Page 23 of The Folklore of Forever (Moonville #2)

Twenty-Three

Fill a small brass cauldron with salt on the new moon to absorb negative influences and bury that salt under a full moon.

Spells, Charms, and Rituals, Tempest Family Grimoire

“What do you think Morgan’s doing?” I ask uncertainly a few minutes later.

“The bad possibilities are limitless,” Trevor replies. “He told me he used to eat Play-Doh as a child. We don’t know what Play-Doh does to cognitive function, man.”

When the siren wails again, a memory spins.

My neighbor growing up, Hank, said there’s a strange kind of goat around here that comes out only when it senses tornadoes.

Fear ignites in my chest like I’ve stuck my finger in an electrical socket. “That idiot.” I’m up and running before I can think. “That colossal idiot.”

My limbs are rubber, fright surging. White spots pulse in my vision. I don’t feel the floor beneath me, I’m flying so fast.

“Morgan!” I shriek, rounding the landing of the ramp. “ Morgan ! Oh curses, he’s going to go looking for a goat and end up killed by the tornado.” I throw open the front door and dash into the street.

It’s empty.

Above, the skies whistle, hot wind battering Vallis Boulevard. Wind chimes, trash, and lawn ornaments barrel through midair. He’s going to get struck by a flying mailbox. Tornadoes can turn flowerpots into weapons.

“Misery, curses, bother, blast.” I wipe my sweaty palms on the seat of my pants. “Morgan! Where are you?”

The wind rips half a Zelda! toward me. I turn, unsure of which direction it came from. I can’t see for all the hair streaming in my face.

“Morgan!” I bellow once more, gripped by a terrible fear that he might be hurt, he might—

“Get back inside!” I hear him yell. “What are you doing?”

My shoulders sag. I clasp a hand to my thundering heart.

“What are you doing? I can’t see you!”

“Courtyard.”

I race into the shop, through Candleland, the Garden. Throw open the porch’s screen door. “Do you have a death wish?”

Morgan is kneeling on the brick pavers, soaked from head to heel. He’s trying to herd Romina’s pet chickens into the cage she uses for transporting them to the vet. I recognize the four he’s managed to coax inside, but Miss Fig, the stubbornest of the bunch, is shooting out of grasp with dignified squawks. I realize that what’s preventing him from getting a good grab of her is that he’s only got the use of one hand—his other is pressed to his stomach to protect a rectangular shape stuffed beneath his shirt.

It’s my laptop. I’d completely forgotten that I left it on the picnic table.

I seize Miss Fig, who cusses me out for teaming up with Morgan, and shove her in the cage.

“You shouldn’t be out here.” Morgan’s hair is an onyx river, shirt plastered to skin. The speckles of rain on his glasses trigger a minor breakdown; the emotion coursing fast and inescapable through my system is a strangely wonderful suffering. He saved my laptop. I want to grab his face in my hands. I want to do unspeakable things to his mouth. I want, inexplicably.

But I do not touch him, because he is the worst, and also because right above us a gray funnel is beginning to descend, its swirling tip tasting the air carefully like it’s feeling us out. The chickens are a flurry of wings, jumping over each other. It’s all we can do to keep the cage from flying away.

Flowers in Romina’s garden rip up by the root, obliterated as they ascend into the funnel, the tail of which changes color .

The budding cyclone turns green. Bright, electric green.

Morgan, whose gaze has been fastened on my face, looks up just after the green tail is sucked backward into the sky. It implodes with a deafening clap .

The storm dies at once.

—

“You thought I was going to die. And you were worried .”

I scowl at Morgan.

“You were.” His smile is sunlight sneaking between clouds. “I wish the tornado had picked me up. Not much—just a couple inches. You’d be so grateful I survived that you’d hug me, I bet.”

“I don’t do hugs.”

“Zelda, stop begging me to go out with you. I’m simply too busy right now, but try again in a week and I’ll see what I can do.”

