I suppose you could pigeonhole this story as an “urban fantasy,” but I actually think the niche is somewhat smaller than that. I was inspired to write this one thanks to the five and half years or so that I spent working as a magistrate in Virginia. That job could be frustrating at times, but on the whole, my colleagues were people who were well-educated in the law and did high-quality work.
I hope this story will be entertaining to all of my readers, but I especially hope that it will resonate with any of my fellow magistrates (current or former) who happen to read it. We often wished we could wave a magic wand to fix things, but maybe even that wouldn’t have been the solution we were looking for.
There were already three people in the waiting room when Bryan Stones arrived at the Mǣgistrate's Office for Prince Willem County. It wasn’t a welcome sight after finding just a few minutes before that someone had parked their truck in his assigned space. He let himself in the side door and deposited his dinner of leftover nightbadger stew and faeriecorn-bread in the ice box before trudging down the office’s single, narrow hall to find his colleague.
“Looks like ya got a live one tonight, Bryan.”
The drawling voice of Mǣgistrate Ron Askew always seemed to transform Bryan’s name into a single syllable. Ron was what some of the deputy sheriffs called “an old school mǣgistrate.” Bryan still wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but it seemed to have a lot to do with the man’s country upbringing and heavy accent as much as anything else. Perhaps it also had something to do with his flowing white beard and the old-fashioned robes he insisted on wearing during his hearings.
Bryan took a deep breath before stepping into the hearing room.
“Okay, what do you have for me?”
“It’s been busy. There’s an emergency protective order over there,” Ron said, gesturing toward the ancient, wooden table near the door. “The deputies know about it, but they just haven’t come to pick it up yet, but you know how that can be.”
Bryan nodded his head in agreement. Though the emergency protective orders issued by the mǣgistrates had fairly effective warding and binding powers, the deputies didn’t like having to perform the required incantations on the parties. Also they required a lot of paperwork.
“Anything else?” Bryan asked.
“Yeah, those three out in the waiting room. The man and the woman sitting together are filling out a criminal complaint.”
“What about that other . . . guy?”
Glancing over at the special mirror that allowed them to view the waiting area from back in the hearing room, Bryan wasn’t entirely sure who or what the shadowy, robed figure seated in the corner was. It might be someone coming in to report a thousand-year curse being put on his house and land and posterity, or it might be a simple trespass. You could never tell.
“Followed the other two in. Haven’t had a chance to speak to the . . . fella,” Ron continued. Bryan noted that Ron seemed to share his vague sense of unease.
“Anything else?”
“I ‘spose that’s it. If I forgot something just gimme a ring. I’ll be awake for a while yet.”
“Thanks. Have a good one.”
Bryan sat down at the hearing room’s large desk, straightened his tie, and then made an announcement over the office's intercom system: “I can help the next person. Please deposit all magical items in the enchanted strongbox to the right of the door and come in when you hear the buzzer.”
A few moments later the couple from the waiting area stepped into the small room. They were separated from Bryan by what he had been reliably-informed was charm-proof glass. Part of him was glad that no one had ever tested that claim.
Bryan began the same way he always did: “I am Mǣgistrate Stones. You may sit down. Have you filled out the complaint form?”
The man slid the sheet of parchment through the slot at the bottom of the window as his companion looked on. Bryan gave the document a cursory scan.
“Okay, each of you please raise your right hand and cover your eyes with your left.”
The couple did so. The physical movement was not, strictly speaking, legally or magically necessary, but Bryan found that having people go through the ritual seemed to make them feel the solemnity of the occasion. Most people anyway.
“Do you give your solemn oath or promise that you will tell the whole truth and that this hearing will not be affected by any work of magic of any kind to the best of your ability?”
“I do,” they both responded.
“Very well. You may lower your hand from your eyes. Do you further state that when your eyes were covered you saw the sign of the dogwood tree?”
“Yes. Is that normal?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Bryan began, before glancing down at the complaint to remember the name, “Mr. Titus, that is the standard sign that the oath has been properly administered.”
Bryan rattled off the rest of his standard spiel about how proper administration of the oath was a precaution against both magic and lying, but that it was no guarantee. Having taken the oath, however, a person who made false statements during the hearing or attempted to influence the hearing or the issuance of any process by use of magic was subject to prosecution under section 18.3-1607, the maximum penalty for which was confinement for thirteen lunar months or a fine of 3,500 guilders or both.
