The Lightwielder Files

Chapter 8

“Algar Fray alive?” Hamid Davenmeyer repeated his voice dripping with disbelief when the three Lightwielders brought him the news in his office. It was draped with crescent moon-covered curtains hanging around the windows. The desk was a deep mahogany brown bordering on russet, the chair of a matching shade only it was slightly darker bordering on black like the night sky. 

Hamid, Mona, and Adam’s father stood on the other side of the expensive-looking desk, papers in three neat piles in front of him. 

The three Lightwielder stood on the other side of the table. Max stood in the middle trying to keep himself from trembling. 

He didn't know why he was trembling as his Algar Fray was somehow in the room with them. Perhaps it was the possibility that he might be in a minute. 

“We think so," Mona said firmly placing herself in front of the boys, eyes to eye with her father.  “And there's proof don't you think?”

She siad this all while pointing to the pictures she had taken of the files on her phone. They didn’t want to try their luck with Adam using another meser on Boyne to let tham take the file out of the library. 

“You know this is all circumstantial," Hamid said rubbing his eye slightly, “and that was a closed case.”

“Yeah, but new evidence has come to light”, Max said and he could almost hear the shuddered of Mona and Adam beside him at the use of his bad pun. “Shouldn’t that be enough to reopen it?”

Hamid looked down at the pictures, dark eyebrows furrowed in thought.

“I’ll admit it all does seem a bit odd," Hamid said already pacingk up his neatly laid piles into a plastic container. “Send me those pictures Mona. I’ll forward onto the jury to see if they’ll look further into the case. If it’s true and Algar Fray is alive or at the very least has a hand in all this then we have to know for certain.”

An ominous din flew over the room filling it with tension.

Then Hamid took his file and pointed the young Lightwielders out of his office.

“Oh one mre thing”, he said the siblings turned around at the same time as if knowing by instinct that it was for them. They were right to do so. “Your mother’s coming back tomorrow.”

Mona’s eyes flashed quickly but then the fleeting look dissipated as if it had never been there in the first place. 

“Nicole’s not supposed to be back until next week”, she said curtly. Max found it a little jarring that she called her mother by her first name, not that he was actively thinking of what Mona would call her mother. 

“Her study in the Bronx ended early," Hamid went on to say still arranging his desk, nonchalantly. “She’ll be arriving by portal tomorrow.”

“Great”, Adam chirped, a bright smile on his face.  “Maybe she’ll have something to say about all of this.”

He turned to look at  Max as the trio made their way out. “My mom, works in th labs”, he explained as they walked on into the main atrium. “She’s one of the best we have. Maybe if they have the samples from the raid and the Breaking she’d be able to do tests on them what do you think Mona?”

She didn’t answer, looking far out the distance in front of her.

“Mona!” Adam repeated, hitting his sister hard on the shoulder.

“Hey”, she said with a wince, but she didn’t look really hurt just annoyed. “Do you want to square up or something?”

Adam groaned gently. “ What is it with you and always sparing for a fight?”

Mona shrugged and walked quickly ahead of them. “I’m a Lightwielder, it’s what I do, I’m supposed to fight the evil darkness.”

Adam pointedly ignored her theatrics and said “Don’t you think mom would be able to help with this?”

“Yes," Mona replied flatly. “I’m sure your mom would be able to help abundantly.”

Max could practically feel the tension between the two siblings, so think you could cut it up with a knife. He wanted to say something to hopefully ease it but Mona beat him to it.

“Max, you’re probably wondering where you’re going to sleep tonight.”

Max’s eyes blinked rapidly.  He hadn’t thought of that at all. How could he, from the moment he woke up this morning it was go, go, go for him. He had forgotten that sleep was actually still a concept that applied to him and that he needed a place for that. 

“Well, uh I suppose I can’t ‘t go home now, can I?”

Mona tutted shaking her head from side to side. 

“No, no absolutely not Max”, she said firmly like a major general planning an attack. “Do you even remember what happened this morning?”

