The Magic Library Mysteries Collection: The Complete Series, Books 1-3

by Hillary Avis

  “It’s just the books,” she mumbled with her eyes squeezed shut, and heard Willow’s low growl rumble in response. “They do that every night.”

  After a moment of blessed silence, Willow’s bark echoed sharply down the hall again, so Allison dragged herself out of bed to reassure and retrieve the dog. Maybe if she closed both the bedroom doors, the sound of the volumes stored in the front bedroom closet—the ones with titles like Delight in the Night that bumped and ground on the shelves as they recorded the town’s raciest memories—would be muffled. An early summer night like this meant a lot of activity on those shelves.

  Most of the other books in the secret library were better behaved, just like most dogs Allison had fostered over the years were better behaved. She knew she shouldn’t write off Willow this soon, only a week after being rescued from years of neglect, but Allison was bone tired.

  The last week had been...a lot. Her first week at her new job as enrichment coordinator of Golden Gardens. Her daughter, Emily’s, graduation from medical school. Emily’s surprise engagement to her boyfriend, Zack. Meeting Zack’s mom, Elaine. Realizing she was the person who’d destroyed their lives two years ago—and that she wasn’t done.

  At this point, Allison was ready to pitch the books or dog. One of them had to go so she could get some sleep, and she had a lot more invested in the books.

  Everything, really.

  When she reached the front bedroom, Willow, a polar-bear-sized fluff ball with a soft gray mask around her eyes, sat back on her haunches, looking pleased with herself.

  “Yes, I heard you,” Allison said irritably, looping her hand through the dog’s collar. “Come on, it’s the middle of the night. Those books won’t listen to you no matter how much you bark at them.”

  But Willow dug in her heels, refusing to budge. Well, two could play that game. Allison put gentle steady pressure on the collar to show the dog that she wasn’t about to give in on this one. It was her way or the highway.

  Willow yelped in pain and Allison released the collar like the handle of a hot pan, more out of surprise than actual concern since she knew she hadn’t pulled that hard.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” she said, feeling silly for apologizing to an animal, even though she hadn’t meant to hurt her. The dog must have a tender neck from her years being tied to a tree all day, every day.

  Willow grinned at her, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. The big faker! It had all been a sympathy ploy. But before Allison could grab her again, Willow’s head swiveled to the window and the hair on her back rose as she froze, staring out. Her bark boomed, rattling the glass and sending a jolt of adrenaline through Allison.

  “Stop that—” she began, but the words hadn’t made it out of her mouth when she saw what had captured the dog’s attention. Outside, blue-and-red lights swooped through the sprawling oak tree that divided her front yard from the neighbor’s. Cops, not books.

  Well, one cop in particular, since Remembrance was so small that its police force was just a single officer, supplemented by the county sheriff. It’d been Bobby Higgins for thirty years, and now it was Kara Lee. A transplant from Hawaii by way of Portland, she was young and had only recently moved to town, though she’d already managed to make both friends and enemies. Allison counted her as a friend, albeit the kind that she had to keep at arm’s length for the sake of the library. Even her closest friends didn’t know about it. But now Kara’s cruiser was parked in front of the house in the middle of the night. This was not a good thing.

  Allison scratched Willow between the ears. “Well done.” The dog had given her enough warning that she could make it outside before Kara got to the front door, head her off before she invited herself inside. That was one of the many pesky rules of the library—no guests. Not even cops were allowed inside.

  Usually no problem, but given Kara’s suspicious nature, it was better safe than sorry.

  Allison jogged down the stairs, tripped over the moving boxes that crowded the entryway, crammed her feet into her slides by the door, and made it to the sidewalk before Kara got out of the car. She braced herself for whatever Kara planned to grill her about now, in the middle of the night.

  But Kara’s eyes widened in surprise when she saw Allison standing there in her pajamas on the sidewalk. “You’re awake at this hour?”

  Allison motioned to the upstairs window where Willow was still visible, a pale ghost dog with her nose pressed against the foggy glass. “I have a new alarm system.”

