Jeldrik Goldtau climbed into the passenger seat and waited for his supervisor Gabriel Winter to get in on the other side. He had no idea where they were heading, only that it was urgent – he had been interrupted halfway through his lunch break by Gabriel who had burst into the room and told him to hurry, he would explain on the way.

  Now they were snaking through the busy city streets, Gabriel mumbling irritably to himself. Jeldrik decided not to press the other man for an explanation. After a little less than ten minutes they had made it out of the inner city and were driving on a quiet road through a forest area.

  Gabriel suddenly spoke: “We’re on our way to a possible crime scene.”

  “Possible?” Jeldrik frowned.

  “Well, all information we have is that a hostile soul forced entry into the apartment we’re heading to. But just before we left the office we could detect no soul at all, not even the tenant’s.”

  Jeldrik turned his head quickly to Gabriel. “Do you mean murder?”

  “Maybe.” Gabriel’s gaze fixed for a second on Jeldrik. “Or the tenant left with the intruder, voluntarily or not.”

  Jeldrik felt a hint of panic rise up his throat. But also excitement. He had just started his internship at the Department of Magical Crime Investigation a week ago and not accompanied his supervisor anywhere. For his first case to possibly be a murder …

  “How do you know about all this in the first place?,” Jeldrik asked. He felt self-conscious, though he knew it was a reasonable question. But he wondered if he should know the answer from any of the books he had read before starting his internship. When he could not detect any trace of judgement in Gabriel’s voice, he relaxed again.

  “You’ve heard of the ABA, I assume?” The Age-egalitarian Bonding Association who wanted to legalise magical bonds with minors. Jeldrik had heard of them. But what did they have to do with this? “Now that they’ve gained more supporters and appeared more and more in public, the amount of crimes against them has increased too. The most serious one so far being the beating-up of that female activist, what was her name? Lena? Lea?”

  “Wasn’t it Mia?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Mia something. Waltz!” Gabriel sighed heavily. “After that, our department’s taken some preventive measures to protect the most likely targets. You know, door carvings and such.”

  “I see! This way you know about what just happened in that apartment.”

  “Correct. Well, at least we get some basic information of the intent people enter the homes with.” Gabriel turned into a bumpy street that led to a row of grey, concrete high-rises. The front door of one of the buildings was covered in waste from a torn bin liner. Close by Jeldrik saw a bike stand with several bicycle front tyres.

  Gabriel parked in front of the next building and was about to open the car door when he turned to Jeldrik. “Are you wearing your necklace?”

  “I a— I am.” Jeldrik’s voice had faltered for a moment. The silver necklace he had received on his first day in the office provided a basic protection against simple spells and curses. It was probably just routine precaution for any officer no matter the case, but to Jeldrik the question made it seem like they were heading into grave danger.

  They climbed out of the car and walked toward the entrance. A small child ran past them, seemingly without a guardian. At the door, Gabriel held his palm close to the key hole and narrowed his eyes. He had some telekinetic powers. Not enough to move a car, but definitely enough to move a door lock. Jeldrik heard a click inside the door and Gabriel pulled it open. ***The staircase looked like a public toilet.*** Grey tiles on the floor, some were cracked, others were missing parts. The walls’ mustard yellow tiles were covered in graffiti. They walked towards an elevator door and pressed the button. Nothing happened. They tried again without success.

  “Which floor?,” Jeldrik asked.

  “I won’t tell you or you won’t even try,” Gabriel said while walking towards the stairs, which was answer enough.

  It turned out to be the 12th floor. Jeldrik had been running for a while now, so he was barely out of breath. Gabriel on the other hand, his upper body looking quite muscular for his age, had apparently not been doing too much cardio. When they had finally arrived on the right floor, he was panting like a dog.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he managed between his gasps. “One second.”

  They stood there for a moment, until Gabriel’s breathing slowed down a bit. Then he pointed to the right corridor. “Last name’s Argon.”

  Jeldrik walked ahead, looking at the sign above each door bell, until he found the right one. When Gabriel had caught up with him, he rang the door. “If anyone’s in there, they’d hear us either way.”

  “And maybe everything’s fine anyway,” Jeldrik added hopefully.

