Jon was completely absorbed by the mirror from this discovery, making all sorts of stupid faces, everything from unhinging his jaw to stretching his cheeks until it hurt in this rapt curiosity to see if Mrs. McMillan’s face would match.
Karyn, either from being the more pragmatic of the two or feeling spurned that the mirror wouldn’t make a magical reflection for her, launched into a flurry of questions that warranted testing.
“Was it a mirror or are we peeking into Mrs. McMillan’s life?” The moment Jon shoved a digit up his nose and the mature woman's manicured fingernail followed suit, seemed to confirm this was absolutely not the case. “Are we controlling her? Do you thinking she’s mimicking you right now?” There was no way to say definitively without her there, but they decided it was doubtful since the mirror was still showing Jon’s bedroom so it was less of a portal and more of an Instagram filter. And a poor one at that, which Karyn was quick to comment, since her face looked more like a potato than usual.
“Is there button or some sort of lever you hit to make it work? Is there any way to turn it off? Or switch it to someone else’s face? Maybe Sarah’s?” No, no, and resounding no. As far as they could tell, the mirror was nothing more than an odd little novelty, a good conversation piece, and a totally normal little trinket for a collector such as Jon’s grandfather would have in his collection.
That lightning revelation struck both at the same time, leaving the reflection of Susan McMillan staring mouth agape, in horror, as a pit formed in Jon’s stomach. Karyn, on the other hand, was electrified, practically bouncing with excitement.
“Karyn, do you think this means-”
“That you and your mom most definitely sold some priceless, magical treasures? Most definitely. But you should be pretty grateful-”
“Because we didn’t even sell the half of it. Which means my attic might be absolutely littered with-”
“All sorts of weird, crazy, magical nick-knacks? And that we should absolutely go through and document each and every thing in here?”
“Absolutely!” Jon said with growing enthusiasm. “Once we get a baseline of what might be magic and what isn’t, maybe we can get a better sense of what was sold today, in case anyone is running around town with a doomsday device in waiting.”
“Like Mrs. McMillan now owning a mirror with your face in it?”
“We don’t even know if that’s the case and how much harm could possibly come from that? She’ll probably be back here tomorrow asking for a refund once she realizes she can’t use it to vainly stare into her own eyes and tell herself ‘I’m beautiful’ and ‘I haven’t lost it’. Let me go get my mom’s receipt book so we have a launching point,” Jon offered, halfway through the door.
Karyn could hear his steps make it only about halfway down the stairs, before stopping and turning around, catching her as she began unloading a box.
“And Karyn, maybe don’t touch anything until I get back with some gloves? I don’t think anything’s cursed but-”
“Better safe than sorry. I hear you loud and clear,” Karyn confirmed, her eager hands pulling back quickly, the whole room starting to feel a tad bit more radioactive than the playground of magical novelties she initially imagined. "And Jon-" Karyn offered sincerely, stopping him one more time, "it's good to have you back. I'm glad to see this supernatural stuff isn't stressing you out like before."
"Me too. I don't know, but this feels like lower stakes, I think grandpa would've left a note if there was anything actually life altering in here. I feel like I'm in my element for the first time in forever, you know?"
"Absolutely. Now hurry up and grab us some gloves, let's get digging into all this junk!"
Linda was a bit miffed to see Jon and Karyn hard at work, meticulously sorting through every one of her father’s things, ‘Where was this enthusiasm yesterday?’, but still offered to order pizza and set up the pull out for Karyn to stay the night. The two were so rapt up in their work, she wasn’t fully aware they even knew they agreed to junk or donate whatever wasn’t worth keeping; a concession that would most definitely be extracted later. It wasn’t on her timeline, but at the end of the day, Linda was getting the clean, organized storage space she’d wanted for years.
Searching through everything was no simple task. There really isn’t a definitive way to tell if something is or isn’t magic. They got lucky with a mood ring that actually reads moods, both of them reading excited, who would've guessed? But even then, that almost started a fight about who should put it on and be the guinea pig. They considered involving Mikey, but decided the less people involved, the better.
After a few dozen duds in a row, Jon was lamenting, “this is basically impossible without some sort of guide or spell. We have no idea if something in here’s granting a passive aura or something!”
“Passive aura?” Karyn giggled at the phrasing. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something that gives your dorkiness a 25% debuff,” she teased playfully.
The hours flew by, as the clock rolled past one, every single one of grandpa’s items had been cataloged and accounted for. Karyn went down the list, “So that leaves us with three known working, magical items, Eleven that we have a good feeling about.”
“Twelve,” Jon interjected. “I’m not backing down on that umbrella.”
“There’s nothing else to do with it, you spent forever fiddling with it. You’ve touched every part of it, opened it right side up, upside down and nothing happens.” Karyn’s rebuttal was met with Jon’s stone faced expression and crossed arms. “Fine, twelve probable magic items, forty that are closer to probably not than probably, a key, and a bunch of useless junk.”
“Are you seriously listing that key as anything other than junk? And you gave me a hard time about an umbrella, obviously made with some sort of bone, with hand engraved runes up and down the base of it, but you won’t give up on some loose key.”
“But it’s the only one. And nothing, nothing in here has a lock. And it’s a skeleton key! If that doesn’t signify something, I don’t know what does. Look, I’m keeping it marked as special interest. All that’s left to do is take pictures of our list and… Did you see where I set my phone?”
“Last time I saw you with it, we were sorting through the ‘stuff that seems Eastern but not specifically from anywhere in Asia’ pile.”
“Thanks, let me go grab that and take a…” Karyn stopped cold in her tracks at noticing her phone overwhelmed with the amount of notifications. Something big had happened.
“Hey Kar, what’s up, it looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I guess… Sarah posted something. About me. And everyone’s going crazy about it. I think we need to watch whatever this is.”