  Kara grinned, but her grin slipped quickly away. “Well, good. Glad she’s looking out for you. Don’t be surprised if your ‘alarm’ goes off again in an hour or so. I have to do a sweep of your backyard after I’ve finished over there.”

  She nodded to the house next door, on the other side of the oak tree. Discounting the cheerful yellow exterior, it was otherwise identical to Allison’s little green house. They’d probably been built by the same builder in the postwar period when houses were spare, functional things with just enough space inside, patches of grass in front and back, and nothing extra. Lights were on in the downstairs windows, casting a gentle glow onto the porch despite the late hour.

  “Are they OK?” Allison asked, her heart sinking as she thought of Taylor, the boy who lived there with his grandmother. He was that awkward age between childhood and adolescence, not a little kid, but not quite a teenager, either. She hadn’t learned much about him since she moved in except that he spent most of his time spying on the neighbors—including her—but she’d grown accustomed to his odd entrances and exits from his upstairs bedroom window and was no longer surprised to see him balancing on the top rail of the side yard fence, on his way to a perch in the branches of the oak tree.

  Kara jerked her head impatiently in a single nod, her mind clearly already on the task ahead of her. “They’re fine. A little shaken up, that’s all. Go back to bed.”

  Allison stifled a yawn, her relief breaking into exhaustion. Kara wasn’t here for the library—she was just doing her job.

  “Make sure to lock your doors and windows,” Kara added over her shoulder, as she headed for the neighbors’ house. “This is the second home invasion I’ve had tonight.”

  Allison nodded, barely listening, and dragged herself back into the house. The two boxes that took up most of the small entry hall reminded her just how much work she had to do in the next week. Something in those boxes of her husband, Paul’s, family heirlooms was the key that would unlock the answer to her most burning question: why had her Paul’s memories been stolen?

  Elaine, the page thief and now Emily’s future mother-in-law, wanted one of the dozens of heirlooms stored inside them, but Allison didn’t know which one. She itched to find out, an almost physical craving, but she forced herself to step around the boxes at the foot of the stairs and head up to bed. The task would be less overwhelming once she could get a few more hours of sleep.

  Willow blocked her at the top of the stairs, filling the air with her smelly dog breath as she sniffed every inch of Allison’s body. She paid special attention to the pajama pant hems where they must have grazed the sidewalk.

  “Yeah, yeah, I went outside.” Allison leaned against the big dog until she moved enough that she could get past her to the bedroom. “Because of you and your big mouth! Kara wasn’t even coming to see me, so all your fuss was for nothing.”

  Willow waited until Allison slid back under the quilt, then flopped down on the rag rug, grunting contently as she settled into an enormous furry barricade between the bed and the door. Whatever doggish ideas she had about her role here, she’d apparently fulfilled them. In her mind, Allison was safe. Allison reached down and grudgingly scratched her between the ears.

  If only she were as confident as Willow.

  Unfortunately, she’d learned yesterday that she had an enemy. And that enemy was way, way too close to home.

  Chapter 2

  “Four times.” Allison held up four fingers and made a face at Kara and Myra.
“Four times she woke me up. That’s why I left her in the yard instead of bringing her with me—I just needed a rest.” She was exaggerating, but only a little. Willow had been responsible for half of her sleepless night, but the rest of the night had just been her busy brain.

  Kara winced over her plate of eggs, her fork poised in the air. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s OK. Only two of them were your fault.”

  Rather than chuckling at Allison’s joke, Myra raised an eyebrow. “Why, what happened last night?”

  “Break-in,” Kara said around a mouthful of pancake. “Had a couple of them during my shift.”

  “One was next door,” Allison added. “The yellow house. That’s why it set Willow off.”

  “Oh my goodness, Michelle’s place?” Myra dropped her spoon on the tablecloth, seeming to forget all about the steel-cut oats with fresh wild strawberries and cream she’d ordered for brunch.