Bryan continued, “Please tell me what happened.”
The man, whose name was Herman Titus, explained that earlier that day he and his neighbor, Phineas Rutherford, had gotten into an argument. Some of the Titus family’s chickens had wandered onto the Rutherford property and Mr. Rutherford was annoyed that he had to spend time herding them back. Mr. Titus said that he tried to apologize, but the encounter escalated into a shouting match and ended when Mr. Rutherford picked up a gravel rock and hurled it through the Titus family’s living room window. Mrs. Titus—who, not surprisingly, turned out to be the woman seated in the hearing room—was a witness to the rock-throwing portion of the argument and the property damage. They had called the sheriff’s office who had told them to visit the mǣgistrate’s office.
Bryan took a minute to read the complaint form more thoroughly, finding that it coincided with the oral testimony of Mr. Titus.
“I have a few followup questions, Mr. Titus,” Bryan said.
The complainant furrowed his brow, but still said, “Of course.”
“Were the chickens magic chickens?”
“No, we do have some, but we keep those on the other side of the property. It’s an awful mess when you’re trying to make an omelet and end up with a magical egg instead of a normal one.”
The Tituses chuckled and Bryan offered a sympathetic smile.
“Was the rock anything other than an ordinary rock or do you have any evidence that Mr. Rutherford employed any incantation or other magic to launch the rock?”
“No.”
“Was the window under any kind of spell of protection?”
Mr. Titus shook his head.
“And you did say, didn’t you, that you called the sheriff before you came in?”
“Yes, they told us to come see you and we headed out a little while after that.”
“I see,” Bryan said in an apologetic tone. “Well, I’m afraid that the sheriff gave you some bad information. They should have directed you to the Magistrate’s Office.
Squinting his eyes in confusion, Mr. Titus asked, “Is that not where we are?”
“No. This happens every so often. This is the Mǣgistrate’s Office. We only have jurisdiction over crimes involving magic, the paranormal, or the transdimensional. And handicap parking violations. For ordinary criminal offenses you have to go to the Magistrate’s Office. Do you have the address?”
The couple each shook their heads. Bryan peeled off a sticky note and wrote the address and phone number of the ordinary Magistrate’s Office on it and then handed it through the opening in the glass.
The Tituses exited and then Bryan repeated the entry procedure with the shadowy figure. An icy draft swept into the room, disturbing the folds of the figure’s robes. The overhead lights flickered momentarily as the man—Bryan assumed he was a man—seated himself at the window. A jagged chin protruded from the robe’s hood, but the eyes remained shrouded in the shadow of the hood.
“How can I help you?” Bryan asked, leaving off the “sir” about which he was still not confident.
The mysterious personage held up a wrinkled parchment and gestured toward it with an emaciated and ancient-looking hand.
Bryan gestured for the figure to pass the document through the window. It came through face down, which struck Bryan as somewhat odd. He flicked the switch to the left of the desk that dimmed the electric lights and admitted moonlight from above. Holding the parchment up to the lunar glow, Bryan observed no special runes or other marks. He switched the lights back on and turned the page over.
“Oh,” Bryan said. “Did you come in to pay a speeding ticket?”
The hood of the robe bent toward him in a gesture that Bryan took to be a nod.
“All right. Just give me a minute or two to calculate the fine.”
The table of fines and fees was one of the portions of the thick, heavy Mǣgistrate's Manual and Spellbook that Bryan used least often, but he dutifully retrieved the tome from its special shelf. He added up the various items: there was the Courthouse Improvement Fund, plus the standard demystification fee, and then two furlongs per minute over the posted maximum limit multiplied by twelve silver coins per furlong came to—
A light tapping on the window interrupted Bryan’s calculations. He looked up to see a yellowed fingernail barely touching the glass. The same finger then gestured toward a small item on the ledge that sat opposite Bryan’s desk.
“Yes, a personal check is fine. Let me just finish this and I’ll give you the amount. You can go ahead and start making it out to the Prince Willem County General District Court - Magical Misdemeanors and Traffic Division.”
The scratching of one of the quills that the Mǣgistrate's Office supplied for the hearing rooms only slightly distracted Bryan from finishing his work.
