Calisa winced as she remembered his dad. He’d left for supplies and hadn’t come back. Could Auntie Zee have been trapped behind a malfunctioning door?She couldn’t. Not possible.“Auntie Zee controls the portals. You told me that yourself. Shecan’tbe trapped behind one. She’s just been delayed.” There were a zillion other explanations that were much more likely, such as she’d decided to spend the night visiting with magical beings.
He nodded, and she saw a shred of relief in his eyes. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s not possible. She’s not lost; she’s just late. She’s been late before. Every so often, she does this. Vanishes for a while.”
“Why?” Calisa asked. “Does she say what she does or where she goes?”
“Auntie Zee isn’t big on explaining,” Jack said. “You may have noticed.”
“Someone should tell her it’s not okay.”
“Yeah, that won’t be me. Until then…we just do what we were going to do today, and try to keep everything running okay until she gets back.” He added, “And we keep it from the guests.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Lie to them?”
“If they know she isn’t here and that we have no idea when she’s coming back, they’ll leave,” Jack pointed out. “You saw how they were last night—they like things the way they like them. So, we have to pretend we know what we’re doing, and that it’s supposed to be this way.”
“Fake it until we make it. A time-honored tradition for people who are completely in over their heads and know it.” She and Jack had gotten through last night. Even the potpie hadn’t turned out terrible. They could keep the inn running until Auntie Zee returned, couldn’t they?
Jack nodded. “How about we tell them she had to go farther afield for supplies this time, and she’ll be back in a day. Two days?”
“A week?” Calisa suggested. There was so much worry in his eyes that she added quickly, “She’ll be back sooner than that. This is just what we tell the guests.”
He looked relieved.
“Okay, I guess since we can’t garden today, I’m going to clean the library?” There was no point in just waiting for Auntie Zee, and it was next on Calisa’s list of rooms to improve.
Jack scraped his half-eaten pancake into the compost bin and washed his plate. “She’ll be back soon.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince both Calisa and himself.
She tried to think of what to say, but there wasn’t anything to say that would make it better.Someone really needs to tell Auntie Zee she can’t just vanish.She’d be happy to be the one to do it, if she had any idea where her great-aunt had gone.IfI could go bring her back right now, I would.But Calisa didn’t know how or even where to begin. She did, however, know how to clean a bunch of bookshelves.
After the breakfast dishes were washed, Calisa claimed several dustrags, a broom and dustbin, and a cleaning spray that smelled like lavender. She carried them through the lobby to the library and deposited them on the window seat.
Out the window, on the porch, Steve was pressed against the glass. He looked in at her with wide, sad eyes. Apparently, he didn’t like the rain.
“Don’t drip on the books,” she told him as she opened the window.
Steve waddled inside, hopped down to the window seat, and circled like a cat before settling on a pillow. He let out a happy chirp as he folded his wings on his back, wrapped his tail tight around his body, and closed his eyes. He was snoring in seconds. Leaving him on the pillow, Calisa began to clean the library around him.
As she worked, she chewed on a question: If Auntie Zee didn’t return on her own soon…couldthey find her and insist she come home? Calisa had dismissed that as an impossibility, but what if it wasn’t?
The most immediate roadblock to that was how to figure out where she’d gone. It was clear Jack didn’t know, and she doubted any of the guests did either. As Jack had said, Auntie Zee wasn’t big on sharing information.
Calisa stepped onto the bookcase ladder to dust the higher shelves, and the ladder zipped down the bookcase. She let outa yelp and hung on. It halted, and she caught her breath.That was unexpect—
It flew back to where she’d begun.
“Whoa! Slow down!”
Steve lifted his head and hissed.
“It’s fine,” Calisa told the lizard. “I was just surprised.” A moving library ladder. She took a second to absorb this, then said, “Everything’s fine.”
The ladder wobbled as if apologizing, and then it hopped inch by inch to the left.
“You don’t have to move,” Calisa told it. “Just let me dust these shelves, okay?”
It halted.
Reaching, she dusted the top two shelves. “A little to the left?”
