Take it in stride

"Do it again!" insists little Jims Anderson. "It was fun!"

"Maybe another time," I brush him off, because after beaming half a dozen people around not once but twice, I'm not sure I could do it a third time, even if I wanted to.

Thankfully, Leslie takes it upon herself to intervene. "How about I make us a nice cup of tea and then we talk a little before we take you back to your family?"

The boy pulls a face.

"Hot chocolate?" Ken suggests, correctly reading his expression to mean that he's not a big fan of tea.

Immediately, Jims's face brightens. "I love hot chocolate!"

There's something disarming about him, so I can hardly help smiling to myself at his antics. When I quickly look at the others, I see them reacting similarly. Both Leslie and Mum appear to be perfectly charmed, and while Ken and Joy are naturally more guarded, their expressions are decidedly mellow as well when looking at Jims.

With an indulgent smile, Mum promises, "We'll make you some hot chocolate."

Thus appeased, Jims happily follows Leslie towards the kitchen, with Mum just a step behind. Ken and Joy hang back with me, all three of us looking after the departing boy.

"Shouldn't we try and find his family as quickly as possible?" murmurs Joy, quiet enough to Jims can't hear and neither can Mum and Leslie.

"From what we know, they've been missing him for weeks," Ken points out. "An hour or two won't make a difference to them."

Joy purses her lips. "Obviously, you don't have children."

"I don't," confirms Ken, his voice sounding tight. "However –"

"If you had any idea how a parent feels when missing a child, you'd know that every hour matters," Joy informs him haughtily, obviously forgetting that she has no children either.

"I understand that," replies Ken, gritting his teeth slightly. "However, there are others in that building and they deserve to go home, too."

My sister considers him with raised eyebrows. "And you think you can make that happen?"

"I think we need to try, and I think he might know something that can help us," Ken answers, now struggling to hide his irritation.

"And he can't help us after being reunited with his parents?" Joy challenges immediately.

"It's just an hour!" Ken exclaims exasperated. "How much can an hour really change?"

I'm not sure whether he really expects an answer from Joy, but she clearly doesn't intend to give him one anyway. Instead, she gives him her most withering look, leaving no doubt at all about what she thinks of his suggestions.

Me, I've stayed out of their discussion so far, mainly because I can see both their points, but now I figure it's time I intervene before it gets out of hand. Reaching into the pockets of my jeans, I pull out my phone and hand it to Joy.

"Call Carl," I instruct her. "He was in contact with some rats who knew the kid's hamster. He might know where Jims lives, which should give us an idea how to contact his parents."

"Couldn't we just ask the boy himself?" queries Joy archly.

"We could," I reply. "However, he obviously thinks this to be a huge adventure, so I'm not sure whether he actually wants to be returned to his parents right now. I wouldn't put it past him to lie to us just to prevent it for a bit longer."

"Valid point," acknowledges Ken.

Joy considers him through narrowed eyes. "He can't be older than eight. He doesn't have any idea what's good for him." She brandishes my phone in the air and announces, "I'm going to call Carl. Once I know how to contact his parents, I will do so. In the meantime, try and get whatever information you think he can give you."

She turns and stalks off in direction of the living room.

"Give my love to Carl!" I call after her, but if she heard me, she obviously decided to ignore me, because there's no reaction whatsoever. Instead, the door to the living room falls shut behind her, leaving Ken and me standing in the hall.

"She doesn't like me one bit, does she?" he asks wryly.

"You're a witch," I remind him, shrugging. "As a fairy, she's predisposed to distrust you."

Ken inclines his head, thoughtful for a moment. "It's nonsense, that rivalry."

I sigh. "Tell me about it."

There's a moment of silence, filled with mutual understanding, before Ken lightly bumps his elbow against mine. "Shall we go see what the boy is doing?" he suggests. "Before your sister calls in the cavalry, I mean."

"We might as well," I agree. Turning towards the kitchen, I take two steps – before hesitating.

"What's the matter?" asks Ken, picking up on it immediately.

I pause, frowning. "How do we know he is a boy?"

"You think it might be a trap," Ken deduces immediately.

"It might be," I point out thoughtfully. Then, as the implications of what I'm saying fully hit, I groan softly. "Which would mean that taking him here was the most foolish move possible."

"I'd agree if you hadn't already blocked his magic," Ken replies evenly. "Had he been someone else disguising themselves as a boy, your neat little trick would have undone any of their magic and thus exposed them. Since it didn't, I'm positive that he is who he says he is."

"I didn't block his magic intentionally. In fact, I'm not even really sure that that's what I did," I stress, unsure whether that fact changes anything or not.