“It comes to fifty-eight silvers . . .” Bryan said, once more balking at the uncertainty of “sir.”
Bryan took the check, verified that it was made out for the correct amount to the correct court, and then conjured a receipt. The figure bowed slightly and then left, not a moment too soon for Bryan’s liking.
As the outer door to the hearing room clicked shut, two things happened at the same time. The bell that signaled that one of the deputies had arrived with a person in custody chimed its familiar, tinny chime. Simultaneously, Bryan heard a very unusual, ethereal voice calling from the direction of the office storage room. Walking past the second hearing room that connected to the jail’s small holding area, Bryan gestured to the deputy with a single upraised finger. The deputy nodded, accepting that there would be a short delay, and then continued filling out his paperwork as Bryan continued to the storage room.
The voice, though only a few doors down from him, had a distant quality to it. Voices were unusual, but not unheard of, in the office. Bryan was sure that if he had ever heard one before, he would have remembered it. It was Bryan’s colleague Mǣgistrate Mack Paulson who seemed to hear the voices the most, but poor Mǣgistrate Sandy Jackson seemed to only get echoes of criminal complaints and hearings long past—that or directions for making long-lasting infatuation potions for some reason.
As Bryan gently pushed open the door to the storage room, a breath of cool air whisked past him. He poked his head inside, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The paper and office supplies were undisturbed. The ancient, hardcover volumes of the Code of Virginia and those of the Magickal and Paranormal Statutes of Virginia were as dusty as ever. Bryan turned to go, but decided to leave the door open, just a crack.
The deputy was stacking his completed paperwork just as Bryan arrived. It was a thick stack and that usually meant a hearing for a charge of prognosticating while intoxicated. The Council of Forty, in its manifest wisdom, had seen fit to mirror the Commonwealth’s statute for the offense of driving under the influence, thus importing along with it all of the associated forms and fees and complications and hassles.
Bryan tried not to roll his eyes as the deputy slid the paperwork through the glass. At least it’s Deputy Linwood, Bryan thought. He always has his paperwork straight on the first try. He glanced down at the written probable cause form and found the name of the accused.
“Good evening, Mr. Riverborne. I am Mǣgistrate Stones. In a moment I will put both you and the deputy under oath. My job is to determine whether there is enough evidence to issue any charges that the deputy may ask for. I do not determine your guilt or innocence. After the deputy has given his testimony I will give you the opportunity to speak, but you are under no obligation to say anything. If you do choose to speak, please understand that the deputy would later be able to testify about what you say if a charge were ever to go to court. Do you have any questions for me before we start?”
Mr. Riverborne blinked slowly and then shook his head very slightly. Whether he was heavily intoxicated or simply uninterested, Bryan could not tell for sure. He administered the oath and the hearing began.
“I was on ordinary patrol in the Arkham subdivision in our county,” Deputy Linwood began, “when I observed a person standing by himself near the playground equipment on the grounds of the Thomas J. Jackson Intermediate School.”
Bryan thought he heard the voice in the storage room again, but ignored it.
“As I approached closer to the individual—whom I later identified as Brandon Riverborne, who is now standing to my left—I could hear him talking. He said, ‘And it shall come to pass that before the passing of the third wolf moon, this playground shall pass away and be restored again!’ Based on my training and experience I understood Mr. Riverborne to be engaged in acts of prognostication.”
“Now hold on just a second!” Mr. Riverborne began to interject.
Bryan cut him off as politely as possible: “Mr. Riverborne, I already told you that I will give you the chance to speak. If you both try to speak at the same time, I won’t be able to follow what you’re saying.”
Mr. Riverborne nodded. Just then the voice from the storage room came back, louder this time, though the words were still indistinct.
“Do you need to get that?” Deputy Linwood asked.
“No,” Bryan responded. “I checked earlier and there was nothing there. Probably just some everyday hauntings that got caught up in the air ducts. The maintenance guys really need to fix that.”
Deputy Linwood continued his testimony, speaking slightly louder to make sure he could be heard clearly over the ethereal mumbling coming from down the hall.
“I could smell a distinct odor of witches’ brew coming from his person and he appeared to be unsteady on his feet. I initiated a consensual encounter and asked Mr. Riverborne whether he had had anything to drink that night. He admitted to me that he had consumed one shot of witches’ brew at the ‘Little Brown Jug’ tavern around the corner.”
