Thanks to her mnemonic memory, Marcia tended to be a bit more resistant to memory charms, so after taking a second to clear her head she started sorting through recent events.
She and Rusty had been hired to look into the supernatural occurrences at the Atwell Mansion by Christine. That was simple enough. Rusty had gone after what sounded like a Werewolf and Marcia came to the Women's Wing to...She frowned this was obviously where the memory charm started. But what was missing?
Start with the obvious, that was the universal rule of memory charms. If you can identify all the elements that came out of the missing bits and you can paint a picture of the events that are missing. So what happened between then and now?
Ok well the most obvious thing is at some point she went from her 20's to early single digits. More than that based on her current outfit there was more to it than that just that. Noticing the tag attached to the backpack strap, Marcia read it and cringed at the words.
Was it just her that was affected or was she likely to be sent back home to her unsuspecting mommy if she did find Rusty or Christine? Would she be able to convince anyone of the truth when she didn't remember most of it? If she was sent away would she be left stuck as a 3 year old?
'Focus on what you know don't get distracted with the questions,' She chided herself.
Using another trick she had picked up, focusing her mind she imagined herself at an interrogation room with her adult self questioning her.
'Ok now you know where you started and were you are now. Can you remember anything useful in between?' The adult her asked.
'Well I did remember running into a guest room for sure,' she answered confidently.
'Why were you running to there?' She pushed.
'I must have been being chased because I slammed the door behind me.'
'What could have been chasing you?"
'Obviously whatever turned me into this,' she replied irritated at the obviousness of her own question.
The older her smirked and said, 'Then were you already transformed?'
Now stumped at her own inquiry Marcia tried to respond, 'Uh...I had to have been..right?..otherwise I wouldn't have been running away...but then how'd I get here? Wouldn't I have to come back into contact with the...whatever it was?'
'Good questions. Now answer them,' the adult responded.
Geeze why hadn't she thought of that, well she did...agh this is why she hated memory charms! She always got a headache. The adult her was watching her expectantly.
'I would come back if I thought I could defeat it or if I had lost something important like...'
Ah hah! The scene vanished as her mind finally put the pieces together. When she got to the room her bag was missing, so she had to go get it to defeat whatever the thing was. But if she's wearing her bag right now it must have been affected to. Yes, it was because she remembered pulling out the grimior but instead pulling out a math textbook and then...the amulet!
She looked to wear she had dropped it. That must be it! If that got rid of whatever did this to her it must have also had a memory charm too. That's why she was diving for it, so it wouldn't erase her memory too! Now if she could figure out how it worked. Maybe she could remember exactly what happened. Picking it up again, Marcia suddenly sensed...