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Scoobies meeting in the turret at my place , she texted Ivy, Sanjay, and Gideon on a group text as soon as she left the station.

The secret turret room was barely large enough for four people and a rabbit, but it was the best place to gather in private. The room looked like a circular tower on the outside, but on the inside, it had seven flat walls and an opening for a narrow stairway. Stretching eight feet in diameter, the only seating was movable beanbags. On the walls, Tempest had hung framed magic show posters from classics like Houdini and Adelaide Herrmann and her mom and aunt’s popular Selkie Sisters show they’d staged in Edinburgh.

Abra helped calm her nerves enough that she didn’t feel her heart pounding in her throat, but she hoped the others would arrive soon. She couldn’t believe that Lucas was truly dead. He’d been a selfish guy in many respects, but also a good man who’d made a lot of people laugh and who’d put his career on hold to care for his sick mom. What had he gotten himself into?

Gideon was the first to arrive. It was a few minutes to midnight when he set a duffel bag on the hardwood floor of the turret.

“I don’t even know what to say about what went down tonight, so I’ll start with this.” He reached into the bag and withdrew a lopsided object, roughly eight inches tall, that was wrapped in a white cloth. “I’ve had this in the trunk of my car all day. I didn’t have time to complete it, so I couldn’t decide if I should give it to you.”

As the cloth fell away, a sandstone carving was revealed. Calling it a carving didn’t do justice to the masterpiece. The lop-eared rabbit of stone was poised to leap, its body so lifelike that it was as if it was frozen in time in a photograph. It wasn’t exactly Abra, but the creature’s eyes had the same hint of mischief as her real-life bunny. The stone was hard, yet Gideon had made the animal look as if it were covered in soft fur. This was exactly why he’d received the prestigious internship opportunity in France. He could work magic with stone.

He placed the carving into Tempest’s hands. Further cementing the impression that it wasn’t quite a representation of Abra, the animal’s hind legs weren’t the legs of a rabbit, but where fluffy paws with claws should have been, cloven hooves anchored the carving.

“He’s gorgeous,” Tempest said.

“As long as you don’t mind that its left ear isn’t quite right yet, he’s yours.” He leaned in and examined the unfinished ear more closely. “Maybe I should—”

“Don’t you dare take Satan bunny away from me.”

Gideon laughed. “I was going for the hooves of a deer, not the devil, but you’re right that Abracadabra can be quite devilish.”

Abra looked up at the sound of his name.

“Thank you.” She set the carving on the floor next to Abra. “You didn’t have to make me something… but I love my magical devil bunny. I—”

“The detective put a tail on me.” Sanjay’s head appeared at the top of the steep stairs. “He thinks I’m the killer!”

“He doesn’t think that.” Tempest was fairly sure she wasn’t lying. “Why would he think that?”

“He wasn’t arrested yet.” Ivy appeared a moment after Sanjay. “So that’s a good sign, right?”

Tempest hugged Ivy as Sanjay flung himself down on a beanbag and put his bowler hat over his face. Abra nuzzled his hand, doing a great job of taking on the role of emotional support bunny.

“Thanks, buddy.” Sanjay lifted the hat from his face and scratched Abra behind the ears.

“Everything okay at the hospital?” Tempest asked Ivy. “I thought you were going to text me for a ride.”

“My sister would have killed me if I didn’t call her. She took me to the station to talk with Detective Blackburn. Sanjay was still there, so he gave me a ride.”

“I was still there,” said Sanjay, “because the detective was grilling me.”

Abra grew bored with Sanjay’s half-hearted petting and went over to the corner to sniff the devil bunny sculpture.

“Who’s the new helper?” Sanjay pointed at the little stone carving from Gideon.

“I’m thinking of calling him Devil Bunny .” Tempest picked up the little figure. “Or maybe Devil Rabbit .”

“Are those cloven hooves?” Sanjay leaned closer to see its back haunches.

“Gideon’s carvings are always animal mash-ups,” Tempest said.

“Usually mythological,” Gideon added, “but I didn’t know of any mythological rabbits, so I made one up. His hooves are from a deer.”

