I left Susan’s house and the goal in my mind was simple Find Ethan Parker and hopefully he wasn’t hurt. I didn’t like giving people bad news. That was the somewhat simple part but it was the actions afterwards that always left me in a bind.

I got in my car and drove off. It was simply a black ford. I had gotten it as a gift for my sixteenth birthday from my teacher. It would be seven years ago exactly in a couple of weeks. I did not like change so as long as it still worked well enough I would keep it. I was heading to my house. That would be the first step into solving what happened to the boy Ethan Parker.

Other detectives, mortal detectives without magic would have stayed to look around the boy’s room and try to find some clue or lead. Something that would show where the boy had planned to go. If that didn’t work, they would try to find his friends and people he spent time with.

I didn’t do any of those things because with magic I wouldn’t need to. For me all that effort was unnecessary. All I needed to do was use a locator spell on him and I would have his location. I rarely worked this fast however as I usually just wasted time and charged extra. However every time I even thought of doing that this time all I could see was Susan’s face.

I would do this as fast as I possibly could.

Driving through the city I took in my surroundings as I passed them. There were many trees all around and as many building and people. I wasn’t overly fond of any of it. I wasn’t a big fan of nature on this world or any other. I was happier inside a building with a book. I was fine with leaving nature to the animals and to the people that enjoyed that type of thing. I was raised in the city and hated the idea of hiking or simply being in nature. Going outside was something I did because I had no choice due to my work. If possible I would love to stay inside all day.

I was relieved when I finally arrived at my house and went inside. The house was two floors if you did not count the basement. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were connected to each other and the upper floor had my room, a guest room, and the bathroom. It would have probably been easier renting an apartment but that would mean more people making noise around me and that would have been a nightmare.

I was better in a house by myself even if it cost more at least I wouldn’t have annoying neighbors above, below, and around me. To me that would have been a prison. It may have cost more but I considered the peace and quiet worth it. It also was about only thirty minutes away from my office.

The basement was my goal as that was the door that I used as the main door to my workshop. A wizard’s or witch’s workshop is the place where he or she keeps all their spell books and research. The place where they brew their potions and practices their spells.

Mine was an extra dimensional space where I could practice freely without worrying about the surrounding area. It was like my sanctuary. A space separated from the world that holds all the people and the noise. It was also where I kept my coolest stuff.

It could in truth be connected to any door that was open to me that I trusted and had access to but it was just the fact that I like to use my basement as the entrance because it was cooler. The reverse was also true. I was very much a fan of the old Scooby doo cartoons where shaggy and Scooby hid in one door and appeared out of another when running from monsters. When my teacher taught me the spell I used it for weeks just to move around his house.

He had created the spell and while I was unsure if others knew of it I didn't properly care at the time to ask as I moved from one room to another. I heard that others use basements, attics, storage units, and sheds for a workshop so I was very happy my teacher didn’t follow the normal methods that they did.

“Absconde eos revelare.” I chanted three times as I traced a path with my wand over the door and watched as behind the wooden door a white light was shining.

When it was finished I opened the door and walked down the steps. Instead of the normal white paint walls and wooden steps I traveled down stone steps with my hands against stone walls. My workshop was a space where all noise from the outside world was shut out.

It was a place of quiet and peace. It was my favorite place in the world. Which was funny because it did not exist in the world. I had designed it the way I wanted it so of course I would love it but the point was still valid. It was a room that you could simply lose track of time on the outside if you weren’t careful. I had plenty of experiences with that.

It was a big room since time and space weren’t limitations that you had to consider when working with magic, you could make it as big and as distant if you wanted. You could make it stretch as long as you wanted. In practice it was similar to the hyperbolic time chamber from Dragon Ball Z. Time and space didn’t have to be equal with that of the outside world. My version the effect was in similar. Two hours on the inside was one hour on the outside.

The workshop allowed you to fill it with stuff and still have room for even more things. I had rooms dedicated just to keeping my books. Books that I had read countless times, books I had yet to read, and books that I didn’t think I would ever read but kept since they were gifts. There were also rooms filled with projects of mine some finished and some just getting started. It was my dream to one day read all the books that I had and complete all my projects. I had an entire room filled with books that were just fiction about magic and adventure.

It played a huge part in why I was a detective. I had spent most of my life reading books about amazing adventures and brave heroes and I realized that I wanted to live a life like that. With magic in my life I figured why not try to live like that. I had seen what happens to people working in regular jobs and I doubted I could work a regular job with regular people with my level of people skills.

Finding the crystal and map that I needed I began my search for Ethan. Magic made life easier in my opinion. People struggle so hard to do what magic can accomplish with less effort. Unless you were messing around with dark magic or doing something that was beyond your level it rarely failed you.

Magic was a mystic force of energy generated by the universe and the things in it. Wizards and witches broke that force down into two categories. We labeled them Prana and Mana. Prana is the energy that is in the atmosphere and the universe that exists in all dimensions and it feeds magical beings like gods, demons, spirits, and ghosts. It gives them their power and it is generated by the universe and refueled by the life energy given off by living and nonliving things.

Mana or aura or qi or chi or chakra depending on a person's definition is the magical energy created by the soul. When people are born the prana of the universe grants them a soul and a portion of that goes to give their body the energy it needs to live. Wizards and witches and magical beings that have a physical body and manipulate magic like elves however have a magical core.

The core is a metaphysical organ similar to a jar inside of their soul that generates, contains, and converts their excess life energy or mana into magic power which lets them perform magic. The core was created as a result by an overlap of the soul and the body. For mortals however the soul laid inside the body and granted them emotions and a conscience.

Even if you didn’t have a core and couldn’t use magic you still had mana and a soul but each person’s mana signature was different. Wherever you went you left traces of it behind. Prana helped created the soul which generated mana and mana became prana when it left a person or cast as a spell. It was like being a Jedi if you used the original definition of the force, it was everywhere connecting everyone and everything but not everyone could use it.

Using magic however was complicated. It required knowledge and training, insight and creativity, and just a little bit of luck. Lots of people who can do magic either require a teacher to protect them from going too far or being too reckless and trying to do too much too soon. Even so there are still many who tried just that and it ended up destroying them. Sometimes literally.

Magic wasn’t contained to certain families and while it is more likely to have magic if you are descended from a family of Witches and Wizards you can be born with the ability to use magic even if no one in your family before you could. It also wasn't contained to certain ages. Magical talent could be awakened at any age but more often in young people but it was more likely to awaken in youths..

Using magic to locate someone whose location you didn’t know was a simple thing. There were many types of locator spells but my favorite method was scrying because I got the location and there was no mess to clean up afterwards unlike if I used something like salt or blood. Just a crystal tied to a piece of string and a map of Philadelphia.

There were no words required to do this. I just spun the crystal all over the map and if he was still in the city I would find him. There was a chance that the kid might have run away. He looked to be about seventeen and teenagers rarely thought things through.

The crystal eventually landed on the map. It was centered on the Northwood Park. This was why I loved magic, everything in life just became easier. Normal detectives would have spent days searching for him and questioning people on where he might be hiding and why he has been missing. With magic however I could skip all that effort and get results.

It would take less than an hour to get to the park. As I drove there I couldn’t help wondering why Ethan didn’t call his aunt to pick him up instead of waiting in a park. There were tons of possible reasons but they weren’t that important to me.

However I had made a promise to find the kid and I was going to keep it. I grabbed the crystal and ran outside to my car. The crystal would point me in the direction of Ethan no matter how where he was or how hard he tried to hide. That was another mistake and led to my next major problem and me being arrested.