by Kali Harper
Lance nodded and led us outside. Once we were back out on the sidewalk, he looked to me and said, “We’ll find them, but whatever you do, don’t question the Celestials. They need to remain hidden. The fact I told you about them could’ve had us thrown out. Enforcement isn’t their job. That falls to Richard and Richard alone once we find out who did this to Morpheus.”
“And if it was Darby?” I asked, swallowing around the lump in my throat.
“She’s a minor and would only lose her broom. Whoever helped her, however, will receive far worse.”
Looking at Lucy, I didn’t have to ask her who she thought was at fault. Her eyes filled with tears, and when I took her hand in mine, she ripped it away and started for the car.
“Let her go,” Lance said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “She won’t be able to help when she’s upset.”
“All the more reason to go after her,” I told him, frowning when he held me in place.
“No. The more time you spend comforting your aunt, the more time we waste in what could be our last chance to find these girls before Mark does something he shouldn’t.”
“According to Lucy, he isn’t answering his phone,” I said, removing my cell from my pocket when I got a text.
“Then let’s make this quick.”
Chapter Twelve
After Lance went back to his car, Sammy and I headed to The Magician’s Closet. If there were any answers on where the girls or our suspect may have gone, they would’ve been here. Standing on the sidewalk with Sammy in my arms, I hovered between going inside and waiting for Lance.
The idea of going into the shop a third time made me uneasy. Our first visit was what got us into this mess in the first place. The last time we were there wasn’t much help, either. What would this visit bring? Would time still be slowed to a crawl? Would the books be hovering against the ceiling the same way they’d done before?
Before I could duck inside to find out, an older gentleman stepped out of the library next door, his brows furrowed in my direction.
“You there, haven’t I seen you here before? Up to no good, I bet. You’re holding the sidewalk down, is that it?” He was walking straight for me, and I couldn’t decide whether or not to run from this tiny man or to laugh at his obvious Napoleon complex.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, setting Sammy on the ground between us.
“Are you planning to loiter around here all day?” He put both hands on his hips and glanced up at me. “Goodness sake, child, have you no manners at all? Speak.”
Using Sammy as an excuse to get down to the old man’s level, I stooped beside him and stroked Sammy’s fur while meeting the other man’s eyes. “I was planning to go inside, actually.”
“Still investigating, huh?” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I’ve seen you around these parts with that detective. Lance, is it? He’s a good man, but he’d be an even better one if he returned my books.”
Books? “Oh, you mean the ones in Morpheus’ shop? They’re sort of—”
“Stuck, I know. Was that you’re doing?”
“What? No. They were like that when we got here.”
“I need those books. The set’s all out of sorts without them.”
“What collection? I might be able to help.”
The old man rambled off a handful of titles, one of which I recognized as the set Kat had been looking to finish inside her own shop. Funnily enough, the books currently stuck inside Morpheus’ store were also ones she had in Emberdale.
Once I assured her she’d get her copies back once the investigation was through, Kat agreed to leave her books in Fairmount at The Magician’s Library.
“There, all done,” I said, putting my phone away as I got to my feet. “She’ll drop them off later this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t even introduced myself,” the man said, offering me his hand. “I’m Napoleon.” He cracked a smile, and as I started to laugh, he said, “My parents had an ugly sense of humor.”
“It’s really your name?”
He pulled on a pair of imaginary suspenders. “Sure is. I did consider changing it, but I’ve grown into it over the years.” He laughed again, and this time, Sammy and I joined him. “My apologies for the interrogation. These things always take so much time. It’s bad enough Morpheus never sent them home when I’d asked him to, but now they’re trapped in that time bubble or whatever it is. I don’t try to understand the goings-on in his shop. I only tend to my books.”
“You must read some of them,” I said, following after him as he headed back for the library.
“Of course I do, but literature is my true calling. None of this hocus pocus nonsense.”
“If that’s the case, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong line of work.”
“Yes, well, when you get to my age and still enjoy the feel of paper in your hands, there’s very little you can do. Anyway, I’ve been working here for close to twenty-five years, and not once has anyone asked me what I want.”
“Twenty-five years? Wow. The longest job I held wasn’t even a fifth of that.” It wasn’t for a lack of trying, either.
“It helps when most who come in here go to the quiet section and only talk to me when they leave. I’m not much of a people person,” he said, holding open the door for me when I joined him. Napoleon pointed to a sign in the window when Sammy went to do the same. “Sorry, kid. Best if you stay outside. Fur does terrible things to these books.”
Sammy grumped, but when I looked at him, he settled down and didn’t say much else, which was his way of letting me know things were okay. The only risk I took by following the little man was a kink in my neck and possibly a pulled muscle from too much laughter. I can live with that.
“Be sure you do,” Sammy said, mind-to-mind. “Someone has to feed me dinner.”
With a smile on my face and Napoleon leading me toward the front desk, I left Sammy behind and entered the biggest library I’d ever seen. From outside, the library seemed rather small, so magic definitely had a play here. Books lined the walls, sorted in rows and organized on shelves.