“Looks more like a devil,” Sanjay said. “Definitely a devil bunny.” He eyed Devil Bunny one last time before putting his hat back over his face. “I can’t believe I’m debating the name of a devil bunny when I’m about to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

“I keep telling you it’s a good sign he didn’t arrest you yet,” Ivy said.

Sanjay groaned.

“You’re not going to be arrested,” Tempest assured him. “Because we’re going to figure out what’s really going on.”

Sanjay lifted the hat and smiled at her. “You’re right. That’s what we do best.” A mini bouquet of pressed white flowers appeared in his hand out of thin air. He handed it to her, but a second later, the smile vanished. “You have a plan? Please tell me you have a plan. Because I certainly don’t.”

“Are those flowers from the bouquet you bought on behalf of Lucas yesterday?” Gideon asked. Tempest hadn’t noticed that the tiny white flowers were the same ones that had been placed in between the roses, but he was right.

“Not that it matters,” said Sanjay, “but I bought these myself and took out some of these little flowers before I arrived back at the house. I don’t know what they’re called, but they fit perfectly in one of my hiding spots for pressing flower petals.”

“I think there’s an app that can tell you,” Gideon said.

“Dear God, we’ve created a monster.” Sanjay shook his head. “This is why you should have eased into having a cell phone before you turned twenty-five. You’d have a healthier relationship to technology.”

“Back to the matter at hand.” Tempest tucked the pressed flowers into the frame that held a vintage poster of Houdini. “If Blackburn suspects Sanjay, there’s got to be a reason.”

“It’s because I was working with Lucas on that little deception yesterday.” Sanjay flipped the hat so forcefully it grazed the high ceiling before falling back into his hands. “And also…” He trailed off and flipped the hat into the air once more.

Tempest caught the bowler hat. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I arrived before Milton tonight.” Sanjay stood and snatched his beloved hat back from her before collapsing back onto the beanbag. “When nobody answered the front door, I walked around to the back.”

“So you were off camera,” Gideon said.

“We already know that,” Tempest said. “It was perfectly reasonable for you to try the back door if nobody answered in front.”

Sanjay squirmed on the beanbag. “The thing is… I was back there quite some time. I thought I could slip into the house through the back door.”

“Please tell me you didn’t,” Tempest said. “You did ?”

“What did he do?” Gideon asked.

“He tried to pick the lock,” Tempest answered without taking her eyes off Sanjay.

Sanjay lowered his eyelids as if blaming Tempest for his poor decision. “I was expected at the house. I thought you all went out for dessert and were running late. It didn’t seem like a big deal. I almost had the door unlocked when I heard another car pull up. It was Milton. So I abandoned the lock.”

“Did you tell Detective Blackburn you were trying to break into Cameron’s house?” Ivy asked.

“Of course not,” Sanjay snapped. “I couldn’t admit to a detective that I had a lock-picking kit with me. I told him I was looking for a way in. Which was true. I did try the windows first, to see if anything was unlocked. Nothing was.”

“Blackburn will also be investigating the other suspects,” Tempest said.

“He told you that?” Sanjay asked. “He didn’t tell me that.”

“He didn’t exactly tell me that,” she admitted. “But he wants to solve the case, not railroad you into a false conviction.”

“How does he know who to investigate? According to that damning video, I’m the only one who could have slipped into the house.” Sanjay stood and began to pace the length of the narrow space.

“Blackburn is a by-the-book detective,” Tempest said. “His strength isn’t in solving impossible crimes, but in digging into the victim’s life and movements and gathering forensic evidence.”

“Lucas was hiding inside my magic trunk for yesterday’s prank,” Sanjay grumbled, “so my DNA will be all over him. And I’m the one he was scheming with yesterday.”

Gideon scooped Abra into his arms. “Let’s make sure you don’t get squished,” he murmured to the bunny.

Sanjay rolled his eyes. “I was nowhere near that rabbit. He knows I was no danger to him. Come on, Abra,” he said to the bunny. “I bestow my magical powers to you, Abracadabra, so you can tell us who really killed Lucas Cruz.”