Ken, alas just shrugs. "It's good enough for me. I have perfect trust in you and your magic and as long as both of you are keeping his powers blocked, I don't think we have anything to fear. How you're doing it is really secondary to me."

"Well then, let's hope my magic deigns to continue to do what it's doing for a while longer," I remark, raising both eyebrows to near-comical heights.

"As I said, I have perfect trust in you," Ken repeats warmly. When I turn to look at him, his expression is perfectly sincere. His eyes meet mine, steady and unwavering, and for a second or two, we just look at one another. Without breaking eye contact, Ken reaches out to brush his hand against mine and suddenly, here's a strange, tingling feeling that –

"Kids! Tea is ready!" calls a voice – Leslie's voice –, nearly making me jump.

Quickly, I pull my hand back and unconsciously use it to smooth out my hair. "Right. Tea. Jims. We should go in there." As I speak, I avert my gaze, focusing on a hand-drawn children's painting that hangs on the wall a little to Ken's left.

"Yes, we probably should go inside," he agrees, sounding quite calm in comparison to my somewhat frazzled state.

Not giving myself another moment to question what just happened – or didn't happen, as it were – I turn to the kitchen and stride towards it, as confident and brisk as possible. Ken, I hear, follows me a few steps behind, but I don't turn to look at him.

Instead, I enter the kitchen to find Jims guzzling what appears to be his third cup of hot chocolate, judging by the two dirty cups already sitting beside him, just as Leslie pours tea for Mum and herself. Considering how Ken and Joy just argued, they, at least, seem to be going on quite splendidly.

"Can we do the beaming thing again?" demands Jims the moment he lays eyes on me.

"Maybe later," I reply, though not really meaning it. I have no intention to beam anyone anywhere again today.

Jims studies me for a moment, before obviously realising that it's the best answer he's going to get and returning to his cup of chocolate. Leslie fills two more cups with tea and pushes them towards Ken and me.

Exchanging a quick glance with him, I pull out a chair opposite Jims and sit down. Mum is on the bench next to him, while Leslie and Ken remain standing by the kitchen counter. I look around quickly, but am only met with three expectant gazes.

Obviously, it falls to me to try and get information from the boy in front of me.

"So, Jims, we were wondering whether you could tell us more about your stay in that white building?" I begin carefully, hoping it's a suitably uncontroversial question not to traumatise him right off the bat. Though, come to think of it, he looks like the least traumatised child I ever encountered.

Peering at me over his cup of chocolate, Jims remains silent and it takes me a moment to recognise his expression as calculating.

Sighing softly, I relent, "If you talk to us now, we can try the beaming thing again later."

"And you'll stop keeping me human!" Jims bargains immediately. "I like being a mouse. No-one ever sees a mouse. I can sneak around and listen to all the grown-ups talk." He pauses for a moment, thinking. "Except when I want to be seen. The ugly Mrs Thomas next door always screams really loud when I run through her living room." He giggles, obviously pleased.

Poor Mrs Thomas.

"I'll give you your powers back and we can beam somewhere," I promise, hoping my own magic will allow me to keep up my end of the bargain.

"Anywhere?" Jims wants to know.

I should have foreseen that, shouldn't I? "Within reason," I answer, sensing that I have to restrict his options if I don't want to end up having to beam him to a place neither of us has any business being.

"Antarctica?" he asks eagerly. "I want to see penguins!"

I shake my head quickly. "Somewhere warmer."

"Africa, then," he decides. "They have lions and elephants and –"

"How about we decide on our destination after we've talked about whoever held you in that building?" Hopefully, by then, Joy will have managed to alert his parents and the only place I'll have to beam him to will be home.

Jims doesn't look enthused by my suggestion, but Leslie handing him a fourth cup of hot chocolate seems to mellow him enough to nod, if clearly grudgingly.

"Do you know what happened to… to bring you there?" I ask him, doing some verbal gymnastics to avoid having to mention the word 'kidnap'.

Drinking his hot chocolate in big gulps, Jims shakes his head without lowering his cup. I wait for several seconds before he finally deigns to speak. "I went to sleep at home and woke up somewhere else."

Well, that's not helpful. It aligns with what Miranda said, but it's not anymore helpful.

"Can you describe the place you woke up in?" asks Mum, her voice as gentle as possible.

Jims inclines his head thoughtfully. "It was a small room. There was a bed and a desk." He pauses, considering. "It was like the prison cells in the crime thrillers my step-mother watches." His voice remains perfectly cheerful as he talks, not showing any sign of being shaken by the fact that he was basically imprisoned for an as yet unknown amount of time.

"I was a mouse most of the time," Jims continues. "I like being a mouse." Speaking, he happily accepts the chocolate bar Leslie slides over to him. At this rate, he'll be in a sugar-induced coma before Joy has had time to contact his parents.