  “Maybe.” Gabriel did not sound hopeful at all. And when nobody had opened thirty seconds later, Jeldrik lost his hope too.

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  Gabriel did his trick again and the door clicked. He slowly opened it, while taking out a tiny cloth bag from his coat pocket. “Just to be on the safe side,” he whispered when he saw Jeldrik’s worried face.

  The bag contained a mixture of enchanted herbs. In his first week at the DMCI office, Gabriel had given Jeldrik a basic course in protective magic (after delivering an exasperated speech about an urgently needed reform of the magical education system, which taught students very little about protective magic). He promised Jeldrik that he would leave the internship being able to protect himself as well against magical attacks as any proper officer. He had not had time, however, to help Jeldrik create his own herb bag or any of the other protections that would be useful in this situation. Which made Jeldrik feel very naked while walking into the apartment. He had no choice but to convince himself that Gabriel knew what he was doing and would protect his intern if push came to shove.

  Gabriel pointed to the door frame where a small symbol was carved into the wood that looked like a teardrop crossed out horizontally. That must be one of the preventive measures to protect ABA members. Jeldrik made a mental note to ask about it later.

  The two men stepped into what looked like a very sparsely furnished living room. A sofa, its rough leather cracked and stained; a small coffee table with a hole where there should be a small drawer; a seemingly empty china cabinet with one of its doors missing, dirty red paint peeled off on several spots. The place seemed hardly fit for anyone to live in.

  Gabriel went back into the corridor, gesturing Jeldrik to follow him. Panic started to rise in Jeldrik again, tempting him to run out of the apartment and as far away as possible. At the same time, he could not help but remember that precisely this was what he had dreamed of since he was in school. So much so that he had sacrificed many evenings he could have spent with his friends to study for the highest grades, which were needed to even start hoping to become an intern in the DMCI. When this day was over, he would have to be prepared for a long and sleepless night of contemplating his life choices.

  Another gesture beckoned Jeldrik to examine the rooms on the left. The first door he approached was open just a crack. He pushed it open. Like the living room, this room contained hardly any furniture. An old-fashioned chest of drawers stood below the only window. On the opposite wall stood a single bed. The legs on the foot of the bed had been broken, so it rested half on the floor. A dusty blanket had slid down from the mattress, revealing the horror on top; a man, shattery thin, his face scruffy and cheeks sunken in, lay naked on his back, one cut through his throat, two more in his stomach, shaped like a cross. Whatever object they had been inflicted with, must have been dull. The cuts were messy and crooked. And there was blood. A lot of blood. More blood than Jeldrik thought was possible to be contained in one human body.

  He stumbled against the wall behind him and tried to call Gabriel’s name, his eyes fixed on the wounds on the stomach. The longer he stared at them, the more abstract they seemed, until Jeldrik almost forgot that he had a dead person in front of him.

  “Gabriel,” he managed to exclaim weakly. And then he heard the other man coming closer, entering the room, standing beside him. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry you had to find him,” Gabriel sighed. He took a few steps closer to the body and observed the cuts. Jeldrik finally managed to avert his eyes and instead watched his supervisor’s concentrated face. A shadow hat appeared on it that had nothing to do with the gloomy light of the room. It was the first time Jeldrik had seen Gabriel so serious.

  “Jeldrik, could you do something for me?” Gabriel straightened up and took the car key out of his pocket. “Go back to the car and drive to the office. Tell them what we’ve found here, they’ll know who to send here. Then wait for me at the office. When I’m back we talk about this. Alright?”

  “Alright,” Jeldrik answered weakly. He glanced one last time at the dead man, nodded at Gabriel and left the room. On the stairs, he realised how weak his legs were. They could barely hold him. He had just enough time to exit the building before he threw up into a bush next to the entrance. The small child was back and watched him from a few metres away with a disgusted face.

  “Sorry,” he groaned and walked to the car. He allowed himself to sit at the driver’s seat for a few minutes to calm himself down. When he felt better, he started the car and pulled away. Away from the corpse, away from this depressing place. He wondered what he had got himself into. As if a murder was not enough, this murder was likely linked to a controversial political movement. At this moment, he would have given a lot to turn back time, have a completely uneventful work day and instead hear about this insane event over a beer from one of his friends.