The costume cycling stopped. Mrs. Shufflewick found herself in a simple gray dress, no era she could identify, and the voice speaking through her was quiet and very old.
They must choose each other openly. Not from duty. Not from prophecy. The artifact confirms what already exists—it cannot create what isn't there.
Her pen scratched the final line and went still.
Mrs. Shufflewick removed the tortoiseshell glasses she didn't own. Set them on her desk beside the regular wire-rimmed pair and stared at the page.
The gray dress faded and her sensible cardigan returned.
She read the channeled passage three times, cross-referenced it against the historical texts she'd pulled from the restricted archives at four a.m., and found the same core principle echoed in sources spanning nine centuries.
Every partnership that had defeated a Collector-type entity shared one characteristic. Not the strongest magic. Not the oldest bloodlines.
Emotional honesty so complete it left no gap for corruption to enter.
She thought of Hazel downstairs, holding her coffee cup like a shield. Of Nate, cataloging his feelings behind those analytical eyes, filing them away where they couldn't hurt anyone.
Eleven days. And already more powerful together than any pairing she'd documented.
If they would only stop being terrified of what they meant to each other.
Mrs. Shufflewick straightened her cardigan, recapped her fountain pen, and began organizing her findings into a format that would survive both magical scrutiny and Hazel's inevitable demand for citations.
8
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
The Codex Mysticus had been humming all morning.
Not the gentle resonance Hazel had grown accustomed to during her daily communion—the steady pulse that confirmed wards intact, knowledge preserved, guardianship holding. This was different. This was the magical equivalent of a smoke detector with a dying battery, and it had been going on since she'd unlocked the restricted archives at six-fifteen.
She pressed her palm against the leather binding. Warm. Warmer than it should be. The golden light beneath the cover pulsed in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat, then diverged, pulling ahead like it was trying to drag her somewhere.
"What are you trying to tell me?"
The Codex fell open.
Not to any page she'd cataloged. Not to any section in her carefully maintained index. The pages were blank—cream-colored and ancient and empty—except for a single symbol burning itself into existence at the center of the spread. Gold ink that smelled of ozone and old libraries and something underneath both of those things that made the hair on her arms stand straight.
A portal glyph.
"Absolutely not."
The glyph pulsed brighter.
"We discussed this." She adjusted her glasses and leaned closer despite herself. "You don't get to open interdimensional doorways without filing the proper containment protocols. I have forms. I created the forms specifically for this scenario."
The glyph completed itself with a sound like a tuning fork struck against crystal, and the air above the Codex split open.
Not dramatically. Not with the explosive chaos of Baba Yaga's arrival or the crackling energy of the lockbox manifestation. The portal opened the way a flower bloomed—petals of light unfurling outward from a single point, each layer revealing deeper colors that had no business existing in the visible spectrum. Lavender that tasted like copper. A green so deep it hummed in her molars.
Through the opening, Hazel saw corridors.
Dozens of them. Hundreds. Branching and folding and reforming like a living blueprint sketched by a drunk architect with no concept of Euclidean geometry. The walls shimmered with text—spells, she realized. Thousands of spells crawling across every surface like luminous insects, rearranging themselves each time she blinked.
"The dimension of lost spells." She breathed the words more than spoke them. "Page four hundred and twelve of Great-grandmother's notes. 'A repository for magical knowledge too dangerous, too broken, or too beautiful to remain in the material world.'"
The Codex's pages riffled to a new section. An illustration appeared—an artifact shaped like a compass rose, rendered in ink that moved. The needle spun, stopped, and pointed directly at Hazel.