"There were others there with you?" That's Ken, still standing somewhere behind me.

Jims nods while stuffing three pieces of chocolate into his mouth all at once. "I didn't see them, but I heard them sometimes. There definitely were other rooms with other people."

"Were you given food?" Leslie queries as she places cup number five on the table in front of Jims, as if wanting to make up for any lack of nutrition he might have suffered.

The boy nods. "Oh, yes. We didn't have chocolate, but we did have food." He quickly wolfs down another few pieces of chocolate, before picking up the full cup again, obviously thinking he has to fill up his missing chocolate quota of the past weeks again.

"Do you have any idea…" I trail off, trying to find a way to ask this delicately. "Do you have any idea why you were kept there?"

It's a big question to ask of a boy as young as he is. He appears to be perfectly fine, despite what happened to him, but there's no knowing what sort of trauma he might be hiding beneath all this cheerfulness. I mean, there's a decent chance he really is that resilient, perhaps helped to be so by staying in his mouse form often, but none of us knows him well enough to really tell.

"I don't know," he answers easily between two big gulps of hot chocolate. "They took me into another room sometimes and told me to change into a mouse and back. It was boring."

Huh?

How odd.

"Was someone with you in that other room?" comes Ken's voice from behind me.

Jims shakes his head. "I was alone, but I think they were watching me. Like in one of the interrogation rooms of mum's crime thrillers."

Suffice to say, this keeps getting creepier and creepier.

"Could somebody have been… studying them? Or studying their magic, I suppose?" I wonder, directing the question at the other three adults in the room.

"Hard to tell without more information," replies Leslie thoughtfully while handing a fresh cup of tea to Mum. My own tea, I notice absently, has gone cold.

"It would explain while most of them returned unharmed in the end," muses Ken. "Once the study of them was finished, they were essentially useless and thus, let go."

I frown. "It's still not right though. Even if they end up being unharmed, it's not right."

"The psychological impact could be dramatic," agrees Mum.

"No-one said it was right," Ken assures me quickly. "The strain put on these people and their families is inexcusable."

"We were mostly put to sleep," interject Jims, chewing on the final remnants of the chocolate bar. "When we weren't eating or in the other room, they made us sleep. I didn't sleep just because I turned into a mouse in the right moment."

"Makes you wonder why they didn't stop you from doing so," I muse. "Surely, to allow people to continue to do magic is dangerous to anyone holding them there?"

Leslie shakes her head slightly. "No-one can take another being's magic, even temporarily."

"She can!" Jims points an accusing finger at me.

My eyes meet Mum's and she nods slightly. "It's unheard of."

Except with me. They did it with me, those witches, just by combining their witching powers. My Fifth Magic might inadvertently be doing something similar now, but I know and Ken knows that I'm not the only one who's capable of taking someone's access to their own magic.

Which makes me wonder…

"Either way, whoever is doing this has to have some pretty great powers of their own," I remark, looking at the others.

"That's the assumption," agrees Ken. "Whoever 'they' are."

Another very good question!

"Did you see anyone, Jims?" Mum addresses the boy, again in that super gentle voice so as not to scare him with her question.

Jims sets his empty cup down and looks at her, his expression clear and open. "There were people there, but I don't know what they looked like."

"Several people?" Ken queries immediately.

"Not together," clarifies Jims. His gaze moves through the kitchen, probably in search of more chocolate-y goodness. "They looked different, so I think there were more than one of them, but I never saw two of them together."

Hm…

"Could you tell whether they were men or women?" Leslie wants to know, while handing Jim's a bag of sweets. He looks briefly disappointed at the lack of chocolate, but then shrugs and accepts the sweets instead.

"Both, I think," he answers, already munching on a handful of sweets. "It was hard to see. They were… blurry."

Blurry?

"How do you mean, blurry?" Ken's voice sounds as confused as I feel.

Jims waves around one hand, sweets clutched in his fist. "I didn't see their faces and they were… blurry! I tried to remember what they looked like, but I never really could. They were shifty."

Disguising themselves, in all probability.

I exchange a glance with Ken and know that he's thinking the same thing. Whoever is behind this is able to disguise themselves pretty effectively from all we know.

"There's a possibility it's only one person we're dealing with," Ken remarks. "If they can use magic to conceal themselves, they might be able to pose as different people as well."

"Or else, it's a group of people and we're up against a much stronger foe than we anticipated," Leslie points out. "We need to be prepared for both scenarios."

Ken sighs, then nods. "You're right. We must consider that possibility, too."

My own thoughts, alas, are already elsewhere, testing out a theory that entered my mind minutes ago and has refused to leave it ever since. "You say that you think there were women, too?" I ask Jims, wanting to make sure.