I keep walking. It’s been a few days since the tornado, which my sisters decided was vanquished by the magic in Romina’s garden. I think they expected me to argue this theory, but I’ve googled “green tornadoes” exhaustively and haven’t found anything close to explaining what I saw.

“Slow up,” Morgan entreats. “Why you gotta walk so fast?”

I’m a bloodhound on Bear Run today, armed with my notebook and a backpack containing my lunch. Sweat and mosquito repellent slick my skin. These Betsey Johnson bedazzled skull hiking boots are finally justifying their expensive presence in my collection.

“You check that way,” I tell him, gesturing to an alley.

“You trying to get rid of me?”

It’s a joke, and he smiles as he cheerfully strolls off, but Morgan isn’t wrong: I can’t focus when he’s hanging around.

Once I’m alone, I let my mind relax. I have to loosen my body, imagining that I’m a leaf carried on the breeze, no thoughts in my head. I bet it isn’t like this for Romina and Luna, who flex their magical muscles so often that they probably don’t even have to concentrate on their magic, don’t have to summon it and wait for a response. Their magic is always drawing power, even at rest; the difference between leaving your microwave plugged in so that you can press a button and it instantly starts working, and keeping your microwave stored in a box in the garage between uses. My machinery’s cold and rusty.

Come on, magic, show me which way to go.

To my delight, the answer is instant. My intuition zips upright, shoulders straight. There , it urges, leading me to the right-hand side of the road. I take off, so enthusiastic that I almost cut off a passing car. This is a tiny neighborhood of new-build Craftsman houses in creams and olives, identical down to the sycamore tree and swing set in each yard. That way , the magic taps as I pass an alley, and I double back. I am an explorer. I am going to detect hidden species, something new, something nobody else—

I crash into Morgan.

“Ow.” He stumbles back, wincing. “Did you miss me that much? I’ve only been gone for a minute.”

“Why are you hiding behind a bush?”

He scratches his jaw, embarrassed. “A lady was watching out her window. She looked suspicious of me.”

“Crouching in her blackberries won’t help.”

“It’s creepier when I’m solo! Women don’t wanna see some guy sneaking around their driveway. Having you with me sets them at ease. It’s less like ‘Oh, this guy is probably a murderer’ and more like ‘Hey, look at those two weirdos, I hope they don’t smudge my lawn.’?”

I stop short. “I’ve never thought about that.”

He half-heartedly grumbles. “That’s your privilege. Women never have to worry about these things, they’re able to move freely through society without concern.”

I playfully tug a lock of his hair, and his mouth trips into a surprised half smile.

“I think it must be close,” I tell him. “Blegh, I wish I’d kept track of which house it was. They all look the same. Wait! Right there! Twenty-seven. I remember that hummingbird feeder.”

Morgan follows my line of sight. “I don’t see a cat.”

We attempt to hide behind a telephone pole as we scope out 27 Bear Run, my backpack shoving into Morgan. It’s pushing a hundred degrees out here and having heaps of hair never helps; I can’t pile it up into a bun or I get a headache, so I’m left with a braid that’s frizzing so bad, you wouldn’t be able to tell it isn’t a ponytail.

Yesterday, while driving this way to get to the library, I saw an animal that resembled Snapdragon. True, I was preoccupied (focusing on the road and all that) and managed only a brief glimpse before it slunk beneath a gap in a fence. I thought about nothing else all night and decided to come have another look today, staking out for as long as necessary. I wasn’t going to tell Morgan, because I was worried he’d scare off any paranimals, but he smelled the bacon sandwich in my backpack and followed me anyway.

“This feels very FBI,” Morgan whispers. “We need code names.”

“What for?”

“In case we’re interrogated.”

“By who? And precisely how would code names help in that situation?”

He ignores this. “Call me Hot Drama.”

“I…why?” I stare at him. “I am not calling you that.”

“What, who, why?” he parrots. “Have you ever considered the life of an ace reporter? It involves a lot of eavesdropping and pseudonyms. I will make you my protégé.” He then tells me that if he can’t have Hot Drama, then he wants to be Thunder Fox.

