by Sam Cheever
Fifteen minutes later, my task complete, I disconnected and realized I hadn’t heard any more from the customer. I headed toward the spot where I’d last seen him, intending to ask if he was doing okay.
I didn’t find him in the expected aisle, or any other aisle for that matter. But I did notice something that made my eyes go wide.
I stood over a chalky circle on the carpet, frowning. Why would someone have drawn a circle on the carpet?
But worse, there was a slightly burnt smell hanging on the air. And a tinge of…rotten eggs?
My gaze slid to the framed picture lying face down on the rug. I walked over and picked it up. It was a picture of Alice with Fenwald clutched in her arms, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower.
A terrible but familiar stench wafted past, making my nose wrinkle with disgust. Those bangers were never going to go away.
My gaze slid to the wall where the picture had been hanging, and my fingers went numb.
The picture crashed back to the floor.
I took a step back. But I forced myself to stop. “Holy fish fingers!”
What I was seeing wasn’t right. And I was pretty sure it was my job to look into it.
6
That Sealed It…I’m Definitely Losing My Mind
“Alice!!”
I stared at the whirling circular hole in the wall, the magic spinning velvet black with pink, purple and vivid orange streaks mixing in from the edges to meld at the center. The spinning vortex pulled on me, tugging me forward. My eyes were wide and unblinking, my peripheral vision filled with the same swirling magic reflected in my pupils. Before I even knew I’d moved, I was standing in front of it, one hand stretched toward the whirling, addictive energy.
Pain flashed through my mind, and I blinked as something thumped to the floor.
I looked down at the slender book of spells, entitled Creative Spell work for Protection and Comfort.
As I looked at it, the book flew back off the floor, danced on the air in front of me as if giving me a piece of its mind, and then flew back to its spot on the shelves.
I swallowed hard.
“Okay…” That had been close. I reached out and slid a fingertip down the book’s spine. “Thank you.”
It hopped in its spot and settled back to inactivity.
“Alice!!” I yelled again. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to leave the vortex unwatched long enough to go fetch the Keeper. But she wasn’t responding to my shouts. Then I remembered she’d mumbled something about a nap earlier. There was no way she’d hear me all the way upstairs in her apartment.
I’d have to open the connecting door and shout up to her.
But something told me I needed to keep an eye on the vortex.
I backed slowly toward the door, through the narrow space between the ends of the shelving and the wall. My hand reaching blindly for the door handle, I found the knob and turned it, yanking the door open. I quickly stuck my head through and bellowed for Alice as loudly as I could.
A warm, furry form slipped past my legs and trotted toward the vortex, raggedy tail waving lazily behind him.
“Fenwald, no!” I hurried after him, terror making it hard to breathe. “Stop, you crazy cat! Don’t go near that,” I told him.
He stopped just in front of the vortex, dropping to his wide haunches and cocking his head as he examined it.
Some of my fear leached away. He wasn’t getting too close. Maybe he had more sense than I thought…
Fenny turned and gave me a look. With narrowed gaze, he told me what he thought of my warning, “Yeow!” And then he leaped toward the hole, disappearing inside.
“No!” I dove at him and missed, hitting the carpet and skidding painfully over the empty spot where the big feline had been.
My knees and elbows stung with rug burn, and I’d bitten my tongue when I landed. I crawled painfully to my feet and stared at the hole. “Fenwald,” I muttered, completely overcome.
Alice was going to kill me.
I sucked in a breath and forced myself to move closer to the whirling energy. It was flat against the surface of the wall, like an animated photo stuck to the plaster. I couldn’t tell by looking at it that it was open. But I’d seen Fenwald fall into it, so I knew it wasn’t what it seemed.
Taking another deep breath, I closed my eyes for a moment, tried to draw my Keeper magic around me, and then reached a hand toward the whirling energy. The energy grabbed my wrist and tugged hard, yanking me inside the terrifying whirlwind of magical energy.
Energy bit my skin like fire-ants, the sensation overpowering, swift, and terrible.
I had just enough time to panic at the idea that it might never let me go, and then it spit me out into a well-lit space with a concrete floor and lots of shelves. I hit the floor running and rammed almost immediately into a long table, covered in a jumble of items.
The artifact library.
“Ow!” I mumbled, whether in memory of the stinging bite of the vortex’s magic or from my pubic bones slamming into the table, I wasn’t sure.
Fenwald looked at me and meowed as if to say, “What took you so long?” He was sitting atop the table, seemingly unharmed.
I took a deep breath at the sight, relieved beyond words.
But something else was wrong.
I peered around the big cat. “Did Alice come and take that off the table?” I asked him, feeling silly for talking to a cat.
He turned and looked at the spot as if he’d understood my question, then pulled himself upright and batted a tiny piece of fluff to the floor with an enormous paw, jumping down after it.
So much for the secret genius of Fenwald.
I stared at the conspicuously empty spot on the table, frowning. The bumpy, stained suitcase was gone.
Why was it gone? Who’d taken it? I decided it had to be Alice, but I had no idea why she would have removed it from the table before I’d gotten it cataloged. And, if it was Alice, why had the vortex led me there?
