Page 54 of Impractical Magic

Aphra shook her head and laughed. “I’m going to need you to stop saying I’m sorry about every damn thing, Scar.”

“No, you’ll like this one. You’re a good friend, and I’m sorry I’ve stayed away so long.”

“Aha . . .” she said with a warm smile. “Now that apology, I will accept.”

Chapter 20: Nevermore

It was getting late, and the well-behaved witches of Oak Haven had all gone home. Scarlett, on the other hand, ambled along the lonely streets toward the park. She studied the sigils carved into the streets, crosswalks, and doorways as she went. She lacked her sister Del’s instincts about whether the sigils were functioning properly or not. But it worried her.

Nothing else in this town is functioning properly, she thought. What happens if these sigils lose their tiny minds, too? How long until some developer replaces our grove with a shopping mall? Aphra had projected such confidence that Oak Haven would never go the way of Jacksonville. It was a feeling Scarlett sorely wished she could share.

The CLOSED sign was posted at the bookstore, but there were dim lights on in the shop. Scarlett glanced across the street at Williams Hardware, which was likewise closed but had lights on anyway. She wondered whether Polly was visiting Nate’s shop or he hers.

How sweet. Two small-town shopkeepers, situated right across the road from each other. Maybe they used to be rivals and are now falling in love. That’s how it works in movies, right?

Feeling annoyed—partially at them but mostly at herself for caring so much—Scarlett gave a brisk knock on the bookstore’s door.

The door swung open.

“Hello?” Scarlett stepped gingerly over the threshold. “Anybody home?”

No response arrived. The store was dimly lit and deathly silent.

She made her way past the construction area by the entrance—the piles of lumber and bags of unmixed concrete, the table saw awaiting its next victim. There were abandoned coffee cups and scattered sawdust on the floor. Scarlett could see that all the old sigils had been removed, but most had yet to be replaced by anything new. Whatever Polly was hoping to accomplish in terms of keeping magic out of the store, she hadn’t done it yet.

“Anybody here?” she called again. “It’s Scarlett! I’m just looking for a book—Aphra suggested you might have it. The Myrmex Arcana? So, I’m just going to look around if that’s . . .” She sighed and stopped yelling. “Stop talking to yourself, Scar.”

The shelves along the front of the store were all covered with tarps, which made it tricky to figure out which books were kept where. Then it occurred to Scarlett that well-loved books and best-sellers tended to populate the front: a reference book about magical insects would probably be shelved somewhere at the back. She made her way through the store, her eyes darting left and right in search of a reference section.

In the labyrinth of shelves, Scarlett scarcely noticed the shadows deepening, the air taking on a strange, briny smell. A loud noise startled her—it came from somewhere in Classics of Literature. She turned a corner to find a heavy hardback had somehow landed on the floor as if it had jumped off the shelf on its own. She approached it slowly—feeling a bit sheepish for fearing a book. It was a thick, leatherbound copy of the Greatest Works of Jules Verne. The book flipped itself open, pages turning on their own.

A massive, papery form unfurled from the open book—a giant squid formed from Jules Verne’s own printed words, its monstrous eye fixed squarely on her. Scarlett screamed as a tentacle, impossibly long and assembled from the book’s pages, whipped out and coiled around her waist.

She gasped, the weight of the enchanted paper crushing her. The squid, its beak snapping menacingly, dragged her back toward the book.

Scarlett grabbed the side of a shelf and hung on tight, trying to keep calm and focus her powers, willing the tentacle to loosen its grip. The monstrous limb twitched, and the paper relaxed momentarily but then clamped down with renewed pressure. Tiny printed letters dug into her skin.

That’s ink, she thought angrily. Ink is not supposed to be sharp!

Which gave her an idea.

She focused her power on the ink, turning it liquid and slippery. She began wriggling, hoping to free herself, when two more tentacles joined the first. The more Scarlett struggled, the more entangled she became.

“I will not die at the hands of an old book,” she cried out. “Let me go, you overwritten pile of—”

Paper, she thought. This is just enchanted paper.

Scarlett snapped, and a spark leapt from her fingertips. Success! Tiny crackles of flame danced along the tentacle, singeing the edges of the pages. The squid recoiled, allowing her to scramble free.

“Ha!” she pointed at the squid. “Haaaaaa ha ha!”

Her pride was short-lived. An errant spark had landed on a nearby shelf, and now flames licked at old, dry book bindings. The fire spread with alarming speed, filling the air with choking smoke.

You can be careless with fire sometimes, Luna had said.

Goddammit.

A fresh tentacle snapped from the book, coiling around Scarlett’s feet. She leapt away, grabbing for as high a shelf as she could reach and pulling downward. A pile of books crashed atop the tentacle, and the squid gave a high-pitched squeal.