"A... warrant? What do you mean, search my property?" Ryan asked with a confused stutter, staring at the man in front of him. The acciptan, an avian species of eagle folk, began to glance around, as if he was already trying to look into the house.

  "We have high reason to believe that the source of the spell was somewhere at the party you threw yesterday. As I hear, you are a unique Awakened with special abilities, belong to an extremely powerful family, and have a steep criminal record," Jargo explained, though he didn't even look at Ryan as he did.

  With a slight frown, Ryan stared up at the tall-grown man, trying to come up with a retort. All of that was definitely true, though it wasn't nice for someone to be suspicious of him, "... What's my family got to do with this?"

  Finally, Jargo glanced down at Ryan, "That is what I would like to know. Now, please let me pass."

  "Hold it-" Ryan said, holding forward his hand, "Show me that warrant you said you have first."

  Clearly a bit annoyed, Jargo pulled out a folded-up piece of paper from his suit jacket's inner pocket, holding it forward. Ryan quickly took it and read through it. While he wasn't that well-versed in legal lingo, he had enough encounters with the police that he knew what his rights were. And there it was, right on paper - this warrant allowed Jargo to search this property for any magical contraband. Fuck.

  "... Okay, fine. Come inside," Ryan took a step away to let Jargo in, and then, without a moment's hesitation, looked inward to speak to Morgana, "You don't coincidentally know any spells that let you hide things from magical inspection... right?" he asked her, but the witch spirit slowly shook her head. That was probably beyond the 'basic' spells she currently knew without a grimoire.

  'Fuck,' Ryan thought, quickly closing the door and stepping inside after Jargo.

  "... Already clean up, have you? From what I gather, this was quite the party," the avian man pointed out. He looked around, as if trying to spot something that was off. But soon, he laid eyes on Liam, who was standing in the hallway.

  Ryan immediately stepped in front of him, "This is Liam, my cousin."

  "Your cousin... Liam Aglecard, is it?" Jargo asked, staring down at the boy peeking out from behind Ryan's back, "The oh-so-famous vampire boy."

  "And how is that relevant?" Ryan asked, pushing Liam even further out of the man's sight. Jargo snapped his head away and continued walking forward.

  "I decide what is relevant and what is not," he explained, walking forward with an almost silent step.

  As the man continued to walk around, his eyes let off a slight, silvery glow. He was an Awakened himself. Ryan knew that the OAA employed a lot of people with information-, knowledge-, or inspection-based classes, so... this was even worse.

  There was tons of special magic set up all over this building, and if anyone that shouldn't know found out, that could be... problematic. Particularly, the elevator would be catastrophic to be found. The only thing Ryan could hope for now was that it was hidden well enough that Jargo wouldn't be able to find it.

  The accpiptan kept glancing around, soon laying his eyes on Ryan again, "... You have a few magic items on you, I see. How did you procure them?"

  "They were gifts," he replied immediately.

  "From whom?"

  "That's none of your business."

  Though it was maybe a bit aggressive, as Ryan said, it really wasn't any of Jargo's business. If he was someone that had to know, then he would know. The same went for the entirety of the OAA, obviously.

  Ryan locked eyes with the man, who just scoffed and turned back around, continuing to walk around. He soon reached the living room, spotting everyone else that was currently in the house.

  "And you are... Silvia Redhorn, Yanna Redhorn, Modak Stonebreaker, and..." Jargo's eyes stopped on Fae. "My apologies, but I don't think I know who you are."

  "Hey, you're the one that just waltzed into our house," Modak stared at Jargo, "Ryan, who is he?"

  "... He's Ja-"

  "Jargo Carpenter, with the Office of Awakened Affairs. I am here to investigate an unregistered, illegal use of a powerful mind-altering spell," he explained, continuing to glance all over the place. Everyone in the room, beside Jargo himself, immediately stared at Ryan and tried to figure out what was going on. He just nodded, and let Jargo continue looking around.

  However, there was one thing that calmed Ryan down almost immediately. Though the man's eyes were still letting off a silver glow, he didn't even flinch at the place where the elevator was hidden. At least with the skill that he was using right now, he couldn't spot it. That was good. Great, even. However, there was another, maybe even more imminent issue than that.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The very glaringly obvious arcane lock outside in the garden placed around the chapel-turned-shed. It wasn't even just a magical thing, but was centred around a physical hanging lock placed on the door. That wasn't something that an OAA investigator was going to miss.

  The only thing that Ryan could do after this was lie his ass off, but for all he knew, this guy had some skill or spell in his repertoire that allowed him to sense lies. But well, lying was better than being found out. Lying, for one, wasn't illegal. Well, unless you were talking about perjury. Wait, lying to an investigator with a warrant wasn't perjury, right? Ryan wasn't under oath, after all. Right?

  Ryan slowly stepped up to Modak, whispering into the orc's ear, "Yo, so, lying to an-"

  "No, Ryan, you are not committing perjury," Modak replied immediately without even needing to hear the question.

  "Right, of course, sorry," Ryan straightened his back, looking back over at Jargo, who was glancing over. Though, he scoffed and quickly continued on. For now, Jargo seemed to want to take a look around inside. He scoured through the living room, then continued on in any of the adjacent ground floor rooms.