A loud thud from down the hall interrupted the deputy again. Bryan rolled his eyes and went to investigate. In the storage room the voice seemed to be gone, but several books had been dumped on the floor. They must have been some of the older ones, Bryan thought, since a cloud of dust was starting to fill the air. It was a mess, but it could wait; a few books on the floor was no reason to put his hearing on hold.
Returning to the hearing room, Bryan told the deputy, “Please continue.” The deputy looked a little uncertain about the latest interruption, but picked up right where he had left off.
“Mr. Riverborne agreed to perform the standard field sobriety tests, but out of concern for his safety, I discontinued the tests when he was unable to complete the one-eyed levitation test. I placed him under arrest for suspicion of PWI and transported him here. He submitted to a breath test and the result was a deep indigo color. I’m seeking a charge for prognosticating while intoxicated.”
It had been a while since Bryan had seen someone breathe a deep indigo result, but before he had time to think about how far down in the Computerized-Mǣgistrate System he would have to scroll to find that version of the charge, the voice from the storage room returned.
“Mǣgistrate Stones, come here. Come now,” the voice said, now identifiably a male voice. It sounded vaguely familiar to Bryan.
Deputy Linwood and Mr. Riverborne both wore looks of astonishment.
“I’ll be right back,” Bryan said.
“I’m not getting any younger, Mǣgistrate Stones,” the voice called. That phrase reminded Bryan of Mǣgistrate Training School and as he pushed open the door to the storage room, he remembered why. There, floating above the large capacity stapler, was the face of Charleston Crummwell, one of the Mǣgistrate Mavens who had taught Bryan’s class of incoming Mǣgistrate Novices.
“Do I have to send you an engraved invitation or something?”
Bryan was confused. “You mean that’s been you the whole time?” he asked.
“Who else would it be? The Ambassador from Planet Vulcan or something? I mean, I thought dumping the book off the shelf and leaving it open to the exact page would have been a dead giveaway.”
“Uhh, I guess that didn’t occur to me. It has something to do with my hearing?”
Mǣgistrate Maven Crummwell snorted. “Well, we don’t exactly cross over just to pop in and say ‘hello’ to on-duty mǣgistrates. The case you need is right there. All right. Bye.”
The face was gone in an instant. Another apparition might have flourished the exit with a puff of smoke or something, but that wouldn’t have been very much like Mǣgistrate Maven Crummwell. Bryan would have found it helpful, of course, if, before disapparating, the particular case on the pages that the book had fallen open to had been identified. Resigning himself to the fate of just having to read them all, he hefted the book up from the floor and shuffled back to the hearing room.
Bryan plopped the book down on the counter next to his computer monitor and kicked up a small cloud of dust.
“A little light reading?” Deputy Linwood inquired.
“Oh, I apologize. I assumed you were finished with your testimony?”
The deputy squinted up at the ceiling for a moment. “Yes, that was everything. The breath test results are in there with the rest of the paperwork.”
“Good. Mǣgistrate Maven Crummwell advised me to read one of these cases and—”
“Crummwell? I thought he died a few years ago.”
Bryan chewed on his lip for a moment. “Well, yes. I mean, technically, I suppose. But old Mǣgistrate Mavens never really quite die, not all-the-way dead, anyway. I certainly didn’t know he was haunting this Mǣgisterial Region until tonight. Regardless, he advised me to look at one of these cases, but didn’t stay long enough to specify which one. It’ll take me a few minutes.”
“All right, Mr. Riverborne, you can have a seat,” the deputy said.
“Don’t I get a chance to talk? He said I could have a chance to talk!”
Bryan once more held up his hand in an effort to calm the man.
“Yes, Mr. Riverborne. I haven’t forgotten and neither has the deputy. But let me just take a look at what the Mavens wanted me to see first, okay?”
Mr. Riverborne did not appear totally satisfied with that explanation, but evidently saw no sense in fighting against the inevitable. He sat down in the plastic chair across from the window just as Bryan was diving into the case summaries.
The first three cases were under a heading for “flying without a license,” so Bryan assumed he could safely skip those. The next section dealt with prognosticating while intoxicated so he slowed his reading pace. Most of the cases dealt with what evidence was sufficient to prove the element of intoxication because, in far too many cases, the prognosticator himself would fall into a trance-like state that often appeared like intoxication.
