The next couple of days came and went. I spent my time relaxing and catching up on some reading during the day. In the evenings I would have dinner and watch movies with the girls. It was a pretty sweet time actually. Some much needed lightheartedness after all the grieving. I couldn’t help noticing how short Emily was with me though. In two days, she gave me nothing but one-word answers and never once initiated a conversation. In fact, she was in her room a lot. She did watch TV with us a bit but always sat off by herself. Something seemed…off.

On Christmas Day, Anabel was preparing a turkey dinner for us, and I grabbed Stephanie in the hall while Emily and Arduwan were distracted with a Christmas movie.

“Hey, any idea what’s going on with Emily? I mean, more than the usual?”

“I don’t know. She’s difficult to read. But if you ask me, I think you should talk to her in private. Whatever it is, she doesn’t want us involved.”

“What makes you think that?” I inquired.

“Well, while you were gone, we were all worried about you of course. But she almost seemed angry. Anabel asked her about it once. She made a comment about how you were supposed to talk to her about something once things calmed down after the Celica incident, but she wanted to give you your space.”

This was true. We did agree to have a talk about something. The state of us in light of Anabel and Stephanie hooking up. How could I be so stupid? On the surface I was grieving, but deep down, I was avoiding her. A person like her doesn’t really have patience when it comes to this stuff and here, she was waiting on me to bring it up. I felt bad. But at the same time…I was scared.

“Yeah, I’ll talk to her. But I’ll wait until tomorrow. Let's just have a nice holiday together.”

We all sat down to a wonderful Christmas meal. Anabel’s cooking was to die for. She learned every trick of the culinary trade from Higgins. It was nice that this dining room, which had been long since unused when I arrived here, was now surrounded with loving comrades.

Emily lightened up a little, Stephanie and Anabel were laughing and carrying away, and Arduwan was eating…well…like a barbarian.

The remainder of the evening we watched a movie together under the dim light of our white light christmas tree. The next day, I would deal with Emily.

Or so I thought…

Around 10AM, the doorbell rang. I was close enough to the door that I answered it. It was two men in gray suits. One of them immediately flashed me an ID card.

“Good morning, Mr. Noble, I presume?” he said.

“That’s right. I’m Eric Noble.”

“Mr. Noble, I’m Agent Rowan and this is my partner, Agent Atkins.” he introduced, “We’re with MI5, domestic security. May we have a moment with you?”

“Certainly. Come right in.”

The two men entered my home and looked all around as I invited them to the kitchen where Anabel had coffee still on from earlier in the morning.

“Is your assistant home?” Agent Rowan asked.

“Assistant? You mean Stephanie? Yes.”

“I would like her to be present for the questioning if you don’t mind. She told us you wouldn’t be back until after Christmas but didn’t specify when. Early morning flight?”

“Umm, well, no. I actually got back a little early. I got home a few days ago.” “Hmm, yes. Airline tickets can be moved ahead during the holiday season?” “I chartered a flight. Can I ask what all this is about?” I defended.

Stephanie came into the room and had a look on her face like she had been up to something while I had been talking to the agents. I noticed she had shuffled Anabel out of the room and said something to her.

“Mr. Noble, I’ll be frank with you. Some discrepancies have come up in the footage from the security tapes during the incident you were involved with at CERN last Fall. Interpol shared this information with us, and you are currently under investigation.”

“Investigation?! For what?!”

“You tell us. It appeared you and your friends who were on the guided tour that day went to great lengths to be alone in the Data Center terminal just before the attack. You also appeared to have been waiting for her to arrive. The young ladies and gentlemen with you during that tour. Where are they now?”

I didn’t like how aggressive this guy was getting.

“Well, my friend Ernie is back in the states,” I replied, “and the girls…well…those are my personal assistants, and they live here too.”

“How many personal assistants do you have, Mr. Noble?”

“Four. Stephanie, who you’ve met. Anabel, who got you the coffee and Arduwan and

Emily.”

“Hmm, all beautiful young ladies I see. You know, I’d read that you were an eccentric playboy in the papers after the incident. But I guess I didn’t realize wealth would attract such a diverse cast as yours.”

I decided to play along, “well, heh heh, I do try to keep myself surrounded with vixens.”

“And how about a Mister Reginald Higgins. He is under your employ as well, is he not?”

That almost caught me off guard, but I got it under control, “no, he was. But he wasn’t. I relieved Mr. Higgins of his duty shortly before the holidays.”

“Strange. Our records indicate he worked for your father for decades. Why the sudden dismissal?”

“Well, it’s exactly because of that. My father died about a year ago. I didn’t like the way

Higgins handled his affairs, so we mutually agreed to his retirement.”

That hurt so badly to lie about Higgins that way. But this was self-preservation we were talking about. He would understand.

“Do you know where he is? His name was dropped last summer from an informant we had investigating a known arms dealer.”

“I haven’t seen him since he left. Sorry.”

“Hmm, very well. Could we speak with the other young ladies? Where are they now?”

Stephanie chimed in, “they’re downstairs. But they may not be decent.”

Both of the agents and myself turned abruptly and looked at her in shock.

“Why wouldn’t they be decent?”

