Alice’s hand snapped out and snatched a deadly looking blade out of the air, inches from my nose.
“…Three!” finished the parrot gleefully. “Shiver me timbers, it’s a pirate’s life and a bottle o’ rum. The lads’ll have some bleepin’ fun!”
I shoved the horrible creature away. He flew off with a cackle, feathers raining down on our heads as he fluttered above us in a messy circle.
Alice expelled a frustrated breath. “You do attract trouble, don’t you, sweetums?” She threw the blade into the air and fired a silvery ribbon of magic at it. Quick as a snake, the energy wrapped itself around the blade and dragged it toward the nearest enormous shelving unit, settling it down onto the top shelf.
A heavy black projectile leaped from the big wooden desk near the stairs, claws unsheathed as it swiped at the fluttering parrot. The cat barely missed the bird’s tangle of ratty feathers. A fresh spate of moth-eaten red and green feathers drifted into the air as the parrot rolled sideways in midair to evade the big cat’s claws.
Fenwald landed far more lightly than I would have expected, given his size, and trotted across the artifact library, flopping to his side in a beam of sunlight that painted the floor in happy stripes.
With another outraged squawk and several more bleeps, the parrot followed the sword to the top of the shelves and settled down next to it. In a blink, it had lowered its head and seemed to be sleeping.
“Did that bird just swear at us?”
Alice sighed. “I’m afraid so. He lived with pirates all his life and talks like a sailor. I brought a witch in to hex him with a magical bleeping spell. Nasty critter.”
“Does he have a name?” I asked, eyeing his suspiciously still form.
“No idea. I call him Parrot.”
“Fenwald, come on Handsome Kitty.” Alice bared her teeth at me, making me flinch. After a beat, I realized it was her version of a smile. “I’m off to fix beans for lunch. You coming?”
“That sounds…um…yes. Give me a minute?” I just wanted a few minutes by myself to try to make sense of something Alice had shared with me during the morning. I lifted my notebook, which was filled with half-written words, squiggly lines and sentences that trailed off into nothing as I’d tried to keep up with my teacher’s rapid-fire teaching style. “I’m just going to make some notes.”
“Brilliant! I’ll give you a shout when lunch is ready.”
As she disappeared through the door that divided the public-facing bookstore from the “Librarian Only” magical area, I gave a sigh of relief.
I stood in front of an oversized desk and looked around at the immediate area, taking in the enormity of the task ahead of me. The room was bisected by two rows of enormous shelves with a narrow aisle between them. Each shelving unit reached thirty feet above my head, still nowhere near the ceiling, which looked to be at least fifty feet high and sported several enormous fans that slowly stirred the air in the massive room. Each fan had a light fixture attached, but none of them were on, yet the room was filled with light. Given the enormity of the magical inventory in the place, most of it probably as ancient as time, I’d have expected a stale smell, maybe even moldy and sour, like old furniture or aged books. But the air was as fresh as a sunny day.
And, unlike the bookstore, the huge space was the perfect temperature.
Directly across from the entrance to the store in front, was a garage-sized door that I assumed was used for oversized artifacts. Twenty yards in front of that door was a long, wooden table, which was covered with more artifacts, some of them in a jumble.
Alice had said something about the artifacts on that table not being cataloged yet.
I stood in the center of the space and lifted my gaze, turning slowly to take it all in. There had to be thousands, maybe millions of things on the shelves. They kept on going and going into the seemingly endless depths of the place.
And I needed to learn about every single artifact.
Every. Single. One.
I was doomed.
With that daunting thought, I turned to the table of uncatalogued items. If I had to memorize every item in the place, I’d better get started.
And that table seemed like a great place to start.
A truly horrendous smell filled the air around me. I waved a hand under my nose and grimaced toward the dividing door. What was Alice cooking?.
I stared at the pair of woman’s shoes I’d been cataloging and blinked, trying to dispel the shadows wreathing their otherwise harmless-looking forms. I touched one of the shoes with a fingertip and felt a subtle vibration saturating the cloth, the sensation filling me with an inexplicable unease.
I wished I knew how to read the artifacts. But I had a feeling it would take time and a lot more learning before I got to that point.
Despite the horrible stench of whatever Alice was cooking, I was getting hungry. My stomach rumbled loudly.
I set the shoes aside, deciding to ask Alice about them after lunch.
My gaze fell on the next item on the table. It was a suitcase that looked like it had been stuffed with cabbages. There was a large grease spot on the top, and the semi-rigid sides bulged unnaturally. There were gaps around the edges where it appeared that the suitcase hadn’t entirely closed.
It looked old.
Like about a hundred years old.
“Oy! Naida, I’ve got beans and bangers,” Alice called out.
Bangers? I assumed bangers were some kind of British food, but they didn’t sound very appetizing. Smoothing my expression to neutral, I lifted a hand. “I’ll be right there.” No wonder the place stunk so badly, I thought. Anything called bangers had to be terrible.
Fenwald bumped against my calves with an engine purr that could have powered a Ferrari. I looked down at him.
