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“I told you to drink an Energy Dragon, but you didn’t listen.”

“Whatever,” Paige murmured. “Did you get the directions?”

“Yes,” Dewey said, waving the pink paper in the air as she zipped closed the last corner. “This time we can’t lose.”

Paige grunted a response to the statement as she lugged the carrier and her tote bag up the metal steps and back through the library to the car outside. With a tired sigh, she clicked on her seat belt and fired the engine.

“Which way?”

Dewey slid the zipper open and shoved the pink paper out the hole at her before popping out and climbing onto the seat.

Paige snatched it, her lips pressed together in an annoyed grimace. “Dewey, this is just the address.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I have no idea how to get here!”

“I can’t do everything, Paige.”

With a huff, Paige kicked her door open. “Wait here. I’ve got to get my phone charger. I left it in your nest.”

She returned to the car with another tired sigh and dug in her tote bag for her phone, then she plugged it into the dash and powered it up. After typing in the address, she waited for the guidance to begin and pulled out onto the main road.

“Let’s hope this time goes better than the last,” she murmured as the library slipped from her view.

Outside of the navigation’s robotic voice, silence filled the car as Paige followed the directions.

“You’re not going to fall asleep, are you?” Dewey asked after a moment.

“No, I’m okay,” Paige said. “I’ll sleep on the plane like you said.”

“You did have that nap in the dungeon, too.”

Paige shot him an annoyed glance. “It wasn’t a nap. And, hey, can we take a minute to talk about how that werewolf didn’t attack us for some reason and ran away instead? What happened there?”

“Maybe he forgot he’d left something in the oven,” Dewey said.

Despite her weariness, Paige grinned at the ridiculous statement, a small chuckle escaping her lips. “Yeah, I’ll bet that was it. His werewolf cake was probably burning.”

“With that schnoz, he probably smelled it from a mile away after he shifted.”

Paige giggled again.

Dewey waved a paw in the air. “Seriously, though, I have no idea. He was racing toward us, and as soon as you cringed, he stopped dead and stared at you for a second before he tucked tail and ran. Literally.”

As they left the city limits behind, Paige clapped her hand onto the top of the steering wheel and settled back into the seat. “Maybe he hated my perfume.”

The morning sun rose higher in the sky, its red light glinting off the car’s hood. Her eyes settled on the bright silver around her wrist, twinkling in rays of light streaming through the broken windshield.

She bit her lower lip as a thought struck her. “Do you think it had to do with my bracelet?”

“He was afraid of your bracelet?”

“It is silver,” Paige said.

“Yeah, I’m not certain it’s the mere sight of silver that’ll stop a werewolf attack. It’s more like a silver bullet through his heart, and even then, they’ve been known to fight until the silver poisons them completely.”

“Hmm,” Paige murmured as she stared down at the charms for another moment.