Stephanie was up to something. I put my faith in her that she knew what she was doing.

“Ahem. In the spirit of transparency, I feel we should be honest and upfront with the agents, Eric.”

“Yes, we should.”

What the fuck are you doing Steph?

She continued, “you see. Eric, has a voracious appetite for spontaneity and exhibitionism. The girls haven’t seen him much since his trip and they thought it would be fun to…ambush him during a game of hide and seek.”

I was starting to catch on. She had Anabel take the girls to the safe room and hide the stones in case the agents decided to go snooping around and ask me to open the safe. There’s no way I could explain their majestic glow.

“All the same. We would like to talk with them.”

This guy was all in our business. I had to find a way to settle him down or he was gonna end up tearing this place apart and taking us into custody.

Stephanie led the three of us downstairs. On our way down, I came up with one idea to try and cool his jets.

“Charm,” I said aloud, as I pointed at the back of both agent's heads on the way to the basement.

“What’s that?” one of them asked as they turned to face me.

“Oh, nothing,” I replied. When in reality I had cast a charm spell on them to make them feel more at ease and less aggressive towards me. If it had been Tolly casting, these two would probably leave right now.

When we got downstairs, all three girls were standing in a line near the well. It looked suspicious as hell. The agents introduced themselves but thankfully didn’t start asking them any serious questions.

“Very interesting that your house was built around an old well, Mr. Noble.”

“Yes, this land has been in my family for many generations, and we’ve tried to preserve it as best we can.”

“May we look in that room?”

They pointed to the safe. I knew they were suspicious that I was hiding something but what else could I do. Over the agent's shoulder I could see Stephanie nodding that it was okay.

“Right this way gentleman,” I offered.

Of course, there was nothing in that room except the floor safe that held the stones and the journal.

“Do you mind opening the safe for us?” Dammit!

“Sure. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

I leaned down and turned the combination. For a moment, I considered attacking the agents. But that would be silly. I just needed to keep my cool. The safe door opened and the only thing inside was my father’s journal. The girls must’ve removed the stones like I had guessed upstairs.

“Interesting. A safe just to keep one book. Let me take a look at that,” Agent Rowan demanded. No more ‘May I?’ coming out of him. I handed it over and said, “please be careful. It’s an important keepsake my father gave to me.”

The agent took the book and flipped through it quickly but wasn’t really reading it. If he had, he would certainly be asking me more questions.

“Mr. Noble. We’re going to leave you alone for now. But I’m confiscating this book in the interest of national security. It’s very odd that someone would keep a single book in the safe of a cellar. We need to make sure it's not some sort of manifesto.”

“Manifesto?!”

“Yes. The Luddite Terrorists that attacked CERN have not all been apprehended. We want to ensure that you aren’t one of them. Personally, I see an eccentric playboy like the tabloids read. And I rather like you. So, if everything checks out with this book. We’ll report back to Interpol that you were just an innocent bystander.”

Charm spell was working a little bit. But I had to think of something before they left with that book. We started to walk with them upstairs and I had an idea, but it was extremely risky.

“You’ll be hearing from us soon, Mr. Noble,” said one of the agents just as they were about to leave.

I held both hands out in front of me towards the men and shouted, “Forget!”

They both stopped in their tracks and looked blankly. I paused for a moment and then reached for my father’s journal. Had it worked?

“Gentleman. Do you remember why you’re investigating me?”

They both looked at each other in confusion before Agent Atkins replied, “No.”

“Then you don’t need my father’s book then do you?”

Agent Rowan responded, “No.”

“So you’ll report to Interpol that there’s nothing of interest to them here?”

Atkins answered, “That’s right. Everything seems fine here.”

“Then I bid you a Happy New Year, Gentlemen.”

The two of them left and I shut the door quickly and exhaled as I hugged the journal tight to my chest…

“Eric,” said Stephanie, “that was amazing! What was that?”

I looked at the girls and said, “I learned some minor magic while I was in Callist. So, I cast a Forget spell on them to make them not remember the reason they were investigating me. Earlier, I cast a Charm spell to make them like me better. Just now, I gave them some suggestions to fill in the blanks for anyone who might be expecting answers from them about their findings today.”

“Incredible!” she replied.

“Yes, but it's an extremely dangerous spell to use. Even for a high level magic user. You can make anyone forget anything, indefinitely. But the tradeoff is that the caster will forget something extremely important to them until they’re reminded by someone else. The scary thing is…since I don’t remember it, I had no idea what it was. And to make matters worse, I cast it on two people, so that means I’ve forgotten two different things.”

Tolly warned me, “Never, ever cast a Forget spell, Eric. It may not seem like such a big deal. But what if it makes you forget your own mother or forget your way home while you’re in a faraway land. If no one is around to remind you of these things, those memories are gone for good.”

“That’s terrifying. But let’s try not to worry about that right now,” Stephanie comforted.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, still breathing hard, “by the way. Where did you three hide the stones?”

Emily, Arduwan, and Anabel all stood in front of me there in the front parlor. They looked at one another and then reached into their cleavages. Emily and Anabel each had two of the stones and Arduwan managed to hide three deep within the chasm of her enormous bosom.

I couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that plan.