“Was it is this morning?” Max asked dryly looking at his nails covered in black dust. “I hadn’t noticed and really my bedroom’s fine. The pygmy hound didn't get in there or do you think that one may come back?”

“It’s possible”, Mona said. “And you’re a Lightwielder there's no reason why you can’t stay here until everything’s all cleared up. Whenever that is.”

Max bit his lip hard in thought. A thought came that maybe dad had found his way home and he wasn’t there. He had left his phone in Adam’s room, so he didn’t know if his dad had tried to get in contact with him. 

For some reason, he had a nagging feeling that his dad wasn’t in a position to get into contact with him. 

“You’re right, my house is compromised, it won’t be too much trouble though?” he asked, suddenly nervous. To say this day hadn’t turned out the way that he had expected it would be an understatement.

Mona scoffed placing a comforting hand on his shoulder that too-soon removed. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, we have tons of rooms here for that particular reason. We’ll find you one.”

“There’s an empty one beside me”, Adam offered, already leading the way to the corridor that led back to his room. 

When they got there Adam made a quick task of finding some more of his clothes and old bedsheets to give to Max for the night or however long he would be staying with the Lightwielders. While Mona teased her brother about his wardrobe being the Lightwielder version of Target with Adam coming back with how Target wished they were as good as his wardrobe, Max looked at the nightstand and found his phone roughed up from the ordeal of the day but still in working order.

Apart from various notifications from different games on his phone, there was nothing else. No messages, no missed calls, no voicemails. Just the screensaver of him and his dad at Navy Pier. They had gotten hold of a tourist who took the picture for them. Max couldn’t help but smile and hope that wherever his dad was and whatever he was mixed up in, he was alright. 

“Hey Max," Adam said holing up a ruby red blanket and heavy pillow with a matching pillowcase. “Let’s go.”

So he followed the pair of siblings to the room next door which was the same setup as Adam’s room although sparsely decorated. The only thing that seemed to be fit for order was the bed that had a fitted sheet and a blanket and pillow set. Beside it was a beside table with a small oil lamp like the one they had found in the library. 

“When Maud found out that we had a new Lightwielder here”, Mona began ,closing the window that had been opened for ventilation, “she had this room made up, just in case you decided to stay.”

Max nodded, mentally thanking this Maud person. 

“Who exactly is Maud?” he asked. 

Mona and Adam exchanged a look. 

“They’re a little hard to explain”, Adam said putting down the blankets and pillows in his arms onto the bed. 

“He means to say that they’re not a person”, Mona added sitting on the window sill. “They’re just a figure around the order who helps us all with odd jobs around the Order castle. Making beds, sweeping, doing dishes, finding lost things. They found my lucky knife last week in the resin box in the training room.”

Max was equal points puzzled and amazed as he arranged the pillows to his liking and comfort on the bed. 

“So they’re a ghost?” he said. 

“We like to think of Maud as a friendly presence that we can’t see”, Adam said with a wistfulness in his voice.

Max smirked, smoothing down the blanket to remove the creases as his dad thought him. 

“So they’re a friendly ghost?”

Adam pointed a finger at him philosophically.

“Ghost implies that Maud was dead. We don’t know that they were .”

“Fair point”, Max agreed and was about to ask more questions about this maud when there was a knock on his door.

For some reason, he thought that one of the Davenmeyer siblings would answer it. Then he felt a bit sheepish when they were looking to him to answer the door. He was still getting used to having his own space within the Lightwielder complex. He crossed the wide-open floor plan to open the door and there stood Delilah strawberry blond hair disheveled, but her white jumpsuit looking more pristine than it had been earlier. To her chest, she clutched a notebook that was covered in newspaper clippings.

“Uhm, hello Max”, she began nervously pushing her glasses back up on her nose. “Are Mona and Adam here?”

“Present and reporting”, Mona peeped from behind the door, slowly coming into view.

“Oh thank goodness”, Delilah sighed, her cheeks looking less flushed than they did, a few seconds ago. “Something told me that I’d find you guys here. A presence.”

