Chapter 19
NINETEEN
The man blinked. “ You what?”
I dropped the dark tone and tried again. “ I’ve come to pray.”
“ Erm …” The hand holding his phone crept up, and I had a strong feeling I was about to become a social media viral sensation as the weird lady who thought the museum was a church.
Ian elbowed me aside gently, took out his debit card, and pinned the young man with one of his trademark intense stares. “ We want to see the secret room.”
The confusion on the young man’s face cleared up to be replaced by a slight pout of disappointment as he lowered his phone. “ Oh , that thing, sure.” He shoved the card reader through the small opening and gave us two tickets after Ian paid. “ It’s right after the wonders-of-nature room. Keypad by the door, you can’t miss it. Code is 6666.”
“ Lovely . Thank you so much,” I gushed with a bright smile before dragging Ian into the narrow dark corridor that marked the start of the exhibitions. “ That was so unfair,” I whispered. “ You’re supposed to use the code to gain entrance. What’s the point of a secret code if it doesn’t work?”
“ Maybe it worked. Maybe they just like to make you work extra for it, show that you really mean it.”
“ Maybe the Cabinet needs to train their employees better.” Natalia and Brimstone would never fail me like this.
“ You could send a complaint,” Ian suggested, amusement in his voice.
“ I’m a good person, not the Wicked Witch of the West .”
We hurried through the dimly lit hallway. This early in the afternoon, we had the place to ourselves. “ That’s the creepy nature room.”
Ian glanced at the insects, brains, eyes, and multi-colored chicken on display, eyebrows slowly rising. “ Impressive .”
I suppressed a gasp. “ Ian ! Is this your first time here?”
He flashed me a grin. “ Maybe .”
“ Close your eyes.” I went on my tiptoes and put my hands over his face. “ Don’t look.”
His hands wrapped gently around my wrists. “ Hope , what are you doing?”
“ This is prime date real estate. You can’t see any of the displays until we come back on a real date. Promise !”
He chuckled, the deep sound turning me into a pile of goo once again. “ I promise.”
“ Okay .” I lowered my hands. “ Remember , don’t look.”
“ I won’t,” he said, amusement in his voice as he tilted his head down and focused on the dark carpet.
“ Good .” I took his hand and led him to the entrance of the room. The keypad was obvious now that I was searching for it, although the outline of the door was easy to miss. “ Here we go.”
I put in the numbers and the door snicked open. Immediately , my heart doubled its beat with excitement. Would we find the key we needed to fix the spell here?
Ian pushed the door open the whole way, and went in. A gentleman would’ve allowed me to go first, but a sexy, handsome bounty hunter checked for any threats before his girlfriend came in.
“ Can I look at this room?” he teased, glancing at me over his shoulders.
I pushed him playfully. “ You sure can because I’m not saying that stupid code line again.”
Another grin, then he concentrated on studying the items on display as I joined him.
The room was square and bigger than expected, especially considering the size of the other exhibitions. It had the same dim lighting coming from recesses in the ceiling as the rest of the place, with spotlights on the items on display. A glass case contained the supposed altar of the dark coven, which was nothing but a setup copied from the usual representations you saw on TV and movies, animal skulls and bloody runes included, and a second case displayed several individual items: a couple of athames, a stone mortar and pestle, different crystals, pouches of herbs, jars full of animal eyes the witches supposedly used in their potions.
Gross . No witch worth their salt would use animal eyes, not even dark witches like Bagley .
“ Hope ,” Ian said from the other side of the room.
I joined him by another display case, this one holding an old thick tome opened in the middle.
The light wasn’t the best, but the tome appeared real enough—hardbound, hand-stitched, the two pages on display written in faded ink with words wrapping around an illustration of a potion-making circle indicating the position for different crystals and herbs.
My excitement grew. Could this be the actual coven spellbook? If it were fake, they’d have gone with more grandeur, like they had with the altar—a giant book, probably a fake skin cover, and drawn the devil on the page.
“ This might be the real thing,” I told Ian .
He was studying the pages closely. “ Can you read what it says? I think it’s French .”
I hovered my phone over the pages, but the translation app was no match for the scrawling handwriting. Closing the app and turning on the flashlight, I inspected the outside of the display case. A thick band of sealant kept the glass box glued to the small pedestal, with the back closed with a small lock. A wire went from a tiny pad applied to the glass to under the book’s black velvet cradle.
Curious , I checked the other displays, but none had similar wiring.
“ I think the case is alarmed,” I said, pointing at the pad and wire. “ That could be proof that it’s the real thing.”
“ It’s proof that it’s something,” he agreed. “ Can you detect any magic?”
“ Good idea.” I set my hands on top of the case and awakened my magic.
Detect .
Power trickled out of me and dispersed on the cool glass surface. No magical kickback whatsoever. I shook my head. “ No recent magic.”
“ If they did magic with the book, then put it back in, would you be able to detect it?”
I shook my head. “ Probably not through the glass. But it seems like a lot of work to return it. If you take the book out to do dark magic, wouldn’t you just keep it?”
“ They might not have wanted to attract notice. If they knew how to take it out once without being noticed, they can take it out again later.”