There are so many reasons why, in every online quiz in which I have to choose a superpower, I pick invisibility. If I were invisible, I could walk quietly away right now and he’d keep prattling to himself. “How about Asparagus as a code name?” I suggest instead.

Morgan is affronted. “That is the least sexy vegetable, after onions.” He ticks off vegetables on his fingers. “After asparagus, it goes: chard, spinach, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and peas.” Before I can ask, he explains, “Talented local writer Mariah Abernathy printed a column about it.”

“Stop bouncing around. You’ll draw attention and we’ll get the neighborhood watch after us.”

“Zelda.” He tilts his head, a pitying smile playing at his lips. “Asking me to stop drawing attention is like asking galaktoboureko to stop being tasty. I draw attention everywhere I go. There is nothing I can do to help it.”

I turn back to the house with a long-suffering exhale. “I miss who I was before this conversation.”

“In case you were wondering,” he murmurs in my ear, sidling closer, “the sexiest vegetable is celery.”

I refuse to be sidetracked. I keep my attention glued to the house, scanning for signs of a furry animal with paddled paws and big golden eyes. I am wholly unaware of Morgan’s warm breath and the peppery zing of skin contact where my shoulder touches his arm. I do not think about celery at all. I do not begin to imagine why this man thinks celery is a sensuous vegetable.

My nose twitches, and at last I give in. “Not eggplant?”

Morgan censures me with a look. “Don’t be crass, Zelda.”

“All right, I don’t think anybody’s home, so I’m going over there. You stay here and be the lookout.” I do another visual sweep before scurrying across the road.

“Wait! Why can’t I come? What am I looking out for?”

I hurry off, scrambling from tree to tree for cover, hyperaware of how silly I must look to the casual observer. At least I am not the silliest person here. Morgan is circling his hands around his eyes as if they’re binoculars and this pose will somehow enhance his vision.

I am an explorer once again, neck-deep in a top secret mission to uncover wonders of the universe. As I sneak around brambles to the front porch, I see myself from the aerial view of a National Geographic helicopter filming my travels. Any moment now, a majestic beast is going to appear.

The paranimologist sits as still as possible , I inwardly narrate in David Attenborough’s voice, so as not to alarm any approaching gingersnappuses. She will wait for as long as it takes, unless the residents of 27 come outside and ask her to leave.

I hear a loud, scratchy whisper from across the street. “Papaya!”

Without turning to look, I wave Morgan off. Shhh! Not now!

Still no sign of the notoriously elusive paranimal , Attenborough continues. There’s only a flowerpot containing a shriveled brown plant, muddy flip-flops, and a rolled-up newspaper on the porch.

“Papaya!”

Morgan runs across the road at a crouch, joining me.

I desperately need a stress ball to squeeze. “You’re supposed to be looking out! Why d’you keep cawing ‘papaya’ at me?”

“It’s your code name.”

“I don’t have a code name!” I am going to attack him. “And papayas better not mean something dodgy to Mariah Abernathy.”

He cranks his head back to study the sky, a paragon of innocence. “So, have you found anything?”

“Hard to find anything when you don’t give me a second’s peace.” I unscrew the cap of my water bottle and take a long drink. Morgan eyes my mouth thirstily. “Why were you calling for me?”

“I was testing out your code name to see if you’d respond to it.”

I drag my nails over my face. “A curse on my ancestors.”

“Cat!” Morgan springs to his full height, pointing to a small square garden. “It’s a cat!”

A big puffy gray one with a squashed face. “Not a paranimal.” I shake my head. “And the one I saw was ginger, remember? A lot like Snapdragon, but lighter in color.”

“Oh, right.” He prods absently at the newspaper. Then frowns. Repositions it to different angles. “Is this written in another language?”