“Maud," Mona stage-whispered theatrically earning a rib punch attempt from Adam. It was an attempt because Mona ducked out of reach right next to Max just in time. 

“Is there a problem Delilah?” Adam asked slightly worried and at the same time excited. 

“Oh, uh you should come in," Max said, remembering himself and moving aside to let Delilah come into the room.

“Thank you.” She looked at them each in turn then fixed her gaze on Max, her entire being radiating with light and energy at whatever it was she had discovered.

“Something was bothering me about the Hellhound remains from earlier and how the partial print belonged to your dad, so I did some extra testing in the lab.”

“But it’s off-limits to juniors at this time," Adam said.

Delilah looked down at her blue mary-janes before looking up at the group again.

“I forged a permission slip from the head of research”, she said, her cheeks flushing as red as a tomato.

Max couldn’t help but smile at her desperation, while Adam and Mona both gave low whistles. 

“Woah, Delilah the rebel," Mona whistled a smirk on her lips. 

Delilah’s breaths were sounding a little anxious now.

“Please don’t tell anyone, I beg you. “

“Hey Delilah, look at me”, Adam said gently, taking Delilah's free hand in his own. “You have our word, we won’t tell anyone.”

“Why would we?” Mona said remembering their own little a***e of power in the library. 

“So what’d you find out?” Max asked desperately for any new news on his father’s situation. 

“So I looked at the partial speck from the dust and sure enough it was from your father but there was something interesting, That wasn’t the only print. There were two prints. This one was very faint but it was clearer under a stronger spyglass. It was from Algar Fray.”

His name bounded off the walls of the room. As if his presence permeated every nook and cranny of the room.

“So it’s true," Max gasped. “Algar Fray is alive and he’s trying to frame my dad for something.”

Delilah shook her head rapidly still clutching her tattered notebook to her chest.

“What makes you say that? I know it’s suspicious but why would Algar Fray want to frame your father?” Delilah asked, anxiety tining her voice.

“It makes sense," Max said pacing across the floor, his thoughts going in circles in a  mile a minute. “Why else would he have my dad’s partial spec on the dust, if he didn’t want to frame him and if my dad were responsible hypothetically, why would he send the pygmy hound to attack his house, to attack me?”

He made good points no matter how haphazard they were but it still left more questions rather than answers. 

“I’ve already brought my findings to the council”, Delilah said, “About Algar Fray and how he’s behind all this.”

“Buy why?” Mona questioned a hand placed on her cheek in thought. “What’s his angle, what’s his endgame?”

“Maybe it’ll all be clearer tomorrow”, Adam said. “No pun intended.”

“He’s right," Mona said, “There’s been enough excitement for one day.”

Something in her tone made Max feel like it wasn’t very often that Mona came to this conclusion. She seemed like a go-getter girl herself.

“Max is safe her. Safer than anywhere else in the city.”

Then why didn’t he feel safe? However, he didn’t voice this out loud as his new friends said their goodnights and left him to himself. 

He called them friends in his mind because you couldn’t go through a lot of what they had gone through that day and not become friends but he had a slight inkling feeling that since they were Lightwielders who spent their days fighting monsters made of darkness that it didn’t register to them as much as it did to him. Whatever their relationship to him now going forward he was glad to have them all in his life that this point of time despite the ridiculous circumstances they had found themselves in. He wondered how much trouble this Algar Fray really was and what on earth he had wanted with his dad. 

He decided to stop spending so much time thinking about it and do as Mona suggested and wait to deal with the rest of it tomorrow. 

He took off his clothes and put on the pajamas lent to him by Adam. They looked like something Mick Jagger would have worn in his younger days on stage not something you sleep with but Max was grateful nevertheless. 

He was about to settle down in the bed when he felt some sort of presence in the room compelling him to leave. He thought that he might as well follow it and hoped he would be able to find his way back to his room. 

He followed the faint sounds of clanging to another corridor then took a turn where he heard the sounds grow stronger. 