Abra stopped nuzzling Gideon’s hand and looked directly at Sanjay.

Sanjay blinked at the bunny in stunned silence. “I was joking!”

“He knows his name.” Tempest took Abra from Gideon’s arms. “Don’t you, Abra?” He wriggled his nose a way that looked like a nod, but Tempest knew better. Rabbits were far smarter than people gave them credit for. Especially Abra. But not that smart.

Ivy burst out laughing. She tried to stop for a breath of air, but couldn’t, which just made her laugh even harder.

“You all right?” Gideon asked.

Sanjay put his hands on Ivy’s shoulders. All that did was cause his arms to shake along with her. “We’ve broken Ivy.”

Tempest was simply happy that her BFF seemed to have fully recovered from her fake poisoning ordeal.

Ivy sighed and wiped her eyes. “I’m okay.”

“What just happened?” Gideon asked.

“Don’t you see?” Ivy grinned at them like a maniacal supervillain. “We all already know we’re mystery-solving friends. That’s why Tempest called a Scoobies meeting.” Ivy started laughing again. This time, so hard she snorted. Which only made her laugh harder.

“Uh, I really think we broke her.” Sanjay waved his hand in front of her face. “Do you know what year it is? And that you’re not trapped in a Nancy Drew novel? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Ivy batted his arm away. “It’s not just that we’re friends who solve mysteries.” She pointed at Abra. “We’re two guys, two girls, and a supersmart animal mascot.”

“Abra did help us solve a couple of murders,” Tempest said. The bunny hadn’t known he was sniffing out clues, but still.

“As if this week couldn’t get any worse,” Sanjay grumbled, “now I’m living in a psychedelic cartoon about a talking dog.”

“Abra doesn’t talk,” Tempest pointed out.

“So… are we the Abracadabras?” Gideon asked.

The three other Abracadabras groaned in unison.

“Now that that’s settled,” said Tempest, “are we ready to solve this murder?”

“You have an idea where to start?” Sanjay asked.

“Mrs. Hudson got a security camera this morning, and remember that the only people on the video were us, Kira, Milton, and Mrs. Hudson.”

“No Lucas,” said Gideon.

“Nobody was watching the house during the night,” said Sanjay. “And the security camera wasn’t yet installed. Lucas could have slipped out then.”

“He could have,” said Tempest. “But how did he get back inside tonight ?”

Ivy gasped. “You mean he was in the house today, before we got there? Why? ”

“I don’t know why he wanted to freak us out last night,” said Tempest. “But it was Detective Blackburn who gave me the idea that Lucas wanted to stay in the house for some reason. The detective had seen the video evidence that suggested Lucas was inside the house while we were in the escape room.”

“It’s a house full of books ,” Gideon said. “And cataloging begins next week after the library games are over.”

“Wait,” said Sanjay. “Do you mean to tell me that I’m a murder suspect because someone is searching for a stupid book?”

“A valuable book,” Ivy said.

Sanjay scowled at her.

“Milton,” Ivy continued. “He works at the Hidden Bookshop and knows all about rare books. It has to be Milton!”

“What I don’t understand,” said Gideon, “is why now? Why did Lucas have to plan something so complicated like this, when Harold’s library has been here all along?”

Tempest shook her head. “You’re forgetting that Lucas and Milton are brand-new to seeing the library. They weren’t working with us on the renovations of Gray House. The three actors only visited for the first time last week.”

“A book,” Sanjay growled. “All this for a book?”

“Maybe,” said Tempest. “It’s just one theory. But one that Blackburn will be looking into now. So you don’t need to worry that he’s only focused on you as the only suspect.”

“Omigod!” Ivy shouted so loudly that Sanjay dropped his hat. “I know what happened!”

“You do?” Sanjay gaped at her.

“It’s so obvious in retrospect.” Ivy grinned. “Tempest must be right about the theory of the motive being finding a rare book—because I know exactly how Milton Silver killed Lucas Cruz.”