The bell on Croakies’ front door jangled softly. I panicked, realizing there was a magical vortex spinning on the wall and a human customer might have just come into the store.
That was not good.
I hurried toward the dividing door and burst into the bookstore, looking frantically around. “Hello?”
Nobody answered me.
Nothing seemed to be moving.
I ran down the center walkway, peering down every aisle.
Nobody.
My gaze slid to the spot where the vortex had been. I skidded to a stop at the end of the aisle.
It was gone.
The wall was smooth and unblemished. The picture of Alice and Fenwald in front of the Eiffel Tower was hanging back in its spot.
And I was apparently losing my mind.
Alice stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her chin jutting. Next to her, his tail sliding over the cool concrete floor, Fenwald jutted his chin too. Oliver, the tree frog, had no chin to jut, so he contented himself with blinking accusingly in my direction.
I bit back the chorus of excuses I’d been making to myself since learning the artifact library had been robbed, and I’d somehow missed the whole thing.
“Tell me again,” Alice said in a tone filled with exaggerated patience. “How this happened right under your nose.”
I bit my tongue against the desire to remind her that her pug nose had been in the same vicinity as mine. One could even argue it had been closer to the scene of the crime than mine had been.
“A man came into the store…”
“What did he look like?” Alice interrupted.
I opened my mouth to describe him and realized I couldn’t. “I…don't remember.”
Alice sighed, the sound like a martyr’s last breath. “You didn’t see him? I thought you were sitting right there in the bookstore.”
“I was.” I frowned as I remembered looking right at him. “I saw him. Even talked to him. But for some reason, I can’t remember a
nything about him.”
I’d expected another martyr’s exhalation on that one, but Alice looked thoughtful instead. “Go on.”
“I asked him if he needed help and he told me he just wanted to look around.”
When I didn’t continue, Alice sent me a sharp look, lifting a slightly bushy eyebrow.
“I heard a thump a few minutes later and called out to him. He popped his head out from between the aisles and told me he’d just dropped a book.” My mind formed the picture of a dark head, the face a blur within a softly formed outline. “I went back to work until I realized I hadn’t heard anything from him for a while. Then, I went looking and found the vortex.”
“Describe the scene completely,” Alice ordered.
I thought about it for a moment, wanting to get it right. My brain pulled together the details I could dredge up. Like the man’s face, everything about the vortex and the area around it seemed suddenly muzzy.
“I remember a foul stench…” I said. My eyes went wide as I realized my mistake.
“Like sulfur?” Alice asked.
I shook my head, wrapping my arms protectively around myself. “No, it was probably nothing.”
“No. Scent is key. Magical energy usually leaves behind a rotten-egg smell. Are you sure it wasn’t like that?”
How did I tell her I was smelling her cooking? “I…I thought maybe I was smelling spoiled meat.” There, that didn’t imply her cooking. Did it?
She arched both brows. “Spoiled meat?”
I nodded.
“Like what we smell here, now?”
I blinked. “What?” I realized my sense of smell had gone numb to that particular scent. But I thought about it and realized I had smelled it at the cataloging table first. “Yes. You’re right. I smelled it here this morning. When you were coo…” I quickly swallowed the word, hoping she didn’t catch my meaning.
I’m never that lucky.
“When I was cooking?” Alice’s small eyes turned to hard little pebbles behind her oversized glasses. “You thought the stink was coming from my cooking?”
My mouth opened and snapped closed. Then it opened again. I gave her a sickly smile. “Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Brilliant.” Alice pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number.
“Are you calling Detective Grym?” Despite my best efforts not to grimace, I felt my face forming into a frown anyway. The last thing I wanted was to face the dour detective with yet another failure proclaiming my inadequacy. In fact, I’d left his car the day before promising myself I’d avoid him at all costs in the future.
Alice stared at me as a ringing sound came through the phone. Finally, a small voice said, “Hello?”
“Lea, sweetums, do you think you could pop over for a few minutes?”
Alice listened to the response and then nodded. “Brilliant. Cheers!” She hung up and gave me a cool glance. “Leandra is an earth witch. Hopefully, she’ll be able to read the magic signature of our thief.”
I liked the sound of that. But I would have equally appreciated the sound of being beaten about the head and shoulders with a pencil if it meant there’d be no Detective Dismal. “Good!” I started toward the front of the building, looking forward to seeing a real witch at work.
A shrill whistle sliced the silence and I jumped, skidding to a stop and turning.
Alice shook her head. “I’d like you to stay here and finish cataloging these items, please.”
“But…”
She shook her head and headed past me. “If you’d finished the cataloging before you went gallivanting off, the thief wouldn’t have had an opportunity to steal that artifact.”
I stood there, fuming for several moments after the dividing door clicked shut behind her with an unnecessary thump.
It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. I only took up the cataloging to be useful and to learn about the artifacts quicker. And it hadn’t been my idea to go hunting the missing killer shoes. It had been Alice’s.
“Fermented fish farts!” I mumbled.
