Dan did the same, vaguely aware of people walking up behind him as he did so. When he opened his eyes a moment or three later, he intended to look over his shoulder, but he couldn’t look away from the sight behind the wall.
There, in front of them, the wall had vanished. Behind that recentlyvanished wall was an enormous room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, complete with rolling ladders, lined the room. Circular shelves jutted out like ribs. There were tables with cushy seats. Other tables seemed designed for tabletop gaming, others for drawing, and a few for puzzles. Then in the back were upright easels and desks that appeared to have a translucent bubble over them.
Three separate examples of Ramelli’s sixteenth-century bookwheels sat at other spots. The first looked very much like a cherrywood Ferris wheel wherein instead of carts for people there were trays for books—complete with wooden place holders. The other two reminded Dan of old-fashioned spinning wheels with less ornate book trays.
“There’s a library?” a voice asked from behind them.
Ana stood there with three other people: Maggie, Karl, and a student Dan didn’t remember. They filtered around him into the vast, empty room. As they walked in, it almost felt as if the room stretched, being somehow larger on the inside.
“How did you find this?” Karl asked, one hand moving the spindled Ramelli’s wheel slowly.
Dan shrugged. “We’ve been exploring.”
Maggie just scowled at him. Then she gestured her fingers from her eyes to him in a very obvious “I’m watching you” way.
Once they passed him, Axell whispered, “No privacy anywhere here either.”
Dan decided that maybe the best plan was to go elsewhere and leave these three in the library, but then he saw one of the bubbles around a desk glimmering like a beacon. “Come on.”
Axell kept pace with him until they reached the bubble. “Door?”
Inside, Dan could see a book on the desk that was open to a page called “Earth Magic.” The article was on plowing the ground, and the image etched there looked a lot like the hole around the snake.
“Do you see that?”
“Gardening?” Axell asked. “Is this really the time to—?”
“Look.” Dan pointed. “That’s like the ground where the snakes were.”
He didn’t have any better answers than he’d had before the library had appeared, but now he had new questions. If the snake appeared because someone had supersized their garden furrows, he wasn’t entirely sure that thesnakewas the real issue after all.
“Someone made that hole the snake came out of,” Dan said.
“Did it come out of the earth or is it guarding the hole? Or keeping people away?” Axell asked.
Clancy appeared and gave a single nod. Then the hob was gone again. If that book was on doing farming magic, was the villain actually a gardening witch, not the snake itself? And why was someone experimenting with the venom?
And was staying in Crenshaw the best answer? Will I die soon here, too? Just in another way than cancer?
32Ellie
Ellie woke to a knocking noise. For a flicker of a moment, she thought it was Hestia needing her, but then she focused her eyes and saw her room—prison cell—in Crenshaw. Even after everything, she was still here. She’d hoped Prospero would argue that she could leave here, or rescue her, but instead she was still in the castle.
Maybe I will have to rescue myself.
Maybe I’ll have to rescue the whole town.
As Ellie yanked open the door, she did find a woman there waiting, but she wasn’t the woman Ellie was hoping to see.
“Maggie.” The woman held out her hand. “I’m a lawyer from North Carolina. Andyou’rethe witch who tried to kill me yesterday.”
“Not on purpose!” Ellie stared at her with a sort of stunned feeling. That was going to rank high on the weirdest greetings ever for her.
“Ellie, right?” Maggie made a sweeping gesture toward the room and the hallway. “Talk here or in the courtyard? Where do you think they are less likely to be listening?”
“Do you suppose the rooms are bugged?” Ellie asked, scanning theceiling as if there would be an actual item physically identifiable as a bug. “Magic ears or cameras?”
Maggie flipped both middle fingers up and lifted her arms toward the ceiling. As she turned in a slow circle, she said, “If so, I hope you all enjoyed the show.” Her shoulders slumped a little as she lowered her arm and looked at Ellie. “I was in my room yelling at the headmaster for days… until one of the others broke us out of the castle. Dan—the bookish guy who smiles a lot.”