  Allison realized she didn’t know the answer to Myra’s question. She hadn’t met the adults in the household yet, only Taylor. Luckily, Kara stepped in as though the question had been directed at her.

  “They’re both fine,” she said quickly. “The burglars were in and out so quickly that by the time Michelle realized what was going on, they were already gone. I don’t think her grandson even woke up.”

  “What were they after?” Myra asked, her forehead uncharacteristically furrowed.

  Kara downed half her marigold mimosa before giving an answer. “That’s the weird part. They didn’t take anything valuable, just some office supplies. I guess that’s all they could grab. It was the same at the first break-in. Nothing taken, although they trashed the place. Thankfully, it was vacant. My guess is that they didn’t expect Michelle to be home. When they realized the house wasn’t empty, they took off with the first thing they could grab.”

  “Poor Michelle.” Myra shivered. “What do you think they wanted?”

  “Cash, probably. That’s what these B&E teams do. They come from a bigger city, hit as many places as they can, then skip out. Easy pickings in small towns where people don’t lock their doors. We never find them unless they’re dumb enough to steal jewelry. It’s so unique that we can almost always identify it when it shows up at a pawn shop.” Kara slugged the rest of her drink and pushed back her chair. “I’m sorry to run, but I am snoring on my feet. I’ve got to go sleep off this champagne before my shift starts tonight and it’s Burglary: the Sequel.”

  Allison frowned. “I thought you said they usually skip town.”

  “They didn’t get anything last night, though, did they?” Kara smiled grimly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried again, and this time they’ll be more reckless. Lock your places up tight, ladies. Make it hard for them. Be proactive.”

  Allison and Myra exchanged a solemn look after Kara left.

  “I feel queasy,” Myra said slowly, pushing the bright red strawberries around the top of her oats. “We’re so far out, and Crystal’s due any day. What if robbers come to the house and she’s there alone with the babies?”

  By babies, Myra meant her grandchildren, Jaden and Nia, both under four. Myra lived with them out on her daughter’s filbert farm while her son-in-law was deployed to Egypt. She helped Crystal with the kids and the chores—when she wasn’t working twelve-hour shifts at Golden Gardens Memory Care.

  “Jenny and Chauncy will run them off.” Jenny was Crystal’s yellow Lab, the house dog on the filbert farm, and Chauncy was the Anatolian Shepherd that guarded the goats.

  Myra made a face. “Jenny’s useless since she had her pups. And Chauncy is only worried about coyotes and cougars. He’d eat right out of a burglar’s hand.”

  Allison gave her a reassuring smile and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “That’s not going to happen. But if it does, Crystal will be fine. She’ll do exactly the same thing she would if you were there—call 9-1-1.”

  “You know how long it takes for them to get out there. It’s not like living in town.” Myra muttered. She used her spoon to stab at her coagulating oats.

  Before she moved in with Crystal and the grandbabies, Myra had lived in town, in the little green house on Rosemary Street where Allison lived now. Myra was the one who’d passed guardianship of the library to Allison and taught her how the library worked. How it recorded the memories of all living residents of Remembrance, Oregon. How, when memories were torn out of a book, they disappeared from a person’s mind.

  In fact, Allison’s first task as guardian was to remove all of Myra’s memories of the library by tearing her pages from the Guardians of Remembrance Library book and burn them. Myra had even texted Allison to remind her to do it. That’s why it was so strange keeping it all a secret from her now. In some ways, Myra knew the library better than Allison did. Or she should, anyway.

  Maybe that explained why Myra was so worried about her family, though. Even though she didn’t remember it, she’d probably grown accustomed to checking on them by reading their memories. When she got anxious now, she couldn’t reassure herself by flipping a few pages.

  “I’ll look in on them this evening,” Allison blurted out before she could stop herself. It was a stupid thing to say. She’d meant in the books, but Myra didn’t know that, and Allison had sold her car months ago. She couldn’t exactly walk; Crystal’s place was five miles away. “If you don’t mind me borrowing your truck,” she added.

