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“What now?” Dewey asked, glancing up from his reference book.
“Over three million results for hashtag wand.” Paige scrolled through them. “Okay, this is not helpful. These references are to people using actual wand-based magic. Which is fascinating since I did not know that existed but still unhelpful.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, that’s probably a terrible search. Sorry. Wand-based magic is fairly popular, especially among the fairies.”
Paige wrinkled her nose and heaved a sigh. “Of course it is. Okay, I’ll try a few more searches and hope I hit on something.”
After a dozen searches that turned up nothing beyond interesting tidbits related to the magical world, her eyes began to glaze over. She scrunched her features as Dewey’s pen scratched away on his notepad.
She shot him an irked glance, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at his progress. With puckered lips, she tossed the phone down on the table and turned her attention to the book in front of her. After flipping to the appropriate page, she pulled her notebook closer and pressed her pen against the tablet.
She stared down at the page, her eyes passing over the words without comprehending them. Dull pain thudded at her temples. She rubbed her skin and squeezed her eyes closed, biting her lower lip.
She sank her teeth farther into her full lip as she pondered whether or not black worms were threading their way across her forehead and eating her alive from the inside out.
“Ugh,” she moaned, sinking her head into her hands.
“You okay, Paige?” Dewey asked, glancing up from his note-taking.
Paige raised her head and sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. Just frustrated. Imposter syndrome.”
“Imposter syndrome?” Dewey questioned.
Paige flicked him a glance. “You’re just sitting over there making progress on your research. Meanwhile, I can’t find a solid lead on the wand anywhere. I suck at this job.”
“No, you don’t. If it was easy to find a solid lead, someone would have found the wand by now.”
Paige flung her hands in the air. “Someone did. Some gross Shrieking Pixies, apparently. Or someone before that who is planning to sell it to them or whatever.”
“Cut yourself a break. Take a deep breath, and just take it slow. Remember, you’re fighting another issue which is probably knocking your concentration.”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing. Every time I feel a flinch, I wonder if those stupid worms are eating their way across my body.”
“The good news is they spread fairly slowly. The biggest concentration of them is near your wound, and we pulled a few of those bad boys out. So there aren’t scads of them in your belly or brain or anything. Not yet anyway.”
“Let’s hope not ever,” Paige said, adjusting the book on her lap. “Okay, okay, whining over. Back to it.”
Dewey waved his pen in the air and wiggled it. “That’s the spirit!”
Paige reread the same page again, jotting down notes. The reference entry listed several origin stories for the magical object, citing the believability level of each.
Dewey’s tale about another universe comprised the third bullet point and, as he’d indicated earlier, the credibility of the story was the lowest of all the legends.
Paige scanned the list for the highest probability, finding it in the Mouth of Hell bullet point. Several factors pointed to this as the most likely scenario, including proximity to another realm, origin of wand narratives in the immediate area, and a large rock split in two, presumably by the wand, near the cave’s entrance.
Paige noted them on her paper and then chewed the pen’s cap as she read the bubbly writing.
Something about it seemed off. Still, it was the most likely source. Where had the wand gone after that? Could it still be in Bulgaria? She scribbled the question down on the paper and drew a star next to it before scanning the other bullet points.
Other origin locations included the Ural Mountains, Alaska, Australia, and Egypt. Paige scanned the information in each bullet point before jotting Egypt on the yellow paper and circled it three times.
She set down her pen and grabbed her phone again, pulling up the SupNet app. She typed a few more phrases into the search bar and scanned the results. Nothing telling about the wand location.
She stared into space for a moment before typing “Bulgaria Hell SP Pixie Div” and pressing the Go arrow. Results lined the screen, and she thumbed through them. Her eyes narrowed at one particular post, and she tapped it.
The screen filled with a picture of two Shrieking Pixies posed outside the mouth of a large cave. The caption read SP convention! Mouth of Hell. Having a blast with my girl, Dena. We about to bring it! #shriekingpixies #spsrule #spsforthewin #wod #dividetheworld.
Paige flicked her eyes to the post’s date. Yesterday. Her heart beat harder, and her muscles stiffened.