  There were plenty of spaces here, after all. A sitting room, a bathroom, another bedroom, storage rooms. Then there was the basement. The regular basement, of course, not the hidden shrine that was only accessible through the secret elevator. Frankly, the basement was a total mess. It was filled with random clutter and stuff and things that they hadn't even looked through. The only good part was that Runar had looked through the entire place and hadn't found anything of note.

  Though, Silvia did have a pretty good point, which she made the moment Jargo stepped out of earshot, "So, uh... I know we hadn't thought a lot about this, but what if there's something else like that weird magic circle from the shed, just downstairs in the basement?"

  Ryan slowly moved his head toward her and stared at her for a while, "You know, I hadn't considered that. But thank you for pointing out that idea."

  "... No problem?"

  Though, once again, there didn't seem to be too much to worry about, since before long, Jargo came back upstairs, and immediately walked up to the first floor above. Though, Silvia and Yanna immediately followed behind, because obviously, they weren't going to let this guy just walk through the bedrooms without anyone else there to watch. Since their father always had close contact to the police and worked with them quite often in the past, they also knew their rights, though for a wholly different reason to Ryan.

  "Are you just going to keep standing there?" Fae asked, staring at Ryan confused, "Can't you do something?"

  Modak seemed similarly concerned, albeit much less upset than Fae, "Right, I thought your family had deals with all of these organisations to not get involved in stuff like this."

  "The fuck do I know? Urgh, I'm going to call Kim, he knows a lot more about this stuff than me. I'd call Runar, but... you know, he's in the middle of-" Ryan started, soon seeing Liam nervously standing in the hallway.

  "... Ryan? Is everything okay?" Liam asked, shaking lightly. He could tell that there was something pretty bad going on, considering how worried everyone seemed, but he couldn't tell exactly what the issue was.

  "Of course! Everything is totally, absolutely fine, don't worry," Ryan smiled, holding his phone to his ear as he walked over to Liam, roughing up his hair a bit, "He's going to take a look around, and then leave. Come, let's watch a little TV, okay?"

  Liam slowly nodded, following Ryan over to the couch. Right then, Kim finally answered the call.

  "What are you calling me for out of the blue? Text like a normal person," Kim said from the other end of the call, but Ryan didn't care.

  "Buddy, shut the actual frick up right now," Ryan started, holding his hand over his mouth to muffle his voice as much as he could, trying not to cuss because Liam was right next to him. "A guy from the OAA is at my place right now, investigating what happened last night, because Nora got into an accident while affected by an illegal spell."

  The other end of the line was silent for a few moments. Kim clearly didn't know what he should say, "Uh... what? What do you mean, the OAA is there? Why is the OAA there, they don't get involved with us."

  "Well, apparently they do, because one of them is literally right here in my freaking house," Ryan whispered, "I can't reach Runar, and I don't know who else I should call for this stuff- please tell me that you-"

  "Yes, of course I do. Fuck, you really need to go through the basic education program for our family."

  "We have a basic education program?!" Ryan almost yelled, barely able to stop himself, "Whatever, unimportant- Just call them, please! He's searching the first story right now, but after that he's going into the garden, so just hurry it up!"

  "I will, if you let me hang up!"

  "Okay, then just hang up!"

  "I will!"

  "Good!"

  Ryan dropped the phone onto the couch, turning around toward Modak, "We need to try and distract him for as long as possible."

  "... And how do we do that?"

  "I don't know, start a fight?" Ryan suggested, "Not a physical fight, just like, be annoying to him or something. Or talk about how Nora may have been lying because of... well, you know. Either way- he can't see the shed outside!"

  Liam looked away from the TV, "Are you sure everything is okay?"

  A smile immediately appeared on Ryan's face, "Of course! Everything is fine! Right, Modak?"

  "Right! Definitely! But I'm just going to go upstairs and also, uh, check out what's going on there, yeah?"

  "Okay..." Liam accepted it with a slightly nervous frown. Ryan nudged his head toward the stairs, and Modak quickly nodded, throwing the ring that he had grabbed earlier back over at Ryan before he turned around.

  The moment that Ryan caught it, he it felt like a current was coursing through his body. Something deeply uncomfortable, but not still familiar. Like the feeling of trying to reconnect with a childhood friend that you didn't have anything in common with anymore.

  It was something that he could very easily push through, though, and he just stuffed the ring into his pocket for now.

  "Do you guys have any ideas?" Ryan wondered, staring at the ceiling while looking inward at the spirits. They didn't seem to know, either, though. Ryan really just had to trust that Kim could get to someone on his end and get it all figured out.

  But then, the doorbell rang again. A little startled, Ryan stood up. He looked over at Fae, who was clearly still overwhelmed, "Could you watch Liam for a second?"

  They silently nodded their head, walking over to the couch to sit down next to the boy, as Ryan rushed over to the front door.

  He opened it up, and almost immediately let out a sigh of relief, "Holy shit, man, I've been trying to reach you for forever, where have you been?!"

  Runar stepped inside, "Sorry, I'll explain later. That car outside - why is the OAA here?"