by Amy Boyles
“We plan on keeping her within our sight.” Amelia hugged Betty. I guess she’d gotten over her initial irritation at my grandmother about her past. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
Betty jutted out her chin. “Let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on doing what we can.” She turned to me. “Pepper, I’ll magic you to the school. If I see Axel, I’ll send him your way as well.”
I nodded in thanks.
“You ready?”
I glanced down at Flower. “You ready?”
The possum tucked her furry face into my arm. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
The last thing I needed for Betty to see was my worry, so I plastered on a big smile. “I’m ready.”
Betty pressed a finger to her nose. Sparkles of magic flitted from her nostril and whirled around me. Next thing I knew, Flower and I were standing in the foyer of the Southern School of Magic.
“Can you please put me down?” Flower said. “It’s not like I’m going to run off and leave you.”
I gently placed the possum on the floor. A figure sweeping down the staircase caught my attention, and I locked eyes with Saltz Swift.
The headmaster gestured in greeting. “Miss Dunn, I’m so glad to see you.”
His hands slid over mine. His touch was cold. Ice shards pricked up the backs of my hands all the way to my elbows. I fought off the shiver that threatened to take over.
“Master Swift, so good to see you.”
He kissed the air beside my cheek. “We really should try to meet under better circumstances than these.”
I quirked a brow. “You mean not when everything’s falling apart?”
“Exactly.” He smiled but the warmth didn’t reach his eyes. The headmaster pointed a toe at the possum. “And who is your guest?”
“This is Flower. Snow had her locked under the crawl space of her house. The possum saw the magic eater and may be able to help.”
Swift gave a curt nod. “Follow me to the library.”
Within minutes Flower and I were standing in a chamber lined with books. The ceilings were twelve feet high, and every single inch was covered in leather-bound tomes. The air smelled of dried paper and animal hide. I inhaled deeply as those were two of my favorite scents.
Swift gestured with a flourish. “The back wall holds the spell books that deal with magical creatures. You’ll want to start there. I’ll check in on you in a few hours, see how you’re holding up.”
I shot Flower a hopeful glance. “We’ll do our best to get through as many as possible.”
“I’ll leave you to it.” Swift turned to leave. “Oh, and Pepper?”
“Yes?”
Swift smiled; this time it wasn’t as cold. “Good luck. Our lives depend on it. I would stay, but I have a class to teach.”
I thanked Swift and he disappeared.
Flower scampered onto a thickly cut wooden table. “Now, which one would you like to try first?”
I scanned the titles. “How about Magical Creatures for Beginners?”
“Sounds like a winner.” The possum darted up the wall until she reached the book, snagged it between her two front teeth and pulled until it slowly slid from the shelf.
She grabbed it with her two paws and jumped back onto the table right in front of me.
“Ta-da! Here you go.”
I patted her head. “Impressive.”
“You should see what I can do with a cherry stem.”
I clicked my tongue. “Maybe another time.” I peeled back the cover. The stale smell of previously wet paper wafted from the book. “Whew. I wonder when this one was last opened?”
“Looks like it’s been a while.”
I closed my eyes, said a silent prayer that we’d find something useful and started flipping through.
We’d been at it a couple of hours. I sat at the table, a pile of books surrounding me. My back and shoulders ached from hunching, and a headache bloomed in my skull.
Flower had easily retrieved twenty books for me, and we’d scanned all of them quickly, searching for information about magic eaters. But what we’d learned so far had been limited. Nothing that really helped us.
I was already getting frustrated. I raked my fingers through my hair, hoping to wake up my brain. Was I missing something? Was there something I wasn’t seeing?
I couldn’t let despair overtake me. I had to keep cool and calm or else I might overlook something.
“You know, for once I’d like to have a real date.”
Axel’s voice cut through the haze of my brain. I blinked and smiled, pivoting toward the sound.
A dark look crossed his face, but Axel quickly smiled when our gazes locked. I rose and wrapped my arms around him.
Axel gave me a solid squeeze. The warmth of his body felt like heaven. I tipped my chin up and smiled.
“We had a real date when you asked me to marry you,” I remarked.
Axel’s lips curled into a luscious smile. “Hopefully not our only one.” He nodded toward the table. “How’s this going?”
“Flower and I’ve been searching through old books, but it’s not going well. How’re things in the outside world?”
A low growl emanated from Axel’s throat. “It’s going. Garrick’s men are on high alert. They’re swarming the town, keeping watch over some of the witches who may be in danger.”
“Like Betty?”
Axel nodded. He threaded his fingers through his hair and slumped to a chair. “What a mess.”
“I agree,” Flower said stoutly. “We’ve picked through a lot of information, but there’s very little that helps.”
Axel rubbed his chin and stared at the wall. “What have you learned so far?”
I stumbled over my words. “Not much. Magic eaters are spirits that feed on the power of others, generally sucking a person dry of their magic and, in the process, killing them.”
Axel squinted at the books. “Yes, we know that. We also know the spirit was summoned.” He snapped his fingers and rose. Axel crossed to the left of the bookcase, walking down to the far edge.
