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“Funny, Paige. Really humorous. You seemed a lot heavier when I was dragging you to the nest, okay?”
Paige stuck her tongue out at him.
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Now, what else could be the reason? Let’s see.”
He scanned the other causes, his claw tracing the page. “Okay, general remedies fail in instances of varcolacs, golems, hobgoblins, certain types of vampires, and striped pixies. Hmm.”
Paige squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head, the room beginning to spin from the list of creatures that might have marked her.
“Okay,” Dewey continued from across the room, “now we’ll cross-reference these with your description and see if we can match this to a specific beast.”
“I’d offer to help, but I’m really starting to feel odd.”
“Odd? Odd how?” Dewey questioned, grabbing his notepad and pen.
“The room is spinning, and I’m feeling a little nauseous.”
Dewey wrinkled his nose and set the paper aside. “That’s just you coming down off your high. Do you have any additional pain in your wound?”
“No, nothing there, thankfully.”
“Good. It should have only been a reaction to the salve. Otherwise, your pain should go back down to the level it was before we treated it.”
“Thank heavens,” Paige said as she pressed her hands against her eyes and leaned back in the chair. After a moment, she snapped her hands away and stared wide-eyed at Dewey. “Wait, will that happen again once we try a new remedy?”
The horns on Dewey’s nose wobbled. “Yes, but it shouldn’t be as painful. I think the excruciating pain of this one came from it being a bad reaction and not working.”
“Just my luck that I get marked by a beast not covered by the general remedy.” Paige glanced around her. She dragged the book she’d been studying before the hubbub onto her lap.
Dewey twirled his pen around in his fingers as he flipped around in various books. He flicked her a glance. “You can go lie down. I’ll keep working.”
Paige shook her head as she flopped her notebook down onto the open book. “No. I’m going to do something. Otherwise, I’ll just lie in there feeling crappy. The least I can do is continue researching this mirror. We don’t want it falling into the hands of the werewolves thanks to my injury.”
“You are definitely having an eventful first week on the job, Paige,” Dewey said with a chuckle.
“The way my luck runs, I would expect nothing less.”
Dewey tugged another book closer to him and paged around in it. “You keep mentioning that. Care to explain?”
“Nothing to explain, really. I’m just unlucky.”
Dewey drew a large X across his paper and tossed a book away. “How so?”
Paige thumbed through her book to the page noted in the index and shrugged. “I’m clumsy. If something bad can happen, it usually does. Like on my way to my interview for this job, a bus splashed a mud puddle onto me and ruined my blouse. And then while trying to clean it, my charm bracelet got caught in my pantyhose and snagged them. And then after I got the job, I fell down the stairs outside.”
Dewey wrinkled his nose and pulled his lips into a wince. “Wow. You really are a klutz.”
“Story of my life. Which is why I’m a little concerned about using a magical item that allows me to go in and out of walls. Somehow, I’ll end up stuck. I know it.”
“It should be fairly easy, so let’s hope not.”
Paige pursed her lips as she returned her gaze to the book in her lap. She scanned the page, trying to make sense of the words. After a moment, she scrubbed her face with her hands. “I’m confused.”
“About?”
“How can we find the location of this stupid mirror? We can make a list of where it’s been, but how does that help us?”
Dewey stuck a finger in the air. “First, it tells us locations it’s been and where it was last seen. We can then cross-reference it with any information we have on the werewolf contingent looking to acquire it. That should give us a clue as to where to start looking.”
