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"What's Amazon?" Goody Albright asked, looking up at me.

"Never mind." I waved a hand. "It's a store where you can buy just about anything. But I guess even they wouldn't have an extinct bird feather."

"Probably not," she agreed. "Well, let's try another spell, shall we?"

She turned several more pages and stopped again.

"Oh, here's an interesting one! The Winged Embrace of Eternal Restoration. This spell is specifically designed to call a wandering spirit back to its mortal body."

"That sounds perfect!" I exclaimed. "What do I have to do?"

"Well, first you must stand beneath the light of the full moon while wearing a gown woven entirely of spider silk," she began.

"Okay…" I said uncertainly. "I guess I could do that. I mean, I don't know where I'd get the gown but⁠—"

"Then you must spread your wings and fly backwards around the sleeping body seven times while chanting the ancient words of restoration," she continued.

I stared at her.

"Wait a minute. My wings?"

"Yes, your wings." She looked up at me over the tops of her glasses.

"But I don't have wings!" I protested. "I'm a middle-aged woman from Tampa! The only time I fly anywhere is when I get on an airplane!"

"Oh, dear." Goody Albright frowned and looked at the page again. "Yes, I see. This spell was apparently written specifically for Harpy Witches. They have wings, you know."

"Well, good for them," I muttered. "But unless you can get me a pair of wings by Halloween, I don't think that's going to work."

"No, I suppose not." She sighed and turned another page. "Now, let's see what else we have."

Bartleby, who had been curled up in my lap this entire time, gave a lazy yawn.

"Perhaps you could try something a little less complicated," he suggested. "I mean, how hard can it be to put a spirit back in its body? Surely someone must have figured it out by now."

"Well, it's not quite that simple, Bartleby," Goody Albright told him. "Separating a spirit from its body is a very powerful form of Dark Magic. Reversing such a spell is extremely difficult, especially when it's been in place for a hundred years."

"Tell me about it," the cat grumbled. "Cordelia spent years trying to figure out how to break that blasted curse. She had books piled all over her house. I'm surprised I didn't get buried under them."

"Well, let's keep looking," Goody Albright said briskly. "There must be something here we can use."

She turned several more pages and then stopped again.

"Ah! The Awakening of the Sleeping Soul. Now this one looks promising! It requires the tears of a virgin mermaid, a single strand of hair from a unicorn's tail, and the caster must stand naked in a circle of mushrooms while singing the Hymn of the Seven Moons."

I stared at her.

"Okay, first of all, I am not standing naked in a circle of mushrooms!" I said firmly. "And second, where in the world am I supposed to get tears from a virgin mermaid? Do I just walk up to one and ask her to cry for me?"

"Well, you could try," Goody Albright said thoughtfully. "Though mermaids are notoriously touchy about their personal lives. Asking one whether she's a virgin would probably get you slapped. Or drowned, depending on her temperament."

"Lovely," I muttered.

"And of course, there's the singing," she added. "The Hymn of the Seven Moons has to be performed perfectly, or the spell could go horribly wrong."

"How wrong?" I asked suspiciously.

"Well, according to this, you could wind up bringing back the wrong spirit." She frowned at the page. "Apparently a witch in the sixteenth century tried it and accidentally summoned the spirit of a particularly unpleasant warlord who'd been dead for eight hundred years."