Above us, the ceiling spanned for miles, the paintings so elaborate and so unique, they looked more like fairy tales than anything else. There was an image of Red Riding Hood, werewolves, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs… everything I could think of was painted on the ceiling.
“Not many agree with it,” Napoleon said, “but it sure beats plain white walls or the astrological signs of every witch and wizard in history.”
“I like it,” I told him, rolling my head from side to side before looking at a wall of books along with many more that were missing. “It makes it feel like humans and our kind could get along somehow.”
“In another time, perhaps.” He set his hand on the empty space on the shelves. “I do love my books. Some might say I like everything in its place. Morpheus always teased me about it, but they always came home.”
“When’s the last time the books were here?”
Napoleon considered my question, rubbing the short stubble on his chin as he did. “Three nights ago, I believe. The place was a mess when I came in the following morning,” he said, walking back to the front desk where a single book was locked inside a cabinet.
“This one here was terribly upset, running into that wall over there.” He gestured to the wall along Morpheus’ shop. “This book’s mate is stuck in there, so I have to keep it locked up before I lose another one.”
He stroked the spine to the book, then wrestled it back into the cabinet before locking the door. “I hate to keep them apart like this, but I’ve already lost so much between Morpheus’ open invitations and that spell.”
“How come the collections don’t act like this?” I’d heard of books acting like this before and had even seen books fly inside Kat’s shop, but the collections never went out of their way to find missing volumes.
“Because they have the rest of the collection to keep them company. A pair is te
rribly intimate and will go to great lengths to find one another. They can get very destructive, in fact.”
“So nothing else was out of the ordinary?”
“The clocks were off, but once I changed them, everything went back to normal.”
“Do you remember the time?”
He considered my question a moment, then smiled. “I remember it exactly because it wasn’t long after I’d gone home. It’s not unusual for one clock to stop, but all of them?”
“Napoleon, the time.”
“Oh yes, it was 12:15 AM on the dot. Wait, where are you going?”
“You’ve been a huge help,” I told him, heading for the front door, “thank you so much.”
“You’re welc—”
The door closed behind me, cutting him off as I practically ran into Lance who was in the process of asking Sammy where I’d gone.
“Where’s Lucy?” I asked once I realized she wasn’t with him.
“Back at the car and where we should be.”
“We can’t leave yet,” I told him. “They changed the time.”
“Who did? What are you talking about?” Lance asked, ushering me inside The Magician’s Closet before closing the door behind us.
“According to Napoleon, all of his clocks had stopped at 12:15 AM. He noticed it when he can in the other morning.”
“The clocks inside Morpheus’ shop didn’t stop,” Lance reminded me. “Their times had slowed. The power probably went out or something.”
“You don’t think it’s a coincidence? Maybe the suspect used the spell to stop time, but once he left, it returned to the slower time Izzy and Darby experienced.” I walked back to Morpheus’ office to show Lance the clock. “Whoever cast the spell probably didn’t realize it would affect other shops in the area.”
“But they couldn’t have touched the ones in the library.”
“What if it was a ripple from the spell they used? Or what if the spell bounced off a ward in Morpheus’ shop, slowing time instead of stopping it like it did next door? That should help us find the time of Morpheus’ banishment, right?”
Lance smiled as he glanced at the clock on Morpheus’ desk, the hands having moved a few hours since our last visit. “Time of banishment isn’t as helpful as a time of death, Astrid. Still, that places the girls inside the shop later than when they said they’d first arrived.”
“Unless they weren’t the ones who set off the spell. They set off the Canundrum, but what if there were two Turning spells?”
“The slowing spell was Morpheus’ doing,” Lance decided, frowning at the clock again. “It would’ve allowed him to walk around unhindered so he could trap whoever was after him.”
“Right, but when he trapped the wrong person, he gave our suspect enough time to cast a second spell at 12:15 AM, giving them the window they needed to banish him before anyone else noticed.”
“Sadly, this means we’re right back where we started,” he said with a sigh.
Rubbing my eyes, I collapsed in the chair in front of Morpheus’ desk, vaguely aware of Lance’s eyes on me when I said, “It’s nothing, honest.” The last time he’d seen me like this, I’d suffered from migraines and seeing things that weren’t there. “We need to find out who did this. If we don’t, whoever’s responsible could go after Darby.”
“But she didn’t see anything,” Lance reminded me.
“No, but maybe our suspect doesn’t know that.”
“So the first thing we need to do is find those girls and get them back to your place. Any thoughts on what we should do after that?”
Was he asking me how to handle his investigation? It certainly looked like it.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but keeping them safe is a good place to start. Come on.”
Chapter Thirteen
Maggie was waiting for us as soon as we walked in the door, her spectral form flickering in and out as she paced the length of my living room. I was the only one who could see her, but even as I stepped toward her, Maggie’s ghost vanished. I’d expected her to return after possessing Ginger again, so when her voice erupted from Sammy’s body, I just about had a heart attack.
“He isn’t here,” she said, her eyes fixed on Lance as he and Lucy headed up the stairs toward my bedroom.