  Myra raised her eyes from her still-full bowl of oatmeal as she stirred it pensively with her spoon, the creases in her forehead deepening. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’ll be good to get Willow out of the house, anyway. Maybe she’ll actually sleep tonight.”

  Myra chuckled, her face smoothing. “At least you don’t have to worry about the bad guys at your place. That big ol’ dog would send anyone running!”

  “You want her?” Allison offered, only half joking. Now that she thought about it, the filbert farm was perfect for a Great Pyrenees. The house was far enough from the closest neighbors that nobody would be bothered by Willow’s booming bark. She’d be that extra layer of security in case Kara or one of the sheriff’s deputies couldn’t respond quickly to an emergency call. And when she wasn’t standing guard, she could help Chauncy with the goats.

  Myra tilted her head. “You know what? Maybe I do. Let me call Crystal.” She dipped into her purse for her phone. Allison ate the rest of her own breakfast while Myra talked through the pros and cons of another animal with her daughter.

  “Is she good with kids?” Myra asked. It took a second for Allison to realize the question was directed at her.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “She hasn’t really been around them.”

  Myra relayed the information to Crystal and then hung up the phone, looking satisfied. “She says we’ll give her a try. We already have enough dog hair around our place that we won’t even notice one more.”

  Allison blinked. Somehow, she wasn’t prepared for that answer, even though she’d been the one to suggest it. This had to be the shortest foster period in the history of dog rescue. “Are you sure? She’s big—and loud.”

  “Big and loud will put my mind at ease. I’m not kidding.” Myra checked the time on her phone, then pushed back her chair and smoothed her sunshine-yellow scrubs. “Shoot, I have to get to work. Can you drop off Willow when you swing by Crystal’s place?”

  Allison nodded and rose to give Myra a quick, grateful goodbye hug. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Remember what Kara said. Don’t forget to lock up tight,” Myra said.

  “I won’t.”

  Myra’s anxiety must have been contagious. Allison walked home from the restaurant with a ball of fear growing in her stomach like a balloon being filled with air. At first the feeling was small and slack, but as she got closer to home—to the books, and Willow who would soon have a different home, and the enormous task that loomed ahead of her—it grew taut and threatened to explode.

  A lock
ed door, a barking dog...she knew they were nothing in the face of someone who wanted to steal from you. If they were determined, they would succeed, whether they wished to take your wallet or your life.

  She knew, because her life had already been stolen, one page at a time.

  Chapter 3

  Though Willow had no idea how to walk on a leash, her years of being tied to a tree taught her to respect the end of a rope. Allison only had to apply the barest pressure to the lead and Willow gamely followed her, ignoring the usual distractions like squirrels and the scent-markings of other dogs as they walked the two blocks from Rosemary Street to Golden Gardens, where Myra’s old farm truck was parked out front.

  She cupped her hands to the window and spied the keys swinging from the ignition. Whatever unease Myra felt about a potential break-in at home, she apparently wasn’t worried about her truck being stolen off the street. Small-town habits die hard. Allison tossed her purse into the cab and then lowered the tailgate. But when she patted the bed of the truck, Willow sat down on the sidewalk, plop, and turned her head away like the idea wasn’t worth entertaining.

  “Come on,” Allison coaxed, giving the leash an encouraging tug. “Let’s go for a ride!”

  In one smooth motion, Willow rolled over onto the sidewalk and exposed her belly, keeping one wary eye on Allison as her broad paws paddled the air. Her message was clear: I don’t trust you enough to do what you say. But I think you might hurt me if I don’t.

  “Oh, you poor thing.” Allison sank down beside her on the sidewalk and gently stroked the dog’s side. Willow tensed at first, but then relaxed under the gentle touch, raising her head to paw for more when Allison paused. It was a request that couldn’t be denied, and Willow closed her eyes, blissful, as Allison obliged.

  This was the side of rescue that kept her at it—seeing those layers of trauma and neglect fall away, bit by bit, with determined love and patience.