10
Harper kept bringing home Alex's class work from school, and with it, news from her classmates, teachers and staff. In the week Alex had been missing from school, the teachers were now smiling, the audio-visual club was laughing and partying, the school finally had a new flag to put on the flagpole and Principal Laritate wasn't binge-eating out of depression and was down four pounds. Five students finally returned after leaving to be home-schooled. Classes were running smoother, no one was crying and Justin was singing and dancing in Science Class. The grading curve had even bounced back into shape, and both Max and Justin loved it!
"Harper…" Justin grinned as he held the door for her to the loft. "Hasn't this just been the most perfect week?" He did a slow pirouette with Max also grinning ear to ear. "No one has called me a nerd all week, nothing has been stolen from my room…"
"Girls are finally talking to me again!" Max lit up and high-fived Justin. From the table on the landing, Teresa looked up while drinking her coffee and paying the bills.
"You two are disgusting!" Harper rolled her eyes at them and shook her finger into Justin's face. "Justin, this is Alex we're talking about! Your own sister! Deep down, you have to tell me that you miss her just a little bit!"
Justin and Max stood side-by-side looking at Harper a bit confused. The two brothers slowly turned their heads to each other, scowled a bit sure of themselves and shook their heads in unison toward Harper.
"Harper…" Max spoke first. "A girl talked to me today. A real one… Not one created by Alex to embarrass me. A real one."
"Harper…" Justin came around Harper and placed his arm across her back. "Look, you're never going to get us to admit we miss Alex, but you just know… Some how, some way she's going to be back, and until that happens, we are going to enjoy not having a sister." He grinned happily. "Come on… a small bit of you has to be happy we're got a No Alex Vacation?"
"Justin, she's my best friend…"
"What's it like doing your homework without making a copy of it for Alex?" Max asked the question.
Upon hearing that, Harper looked away and lightly grinned.
"We knew it!" Justin and Max started jumping around hysterically and goofily ecstatic after realizing Harper could be just as despicable as they were.
"Well…" Harper quickly lost her grin. "Maybe just a little bit, but she's still my best friend, and I miss her!" The phone rang behind her on the table. "And I'm going to tell Alex how you acted while she was gone!"
"We'll cross that bridge when it happens…" Justin turned round to get the phone, but his mother had already crossed the room to fetch it. Swaying her hair to one side, she lifted the cordless phone to her right ear.
"Hello…" She answered it as the kids moved behind her. "What? Who?" Her face turned to a mixture of happiness and surprise. "Professor Danvers?"
"Yes!" Harper cheered and pumped her arm in victory then looked to Justin. "Alex should be home by next week! Choke on that!" She dared Justin and Max to do anything about it. Theresa took the cordless over to the spiral stairs down into the shop.
"Jerry…" Theresa called for her husband. "Phone for you."
"Theresa…" Jerry was checking his order with the guy who delivered the fresh produce for the sandwich shop. "I'm kind of busy right now. Just take a message."
"It's Professor Danvers!"
Jerry made a face of stunned relief.
"Same order as next week, Ted!" Jerry blurted out quickly. He could wait to pay off his fresh produce guy a few minutes more to find his daughter. He slammed the cash register shut and dashed past the one customer in the shop to get the upstairs phone. He ran faster than the time he had covered it to stop Alex from using his credit card to order the Justin Bieber Commemorative Dish set. Hitting the top landing with all his might, he felt as if he had sprinted it in just three steps. As much as Alex got on his nerves, she was still his baby girl – and he wanted her home!
"Professor Danvers!" He stormed the loft and snatched the cordless from Theresa.
"Jerry, I understand we have another problem involving the kids…" The salt and peppered-haired mystic spoke with a London accent and tossed his teacher's robes over a wooden chair in the alcove of his classroom. The classroom was in the former Temple of Athena in the ancient city of Phthia in the foothills of Mount Olympus. Today, it was a magic-friendly village with a high population of sorcerers and wizards, much like Carpathia, Ontario in Canada and Hogsmeade Village in Scotland. Very few non-magic folk, whether they were called muggles or mortals, lived in the village. The temple was part of the grounds of Alexandria, a magic school for burgeoning young wizards and witches and even a few modern-day demigods. To the public, it might have been just another archaeological dig site, but in the magic community, it was a school for wizards and like several wizard schools, it had a constant problem with keeping a permanent Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher. The usual Muggle Relations Teacher, Clarice Voyant, now filled the position while Danvers covered her classes because of his lifelong experience with non-magic folks.
