"Okay. Let's be safe instead of sorry," Marcus said. He opened the floo.
"What's up, Kid?" Michael asked.
"I think this place was breeched at some point across the weekend when we weren't here," Marcus said. There's a new figurine tucked in a desk drawer here, and it doesn't belong to any of us. We haven't seen it before. We all know I'm not a seer, but this thing has bad juju written all over it."
"Well, for Merlin's sake, don't touch it," Robert said in the background.
"Wanna go see some bad juju, Robert?" Michael asked.
"Why not? I was only going to go to bed anyway," Robert teased.
"We'll be straight over," Michael said, closing the floo. It wasn't more than about two minutes when Michael and Robert arrived, and Michael had a backpack with him.
"Desk drawer you said?" Michael said.
"Yeah. Over here," Marcus took them to the drawer. Michael took a magnifying glass out of his pack and looked at it and curled up his lip in disgust. He took out a little glass bottle that had an eyedropper in it and dropped a few drops of the clear liquid onto the stones. The stones hissed and started to show little tiny glowing runes in bright florescent, ugly green.
"You're right. That's oozing with bad juju," Michael said.
"You develop seer's energies, Michael?" Robert asked.
"No. The stones themselves. The shape of them is pretty telling that they were carved with a dark arts intent right in them from the very start. And that green business? Someone's put teesy weensy dark runes in those stones. It might take me some time to translate them, but I don't think that's a cookie recipe."
"Can you remove it safely?" Robert asked.
"We'll find out," Michael said. He got out a jar that looked very similar to one of Robert's bug jars, except these had a strange looking lid. Angus frowned, not having seen one of those before.
"That's a containment jar," Marcus said.
"Yes, and it doesn't exist," Michael said, looking at everyone in the room. "Got it? Not even Lucian has been told about these jars."
"Some toys are on a need-to-know basis, and Lucian has not had a need to know," Robert said. "Especially since Michael is the only one authorized to remove certain dark items anyway."
"That's because I'm older than dirt, and at my age, I'm expendable," Michael said dryly.
"I'd like to refute that, but I can't," Robert said. "Our new useless minister believes that people over 60 are well past their prime and should resign or retire. And if they won't, then they're being moved into extremely dangerous assignments so that they'll be weeded out in short order. Or that's the minister's hope anyway. He's a complete moron, in my opinion. Can I help you, Michael?"
"Nope. Don't want you near it," Michael said. He drew a long pair of forceps out of his bag, picked up the figurine, chucked it into the jar and then took another bottle of potions and poured it into to the jar, submerging the figurine into a cloudy solution that soon turned clear. When it turned clear, Michael put the lid on the jar and cast a nonverbal spell over the jar.
"What'd you want in that drawer?"
"My colored pencils," Angus said.
"Can't let you use anything out of that drawer tonight until I can get a seer to make sure its clear," Michael said.
"Iya went to bed, but I can have her here first thing in the morning," Robert said.
"I bet one of your kids have colored pencils you could borrow tonight," Marcus said. "We just need to ask them.
"Go through the rest of the house, every shelf, every drawer. Make sure you don't find anything else that none of you own. I suspect this will be it, though," Michael said. "If you find anything more, you let me know immediately, and in the meantime we'll try to get these runes translated. I think you'll be safe enough tonight so long as you don't find any more surprises. It's a good thing you let us know so quickly. Well done."