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
