We split from Bonnie and Rhys near the apartment.  I gave Rhys’s hand a quick squeeze before I hurried after Dana and Lola, hoping he knew how much I appreciated his involvement in this – without him, we wouldn’t have identified this lady or found a good place for her to get help, and he was only involved because of me and my friend.  Yet he hadn’t even batted an eyelash at all this and seemed just as invested in helping this human kid as we were.

I hoped Bonnie would be safe, too.  I knew from experience that she was surprisingly fast for her stocky build and she could avoid getting caught by most people, but she was intentionally trying to draw attention to herself and that wasn’t something most supernaturals tried to do.  I only hoped that with Rhys there looking out for her, nothing bad would happen.

Meanwhile, I had my own tasks to focus on.  I’d brought a memory potion with me, and an extra one just in case, but mostly we were hoping my somni powers would do the trick.

Bonnie had told us to be confident walking into the run-down apartment building.  “If you look like you know where you’re going and belong there, people won’t look at you twice.  They won’t question you.  Just bluff,” she’d said.

So I was trying my best to do that as I followed Dana and Lola into the building.  We were deliberately dressed a little more nondescript than normal – which for me included no earrings, hair clips, or other jewelry – so we wouldn’t stand out if people did happen to notice us.  Thankfully, we could hear something of a disturbance down the street and people were looking curiously in the direction of all the shouting.

Apparently, seeing a wombat run around could get people’s attention.

Which meant we walked down the hallway undisturbed, up the stairs until we reached the apartment listed on the court documents as this woman’s residence.  Lola glanced around, confirming no one else was in the hallway.

“Cover your ears,” she warned.  Then, without even taking a deep breath, she let out a short but piercing scream and the doorknob seemed to shudder in response.

Immediately, Lola shoved open the door and yanked both of us inside the apartment before anyone could start looking around for the source of the scream.

Inside, the apartment was dark and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in months.  The smell of old food and trash warned us before we even got into the living room that this was not going to be pleasant.

What we didn’t expect was for the woman to be home.  We’d thought she’d be at work based on the court documents, so seeing her there startled us almost as much as finding random people in her apartment startled her.

Then I jumped in front of the others and caught her eyes.  “We’re friends,” I told her, letting out my somni magic, “everything is fine.”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but then her eyes kind of glazed over and she nodded obediently.  “Everything is fine,” she repeated.

“Why don’t you have a seat?”  I suggested.  “My friend here needs to ask you a few questions.”

With the woman in a fairly docile state thanks to my magic, Dana began talking to her, while Lola quickly headed off to search the rest of the apartment for the little girl.

She came back a moment later, jerking her head to catch my attention.

I came over to join her.

“She’s in the back bedroom, and she looks terrified.  Crying and stuff.”  Lola looked upset.  “Look, can we just use a memory potion on her instead of your magic?  It’s not like the magic is bad, but we don’t know how she’d feel after the fact, right?  She’d just basically wake up alone, in the dark – sure, near her house, but she’s scared already and not remembering how she got there or anything, that’s got to be worse.  I’m good with kids, I think I can convince her to come with me and let her know I’m taking her home, then if we just use a memory potion on her so she forgets me, you, and Dana?  Then she’d at least be calmer and know where she was and why she was there, even if she doesn’t remember how she got there.”  She looked at me pleadingly.  “Would that work?  We could even make her forget the lady, maybe forget most of the trauma while we’re at it, right?  Because if she forgets the lady, maybe she’d forget about being kidnapped?”

I had no idea if trying to erase the girl’s memories about being kidnapped was a good idea, but I was kind of worried that it wasn’t.  “Angelique warned me not to just use memory potions as a get-out-of-jail free card; they can have bad consequences, and in this case, I think there would still be some part of her brain that would remember what happened and try to put the pieces back together.  Let’s just do a potion for us, then I’ll give Bonnie another one for the lady.  Kids are resilient, but if it looks like she won’t be able to handle it, then Bonnie can give it to her.”

Lola sighed, but agreed.  Messing with people’s minds was questionable enough as it was, I didn’t want to do more than was okay, even if it sounded like a good idea in theory.

I quickly collected hair from each of us – the lady didn’t even notice when I took one of hers – then put the ones from Dana, Lola, and me in one potion, activating the potion with witch magic, and then handing the vial to Lola.  “Give it to her after you get there,” I warned.  “If she takes it before basically the last moment she sees you, she’ll still remember you.”

Lola nodded, then slipped back into the room to begin trying to convince the little girl that she was a friend and would take her home, and everything would be okay.

I stood awkwardly in the living room, trying to keep an eye on Dana and her, err, patient, and keep alert in case Lola needed help, but thankfully she didn’t.  She emerged from the room soon after, carrying a little girl whom I recognized from the pictures Bonnie had showed us.  Scared, a little worse for the wear from the ordeal, but she didn’t look that bad.  Dana paused her interview long enough to come over and ask a couple of brief questions and ensure the girl wouldn’t need medical help before she got home, then returned to the lady while I gently tossed a coat over the little girl to hide her and Lola and I left the apartment, walking swiftly and trying to keep out of anyone’s vision while we went.  We hoped that if anyone saw us, they just figured a couple was taking their tired kid home late at night.  Or, better yet, that no one saw us.

Thankfully, we made it back to the car without incident, and I helped Lola get the girl in and then waved her off, crossing my fingers that she’d be okay on the drive home.  If she got pulled over while the girl was in the car, it’d be really hard to explain that no, she wasn’t the kidnapper, she was rescuing her from the kidnapper.  Yeah, police would be really likely to buy that story, right?

