Library Cat Magical Mysteries Box Set (Books 1-3), page 34
What changed my mind, you ask? Why did I give it all up? My immortality? The man I loved?
Do you really need to ask that?
The weight of it all.
Nothingness is so incredibly heavy.
I couldn’t take it. I reclaimed my soul and disappeared. Of course, it wasn’t that easy.
After I reclaimed my soul, the first thing I tried to do was put a bullet between my eyes.
It didn’t work.
The bullet grazed my forehead and ricocheted into the wall. So then I consulted a Thomas Guide.
(This was some time ago, before everyone had a tiny little idiot box in their pockets—for a little thing that supposedly contains all the information of the world, these phones sure seem to make people a lot stupider. You ever think of that? It’s why they call them Smart Phones. So you don’t realize how many brain cells you’re losing.)
What was I saying? Oh yeah, Thomas Guide. I found directions to a bridge. I waited until nightfall so no one would try to save me. I tied a brick around my ankle and jumped into the Colorado River. It was cold, like instead of being tied around my ankle, the brick slammed into my chest and sucked all the air out of my lungs.
It was slow going, drifting all the way to the bottom. Long enough for me to untie the knot and kick like a madman up to the surface, if I’d wanted to.
But I didn’t want to. I didn’t panic. I was at peace. I looked at the rocks and the fish and decided there were worse ways to go. I opened my mouth and inhaled until both of my lungs were full to the brim of that icy Rocky Mountain spring water.
At peace with everything.
Until I woke up on the shore.
The brick was still tied to my ankle. It was a big one too. Not one of those puny little red ones that the industrious third little pig used to make his house while his younger brothers were lollygagging around with straw and sticks. It was a big beefy cinderblock.
To make a long story short, I tried several other methods of ending my own life, but none of them worked.
I cannot die.
I thought at first that by using the voidmagic I had ‘bought’ too much time, that my immortality was infinite. But that didn’t make sense. I’d reclaimed my soul from the void. I was mortal again.
Then I realized it. The Baron put a protection spell on me. Before I left, he must have known what I was going to do. Of course he knew—he knew the depths of my… well, not my soul. He knew each nook and cranny and dark recess of the blackhole abyss where my soul used to be. He knew me better than I knew myself, because I didn’t know for sure that I was going to do it until I’d opened up the portal and found the snarling, eldritch creature my soul had become.
He’s a powerful wizard. And as much as I loved him—he loved me too.
He protected me from myself. From my conscience. In the hopes that we might one day be reunited.
That’s why I think all six books are in this town. Like iron filings to a magnet, the books sought me out. I’ve been in town for quite some time now. Long enough for each of the six to seek out my vim and make its way to me. The Baron is probably hoping that I’ll be tempted. That I’ll pick up one of the books and take advantage of its destructive force. Travel back into the void so I can join him again.
It’s why I didn’t trust myself when we destroyed the first book. It would have been all too easy to close my eyes and let the voidmagic take over. Its cold embrace so familiar and soothing. To abandon myself and let the Baron find me again.
And what would I do if I saw him again?
Would I plunge a dagger in his neck and rid the world of a powerful, corrupt wizard?
Or would I close my eyes and wait for his kiss?
Some questions, you don’t want to know the answer to.
Chapter 21
Hortensia took a drink of water. I was relieved when she didn’t immediately resume her tale. Hers was one for small doses. Too much dark magic, unfathomable creatures, lost souls—it weighed heavily on the listener.
“Feed!” Victor Frankenstein shouted from upstairs.
“Now that’s something I can get behind,” Hortensia said. “Get the cat to rustle up some victuals for us. I’m in the mood for something fancy.”
“You’d trust Kong to cook for you after the diaper incident?” I asked.
“Maybe not,” she said. “What about a burger then? At the diner?”
“Sure,” I said. While I usually ate at Kit’s cafe, there was a diner in town that specialized in big heavy plates of comfort foods. The food was delicious, but it sat like a brick in your belly, and in hundred-degree weather, that was a lethal combination. It was almost time for me to take a lunch break. I knew that a big bowl of whisperwind stew was going to make me sluggish and lazy the rest of the day, but tell that to my growling stomach.
“Teeth!” Victor shouted. “They keep falling out! How can you feed if you don’t have teeth. And if you can’t eat, you will surely cease to exist!”
“What does he have up there?” Hortensia said. “Have you even been upstairs to look?”
“I’m afraid to,” I said. But something in Victor’s ravings was clanging around in my brain, not unlike his steel trays and instruments clanging on the floor.
“What if he’s got a big green abomination up there with bolts in his neck?” Hortensia asked. “Yellow fangs and drool running down his liver lips?”
There it was again. Fangs. Teeth.
“I know where the cursed book is,” I said. The amulet at my neck twitched as if confirming my suspicions.
“Upstairs?” she asked. “You think old Vick is reading it? I got news for you, he was already nuts.”
“No,” I said. “I remembered what everyone said. My neighbor was complaining of a toothache. Horace Dinklesmith was raving at the grocery store. He got so close to me I could see sparkling silver fillings on his back molars. And Professor Buttonwood. Just this morning she mentioned recently getting a cavity filled.”
