Penny back in the mansion walked around the garden in search of the butler. It had been four days and she couldn’t find a toad. She had come to realize that the butler had run far away from the mansion but where did he go? She had also attempted to go to the forest, calling out his name in hope that a toad would appear in front of her but nothing like that ever came to happen.
“Still no news about him?” It was her aunt Caitlin who had come outside the mansion and stepped into the garden to give Penny the needed company after she noticed how her niece’s drooping shoulders.
Penny shook her head, “Finding toads are hard,” she saw her aunt give her a smile.
Penny had let her aunt know of the missing case of the butler. Damien had told the household that their dear butler had gone to his hometown for a week’s vacation and she could only hope that it would be a week and wouldn’t extend the timeline where they would have to declare that their butler was officially lost.
It made the white witch wonder if the butler had really been lost or if he had escaped the household of the Quinn’s, after all, the man had been looking at how to run away from here in the beginning. According to what Piers, the black witch had to say, the spell stayed for only twenty-four hours but what if it stayed longer than that which was why the butler had not returned?
Penny felt guilty for turning the butler to a toad. She should have made him stay there for twenty-four hours and then got him back home once he would have turned back to himself but Durik had been adamant in following her when she had started to head out.
Caitlin placed her hand on Penny’s shoulder, “You will find him. Don’t lose hope.”
They started to walk in the garden where the flowers had bloomed and the plants stood firmly even with the amount of rain that kept falling on it.
Penny didn’t know if there was anything more she could do right now than wait. Hopefully Durik didn’t get eaten by a wild animal in the first twenty-four hours, she could only hope he was still alive and nothing had happened. It was a lesson to understand the consequences before doing anything in the future.
“Did the Artemis, your uncle and aunt ever keep any book of spells with them?” Penny inquired curious. They already knew the book of spells existed for the white witches and there was another book which was solely being protected by the man in the Adams mansion.
“I don’t think so,” Caitlin said while trying to recollect if she could remember something from the past memories, “Black witches are usually very illiterate and their trust level is worse than any other creatures to compare to. They had a bunch of potions in one of the rooms but there was nothing in there apart from it. When I was young, I stumbled into the room and strangely they let me play with the liquids which I wasn’t aware was a potion made by them.”
Listening to this, Penny said, “There is this spell. The spell to camouflage a place or a house. I have tried looking at it but didn’t find anything in the book of spells or in the church that is now closed,” it was the first time she had experienced anything like that, “The mansion, when you used to live there was fully furnished?”
“Yes. Why do you ask that?” Caitlin gave Penny a questionable look.
The young witch frowned, “You said they sent you and father to bed early and not to wake up.”
“They did. They used to be very strict about timings and disciplining us though it didn’t work out all the time.”
The elder Artemis couple had obviously put a spell on the house. It was possible that the house had already collapsed after the death of the previous owners and the Artemis were barely keeping a falsified appearance for people to not doubt. There was a term for it, thought Penny to herself. She hadn’t come across the spell but she knew she had read that phenomena of keeping objects still intact like they once used to look.
The couple used to send the children just so that the children would never come to doubt when the night pulled in over the sky.
It was sad that her aunt had practiced no magic at all and she had shut the door, not wanting to touch it even now and wanting to live as a human as if she knew nothing about her own self. Caitlin wasn’t the first white witch who chose to live like this. There were plenty of white witches who didn’t bother themselves with the magic. People believed that the ones who touched the magic were bound to be cursed where witch hunters and other creatures would come to hunt you down.
Penny could use her aunt’s help but she wasn’t going to force and push her to get back into something she didn’t want to do. By what she knew so far, Caitlin didn’t want any part in the witches and she was here only for her sake. Because Penny was Caitlin’s brother’s daughter.
A drop of water fell from the sky, falling on the side of her arm and Penny looked up at the dark clouds that hadn’t moved since the time of the morning.
“It is going to start raining soon,” Caitlin stated when a few drops fell on her.
Penny smiled looking up at the sky, “It is going to be a lot of rain,” she said looking at the sky. Having grown in the land of Bonelake, she loved the rain, the thunder, the lightning, and everything about this weather.
“Let’s go in before either of us get drenched,” and Penny would have started to walk with her aunt who had started to head in the direction of the entrance of the mansion but the young girl didn’t move from the spot she stood at, “Penelope?” her aunt called her.