Trying to push that thought out of my head, I hurried back upstairs to make sure Dana had reinforcements – aka that my magic didn’t wear off before it was supposed to.

Dana was waiting for me when I got back, shaking her head a little as she glanced over at the woman while speaking in a low tone.

“We were right,” she murmured.  “She went into a bad depressive spiral after her husband died, but I think it’s actually a little more complicated than we first thought.  I get the impression that her husband made all the choices for her and basically demanded that she produce a child, so to her, the child was her way of making her husband love her.  The relationship sounds pretty toxic, actually, but when she lost him, she didn’t know how to function anymore and is basically still waiting for her husband to tell her what to do.  She just knows she has to have her son or her husband won’t love her.  It’s messed up, but yeah, she has no idea what she did.  There’s quite a few neighbor kids in the area, apparently she offered one of them a toy to bring her son back to her, and described her ‘son’ to the kid.  She’d seen the little girl, thought that was her son, and knew exactly what clothes the girl was wearing so the kid she used knew whom to approach.  I doubt the neighbor kid realized anything was wrong, and as far as this lady goes, she just thinks she rescued her son from kidnappers.  She doesn’t even realize it’s a girl or that the kid is terrified.  She doesn’t even realize the state her apartment is in – basically she sees the picture in her head and makes reality fit it.”  Dana sighed.  “I won’t condone kidnapping a kid, but she doesn’t even know she did that.  She needs help.”

I nodded and approached the lady again, leaning down a bit until I caught her eyes and then started weaving some more potent magic.

“You know you’re not doing okay, right?”  I asked gently.  “Your husband died, and the authorities took your son because you weren’t taking good care of him.”  It might sound cruel to repeat that, but she needed to have those realities planted in her head.  “If you ever want to get him back, you need to get help.  You need to put your life back together.  You can’t keep living like this.”  I motioned around us.

The woman’s eyes filled with tears.  “Matthew?  Where’s Matthew?”

“Matthew’s with his foster parents,” I answered gently, but firmly.  “He’s safe and doing well, but you need to get better before you can see him again.  You want to see him again, right?”

She nodded.

“Then can you focus on getting better first?  Getting help to get stable again?  Then you can talk to the courts about seeing Matthew, once you’re ready.”

She looked like she was ready to cry.  “I don’t know how.”

“Little steps,” I answered.  “And you can start by going to get help.”  I gave her the name of the place Rhys had told us about, then made her repeat it back to me until I was sure she had the place burned in her memory.  “Go get help.  Get your life back together, get things on track, and the end goal is trying to see Matthew again.  Don’t give up – just remember, unless you can get better, you won’t get to see him again.”

I really hoped I wasn’t giving her false hope, telling her that she would get to see him again if she got better.  I hoped she would, because he was only removed because of neglect, so if she could prove she’d turned her life around, then they’d probably give him back, right?  But I was trying to word what I said as carefully as possible to avoid any breakdowns in her life down the road if she tried to get permission to see him again and was refused.  She needed to know that she could keep trying to see him but she needed to take care of herself first.

Dana came over, gave a couple of instructions to the woman, too, basically reiterating what I’d said, and once we were satisfied that she now had a goal in mind of getting better so she could try to see her son again, and she knew where to go to get help, we walked out the door and then I released my magic.

“She won’t remember us?”  Dana murmured as we headed down the hall.

“Nope,” I confirmed.  “She should remember the ideas we planted, but not what happened.”  I hesitated, glancing back at the door suddenly.  “I should have brought a third potion to make her forget the kid.”

“Don’t worry about that.”  Dana shrugged and pulled me along.  “It’s too late now anyway – Lola and the kid are long gone.  But I don’t think you need to worry about it.  She wasn’t really aware of what was going on – she did take the kid, but I think some part of her brain realized it wasn’t the right kid, so she was still fussing about wondering where her son was.  She didn’t even seem to realize that she had the kid in the other room.  I don’t think she’ll remember, but if she does, she’ll probably think it’s her mind playing tricks on her.”

We got back outside and headed down the street in the direction of the commotion.  Up ahead of us on the street, Rhys caught sight of us and slipped off, a whistle sounding a moment later.  I caught the flash of brownish fur in the streetlights as Bonnie – being chased by kids who apparently thought they were “cool” to try to catch a wombat – raced off between the buildings.

Dana and I reached Bonnie’s car and got in, waiting for what felt like a long time before Bonnie and Rhys showed up.  Bonnie was breathing a little heavily, but smiling as she did.

“Well?”  She demanded as they got in the car.  “How’d it go?”

I was about to respond when my phone rang and I answered it, putting it on speakerphone so they could all hear.

“Mission accomplished,” Lola announced.  “I delivered the girl a block from her home and made her drink the memory potion.  She looked a little disoriented at first, but I watched until I saw her knock on her door and it opened to her parents.  Then I decided to get out before they called the police to tell them she’s safe.  Or whatever people do in that situation.  Anyway, I’m out of the neighborhood now but the girl is safe at home.”

Bonnie smiled widely and reached out to give me a high-five, which I awkwardly obliged her.  “Yes!  Everything was okay on my end – a couple times people tried to trap me and nearly managed, but I just charged and knocked one of them over once.  I’m guessing there might be reports of a loose wombat in town tomorrow, but hey,” she shrugged cheerfully, “they won’t catch me!”

“Success on our end, too,” Dana was smiling almost as widely as Bonnie.  “We were right about the lady suffering a psychotic break and Nicky was able to convince her that she needs help and needs to get better before she tries to see her kid again.  I think we did the best we could in this situation, everyone.  Now, let’s get home and celebrate, okay?”

That sounded like a good idea to all of us.