"Now…" Danvers spoke to Jerry through a levitated period Bell phone with a severed cord; electronic items were not allowed on school grounds. "As I understand it through the grapevine, Alex has disappeared, and she might be inhabited by a wizard spirit." He gestured to a teapot to pour him some tea then sat to judge some test papers.
"Yes, yes, exactly…" Jerry spoke as Harper and his family listened to his side of the conversation. Max and Justin lightly sighed to each other only partially interested. "I was hoping you…"
"I take it you tried a Geiger Spell?"
"Did we try a Geiger Spell?"
Justin nodded and gave a thumb down to reference his success with it.
"No luck." Jerry answered.
"A Custer Location Spell?"
"A Custer Location Spell?" Jerry asked his son and got another thumb down from Justin.
"Dad," The eldest son responded half-interested to find his sister. "I tried a Geiger, the Custer, the Whatznots, the Bermuda Cross-Eyed, the Caractacus, the What-Chu-Doing, the Keplinger Pythagorean, the Abbott-Costello First Base Person Locator, the Duck-Duck-Goose and nearly burned my eyebrows off trying to pull off an Aztec Four Corners. I tried every lost person spell I could think of plus a few of my very own." He gasped to catch his breath. "None of them worked, and I actually accidentally conjured Mikayla at least twice!"
"He got Mikayla?" Danvers sipped his tea as he listened through his end. "I always did like her music; shame she stopped singing to focus on acting." He swallowed his tea and lifted his head. "Jerry, if Justin has gone through all these spells, and still can't find Alex, then whoever she is now is using a cloaking spell. She does not want to be found."
"But you know how to find her, right?" Jerry tried to be optimistic.
"Well…" Danvers mulled it over. "Maybe if we knew who was using her body…" He sipped his tea again. "I mean, Jerry, this is rather getting ridiculous. How many times has Alex been replaced? I mean, two ghosts, one demigoddess…"
"Uh, one ghost and one demigoddess…" Jerry looked at Harper. "And Harper at least once…." He lowered his voice a bit. Standing nearby, Harper remembered that awkward body-switching incident.
"Not a happy experience…." She recalled.
"Professor, we have reason to believed Alex might be now one of the Frost family…." Jerry continued.
Danvers suddenly coughed on his tea.
"Yikes!" He uttered expression of disbelief under his breath. "Jerry…" Danvers became retrospective and set aside his cup. He flashed back on his past and old faces from ages gone by and feelings he had forgotten. A deep breath came up from his lungs and a tear dropped from his eye and rolled down to his goatee. "That's a name I have not heard in a long time."
"I think he knows them." Jerry told Theresa.
"Jerry…" Danvers recaught himself and gasped reflectively once again. "Old Jack Frost was a very good friend of mine, and his eldest son Teddy was one of my very first protégés. They were some of the most philanthropic people I ever knew, and their mastery of the mystical arts…" Danvers chuckled nostalgically. "It tore me apart when I heard what had happened to them. They adored living around muggles; they loved sharing their wealth." He paused a moment. "I don't see any of them doing this."
"You don't?" Jerry's heart sank. When he gasped, Theresa fretted, and Harper drifted away from listening. She couldn't bear to listen more. Even Justin gasped a bit to see them so defeated. Even Max felt the intense sadness.
"Look…" Danvers looked down to his curriculum. "I've got this weekend booked heavily, but if I can cancel anything, I will be there. No one, not even a wizard, can disappear completely. We will find Alex!"
"Thanks, professor…" Jerry hung up the phone and looked to his wife. He was dejected and disturbed by the reality of what was happening. He wanted hope, but he also had to be realistic. "I don't think we're going to be finding Alex anytime soon."
Harper heard whistling and looked beyond Max toward the landing. The wind had picked up outside and the breeze whistled around the crack around the door to the patio. Jerry looked up at the strange phenomenon as the whistling noise increased and decreased just before a strong gust blew the door open. It was a bright dusky day with an overcast light blue sky. There was not a breeze in sight to blow the door open. When Theresa turned to close the patio door, she looked out toward a large brown owl coming straight at her from the roofs across the street. It was the largest owl she had ever seen. It flew straight into the room and sailed over the stairs just over Harper who shrieked as it came near her. It sailed over the TV against the far wall and came down on the kitchen counter where it landed on the range top. It had an envelope in his mouth.
