Page 57 of Sigils & Spells

Claudette snorted. “Obviously. What else did you learn?” She pushed back from her desk and spun in her chair.

I dumped my messenger bag and lunch box on the counter in front of her and pulled out a rat’s nest of purple and blue fibers. “I learned to crochet!”

Claudette reached out for the mess in my hands. “Is that what you call this?”

“I know. I was doing really well at the shop, and when I got home something went wrong. I’m going back after work to see if they can help.”

“You might have to frog the whole thing,” Claudette said as she fingered the wreck.

“I’m not wasting power turning a lump of yarn into a frog. That’s a waste of energy.”

I snagged the miserable attempt at fiber arts away from her and hauled my messenger bag back on my shoulder, grabbed my helmet and lunch box, and headed toward my desk area behind the first row of shelves.

I was about half way there when Claudette was on her feet chasing after me. “Wait, you can turn things into frogs?”

“I only did it the one time, and I got into trouble,” I admitted.

“No, seriously, Pandora, you can turn people into frogs?”

I dropped my bags and helmet on my desk and turned to her.

“You do know what this place is, don’t you?” I really hoped she did, otherwise I had a lot of explaining to do. A lot.

“Of course, but … Okay, maybe I never believed in all of it. But there are some people who are always lucky, and Nan Weiss always gets her way. Always. Dr. Bronson told me never to open the books in here, it’s not a library, it’s—”

“A well curated collection,” we both said at the same time.

“Right, and if I wanted to read a book, I could go across the street. I mean, we all know if you’re out in the woods, and you hear your name, no you didn’t. I guess…”

When I first moved to Duchamp, I had expected everyone in town to be somewhere on the preternatural scale. I learned that the same way I learned how to pronounce Duchamp: the hard way. Most people did know, they just ignored all the magical and weird shit going on around them.

“Can you get me the winning lottery numbers?”

“Claudette!”

“Well, if I can’t get you to turn someone into a frog for me, what’s the point?”

I laughed. She was right, what was the point?

“If I turned someone into a frog for you”—I wasn’t, but I was curious—“Who and why?”

She thought for a minute. “Maybe Chris, no Eric. Then I would kiss him, you could be hiding behind the bushes and turn him back, and I’d convince him it was true love’s kiss. And he’d instantly fall in love with me out of obligation.”

“I thought you liked Darren.”

Claudette shook her head with slow, deliberate motion, the head shake version of a golf clap. “That man is hot, he knows it, and he is far too liberal with his affections. I might be willing to let him eat crackers in my bed and churn butter a time or two, he is not relationship material. But Eric Dupree, now he is marriage goals.”

I knew what she meant. Darren was good at churning butter, as she said, but he wasn’t commitment material. He was mistake material.

“I’m not turning Eric Dupree into a frog. Wait, isn’t he the whiskey guy.”

“Fine. Bourbon not whiskey. I’ll figure something else out you can witchy up for me.” She spun and headed back to her desk as we both heard the door chime.

If I hadn’t heard muffled voices, I would have yelled after her, but I didn’t want to appear unprofessional, or have someone important hear me yell about turning men into frogs.

I had only done it the one time because I didn’t think I actually could, and that boy had been really annoying. He never remembered what happened, but he left me alone the rest of our time together in school. So it was a win-win. I found out I was a witch, and I got the bully to leave me alone.

I began working on the list Dr. Bronson placed on my desk. He left me a list of tasks every morning. Or maybe he left it at night before he left. The largest part of my job was more librarian than archivist. I wasn’t ensuring the preservation of anything other than information, and I really wasn’t doing much of that unless someone needed a tome that Dr. Bronson refused to let out of the building. In that case I spent hours painstakingly copying down sigils, spells, recipes, strange drawings, whatever was on the page. This usually meant taking photos, but other times it really meant utilizing drawing skills I had to magic into place.

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