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Tempest watched from the passage between sections as he picked up his sphinx trophy and tucked it into the tote bag under his arm. Then he gave Barnabas’ hand a perfunctory shake, saying something Tempest couldn’t hear from where she’d stopped. He hesitated for a moment, glancing around one last time with the same searching look she’d seen earlier, like a cat looking for a rustle in the grass. But before his eyes made it to where Tempest was standing, Fortune picked the lock on her cage. She kicked the door open, burst out and flew directly back to Dan, landing on his shoulder.

Archibald and Barnabas stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed as the normally reticent bird rubbed her beak affectionately in Dan’s tawny gold hair.

Dan went still for a moment. Then he smiled and chuckled, with the same surprised quality Tempest had noticed earlier. He lifted a hand and offered her a finger to step onto. Fortune regarded this invitation with complete disregard and remained where she was, claws clinging onto his shoulder.

“Okay, I guess you can come back to Boston with me.” Dan shrugged and buttoned the last two buttons of his overcoat. He glanced out the front window. “I think my ride is here now.”

For a few tense seconds, Tempest was afraid the parrot might actually elect to leave her. Fortune rode his shoulder all the way to the front door. She only hopped off at the last possible moment, flapping over to the top of the stacked books in the window display.

They all watched Dan Wilder walk out and get in the waiting car.

After a moment, Fortune flew back across the shop to Tempest’s shoulder and nudged her ear, the way she always did when she had something to share.

“Thanks for having me, gentlemen,” Fortune said, in that uncanny way she had of mimicking other people’s speech. Dan’s voice came through clear and formal. “You have a lot of great books here in this store. Particularly the used ones.” A pause. “And do give my regards to your sister? I’m very sorry I didn’t have a chance to meet her today.”

Tempest stared out the door, watching the taillights recede.

Q: What is the literal translation of the word “disaster?”

A: From the Italian disastro or “bad star.”

Catastrophe comes from the Greek katastrophē, meaning a sudden overturning. Tragedy comes from the Greek tragōidia or “goat song,” and classicists have been arguing about the goat reference for centuries. The ancient world held that misfortune was the work of divine forces, foretold rather than caused. People were seldom held responsible.

—Dan Wilder, The Most Important Question: Fanciful Trivia by Dandelion Wilder

FIVE

ASHES TO ASHES

Dan smelled the fire before he saw it. It didn’t register as anything ominous at first. He only thought it an odd time of year for fireplace fires, especially as the weather had been so warm this June.

He had just come through Primrose Passage, the secret warded entrance to Primrose Court, and emerged into the park at the center of the community. It was still early. His flight had landed at five a.m. at Boston’s Logan airport. He was exhausted, but in the end glad he’d gone to the book signing. Now he was looking forward to a nap, right after he checked in on things at the tavern. He’d been expecting some deliveries. His bag, with the heavy statue inside, was slung over one shoulder and his stomach was growling.

The signing had gone well. He normally hated crowds, but he hadn’t minded chatting with individual customers, he had discovered. The flow had been steady, never too overwhelming thanks to the Owl’s brothers’ clever bracelet system. Crowd control was the one thing the officious duo had gotten right. They’d seemed so proud of coming up with the plan.

But Dan was still reeling about their stated intention to do away with their used book section. It turned his stomach the way they talked about books like they were set dressing. Disposable.

This only strengthened Dan’s resolve to set up a lending library in his tavern. He had no interest in selling books. If it were up to him, all books would be free to be read by whoever wanted and needed to read them. He knew from personal experience that sometimes the most curious answers came from the most unlikely sources. Books had been his refuge as a lonely kid in the orphanage. And none of those books had been new or trendy. He’d devoured them the same.

It’s good to be home.

Home. A place where he felt like he might belong. Primrose Court had always been a welcome destination. A fine place to visit. But this was the first time that he’d thought of the magical community as his home.

He sniffed the air again. Was there some sort of festival with bonfires this week? Midsummer had already come and gone.

The smell wrapped around him as he exited the park and that is when he realized this wasn’t the benign scent of firewood burning. It was something else. Something alarming. He smelled the sharper scents of char and wet ash and something metallic and chemical underneath.

He picked up the pace.

When he turned the corner and sped past the apothecary he got his first look at the fire wagons. There were two of them parked in the cul-de-sac outside the tavern, at an angle across the cobblestones with their red lanterns still spinning.

A cluster of residents, still clad in pajamas, stood at a careful distance from the smoking aftermath. They were staring bemusedly at the wreckage. Dan felt his soul coming unstitched from his body, a common trauma response, he knew. He didn’t try to stop it from happening. There would be time to unpack his emotions and process the damage later. Right now, when he didn’t have all the details and he needed to take stock, it was probably for the best that he was so good at going numb.

His neighbor Sara’s flower shop had taken the brunt of the fire. He could see this from the street, just by looking at the blackened upper window frames. Her door was sealed with hazard tape, and it looked like a section of the roof on her side of the building had partially collapsed.

Dan saw Lucretia Lathrop, the owner of the apothecary, filling in a couple of newcomers on whatever had happened. They were all speculating about what might have caused the blaze and how it had gotten out of control so quickly. Most of the buildings in Primrose Court had wards and spells to put out fires like these, or even prevent them before any real damage was done. Somehow, this time, all the usual systems had failed. Most of the residents were chalking it up to a freak accident. A few were coming up with elaborate conspiracies. Others shrugged their shoulders and looked knowingly at the smoking structure and simply said, “It’s the work of fate.”

But Dan wasn’t interested in the particulars of the fire and the failed failsafe measures. right now. He was much more interested in hearing whether anyone had been hurt.