"Justin…" Jerry gasped and looked around. "Did you try getting enrolled in Hogwarts again?"
"No…" Justin caught his breath and turned toward the owl. He was the only one who knew that it was customary to reward an owl with a treat that delivered a wizard letter. He took a few pieces of dried chicken off the leftovers in the refrigerator and offered it to the owl. It was a large one, about two feet tall and covered in mottled black and brown feathers. Even Harper awed at how beautiful it was at rest, but before Max could try to stroke it, it dropped the envelope, gobbled up the smaller of the two pieces Justin offered it and grabbed the other piece to jump off the counter, sail over the sofa and out the patio door once more. Theresa was holding her heart from that amount of excitement. Not only did she have to get used to her husband and children as wizards, but she also had to face the myriad customs and quirks of wizards from other countries. Justin picked up the envelope and turned it around.
"Dad…" Justin read the recipient. "It's from Alex!"
"Alex?" Jerry looked to Theresa and took the envelope from Justin trying to open it, but it must have been bewitched, because the letter was fighting to get away from him. Trying to hold on to it to read, he became forced to let go of it struggling to get free and watched it fly up and fold itself in from the corners to resemble a small mouth made of paper levitating itself in the air before the family.
"Dear Dad…." Alex's voice came from it. "I'm sorry I ran away, but I decided to tell you why I did what I did so you wouldn't worry. As you know, there was and has always been a very likely possibility that I am not meant to win the right to be the family wizard. I'm okay with that. It means so much more to Justin that I wouldn't have the heart to take it away from him…"
"Alex, please, that's not true…" Jerry tried to talking to her through the letter, but it kept talking.
"I ran away because I needed to find myself and decide what I really want, and I have finally found it." Alex's voice continued unabated. "I'm finally happy. I'm healthy and I'm studying hard to get my high school equivalency diploma. I've just got to get away from Waverly Place. I could never be the person I wanted to be there. Please, stop looking for me because you will never find me. I promise to visit sometime in the future, but not just yet, because I'm just so busy. I love you and mom. Please, I have to do this… Love, Alex…" The letter unfolded to a sheet of paper again and floated down to the floor.
Harper stood stunned. Max couldn't speak.
"Alex!" Theresa shrieked and tried talking to the letter. "You listen to me, young lady! You get your ass back here and…"
"Mom, mom, mom…" Justin stopped her from ripping the letter. "That's not Alex! It's just Wizard Mail." He tried to tell her. "It only tells you what was read on it."
"Alex isn't coming back?" Harper was so depressed. "Why would she leave me?"
"I can think of a few reasons…" Max mumbled under breath, but Harper must have heard him because she smacked him upside the back of his head.
"This…" Jerry took the letter. "…was not Alex." He took a deep breath. "Whoever this was doesn't know we've already connected them to the Frost family. They're trying to throw us off…"
"Mr. Russo…" Harper spoke up. "I thought you said these wizards were really nice. Why would they do this to us?"
"Because…" Jerry reacted and thought about it. "It just… Harper, don't make me try to think!" He looked at the letter again for clues. It wasn't regular paper or notebook paper. It was embroidered with designs in the surface and had a symbol in it from the kind that hotel stationary used. "Justin…" He turned to his son. "What does that look like to you?"
"It looks like…" Justin held it to the light. "A dancing hippogriff with… a clump of rye in one claw and…"
"A sword?"
"A sword!" Justin grinned and looked to his father. He looked bewildered but tried to hide it. "I have no idea what that means!"
"That's the old Russo Family Crest…." Jerry announced. "It hasn't been used since your ancestors left Europe. I haven't even seen it in years, and if I haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure Alex wouldn't know it."
"Jerry, what does that mean?"
"I means whoever sent this wanted to hide something on this paper." Jerry grinned. "We need to reverse enchant this letter."
"I can do it." Justin pulled out his wand.
"No, Justin…" Jerry rolled the letter into his hand. "I'm sure you could do it, but it needs to be done carefully. We'd only get one chance at it." He heard a knocking sound at the door to the loft. Getting off the sofa, Max headed over to the sound and opened the doorway to one of Justin's friends from Wiz Tech.
