“What about just the enchantment?”
The librarian typed into her computer. “No, I’m sorry. Still only the one.”
“What happened to it?” Samantha asked.
“It looks like it’s been checked out for the last decade.”
“It’s been checked out for ten years?” I asked, exasperated. “And nobody’s needed it?”
“That’s correct. Oh, dear me. She will have quite the fine, yes, she will. I must get one of my new bursars to investigate. It seems like the last bursar to look into it died a horrible and unexplainable death.”
“Maybe we could find it,” Samantha said. “We’re very good at finding things.”
“I don’t think that would be appropriate.”
I turned to Katie and used my thoughts to tell her to look up the address. She nodded and hovered into the air. As she did, she twisted around the desk ever so slightly to get a better angle on the book. I saw her lips move as she read the address, and when she nodded slowly, I knew she had the address memorized.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I understand. We’re sorry for wasting your time.”
Chapter 45
We followed the address Katie had memorized through downtown San Diego and up into Mission Viejo. After my run-in with the gnome, I worried that following a random address in a witch’s library could lead to another confrontation with a magical creature, but we needed the enchantment badly, and, as far as I knew, this was the only way to get it.
“The name of the book is called Saving the World: Spells to Stop Doomsday,” Katie told us as we pulled into a residential neighborhood with big houses and nicer cars.
I parked on a steep incline and we walked up to the front of a house painted a muted yellow. It was more of a mansion than a house, really, being three stories tall and blanketed with ivy. The front door was covered in gold fleck, and the door knocker was the shape of a roaring lion. I pulled the door knocker back and let it go. The thunderous echo roared through the house.
The door opened almost immediately, revealing a smiling butler dressed in a tuxedo with a bow tie. “May I help you?”
“We’re here…um…I don’t know how to say this,” Samantha said, scratching her head.
“We’re here to see the lady of the house,” I said. “It’s about a library book which she has had on loan for some time.”
The butler scoffed. “I’m afraid the lady does not have time for such trivialities.”
“Who is it?” a woman’s throaty voice came from the back of the house.
“Some children, ma’am, inquiring about a book,” the butler replied. “Shall I send them away?”
“No, please!” I shouted into the hall behind the butler. “Listen, we really need a book you have on loan!”
A pause, then the voice replied, “Which book?”
“Saving the world!” Samantha yelled this time. “It’s got all sorts of spells about preventing doomsday.”
“Please,” I said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
There was a long silence. I expected her to tell me to piss off. After all, that’s probably what I would do if a bunch of teenagers banged on my front door.
“Let them in,” the voice said.
“Yes, ma’am,” the butler said. He looked us over from head to toe and then added, “Please wipe your feet.”
The butler led us inside the house, which was just as opulent as it was on the outside. A bejeweled chandelier hung from the center of the foyer. Long staircases covered in red carpet ascended up either side of the room and led to a golden door at the top of the staircase. In front of us, a large crystal dragon rose ten feet into the air, screaming silently into the air as we walked inside.
“Please be careful not to touch anything,” the butler said. “The dowager Vermilda’s collection is quite priceless.”
“What is the difference between priceless and quite priceless?” Samantha asked.
The butler raised an eyebrow and said, slowly, “Several hundred million dollars.”
I turned to Katie and she looked deep into my eyes, waiting for me to tell her what to do. “Search the house for the book,” I thought to her, and she nodded. The butler never looked at Katie, so I was sure he wasn’t magically adept. The woman we were meeting, however, was another story, and I needed Katie to disappear before we met her.
The butler led me and Samantha through the foyer and down a long hallway with gilded-framed paintings of dragons hanging on either side.
“Your boss likes dragons,” Samantha said.
“She is quite taken with them, but who wouldn’t be? Marvelous creatures, dragons.”
I shrugged. “If you like that kind of thing. I don’t suppose you know where we could find a dragon, do you?”
“They are a myth, my dear. I’m afraid just the product of overactive imaginations.”
I chuckled. I wasn’t sure if he was playing me or if he really didn’t know anything about magic, but it seemed as though he was either naïve or stupid. It didn’t matter, though, because he wasn’t the person we were there to see.
The hallway opened into a pink sunroom with golden accents where each wall met the next one. More paintings of dragons covered the walls, except for the far wall which was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows. In the dead center of the room, an elegant woman dressed in a white gown puffed on a cigarette from a long cigarette holder.
She looked like the star from the golden age of cinema, the type that Katie and I used to watch. She rose from the couch and walked toward us as if she were gliding on air. She took a puff off her cigarette and blew it into the air, walking through the smoke as she came toward us.
“These