“Was he here before?” Lance asked, pausing halfway up the steps, his chest heaving with what I could only assume was a sigh.
We’d already spent most of the day running around after Mark. Once Mark stopped answering Lucy’s texts, the sick feeling in my stomach grew. I hated to think he had anything to do with this, mostly because of how much Lucy cared for him. Granted, I’d never met the guy and the little I knew about him was how they met and how he helped his niece get her magic after she’d practiced it as a human.
I’m sure he had the best intentions, but if that were true, why was he always out of reach? He did come to Emberdale on his own, after all.
“Mark came back with the girls not long after you left,” Maggie said, drawing me from my thoughts. It took me a moment to remember what we were talking about, and by the time I did, Lance continued toward my room. “Aren’t you listening? They aren’t here.” Maggie padded after him, bounding up the steps as she spoke. Her voice was muffled, but I could’ve sworn she said something about Mark’s shoes and how he’d tracked dirt all over the front porch before cleaning it up.
“There isn’t any mud around here,” I said once Lucy joined me in the living room. “It hasn’t rained in weeks.”
Lucy shrugged, her eyes vacant as she stared out the front window. Her face was pale, made worse by the fact she hadn’t put any makeup on. I’d noticed it before but thought nothing of it. Still, thinking back to all of our family get-togethers, I’d never seen her without it. Not even at my parents’ funerals.
“You okay?” A gentle touch on her shoulder brought her back to the present. “You were white as a ghost for a second there.”
She shook her head and waved me away, taking a deep breath as she did. “This isn’t like him. Did I tell you how we met?”
I smiled. “You did. He was there with Darby, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. He had to wait for her to finish her trial, so we had a long chat. There were others he could’ve talked to I suppose, but he talked to me. Me, Astrid.”
“It sounds nice.”
“It was. At first, it was the small things, you know? Why I needed a new broom, how long I’d been practicing magic, what I specialized in, you know, the normal stuff.”
Normal meaning magical. “You never told me what magic he does.” Come to think of it, I didn’t know what Darby did, either. Not that it really mattered, but in Emberdale, there were no secrets. Everyone knew I was practicing conjuration just as much as Ida was a Seer, Lance had an ability to shield himself when needed, and Harris worked with charms.
“He’s like me,” Lucy said, oblivious to my thoughts. “He was born into magic but never taught, so he learned things on his own. It’s probably why he offered to help Darby when he did. He’d seen the magic in her the same way I’d seen it in you, only Darby already had a knack for it. He embraced her along with the magic she’d already learned, then slowly molded her so she could take part in Morpheus’ trials. She has another one coming up soon, and I think it’d be lovely if you both got to do it together.”
“I thought the trials were private.” I knew Sammy couldn’t go in with me when I did mine.
“Your first one is, but if your magic is compatible with Darby’s, then you can go in future trials together.”
“Funny, I thought you would’ve wanted to do that yourself.”
“Heavens, no. My magic isn’t what it used to be, even with my new broomstick. Both you and Darby are young. You have a spark inside of you that I lost a long time ago. Once you grow into your magic, that too will change, but for now—”
“Darby wants to practice magic with Izzy,” I said, cutting her off. “That must be why she went to see Morpheus.”
<
br /> “She said as much already,” Lucy agreed.
“She wanted Izzy to join her the same way one joins a school, but if the future trials can involve a pair of students, then that must be the reason why Darby actually brought her here. She doesn’t just want Izzy to learn magic, she wants to do her trials with her.”
“Far as I understand it, they do everything else together,” Lucy said. “But, Astrid, she isn’t like us.”
“I know.”
“And no amount of wishing or begging Morpheus will ever change that.”
“I know that, too, but Darby’s young. She needs time to learn your ways—”
“Our ways, dear.”
“I may have embraced my magic, but I’m far from understanding all of this. Darby’s like me. We’re both new to magic, including the rules and limitations Fairmount might set for us.”
As the silence fell between us, I took Lucy in my arms and hugged her tight. She shook, sniffling as she reached for a tissue she had in her pocket. When we separated, the wise woman I spoke to before was gone, replaced by one filled with grief.
“I’ve done something terrible,” she said, wiping her nose which was already red. “I’ve tried to explain it away. To excuse what I saw—”
“Lucy, what is it?”
She didn’t answer, a string of wracking sobs causing her to shake so violently, no amount of hugging could calm her down. There are few times I’ve seen my aunt cry, but never like this. When my parents passed away, she was silent, and when her first fiance broke her heart, she couldn’t open the door to her house for weeks. This though, this was different. These weren’t tears of grief.
“You’re angry,” I said, rubbing her back as Lance walked back into the living room with Maggie alongside him.
“In my purse,” she spoke between sobs.
Lance dumped the contents of Lucy’s purse onto the coffee table. Her cell phone skittered to the floor as everything else fell out, including her foundation, compact, lipstick, various receipts, pens, pencils, and paper clips.
“The compact,” she said, hiding her face in her hands. “Open it.”