"Hello, Russo family…" He poked his head in from the side. His wild curly brown hair appearing first, Johnathan Danforth Collins had shared broomstick-riding class and potions class with Justin. He was a funny jovial guy who usually lived in Alaska, but at Wiz-Tech, he was the one of the school Quidditch champions. "Justin, I found Alex hiding at Wiz-Tech; help me get her in…"
"You found Alex?" Harper squealed excitedly and stepped back as Justin helped Aaron in the hallway. The family reacted surprised and excited as Justin and Johnny carried the girl in bound up in ropes around her legs, waist and wrist. She also had a gag around her mouth. She was dressed in faded jeans and a white top with her bare arms restained in front of her, but there were a few things off with her appearance. She did not seem as lean as Alex, and she seemed more physically endowed as a teenager. Her hair was longer and straighter. Justin carried her feet, and Johnny carried her shoulders.
"Why is she tied up like that?" Theresa started untying her.
"Well, she kind of escaped me three times on the way…" The African-American wizard confessed.
"Wait a second," Jerry took the gag off his alleged daughter. "This isn't Alex! It's Melissa!"
"Melissa?"
"Told you!" Melissa got the gag out of her mouth and punched Johnny in the stomach as he doubled over then turned grinning and happy. "Mr. and Mrs. Russo!" She hugged her would-be parents and Max.
"Who the heck is Melissa?" Harper hated getting her hopes up.
"Sometime back, Alex created a clone to sneak out after dark, and Melissa was the ghost who got stuck in it." Justin recalled the incident as if it were yesterday. "We couldn't kill her again or have another Alex around, so Professor Crumb adopted her to raise as his daughter at Wiz-Tech." Harper suddenly recalled the incident. It had happened around a year or so before she had learned Alex and Justin were wizards and long before she had moved into the Russo basement. Despite the fact that she had been bound up and taken against her will in the back of a flying snowmobile, Melissa hugged and kissed her former foster family and moved closer to Justin.
"Justin…" The former female spirit grinned to him romantically. "You're taller and more handsome than I recall…" She squeezed his arm. "And is that a bicep I feel?" She flirted with him.
"Well, I do try to keep in shape…" Justin flirted back then stopped himself. "Wait a second, what the heck am I doing?" He was flirting with a clone of his sister!
"I got a bicep too!" Johnny flexed his arm to her, but she just ignored him.
"Melissa, sit down…" Jerry gestured for his daughter's clone to down on the sofa. Behind them, Justin and Max took Johnny to get a soda from the refrigerator. "You were born the first time at the turn of the century?" He looked into his daughter's face and wished it were really her looking back at him. Harper hung over the sofa listening to her best friend's clone.
"Eighteen eighty-eight…" She confessed.
"Honey…" Theresa took over. "Do you recall the Frost family who owned the property north of here? What do you know about them?"
"All I recall was that it was a pretty big scandal…" Melissa loved seeing the Russos again and hated to hear that Alex had left them. "I mean, there were all these rumors about them being witches and sending money to fund the Confederate Army, but no one ever had any proof, so, when those three men were jailed for starting the fire… Well…"
"Did anyone survive?"
"Just the oldest son; he was a lieutenant in the Fifth Cavalry stationed in Tennessee." Melissa tried thinking back. "All I know about him is that he went away after the fire and the trial. I guess he couldn't handle the memories."
"Did you ever meet any of their spirits?" Jerry asked.
"Mr. Russo…" Melissa exhaled a bit. "Not a lot of people know this, but not all ghosts know each other. People think we interact from multiple time periods, but the truth of the matter is ghosts only know ghosts from their own time periods. Unless you knew like a mediator from both times…"
"So a person who died in the Twenties wouldn't meet a spirit who died in the 1860s…" Jerry replied to make sure he understood.
"Oh my god, the afterlife is controlled by a bureaucracy!" Harper made a face.
"Unless you cross over and become a pure spirit and then you can interact with all spirits." Melissa recalled her years as a ghost. "It's kind of our version of American Idol…"
Jerry reacted defeatedly and began grinding his jaw a bit. Next to Melissa, Theresa was descending into depression again. Sitting next to Melissa was the closest she had got to her daughter all week, but it was not the same. She was sweet and innocent, maybe just a bit flighty, but she was not Alex, and they were not going to substitute her for Alex.
"But my wizard training is coming along great!" Melissa lit up. "Professor Crawley at Wiz-Tech says I'm a natural on a broom!"
"That's nice, honey…" Theresa motherly rubbed Melissa's leg to support her and looked away dejectedly.