He turned to a glass room, where on the inside he would see Mona throwing a handful of knives at a target on the other side of the wall. Each landed with a hard thunk, and when her handful of knives was empty, she would go pick them out of their places on the wall and begin again. This went on for a couple of minutes and all the while she didn’t notice him or at least didn’t seem to notice him. Until she turned around and saw him there jumping with a jolt in her step.

Max made a show of moving back the way he came until Mona gestured with her hands for him to come in and join her. He walked quickly to the glass door, the same consistency as the rest of the room.

He opened it was immediately hit the cool feeling of being outside on an Autumn’s day. 

He noticed various boxes lined along the glass walls. On closer inspection, he could see that they were knife boxes, different shapes, and sizes. There were also target boards similar to the ones set up by Mona on the other side of the room.

“Sorry to bother you”, Max said still a little mostly intrigued by the knives in their cases.

Mona shrugged twisting a tiny jeweled dagger in between her fingers. 

“It’s okay," she said with a small smirk coming up on her face. “At least I have an audience for my mad knife-throwing skills.”

Max couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or that she was trying to hide something.

“Well you don’t seem to need the practice”, Max replied, still remembering how perfectly each knife landed on the center. 

“You always need practice”, Mona sighed, her eyes wistful for a minute. “I really should be practicing with the moving targets but I don’t know…”

She tapped the dagger rhythmically against her belted hip, biting her lip in thought.

“I think I just used regular targets because it makes me feel good. Feel like I’m doing something useful you know?”

Max nodded slowly eyes drawn to the wood carvings on the box. 

“I know exactly what you mean.” Then he felt exceptionally stupid when he added the next part. 

“I whittle wood when I’m nervous. Nothing major just animals mostly.” Why was he saying this? Mona didn’t care about his wood carving one bit but them he looked surprised at the blatant interest in Mona’s face. 

“Wait so you were the one who made those swans I saw in the kitchen?” She said unmasked delight coating her voice. 

Max blinked rapidly. He didn’t think she’d notice in all the commotion, a tiny knic-knac strewn on the floor. 

“Yeah, yeah it was me”, he replied. 

“That’s really cool. How long did it take you?”

He strained to remember. “Just a day. Sometimes before school, sometime afterward when I got home.”

“That’s a nice skill to have.” 

Max scoffed gently, looking away back the carving on the box before deigning to meet Mona’s eyes again. 

“It’s not really a skill. I mean it’s not useful or anything.”

“Why does everything have to have a use? What happened to beauty for beauty’s sake?”

Max shrugged, hands in his pockets. “I guess you may be right. I liked doing things like that because it made me feel good like I was accomplishing something.”

Mona nodded thoughtfully, stiffing her dagger into the belt which was actually a holster at her waist.

“My mom used to say that art was just expressing your soul, I’m sure there are less technical ways to express yourself.”

Max quirked an eyebrow playfully in the direction of the targets. 

“Like knife throwing?”

Mona chuckled. “I’m sure you can find a way to make knife throwing creative.”

“What, like knife throwing to music?”

Mona’s eyes widened in delight. “Yeah. Yeah, you may be onto something.”

They laughed and Max noticed how she just mentioned her mother but then called Adam’s mother Nicole. He guessed that they were half-siblings. 

“I hope you don’t mind me asking but is it true that you Adam don’t share a mother?”

Mona frowned but then her face settled into an impassive mask. 

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business, I was just…”

Mona sighed heavily through her mouth. 

“Nah, it’s okay.” She then c****d her head to the side. 

“ What caught you on?”

“You called Adam’s mom Nicole. I know there are some people who call their parents by their first name but you don’t strike me as the sort to do that.”

Mona gave a bitter laugh crossing her arms across her tank-top covered chest. 

“You’re right. It would be my hide if I even thought of doing that.”

Then she sighed again, gently this time, her brown eyes softening with vulnerability. 

“And you’re also right about my and Adam having different mothers. Mine isn’t in the picture anymore.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Max earnestly, this time not feeling so awkward about what he was supposed to say next. 