He nods, partly distracted by investigating the different types of sweets in the bag Leslie handed him.

"Do you have anyone in mind?" Mum wants to know, her eyes watching me alertly.

I shrug, not knowing how to reveal my theory without also having to reveal that Leslie's husband and some of his friends blocked my magic for my entire life for reasons I still haven't fully understood.

Reminded of that particular fact, and obviously thinking it's been behaving too well for far too long now, my magic briefly flickers awake, causing a mini-tornado to sweep over the table between Jims and me. He watches it with interest, holding on to his bag of sweets, while the empty packaging of the chocolate he ate flutters to the floor. The empty cups gathered next to him clank against each other, but are saved from shattering on the floor by Mum reaching out and holding them in place with her hands. She, too, has learned that her magic cannot counter mine, I think.

Leslie hurries to clear away the empty cups and with all of them thus distracted by my accidental show of wind magic, I use the opportunity to turn to Ken. He's looking at me closely and when my eyes meet his, he raises an eyebrow questioningly.

He's asking the same question Mum did, only that he's not someone I have to hide anything from.

Leaning back in my chair, I wait for him to lean forward before murmuring in my quietest voice, "Could it be Ermintrude?"

I don't know what made me think of her. Perhaps it was nothing more than instinct. But when Jims mentioned that one of his kidnappers could have been a woman, she was who I thought of. After all, we need a witch both powerful and vicious enough to pull this off and I truly can't think of anyone else. After all, there needs to be a special sort of hatred for other beings to do this to them and Ermintrude has shown herself to be plenty hateful.

Ken looks at me thoughtfully for a moment. "Might be," he replies finally and while his response is cautious, I can see from his expression that he's considering my suggestion and thinks it to be a valid one.

We can't discuss it further, obviously, considering that no-one else in this room is aware that I ever even met Ermintrude, so I know this will have to be left for later. For the time being, we're limited to exchanging another meaningful glance before both turning towards the door, where Joy has just now appeared.

"I found his parents," she announces triumphantly.

"That's a relief," Leslie replies immediately and smiles. "Thank you, Joyce."

Joy looks slightly uncomfortable at having Leslie, a witch, thank her so genuinely, but she overcomes it quickly and brings her features back under control.

"I called Carl who went back through the notes he made about his research while still here and could tell me in which part of Edinburgh Jims lives," she explains instead, focusing on the facts as she so often does. "Then I just had to do an internet search to find any Andersons who have their home there and identify the correct family using old news articles about his disappearance."

"Well done!" commends Mum with a warm smile at her oldest child.

"Good work," agrees Ken and has the good sense to not let any sign of their earlier disagreement colour his words or his expressions.

I smile at Joy quickly to show that I, too, am glad she undertook this detective work needed to bring him home. Really, the only person present who appears to be disappointed at her success is the lost boy himself, little Jims.

"I don't want to go home yet!" he protests. "It's boring at home."

Mum seeks out Leslie's eyes and this time, it's the two of them communicating non-verbally. I'm not immediately sure what it is they mean, but then Mum speaks, even more gently than she did before, and I realise what it is they're concerned about. "Are you afraid someone might be angry when you get home, Jims?"

It's not a bad question, trying to find out whether there's a sinister reason for the boy's reluctance to go home without spelling it out in so many words. Once the words have left Mum's lips, I know I'm not the only one sitting with baited breath, waiting for Jims to answer.

He, alas, looks confused more than anything. "Why would they be angry? They'll be glad to see me for sure," he assures Mum, "It's just that it's boring at home and the baby never stops screaming." There's nothing but honesty in his voice or his features, except for a hefty dose of confusion about these strange adults asking the oddest questions.

Slowly, I let go of a breath and notice Leslie and Joy do the same.

"Besides," Jims continues, now grinning slyly, "she promised to beam me somewhere fun."

It's perfectly brazen, but after the tense moment of wondering about Jims's home, I feel relieved enough to let it slide. Laughing softly, I reply, "For now, the only place I'm beaming you is home."

He pouts. "Home is boring," he insists, not for the first time.

It's a sentiment I'm not totally unfamiliar with, admittedly, and that feeling, in addition to being quite taken by this little boy against my will, probably plays a role in making me promise, "If you go home now to your parents, I'll come back another day and we'll go see those penguins. How about that?"

Jims's wide grin is answer enough.

The title of this chapter is taken from the song 'Hurt before' (written by Andrea Corr, Caroline Corr, James Corr and Sharon Corr, released by The Corrs in 2000).

To Guest:
Jims is a lot of fun to write! He's quite a clever and precocious child in canon, so I figured that a modern Jims, who's also a little older, would have quite a bit of cheek on display. I hope you enjoy more of Jims in this chapter, too!