I lean closer to him. At first blush, the print facing up definitely looks like ordinary English words in an ordinary newspaper. But when I try to read the words, none of them make individual sense. Headline: Tudey’s Niws iv Samothung Samothung . My index finger traces the accompanying logo of a faint orange-and-black swirl. There are black-and-white photographs of rodents, with nonsensical captions. Advertisements that say Sail! Buoy samothung ge tew samothungus .

“Looks like gibberish.”

“I don’t recognize anything about this newspaper. And believe me, I know my local competition.” He picks it up, testing the weight in his hand. “Do you—” We both yelp as a blur of orange materializes between us, and a claw sinks into my shoulder.

The newspaper is running away.

The newspaper has turned into a gingersnappus , and is running away.

“Oh my god!” Morgan yells at me.

“Oh my god!” I yell at him.

“What do you people want?” the owner of 27 Bear Run yells through their screen door. “Get off my porch.”

We flee.

“Another ginger cat that has a secret gingersnappus form, that transforms into an object and then back into a gingersnappus again at will!” I cry. “There is a definite pattern: first Snapdragon, and now this one. We can safely deduce that the Black Bear Witch likes to enchant ginger cats.”

Morgan grasps my arm. “Imagine a gingersnappus that turns into a diamond necklace. Or a hat. Or a dandelion. But what if someone accidentally stepped on it? Maybe they’re not even really alive when they’re in object form, or they’re in some kind of stasis. Hey, I know! Let’s break into the animal shelter! We’ll poke any ginger cats to see if they shape-shift.”

“Breaking into an animal shelter should maybe not be plan A,” I interrupt, patting his back to calm him down. “Let’s use our heads here. Pause to document what we know so far.”

I pull him off the sidewalk and into the Holly Jolly Trolley, which has been sitting beside the post office for so long that its wheels have sunk down into the dirt. Moonvillians use the trolley as if it’s a town square gazebo, and it’s always got crumbs from dog biscuits on the floor.

I leaf through my notepad and bite the cap off my pen. He unlatches his briefcase. Whips out a sheet of paper. Gingersnappuses , he jots down, crossing out Gingersnappi as plural terminology? I trace three capital letters stamped into the leather of his briefcase. “ LPI. What’s that stand for?”

“Library of Paranimal Information.”

My heart flutters.

“I’ve tried to digitally archive my notes,” he continues, unaware of what his organizational methods as well as “archive” in his silky voice has done to me, “but the files keep getting corrupted for some reason. The only notes that don’t get ruined are longhand.”

I read a few lines at random:

Huggle: squi;rrel paranimal. Small, furry, three pupils in each eye, shaped like rings, fun!ctions they serve unknown. (Affects how huggle perceives colors, shadow, distance?) Eating habits? Magical abilities?

“What’s this nonsense?” I tap the punctuation errors.

“Crooked-dooring.”

One corner of my mouth pulls back irresistibly into a smile, and I imagine Dottie beside us, smiling, too. I bet she’s tickled to see what I’m up to these days.

I tap my pen against my lips. Morgan watches raptly. “What does this tell us about the Black Bear Witch? We aren’t any closer to figuring out who she is.”

“It tells us she doesn’t like orange cats,” he guesses. “Or maybe that she loves them extra?”

We scour the neighborhood for cats but don’t find any orange ones. At sunset, we reluctantly part ways and resolve to meet up tomorrow. Hopefully we can get on the volunteer list at the animal shelter.

“Meet me at the trolley at nine,” Morgan instructs. The waning day gilds his face with blooms of gold on his forehead, cheekbones, Adam’s apple.

“Why don’t we meet at The Magick Happens?”

“Because your sisters might ask what we’re up to,” he replies.

I can tell he’s thinking exactly what I am: that for now, we want to keep this as a secret for ourselves.

It gives me this aerated, powerful, fireworks feeling, like carrying half of a story that nobody else has ever read, tucked away in my pocket. What gives the story so much value is knowing that Morgan’s got the other half. Everywhere I walk, I’m going to think, I’ve got a secret, and only he knows! And whenever I see Morgan out and about, and we wave hello to each other, I’m going to think, He’s got a secret, and only I know .