I opened the garage door and she sashayed inside, her tail swishing behind her. I waited until the garage door shut, then looked in the squad car’s windows, popped the trunk, and checked in there too.
I was one hundred percent unicorn free.
Finally.
I swung back into the driver’s seat and fastened my seatbelt. “You mind coming with me on an errand?”
“Will there be tea?”
I smiled. “My own private stash.”
“Well, then. Do lead on.”
~~~
The library was built on top of a hill on the eastern side of the main highway. It was squarely in Ordinary, but so out of the way, no one ever wandered up there.
The fact that it looked like an outbuilding or pump house helped keep the curious visitors to a minimum. Also, the powerful spells and guarding charms built into it and around it usually did the trick.
The clouds overhead raced and pushed, roiling in swirls of crisp white, slate gray, and charcoal. Hearty coastal pines threw mossy shadows over the road that unstrung like a child’s scribbled line.
When I was younger, this drive with my dad always felt like trekking down some kind of mystical fairy highway, a road that would lead me to magic and trickery and dreams come true.
Death in the passenger seat was a comforting stillness. I felt like I’d been surrounded by a raging fire, and he was a cool cloak, an umbrella against the scorch of the world.
“You know Xtelle isn’t what she appears to be?”
“I know,” I said. “She says she has nothing to do with the Hell vortex, but she was there when it opened. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Plus, she has a history with Bathin.”
He made a small “mmm” sound.
The little structure came into view and Than leaned his long body forward, tipping his pale, pale face up into the wavering gray sunlight. “The library.”
“The library,” I agreed.
Itdidlook more like a pump house than a library: four neat cedar shingle walls, a thin door, and a sharply peaked roof.
“I assume it is larger on the inside?”
“Well, it is magic.” I parked the car and killed the engine.
“I don’t usually bring people here. So…well, I just thought you should know that.”
He sat back and unbuckled his seatbelt. “You have stoked my curiosity, Myra Reed. I shall be the soul of discretion.”
We crunched over the gravel, and a crow called out from somewhere up in the tall pines. The air smelled cool and damp and green, earth with a tang of salt, wind whispering as it combed tough green needles as if the entire world was breathing, breathing.
I stopped at the curve of mossy stones ringing the little structure. Third stone to the left of the door wasn’t anything special. It was about knee high, a common brown-gray rock found everywhere on the Oregon coast. I touched the top of it with my right palm, then whispered three secret words.
Than stood outside the stones, right in front of what would soon be the entrance to the place. I could feel his gaze on my back, and it was not unkind.
I walked backward, careful that my footsteps were even and fell exactly into my previous steps. When I was next to Than, I said, “Myra Reed.”
There was the slightest sound of distant chimes, the scent of sweet honeysuckle, and the spells that kept the library hidden and safe released.
The little pump house stretched up and outward, fanning open like a book whose pages were flipped by a giant’s thumb. It didn’t build itself shingle by shingle, window by window, arch by arch, it simply wavered at the edges, out of focus, blurred. And then, from the center outward, it became sharp, clear,real.
“That is a very old spell, Myra Reed.”