Then I turned on my heel and started back toward the table. Maybe if I hurried, I could get the rest of the artifacts cataloged before Lea arrived.
I knew that was an impossibility as the warning bell from the front door jangled happily through the library.
I sank into depression.
Nothing I did was right. Maybe my grandma had been right all those years when she repeatedly told me I wasn’t cut out to be a magical person.
Clearly, I was dealing with some serious inadequacies in that department.
With a sigh, I trudged toward the table.
I didn’t quite make it.
With a hop and a jaunty jig, Casanova’s chair skidded across the room and scooped me up, taking off with a squeal of wooden legs on concrete. I grabbed hold of the arms to keep from being flung aside as it took me for a fast ride through the artifact library. The chair shot forward, then backward, then spun in dizzying circles, while invisible fingers pinched my imprisoned butt cheeks, making me jump and yelp in outrage even as I clung to the oversexed, fast-moving furniture.
As it reached the garage-sized door at the back, the chair spun in a tight turn and shot back toward the front at a speed that made my eyes water and my shoulder-length brown hair stream out behind me.
By that point, I was shrieking in terror, but the chair ignored me and moved even faster. Until it reached Shakespeare’s desk near the front of the artifact library.
Without warning, it squealed to a stop, and I was propelled out of it.
I flew through the air, too terrified to do much more than throw my hands out to catch myself, and landed half-covering the big desk, hands splayed on the leather blotter at its center.
I was vaguely aware of the gnish of a chair spinning on its back legs and scurrying away before I could pull myself together and retaliate.
Beneath my palms, the blotter began to warm and roll, startling a short bark of surprise out of me and sending me scurrying away.
I watched, fascinated as energy spiked the air around the desk. Curious, I held out a hand and felt magic sliding over my skin.
Like butterfly wings on a warm summer day.
It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling at all, and my heart slowly returned to normal as I watched the desk work its magic.
Being Shakespeare’s desk, I fully expected a sheet of paper to appear proclaiming some wise and witty Shakespearianism. Instead, there was a sudden flash of bright light above the desk, and a sheet of paper appeared, hanging in midair. The page had words carefully printed across its surface in a heavy, dark hand.
Beware the implements of travel, for they oft be deadly.
Okay, that sealed it. I was definitely losing my mind.
7
Whooo?
I stood back and tried to make myself invisible. Alice was mad at me, and I was afraid she would make me go in the back if she thought I too interested in what Lea was doing.
But I was interested. Too interested to want to be banished.
I wielded the dusting feather with careless abandon, not paying any attention to what I was dusting. I was pretty sure there were two or three books that were as pristine as the day they’d come off the presses, and the rest could be buried in dust for all I knew.
My attention was intensely focused elsewhere.
Lea had laid out a circle beyond the one that was on the carpet. That circle had gotten smudged from somebody’s shoes…I’m not digging too deeply into that one…and a winding path of cat paws.
She’d placed a thick white candle in the center on a small round mirror and surrounded it on four sides with smaller candles. Then she’d placed a wide, shallow bowl containing a pile of pale green leaves in the middle of the original circle.
“What’s that?” Alice asked.
I leaned closer as Lea twisted, pulling a fireplace lighter from her bag. “Wormwood.”
“Ah.” Alice nodded. “To enhance divination.�
��
Lea lit the leaves and straightened. In one hand, she held a bundle of sticks wrapped in what looked like parchment paper and a piece of chalk. As I watched, she dipped a feather quill in a tiny bottle of some kind of red ink and wrote across the paper with it.
“What’s in the paper?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Alice’s gaze shot to me, and her face tightened.
I gave her a look that I hoped showed I wasn’t going to back down. Despite what she seemed to think, I was pretty sure the loss of the suitcase artifact wasn’t my fault.
Mostly sure.
“Licorice Root,” Lea said. “It should give me some control over the shadow of the intruder once it arrives.”
I felt my eyes go wide. That didn’t sound terrifying at all.
No, it did not.
“Is that blood?” Alice asked, nodding toward the small bottle of ink.
Lea shook her head. “I don’t dabble in blood magics. It’s Synsepalum dulcificum, otherwise known as magic berry or redberry. It’s a transformative medium, enforcing the magics of the other herbs.”
I gave up pretending to dust and found myself moving closer.
Lea looked at Alice. “You should step back. I don’t want you to get stung when the circle engages.”
Alice backed down the aisle and stopped next to me.
Lea knelt inside her circle and bent over the largest candle first. As she lit it, she muttered, “Ostende mihi,” then waited until the wick grabbed the flame before moving around the circle. With each lighting of the remaining candles, she repeated the original phrase, “Ostende mihi.”
The flame of the center candle shot twelve inches into the air and sizzled with energy. The flame spluttered orange with bursts of green in the center candle and the color of blood in the other four candles.
As she lit the final candle, Lea stood and lifted her hands, her chanting too soft for me to make out the words. Though, I suspected I wouldn’t have understood them anyway since they were in Latin, and I’d all but failed my Latin classes in school.