Page 27 of Disenchanted

“And how do you know that, exactly?”

She pressed her lips together in a firm line. “There may have been a slight mishap when I opened it last night.”

“Sage!” Casimir looked incredulous. He took a step closer, towering over her. “You mean to tell me that this really is a genuine spell book? And it’s activated some kind of real spell?”

“Quite,” Sage said. “It opened itself to a page last night—a page that evidently, for one reason or another, was significant. I may have recited a line or two, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“Oh, yes, you’re right. Absolutely. A witch reciting lines from a mysterious old book rarely leads to anything out of the ordinary. You know, we should have considered the possibility of you hosting some kind of read-along with it today. Cut our losses and opened ourselves up to as many lawsuits as possible.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re always so dramatic.”

“Me? It’s you who…” Casimir promptly shut his mouth with an impatient sigh. He leaned in and stretched out an arm to rest a hand above her against the bookshelf. “Sorry. I’m just worried about you.”

“Me? What are you worrying about me for? There are several children out there with Legolas ears.”

“We tidied the Legos away, didn’t we?”

Sage rolled her eyes.

“I know the extraordinary pressure you’re putting on yourself, Specs. You were so determined to keep your magic under wraps more than ever this month. And if something’s happened to get in the way of that, then I want to help you.”

“Nothing will get in the way. I won’t let it.”

Casimir gave her a piercing look, his brown eyes gently disapproving. He didn’t reply, only dropped his arm with a heavy sigh. “Where is it?” he asked quietly, and Sage considered her options for a moment before replying with a reticent nod in the book’s direction. Casimir crossed the room, darting between stacks of photograph albums, newspaper clippings and a long-abandoned broken computer, until he reached the one and only box that mattered in that moment. He lifted away the stack of scrolls, then took the book from the newspaper wrapping and held it out to Sage.

“Show me.”

Reluctantly, Sage joined him behind his desk, clicking on the reading light with its string. She had left the book unlocked on purpose, for fear that it would never open to her again, so she scrolled through the pages as quickly as possible to find what she was looking for—the page that it had opened to last night.

“I don’t understand. It was here. Blasted thing…”

Every single page was bare, with no sign of the strange words that had revealed themselves. Each leaf was a pale piece of blank paper, brittle and crisp with age beneath her fingers. All empty.

“There’s nothing in it, Specs. It’s never been used, just as we thought.”

“Casimir, I’m not a lunatic. There was writing in here last night, a whole allegory or a poem or something. A whole page of…”

“Incantation?”

Sage stopped. “Of…words. That’s all.”

“Sage, I know you don’t want to hear this. And I know you’re probably going to throw something at my head for saying it out loud…”

“Then don’t.”

Casimir exhaled so deeply through his nose that he reminded Sage of an impatient dragon. She was fighting a losing battle, but she just couldn’t bear to hear him confirm her very worst fear.

“…but I think we need to accept the possibility that this is magic. Real, tangible magic. We already know it’s interlinked with our town’s nature—we’ve read a million reports of its existence, held handfuls of very poorly attended seminars on the matter. And this”—he prodded the top of the book with an emphatic finger—“is a spell that you’ve activated. It’s called to you.”

Sage let her eyelids flutter closed. It sounded even worse than she’d expected, to hear smart, logical, calm Casimir acknowledge it. A spell that she would not be able to hide from, that she could not outrun, as Lilara’s words had so poetically informed her.

“No.” Her eyes snapped open.

“No?” Casimir scoffed.

“You heard me. Absolutely not. It’s not possible. And it’s preposterous that it could be hers…It’s nothing more than a blank journal. You’re right. Let’s forget it.”

“Preposterous, hey? Then what’s that?”