“ We need to check the book itself.” I inspected the wires again, then sent Ian a hopeful glance. “ Can you deactivate these?”
His answering look was a masterpiece in deadpan. “ I’m a bounty hunter, Hope , not a cat burglar.”
“ We can’t all be perfect, I suppose,” I said with an exaggerated sigh.
“ Gotta leave some room for improvement.”
Straightening , I mulled the problem. “ We need to check the rest of the pages. Maybe there are some in English , or a big highlighted section with the spell that’s messing with Shane and the others.”
“ Post -it arrows pointing at the crucial passages?”
I beamed, undeterred by the dryness in his voice. “ Exactly .” A genius idea popped into my head. “ I know what we need.”
“ Oh ?”
I double finger-gunned him, wink included. “ We need an air mage.”
Thirty minutes, three new adult entry tickets, and one very cranky Dorsey later, we were back in the secret room.
“ I can’t believe he made us pay for our tickets again,” I grumbled. I’d never do that to my customers.
“ I can’t believe you blackmailed me into coming,” snapped Dorsey . “ Aren’t you supposed to be a good witch or whatever?”
“ I didn’t blackmail you, Ms . Dorsey , I made a small suggestion.”
“ You said if I wanted in the Christmas event I had to come.”
“ A good deed a day keeps the bad guys away, Ms . Dorsey .”
She blew a raspberry, which sounded slightly deranged coming from her lips. “ Bah . Keep your one-liners to yourself, Avery . Blackmailing a frail old woman is nothing to be proud of.”
Normally , I’d have agreed, except Dorsey wasn’t frail and she’d probably live well into the hundreds purely fueled by pettiness, so she was probably still in her midlife years. “ I just need your help for the good of the community.”
“ Fine . Is this the book?”
Since we were standing around the display with the spellbook, clearly. But the good manners I’d been raised with came to the fore. “ It is, indeed.”
“ Good . I want five hundred bucks.”
“ What ?”
She crossed her arms, an evil gleam bright in her mean beady eyes. “ You heard me. You want me to help you? Five hundred.”
My jaw fell open. “ You … You …”
“ You seriously think I want to be in your event that badly? Nuh -uh.” She held out her hand and made grabby motions with her wrinkled clawlike fingers. “ Pony up.”
I straightened to my full, unimpressive height, which was still taller than hers. “ Ms . Dorsey , since you’re a longstanding member of the community, I will let this attempt at extortion pass. May I remind you there is a member of the bounty hunter guild present?”
She snorted. “ Cavalier ain’t gonna bother dragging me in. He’s got bigger fish to fry.”
I pointed at Ian . “ He’s right here.”
Ian leaned forward, planting both hands on the pedestal. “ I’m right here, and I don’t mind catching smaller fish from time to time.”
Dorsey tapped her nails on the glass. “ Two hundred.”
This …horrid old crone! “ Free !”
“ Every act of magic deserves compensation. Bill the Council or something.”
I snapped my mouth closed on my retort because when she put it like that, she had a point. “ Free tea and muffins for a week, and…” I dug deep into my well of graciousness, and added, “ And you can join in the Secret Santa .”
Dorsey took her sweet time thinking about it. “ Eh , deal.”
“ Great , now flip the pages.” I heard Grandma’s echo of a tut-tut in my mind, and dug in deep again. “ Please .”
“ That’s better.” Dorsey licked her thin, wrinkled lips and rubbed her claws. “ Let’s make this darlin’ dance.”
She put both hands on the glass, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. Any moment now she was going to start channeling a spirit.
“ It’s not a seance, Ms . Dorsey .”
She shushed me. “ Let the expert work, little girl.”
“ Okay , grandma.”
A shudder racked her curved frame, and she sent me a mean look. I arched an eyebrow in a what? motion, which only intensified her glare.
“ We should move this along,” Ian said, clearly amused.
We both scowled at him then concentrated back on the book. The pages moved in a flurry, smashed against the top glass, and got stuck bent at an odd angle.
Dorsey cursed, narrowing her eyes. The pages moved again, and a few turned the whole way. Another flurry followed, and then we were left staring at the blank end page of the book.
“ Delicacy isn’t your forte, huh?” I asked. I know, I know, dire situation, being nice and all that, but one had to find the spots of joy in the dark moments inside a museum with an archenemy.
She huffed. “ I would like to see you try.”
Since she made an excellent point, I decided to fall back onto my better manners. “ You’re right, I’m sorry.”
Mollified , Dorsey’s face scrunched again as she called on her magic. The pages moved slowly this time, but there was obviously no way to flip them one by one easily. As the pages rushed over, I caught more illustrations of plants and circles, more French , maybe some German ? A bit of English .
Dorsey blinked and her hands on the glass began to tremble. She wasn’t a powerful mage, and I felt suddenly guilty for putting all this pressure on her, evil crone or not.
“ Let’s check the beginning of the book,” I said. That was where witchy families usually wrote down the family tree.
Dorsey didn’t bother to answer as the pages flew in clumps until we were left staring at the first one. No family tree. Instead , a list of eight family names.