“Oh no,” Hortensia said. “Like a trip to the dentist’s office wasn’t bad enough.”
- - -
The office of Darius A. Arnaud III, DDS, was located away from Canal Street in a residential neighborhood. A small fountain was in the front, with nothing inside but a handful of dried leaves.
Hortensia cinched her bathrobe belt tight—that’s how you know she meant business.
“Plenty of out-of-date reading material in the dentist’s office,” she said. “We should have known.”
“This isn’t funny,” I said. I was sweating bullets, and it had nothing to do with the weather.
“I never said it was,” she said.
“You could have at least worn shoes,” I said. She was shuffling about in her slippers.
“These have rubber soles,” she said. “Same thing. They help my plantar fasciitis.”
“You can’t use magic to heal it?” I asked.
“Those quacks with their wands,” she said. “They’re worse than the dentists.”
“If you say so,” I said.
“I say plenty,” Hortensia said. “And it’s in your best interest to listen up.” We approached the door, and I hesitated for a moment before grabbing the handle.
The next thing I knew, bright pain lit up my wrist. “Ouch!” I said and retracted my hand. Hortensia had clonked me on the wrist with her metallic hand. “What did you do that for?”
“We’re going into battle,” she said. “And in battle, if you hesitate, you die.”
“Battle?” I said. “Aren’t you being a little over-dramatic?”
“If anything, I’m being under-dramatic,” she said. “This book is serious business. Remember last time? What almost happened?”
Hortensia was right. The last cursed book we’d tracked down killed anyone who read it. It had shape-shifted too, changing its cover to suit the person who found it—because it wanted to be read. My mother had stumbled upon the book, but we’d managed to destroy it before she started reading.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”
“No hesitation,” she said. “No mercy. No surrender.”
“You sound like a drill instructor,” I said.
“I saw it on a bumper sticker,” she said. “It was on the window of the hardware store.”
“The hardware store—” My brain had just made a connection and it was on the tip of my tongue, but Hortensia flung the door open and I had no choice but to prepare for battle.
There were at least fifty other things I’d rather prepare for—colonoscopy, income tax audit, re-shingling the roof. But here I was.
A middle-aged librarian.
Preparing for battle.
With my octogenarian mentor.
Inside the lobby was… a completely normal dentist’s office. A coffee table with a few magazines. Cardboard stands holding brochures about dental implants, deep cleaning options and thirty-minute magical tooth realignment. No one was at the reception desk. The chairs were empty.
“Hello?” I called. I rooted around in my purse until I found my wand. I held it at my side with a death grip.
“Silence, birdbrain,” Hortensia said. “Maybe we can get the book and get out of here without—”
The leaves on the potted plant rustled. I held my breath. Hortensia took a step backwards, those rubber soles gliding against the low-pile carpeting of the lobby.
“Can I help you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Can you come out so we can talk?”
“I live in the shadows,” he said. “I cannot be caught, cannot be seen.”
“Okay,” Hortensia said. “But you’re behind the potted plant.”
Dr. Arnaud stood up and assumed what I can only describe as a martial arts stance. He bounced on bent knees, holding his hands straight in front of his body, as if ready to chop. He was wearing black scrubs with a black long-sleeve undershirt. A black surgical skull cap was pulled down to cover his forehead. He wore a black surgical mask looped behind his ears. I took in the scene, not quite believing what I was seeing. He wore black athletic socks underneath a pair of black leather flip-flop sandals.
“I am descended from an honorable shinobi clan,” he said. “My mission is to destroy you!”
“Shinobi?” Hortensia asked. “Is that the raw fish stuff?”
“That’s sushi,” I said. “I think shinobi means ninja.”
“That explains the getup,” Hortensia said.
A black blur streaked across the lobby, behind the reception desk. In an instant, whirling silver discs were coming straight for us.
The amulet at my neck went icy cold, and I raised my palms without thinking. All the discs stopped mid-air, hovering in place. One by one, they dropped to the floor.
“CDs?” I said. I had thought they were shuriken, also known as ninja throwing stars.
“And you said no one uses CDs anymore,” Hortensia said.
As we spoke, he launched a second attack. Using a bendy straw from a can of soda, he shot a thumbtack at me. It bounced off my robe and tinkled to the floor.
“If this is his ninja arsenal,” Hortensia said, “I’ll hold him off while you search for the book.”
“On it,” I said. Darius stood up from behind the counter and started flinging around a pair of nunchakus while screaming at the top of his lungs. When he stopped, I saw that the nunchakus were two sharpie markers held together by a chain of paper clips.
This would have been funny, if a man’s sanity hadn’t been stolen from him.
Actually, it was still pretty funny.
I flung magazines around the lobby searching for the book. How would I know when I found it? “Does this one shape-shift too?” I asked Hortensia.
“I don’t think so,” she said, dodging another CD. “If I remember correctly, it’s a small leatherbound book. Size of a typical paperback.”
