(Also Lola and I have a lot of feelings about carpets in bathrooms).
Lola's paper shoes squished on the bathroom carpet. Her immediate thought – who carpets the bathroom? – was quashed by the realisation that it was blood soaking through the paper.
She stepped back into the hall, taking a proper look at the room.
Ordinary. Like everything else in the house. White tiles with a petal
pattern. Rose-shaped soaps clustered together on the sink. A
mismatched collection of shampoo and conditioner bottles, and a
sun-catcher shaped like a star hanging in the window. Ordinary.
Apart from the blood.
It leapt up the white tiles as if the killer had thrown a bucket of
it across the walls. Dripped down in jagged patterns, pooling in the
pristine tub. She saw a partial hand print in deep crimson on the
toilet lid. It was surreal, to see this much blood. Surreal and
compelling. She could drag her fingers through it and recite cantrip
after cantrip, burn through the energy here to create charm after
charm. The blood was a few hours old, she could tell, but there was
still enough power here for dozens of little spells.
Or one huge one.
But whoever killed the owner of this sweet, ordinary house, hadn't
cast a spell, or at least not a blood magic one. You wouldn't spill
this much blood and do nothing with it. Lola quickly checked the aura
of the room and found no traces of magic. This wasn't like the murder
at the Red Lotus, or Isako's death, where the blood had been used for
a ritual. This was just...slaughter.
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