Page 65 of Witch and Tell

“Your source,” Lise said.

“Exactly.” I swiveled to face her. “Will you help me?”

Rodney, the traitor, had now crawled into her lap and purred like an outboard motor. “I don’t know how I can. What am I supposed to do, smell her coming?”

I told her the truth. “I don’t know what you can do, either. All I know is that if Beata’s magic goes unchecked, my going to prison will be the least of it. She could do a lot of damage, ruin a lot of lives.”

I felt as if my grandmother spoke through me. Was she here with us? For a moment, I caught an image of her bending to crush pine needles between her fingers. But, no, I’d imagined it. The woods were still but for birds flitting between trees.

“It’s a risk for you, too. I don’t know how Beata will react. I don’t know what she can do. Are you game?” I tried to ask this nonchalantly, but it was my life we would be fighting for. My life most immediately, that was. Perhaps we would save others in the future.

“I want to say no,” replied Lise, “but I can’t. This is my destiny, somehow. Is that bizarre?”

“As you’re finding out, it’s not strange at all.”

Destinywas a big subject, one I’d grappled with often from my chair by the fire, when fate didn’t breathe down my neck as it did now. For me, choice was moot. Justice motivated me. In this case, justice applied not just to Byron, but to Beata. Lise would have to come to her own conclusion.

The seconds stretched to minutes, and Rodney, eyes closed, continued to purr loudly.

“Okay,” Lise said finally. “What do you need me to do?”

Chapter Thirty-five

At last, day teetered on the edge of night. I rose and dusted the bark and pine needles from my rear end and gave thanks for the tracksuit’s warmth. Lise had left hours ago. I’d kept alert for signs of the sheriff’s office, but no one had come here for me yet.

“Come on, Rodney. We’re going home.”

But not home the usual way. I’d given my key to Lise, and besides, someone from the sheriff’s office would undoubtedly be watching for me to return. My lame costume as Ian’s mother Escalade—I still groaned at the name—would only get me so far, and might even be public information by now. Luckily, I knew a way into the library that didn’t involve a key.

I kept to the trees along the path that led from the woods, along the bluff above the river, to the library. Where the woods thinned near the clearing around the library, I stopped behind an old oak and surveyed the grounds.

The library was completely still, dark. It was closed by now, of course, and Roz had turned off the lights and drawn the curtains. I faced the far side of the old mansion—the side away from the drive to the highway— and only the odd day hiker or Lyndon doing garden duties would see me. At this time of the day, neither was likely.

Rodney at my heels, I ran across the open space and crouched at the library’s outer wall, directly outside the former parlor, below the bay windows of what was now Literature. My plan was to shimmy down the sawdust chute that had once fed the mansion’s ancient boiler in the basement. Now, of course, an efficient gas furnace heated the building.

I edged to the hinged steel door in the foundation and pried my fingers under its heavy rim.

“What are you doing?”

I wheeled around to see Buffy and Thor behind me. “What areyoudoing? You’re supposed to be home after dark,” I said, following the old advice that the best defense is a good offense. I kept my voice low.

“You’re a fumigator,” Thor said.

“Fugitive,” I corrected.

“We’re here to look for you,” Buffy said. Her sequined tulle skirt was a dusty pink in the twilight. “You’re worth big bucks.” She squinted. “Why is your hair that color?”

“Someone paid you to find me?”

“They will,” Thor said with confidence. “Perhaps Sheriff Sam would be interested in this information?”

A wily smile spread over Buffy’s face. “Unless you pay first.”

Good grief. These kids made Vito Corleone look like Florence Nightingale. “I don’t have my purse with me.”

“We’ll take an IOU. Here.” Buffy proffered a pen and a small notebook with a unicorn on it and the wordsDREAMS ARE FOREVER.

Shysters. “Is twenty bucks enough?”