“It’s not your fault.”

“My mom’s not in the picture either.”

Mona placed a calming hand on his shoulder. 

“You know, I wonder if she was a Lightwielder.”

“Who knows maybe she was. Maybe she escaped her Order and found your dad. Sounds awfully romantic if it were true.”

Max wasn’t sure he found the whole thing romantic but he did find it intriguing, to say the least. That is if it were true.

“What do you think her primal source of light  would have been?” Mona asked. 

Max shrugged his shoulders. 

“I’m not sure, I didn't know her that well. She died when I was very young.”Mona nodded in understanding.

“I’m sorry to hear that. So did mine.”

The silence filled the glass room until Mona took hold of Max’s hand and dragged him out of the room. 

“Come with me”, she said opening the door, then closing it tightly behind them. “I want to show you something.”

They walked down a hallway lit with fluorescent stars on the ceiling which Max couldn't help but be amazed at. He had never seen so many of those bright stars in one place apart from the night sky itself on camping trips with his father. 

The corridor grew narrower and narrower until they had to walk in a single file. 

At the end of the corridor was a door. 

Mona’s finger lit up with a small bot of lighting which she touched to the heard to the wooden door. 

It began to glow, a pearlescent white filling every nook and cranny and crevice of the ancient wooden before revealing a circular carving burning bright like the sun in the middle. She pushed open the door, then turned to Max with a smile. 

“After you.”

Max walked past her toward the open door trusting her completely. The light inside seemed to shine brighter as he approached the interior of the room. Once inside, he gasped in utter amazement at what was before his eyes. From the floor to the ceiling everywhere he turned they were mirrors, mirrors of various shapes and sizes. Some circular and all-compassing, some long and narrow. Some frames were modern-looking while others looked like they belonged on an antique roadshow.  But from all the mirrors was a pulsating heat most definitely the Light that he kept hearing about coming from them. 

“What is is this place?” he asked his voice filled with wonder but also an odd hint of trepidation.

“This is the Hall of Mirrors”, Mona announced then added with a sly glance. “Very creative don’t you think?”

Max chuckled eyes still fixed on all the mirrors hanging around the room. It was more like a gallery for mirrors.

“Do they mean something?”

Mona moved along in front of him directing him deeper into the room. 

“Each of the mirrors can show you different things. Like this one…”

She swerved left to a morrow that was the shape of a star, the frame covered in rosewood. 

“This one shows you you’re one true love.” 

Max blinked in astonishment. 

“Really. Have you ever looked at it?”

“No, but I know who I would see.” A dreamy look came on her face.

“Who?”

“Myself.”

Max couldn’t help but laugh And at the same time wonder if it was Harry that she was thinking about.  He had only known her for about a day and could see that she was endearingly conceited but he didn't think that she was her own true love. He had only known Harry for a couple of minutes but from what he could see between them he knew there was something there that moment Mona was hiding from even now. But he decided not to push it.

 "What about this one?” He pointed to a big square one covered in Crescent moons on what looks like blue aluminum foil.

 “Now this one is one of my favorites”,  Mona said,  a red ribbon to pull after her to approach the mirror. “This one is supposed to show you how you really see yourself.”

She nodded for him to come closer. 

“Go ahead, take a look inside.” 

Max walks gingerly past her and stood in front of the mirror. he could see himself as he would in any mirror but this one was different like he had felt before this one was emanating with the presence of light.

 "Am I supposed to do something? " Max asked turning back to look at Mona. Before she could answer the mirror started to glow a little turning him back to face it in its reflective surface he could see himself but not as he was now a little younger you could tell by the scraggly cut of his hair. then behind him he saw a figure approaching on closer inspection he gasped from the shock it was his dad. He blinked rapidly to make sure that this was not his imagination.  it wasn't it was as real as the mirror in front of him full stop but there was something odd about his dad he cast a large shadow eyeshadow that seemed to grow in length until it blacked out to Max entirely.

He stepped back, his head suddenly throbbing uncomfortably.