one there.

  Her heart beating loudly in her chest, she decided to walk back around the corner to see who was there. That's when she felt her second shock: The string of rope in her hand, which had been so tight until now, suddenly loosened. She ran around the corner and found that it had been cut with a knife. Somebody had deliberately cut the rope and left her stranded in here.

  And now she was scared. Really, really scared. They had been aware of her the whole time. She smacked her head. She was so stupid. As soon as she had set the fire they must have looked on the security cameras and seen her. That's why the door had opened like that—swinging towards her just as she had been near it. Office doors didn't open automatically. Somebody had remotely opened the door for her and laid a trap for her and she had stupidly walked through it.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said to herself. “I'm so stupid.”

  A voice spoke through an invisible radio she couldn't see. “That is the smartest thing you've said since you entered the building. Now be a good girl and sit down. We are sending someone to grab you.”

  No, you're not, she thought to herself. She still had her curses. She didn't know if they would work remotely, but she had to try. She took out the strongest curse she had and focused on the voice. If it worked, it could cause temporary blindness or even permanent eye damage. She decided to send all her magical energy through it. Destroy the eyes, she commanded.

  It worked and she heard two screams on the radio. Then another voice cut in. “She's a witch! You fools! Send the robots!”

  From around the corner, she saw two small tank-like robots (the size of small dogs) rolling towards her. They had what looked like a gun on the top and started shooting darts at her. She ran, but the robots followed her.

  The voice on the radio laughed. “That was a nice trick, killing my two men with a curse, but it won't work now. I put a magical barrier around me. And those two robots are run by artificial intelligence. Your curses won't work on them but do try. I'd like to see it. I'm sure it will be very entertaining.”

  Yuki had been running left and right almost blindly as the robots were really fast and catching up to her. She didn't realise when she smacked head-on into a wall and landed on her ass. The robots were a few seconds behind her in extreme panic. She took out all of her curses and focused her attention on the robot and cursed them. She even tried to bring the dark fairy godmother voice, but it didn't come. Clearly, the cultists were right; her magic wouldn't work on a robot controlled by artificial intelligence. There was nothing living in the machines for the curse to latch on to.

  She still called her on all her magic and forced her will. Forced her magic on the robots. She had caused the paper to catch fire right? So why not these robots?

  But a voice inside her told her that that had been an accident. A mistake, a misfire of her magic. One that she couldn't repeat now. She was hit by a dozen darts all over her body, and each felt like being stung by a poisonous scorpion. Screaming and writhing in pain, she dropped her curses and fell.