After several minutes of reading, Bryan came to the next-to-last case in the PWI section, Hamilton v. Commonwealth. It caught his eye because despite being decided nearly 150 years before, it had never been modified or overruled. The facts of the case, however, were strikingly similar to the testimony he had just heard.
In a tiny town out in the western part of the state, an elderly woman had been charged with prognosticating while intoxicated under an earlier version of the statute. It was before breath tests, but she had been, to put it mildly, “highly intoxicated.” Nevertheless, in spite of the accuracy of her prediction—a matter of days after she was arrested the mayor had, in fact, fallen through the floor of his neighbor’s outhouse—the Supreme Court of Appeals for Magickal Offenses had overturned her conviction in a unanimous decision. Justice G. MacDonald, writing for the Court, reasoned that “the gravamen of the act of illegal prognostication is the publication to another; mere foretelling is not sufficient to sustain the indictment.”
Bryan looked down at Deputy Linwood’s written complaint and then the connection dawned on him.
“Deputy Linwood, did you observe anyone else at the playground or in the immediate vicinity?”
The deputy stepped back up to the hearing window. He scratched his chin and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before answering.
“No, I don’t recall anyone else. It’s a quiet neighborhood in general, but especially at that time of night.”
“And I believe you also said that it was only as you approached Mr. Riverborne that you could hear him talking?”
“That’s right. Although it was only after I got within a few feet of him that I could make out the words. He wasn’t talking very loudly.”
Bryan paused. Since it was rare for him to be in that position, he wanted to choose his words well.
“Mr. Riverborne, you can come back to the window for a moment.”
The arrestee wore the same blank expression, but the deputy now realized that something was slightly out of the ordinary.
“Based on the testimony of the deputy,” Bryan began, somewhat tentatively, “I find that there is not probable cause to issue the charge of prognosticating while intoxicated. Since Mr. Riverborne was alone on the playground with no one else to hear, his words were not published to another.”
Mr. Riverborne, despite his condition, seemed to understand, judging by the way that his eyes got bigger.
“So does that mean I can get out of here tonight?” the man asked with relieved excitement.
Seeing that Deputy Linwood had something to say, Bryan held up his hand again toward Mr. Riverborne.
“Could you write that case name down for me, please? I’m sure my sergeant will want to see it. I’m not questioning your ruling,” he said, somewhat apologetically.
“Of course,” Bryan said. He jotted the name on a small scrap of paper and passed it through the window.
The deputy looked at the paper briefly, folded it, and then stuffed it in one of his shirt pockets. Then he said, “I guess I’ll just take the drunk in public charge for now.”
Bryan nodded, signed the written complaint, and was about to announce his decision to then-visibly-disappointed Mr. Riverborne when the intercom system rang. The mirror showed him that it was a pair of women dressed in the distinctive yellow and purple doublets of Archmage Damian’s Tavern and Paranormal Emporium. When employees from that establishment showed up it always meant one thing: a customer had used the entryway to the store as a portal and they were there to file a complaint for transdimensional trespassing.”
“How can I help you?” Bryan asked over the intercom.
“Yes. Hello,” one of them said, leaning closer than necessary to the outdoor speaker. “We’re from Archmage Damian’s and we need to file a complaint. We were on duty and—”
“Yes, madam, you’ll have to write out a statement. Please come in and have a seat and I’ll be with you shortly.”
Bryan turned back to his workstation and had just enough time to conjure the warrant for drunk in public against Mr. Riverborne when the phone rang. He recognized the number as coming from the local Community Services Board and that too always meant one thing: what some poor non-magical person had thought was a mental health emergency was actually a magical or supernatural abnormality. Bryan took a deep breath and let the phone ring.
“Do you need to get that?” Deputy Linwood asked.
Bryan nodded and signed the paperwork for the deputy. “I suppose I’d better, right?”
That elicited a smile from the deputy and a puzzled look from Mr. Riverborne. It was going to turn out to be a busier night than usual, Bryan thought, but that was the job.
He picked up the receiver and said: “Prince Willem County Mǣgistrate's Office, this is Mǣgistrate Stones. How can I help you?”