“Saltz Swift said the books we wanted are over here,” I protested.
“But what if they’re not?” Axel reached up and pulled down a book that didn’t look nearly as old as the others. “Aha!”
“What’s that?” I said.
“This might help us. At least it might give us an idea for protection.”
“Yes, but what is it?”
“This is called the Catchings and Conjurings of Creatures Mythical. Sounds like a winner.”
“Impressive,” Flower said.
I froze. There was something familiar about that title. Something I couldn’t place. I stared at it. The binding looked familiar, too.
Axel placed it on the table. The binding cracked as it opened. Beautiful colored images snaked across the pages. The first held an animated unicorn. The creature threw its head back into the sky and reared up, pawing the air.
The creature seemed to look at us and snort in impatience.
“Can it see us?” I said.
Axel nodded. “It’s in there. Trapped on the page.”
I curled my fingers into Axel’s arm. “I know where I saw this book. At Snow’s! She said she’d trapped these creatures. How did this book end up here if it was at her house?”
“Do you think Saltz brought it?” I said.
“Maybe,” Axel replied. “Or perhaps it’s a copy?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so. From the way Snow talked, she made it seem that she personally had trapped every single creature in this book.”
Axel quirked a brow. “She would have to be very old to have trapped some of them. A few of these creatures are extinct. It might’ve been passed down.”
“But why is it here?” I said.
Axel flipped the page to a troll. The small stout creature threw an axe over his shoulder and glared at us. “Are you going to just stand there and stare at me all day, or are you going to
call me out of this book?”
My jaw dropped. “Holy cow.”
“And as we see,” Axel said, “this book holds many different creatures.”
I touched the binding. The troll shouted obscenities at me. I flinched but ignored his harsh words. “But it’s only a book.”
Flower scurried over to us. “But it’s very magical.”
Axel nodded. “Right. There are probably three hundred entries in here. From unicorns to krakens—this book holds them all.”
“And you think it might have an entry about the magic eater?”
“If we’re lucky.”
Oh my gosh, if that were true, that would mean Snow had the magic eater all along. Had she been the one to summon it?
Axel flipped the pages one by one. I spotted demons and Pegasus, cupids and gorgons, until we reached the rear of the book.
“This part holds the lesser known or more rare entries.” Axel peeled back page after page until he shouted, “There!”
He must’ve found what he was looking for. I smiled with pride. He was so smart, this fiancé of mine. I was one lucky gal.
He proceeded to read. “‘The magic eater, once summoned, will eat until either the beast has fulfilled an obligation or until there is no magic left for it to digest.’”
I shuddered. “That would mean the creature would devour all of us in Magnolia Cove.”
“‘This creature goes by the name Erebus, and will work tirelessly until it has completed its duty.’”
Axel stopped talking. I peered over his shoulder and stared at the page.
“Where is it?” I said, afraid of the answer.
Axel turned the book upside down. The pages converged in the center, and a world of creatures yelled and hissed at us.
“Opinionated, aren’t they?” I said.
Axel didn’t say anything. He flipped the book back over and shoved papers away until he reached the page once more.
Still blank.
He exhaled a low whistle. “Erebus the Magic Eater that you and your cousins summoned, came from this book. He was called from his prison in here and set loose in Magnolia Cove.”
My chest tightened in excitement. The tone of Axel’s voice suggested it might be easy to chain the creature back to the book.
“How difficult will it be to return him?”
Axel closed the book with a thump and tucked it under his arm. “Hopefully not too bad. Maybe we can trap him back in these pages. We just have to find him.”
“And the words we have to say?” I said.
Axel tapped the cover. “I need to think about that. But what I’m concerned with is that whoever slipped you the wrong piece of paper summoned the magic eater from this book, which means they knew all about it.”
My stomach seized as I realized what was really going on. “Saltz Swift was at Snow’s today, and now the book is here—and he didn’t tell me about it.” I lowered my voice. “He told us to stick to this wall. But you found this book on another one.”
Axel pursed his lips. “I don’t know if Saltz is guilty, but we need to keep a close eye on him.”
Axel waved a hand over the mess of tomes I had strewn over the table. One by one they lifted and returned to their spots on the wall.
He gave me a tired smile. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
I scooped up Flower and tucked her under my arm. “We need to find Saltz first,” I said. “He said he was going to check on us soon, but he never showed up.”
A scream split the air. I shot Axel a look, and we raced from the library back into the corridors of the school. We followed the sound of the scream to the foyer.
A crowd of people ran toward the same place, surrounding the young student who had screamed.
The girl took a step back and pointed down. Slumped on the floor, his face pale and drained of life, lay the body of the former headmaster, Saltz Swift.
EIGHT
The police had been called, and I sat outside, my hands trembling as I held the book that had contained the magic eater.
“Are you okay?” Axel said.
I closed my eyes tight and shook my head. “I feel so horrible. I liked Saltz Swift. He was a decent headmaster and was good to me. He let me teach a class. I guess now we know he didn’t put the book in the library.”
