He wasn’t wrong. The real world was boring and involved office jobs, stiff collared blouses, and way too many uncomfortable shoes. It also involved getting to retire to Spain — hence why I was driving back to my childhood home, while my parents finished the process of selling their house in Southern California to retire luxuriously on the Spanish coast.
I could have gone with them, sure. But choosing to stay and finish my last year at university was responsible and very adult, as my dad would say, which I needed to start acting like considering I was on the verge of no longer being a college student.
It was a long drive up north. My butt was sore, my back hurt, and my chubby kitty, Cheesecake, was absolutely livid to be back in the car for the second day in a row. Not even the fries I kept tossing him from my fast food bag were keeping him placated any longer. I drove through a world awash in wet grays and soaked dark greens until, finally, I passed the Welcome sign for the town of Abelaum, population 6,223 — or 6,224 now, thanks to me. The downpour became a drizzle, and the watercolor world deepened its tones until the forest took shape: tall pines surrounded by a thick undergrowth of ferns and saplings, with mushroom caps sprouting pale and ghostly among their roots.
I should have stayed at the house to unpack. Instead, after hurriedly hauling my boxes into the living room and making sure Cheesecake got his food and water, I got back into my car and made the short drive into town, to Main Street. Right in the corner shop of a three-story brick building, I met my best friend of nearly fifteen years, Inaya, in Golden Hour Books.
Her Golden Hour Books. My best friend had made her dream a reality and was the proud owner of the cutest damn bookstore I’d ever seen.
“Almost finished,” she said, her fingers flying over her laptop keys. Her hands were adorned with delicate gold rings that shone brightly against her deep brown skin, the rings bejeweled with little bees and flowers that matched the cute floral patches stitched on her pink jacket. She was the brightest ray of sunshine I’d seen since passing San Francisco, and I felt warmer just being in her presence.
“No rush, girl, take your time.” We’d originally agreed to meet later that night, but I’d been too impatient to see her and too eager to shirk off the tedious task of unpacking my entire life from cardboard boxes to wait. I felt guilty now that I’d popped in on her when she was in the middle of cataloguing such a large new shipment of books.
I picked up one of the stacks she’d finished inputting and balanced them carefully against my chest. “Should I take these to the back?”
“That stack is as big as you!” She laughed. “You don’t have to do anything.”
I couldn’t exactly see her around the book stack, and my glasses had slipped down my nose. But I insisted. “To the back?”
“Yeah, there’s a yellow cart back there,” she said. “Thank you!”
Unfortunately, gravity and I had always had a strained relationship — pretty toxic, actually. Between my untied boot laces, slipping glasses, and too-large book stack, I tripped over my own feet halfway to the back and sent the books flying.
“Everything is fine!” I called as Inaya loudly burst out laughing. I scrambled on my hands and knees to collect the books — until my fingers brushed over the cracking leather-bound cover of a thin volume and I jerked back in shock. The book was cold.
I turned it over curiously. The lettering and filigree design on the front looked as if it had been burned into the leather, and the words were foreign to me: Latin, if I had to guess. I pulled out my phone and typed in the search engine for a translation.
It was Latin, and it read: Magical Work and Conjuring.
“Find something good?” Inaya’s voice made me jump. There was a sound in my ears like the distant roar of waves through a long tunnel, and my stomach felt hollow, like the sensation of falling.
“Yeah, check this out. This one looks really old.” I handed the book over to her, and there was a jolt as it left my fingers: a tiny rush of fear that made me want to snatch it back. Inaya opened it, frowning.
“Wow.” Her eyes went wide as her fingers moved reverently over the page. “This isn’t a printed book. This is handwritten.”
I got to my feet and leaned against her shoulder so I could see. She’d opened the book to the center. On one page was a sketch of a bizarre mutated zombie dog, ragged and skeletal. The other page was covered in rows of neat Latin text. It reminded me of an explorer’s journal, like something Charles Darwin would have carried around as he explored the Galápagos — if the Galápagos had been filled with monsters and magic.