There was a big bookshelf in the corner. Great. I browsed the spines and there were tons of antique medical books, biology texts and field guide books. How was I going to know what book it was? I tried to do my regular catalogue spell—the one I’d used to find the private detective’s case file when we were at his office. It didn’t work. It felt like a shield went up when I gathered my magical energy and released the spell. The cursed book had blocked my magic.
I closed my eyes and focused on the amulet at my neck. It was a powerful voidmagic artifact. It could sense the cursed book if I was calm and listened.
“Hey, Francie,” Hortensia said. “We got problems.”
She broke my concentration and I was no closer to finding the book. “What?” I said and spun around. Darius had turned around. Strapped to his back was a huge katana sword. He pulled it from the smooth wooden sheath and it caught the fluorescent light, gleaming with bloodlust.
Everything slowed down. He raised the sword and took a huge step towards Hortensia.
All of a sudden, she looked very old and very vulnerable. She was the strongest witch in town—and likely the strongest witch in the world. She could flick her finger in his direction and his brains would liquefy.
But she didn’t do it. She didn’t want to liquefy his brains.
In that slowed down instant, I realized what the problem was. She knew plenty of spells that would kill him. But she couldn’t think of a spell off the top of her head that would simply disarm him. She’d gotten rusty at Saguaro Estates. And now a crazed dentist was bearing down on her with a razor-sharp sword.
“Subvolo!” I said. His sword flew out of his hands and pierced through the ceiling up to the hilt.
I hadn’t even had to strain. It was easier than lifting the stack of the Jibbleson Sisters’ books.
Because I’d had something to help focus my vim. An image on which to magnify the intention of my magic. Hortensia, about to get sliced in two.
Darius looked at his empty hands in shock. Hortensia unleashed a shackling spell that restrained him. When his ravings wouldn’t cease, she put a silence spell on him as well. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” she said. “Find that book and let’s get out of here before his next patient comes in.”
I started tearing the books off the shelf, but not daring to open the covers and accidentally read a few lines and lose my grip on reality.
When my fingers touched the spine of a book called Anatomy Epitomized and Illustrated, a bolt of electricity surged through my bones. This was it.
I tried to remember how I’d opened the portal before. I pointed my wand at a potted plant. Numbness spread from the amulet, first to the base of my neck, then to my chest and arms, to every inch of my body. Like before, the nothingness spread all over until the only thing I could feel was the tip of my wand.
My arms moved, but I couldn’t feel them move. I felt like an insensate doll being positioned by an unseen hand. I pointed my wand at the potted plant. The soil and leaves churned in a whirlpool, growing smaller until they winked out of existence. Inside the pot was nothing at all. Nothing, except for untapped power, raw and elemental. Nothing, except for unspeakable creatures and the abandoned souls of those who’ve dared to wield voidmagic in times past.
I moved my wand, pointing it at the book. It lifted into the air as if it was a feather riding a gentle spring breeze. It hovered above the pot and then I let it go.
The book ceased to exist. It never even was. It had never existed, never occupied space on this Earth.
The dentist stopped struggling against the magical bonds. He looked at Hortensia, then to me. His face went slack and his eyes lost all emotion.
“It’s over,” Hortensia said. She waved her hand, and the dentist moved. He rolled over, then sat up. “What just happened?” he said. He rubbed the back of his head. “Was I asleep? I thought you two were imperial agents of the—” He stopped and looked at the ground. “Frannie? Frankie? Francie? You’re the librarian, right?”
“Francie,” I said. “Yes. It’s okay. There was some weird magic in your office. We cleansed it.”
“Oh,” he said in a weak voice. “Then thank you.” He got slowly to his feet and surveyed the wreckage. “What happened? Where’s the philodendron?”
“It died,” Hortensia said. “We gotta go. Sorry for the mess.”
She hurried me out of the office. I felt bad for Darius. He didn’t know what had happened, only a vague dream recollection of his shinobi fantasy.
“Job well done,” she said and clapped me on the back with her metallic hand.
“Ouch,” I said. “You gouged me.”
“Toughen up,” she said. “A little gouging never hurt anybody.”
“I’m pretty sure many people have been injured by gouging,” I said.
“Not if it’s only a little gouge,” she said. “A little gouge builds character.”
“I hope so,” I said.
We got into my car and I started the engine, but didn’t pull out of the parking space yet.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said. “I need a second. So just now, did I leave a piece of my soul in the void?”
“Hard to say,” she said. “All magic has consequences. You consume vim to cast regular spells. This is no different, except the void is greedier—hungrier. It wants something more. Something that can’t be replenished as easily as your vim.”
“And what’s that?” I ask. “Your soul?”
“The divine spark of humanity,” she said. “That’s the complete opposite of nothingness itself. That’s what it wants.”
“Does the soul regenerate, like your vim does if you eat and sleep enough?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Since I lived so much of my own life without one.”
“Good grief.”
“Hey, you think saving humanity was going to be easy? If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
I put the car in reverse and checked the mirror before backing into the road. “Let’s just hope that—”
But I don’t know what I hoped for, because everything went black.
Chapter 22
My mouth tasted like a fistful of sweaty dimes. I smacked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. I tried to open my eyes, but the lids were just too heavy.
