The girl from the lift!

Feeling less threatened, I lowered the broom.

"I'm sorry that this happened but..." she looked at the wall on the left, then quickly turned back, "could we...um...keep it down?"

I stood silent in the middle of the room. My heart was rapidly thumping against my chest—for two different reasons...

"I...wasn't expecting this to happen." She started by explaining how she had recently found out about her mother using some kind of mind control liquid in her food that was influencing her mind. "It creates this...intense urge in your brain to do something and ignore everything else."

Mind control? Is that...magic? Hasn't magic disappeared decades ago? "Is your mother..." I hesitated, "a witch?"

"No. Witches have been gone since...forever. But, there's items that still use magic being passed around. It's just that the authorities don't know about them. According to James, that thing on my finger," she pointed at her original body's finger, " is supposed to be able to swap people's bodies. I was going to use that to save myself from my mother but now..."

By then, I had fully let go of the broom, letting it lean against the wall. There was a moment of silence—for us to collect our thoughts.

Magic was something that had long since disappeared from our city. Witches of the past had been killed or exiled and magic has been banned since then. To experience magic firsthand was not something I would have thought of in a million years. And it all came from this grey magic item around my finger.

I finally broke the silence. "How does this thing work?"

She shrugged.

"You don't know?"

"If I knew, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place."

She's got a point. I proceeded to put her black haversack down and examine the magic item further. It fitted nicely around my finger but provided some resistance when bent. Still, I was no closer to figuring out the inner workings of this foreign object.

I began wondering if returning to our original bodies was even possible.