“My guess is it ended there possibly as part of the summoning spell.” Axel wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “There may be more in the book. A protection ward. We’re going to need it because the way that thing’s moving, we’ll have to round up your grandmother and the others who might be affected.”
My eyes widened. “But how can we protect them? Saltz was a powerful wizard.” Then I remembered. “Sylvia Spirits was attacked, but she managed to fight it off.”
Or had she? No one had seen Sylvia with Erebus. All we had heard was her scream, and then she had claimed the creature attacked her.
I frowned. Sylvia wasn’t the type of person to have had me and my cousins summon something so evil.
Was she?
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. What a disaster. But I had to focus on the now. “Okay. It’s starting to get late. We need to come up with a serious protection spell or figure out a way to keep Betty and the rest of them safe through the night. Then we can focus on catching the creature during the day. As a magic eater, he’ll probably be more powerful at night, but if we can find him during the day, we may be at an advantage. How does that sound?”
Axel smiled at me proudly. “Sounds like a plan.”
CJ, Sylvia, Betty and my cousins were all back at my house. Garrick Young, the sheriff, had arrived and informed them of what happened to Saltz Swift.
“I’ll stay through the night,” Garrick said, “keeping watch outside.”
We all thanked him, and Garrick went to sit on the porch, to make sure nothing that wasn’t supposed to enter our house would.
Axel showed Betty, CJ and Sylvia the book. “The creature was summoned from here,” he explained.
“Catchings and Conjurings of Creatures Mythical,” Betty nearly whispered. “I know this book from somewhere.”
“Me too,” Sylvia said, “but I can’t think of where.”
Axel tapped the cover. “According to Pepper, it’s from Snow’s house. I came across it in the library at the school.”
“Strange,” Betty said.
“Let’s see if there’s anything we can find in here that points to protection,” Axel said, steering the conversation back to the present.
CJ, Betty and Sylvia poured over the pages, devouring the words that Axel and I had perused only hours earlier.
“I’m going to make some hot tea,” I said. “Does anyone want some?”
A couple of people murmured yes, so I trudged off into the kitchen to make tea. I found Flower inside. She had stretched her paws onto a window and was looking out, chanting low. When she finished, the possum glanced over her shoulder and jumped.
I smiled. “You performing a protection spell?”
Flower worried her hands. “Of course. I don’t want to die, and I heard Snow say them enough times.”
“You heard her from under the crawl space?”
“Oh, I eventually chewed through a little bit of flooring and slipped upstairs every once in a while. I was still trapped by the boundaries of the house, but seeing new scenery helped.”
“I’m sorry Snow trapped you.”
Flower perched onto a chair and studied me with her dark eyes. “It’s okay.”
“Maybe when all this is over we can help you get back to where you came from.”
“That would be wonderful,” Flower mused. “To run free in the forest is all I want.”
I put the kettle on and sat at the table across from her. “Tell me, what did you see before Snow died?”
The possum arched an eyebrow. “You want to know what the magic eater looked like?”
“I think I know what it looks like.” I drummed my nails on the table. “Wha
t I want to know is, was there anything that warned of the intruder?”
Flower seemed to think about it for a moment as she placed a paw under her chin. “I don’t remember any sort of warning. It just arrived like a tornado. You saw what a mess Snow’s house was in.”
I nodded. “I did.”
Images of the mess crashed down on me. The weight of the two dead bodies I’d seen today made tears prick my eyes. I didn’t like Snow, but I didn’t want her dead—much less to be the catalyst for her demise.
Betty could be next. The idea that such a nasty creature would hurt my grandmother simply made me angry.
“Why?” I closed my eyes tight. “Why did this have to happen?”
Sympathy filled Flower's dark eyes. She dipped her head. “I’m sorry, Pepper. But maybe we can stop it.”
Axel swept into the kitchen holding a dark stone that looked like obsidian. He chanted another protection spell. When he was done, my fiancé turned to me.
“This is the last room and should hold us till the morning.” He slipped the stone in his pocket and stared at me.
Flower's gaze shifted from Axel to me. She seemed to sense that he wanted to speak with me privately, so she hopped up and scurried to the door.
“I’ll just wait out here for my tea,” the possum said.
I rose and turned the heat down so that Axel and I would have a few extra minutes alone.
“Are you watching Sylvia?” I whispered.
He nodded. “She saw it, you say?”
“Yes.”
We stared at each other. Axel was thinking the same thing I was—how could Sylvia have survived when Saltz hadn’t? It made no sense.
“We both watch her,” Axel whispered. “If I notice anything suspicious, I’ll tell you.”
“And if I see her call a demon, I’ll scream for you—how’s that?”
Axel smiled grimly. “And just when I thought we’d have a few hours to figure out where to get married, we’re sucked into a life-or-death situation.”
I wanted to make a joke, but I was dry. There was nothing I could say that held any sort of amusement because none of this was funny.
“Flower said the magic eater gave no warning—except tornado-like winds.” I cocked a brow. “Did you give the book to Garrick?”
