Page 462 of His Hungry Wolf

“Okay. I’ll bring you something to eat,” he said getting out of bed. “Oh, and if you use the bathroom, don’t flush the toilet. The pipes are old in this place. If they hear the rattling and I’m not here, they might come looking for you.”

“Then I’ll try not to do anything that might need flushing,” I joked.

“You do that. So, how does a breakfast burrito sound? All the fixin’s?”

I looked at him wondering if he was joking.

“Kidding. I’ll bring you something light. No fiber.”

“Right,” I said having another reason to dread my day without him.

Lou was gone for a while and returned with a plate of fried eggs, hash browns, and a croissant. It was filling enough. And when I was done eating, I returned to the endless supply of boxes.

Nothing had changed from the night before. Each box contained a small piece from Lou’s grandmother’s interesting life. She clearly loved two things, traveling and her books. The two seemed to overlap. But none of it revealed the clue Lou and I hoped she had left.

After a lot of hours and getting halfway through the boxes, I began to consider that she hadn’t left a clue for Lou to find. Maybe this was all a wild goose chase. Even if she had left something in one of the boxes, how was I supposed to recognize it? In that case, how was Lou supposed to?

I paused considering that. If his grandmother had left a clue for him, how would he recognize it? If she intended for him to find something, she wouldn’t have buried it, would she? She wouldn’t have.

At the same time, she wouldn’t want anyone else to stumble upon it. If a clue was out there, it had to be hidden somewhere personal. Maybe there was somewhere the two of them went together. Didn’t Lou say that some of his best childhood memories involved heading into town? Could she have left it there?

No. That would be too hard. And anyone could have stumbled upon it. If there was a clue, it had to be in this house. Or, at least on this estate. It had to be somewhere that Lou might think to look.

Where would a mystery author leave a clue for her favorite grandson? In a book. She would leave a clue in a book. It wasn’t in this mountain of boxes, it was in her library.

Scrambling to my feet, I worked my way through the stacks to the bedroom door. Pressing my ear onto it, I listened for footsteps. It was quiet. Lou had said that his family never came up here. I had to rely on that. So, unlocking the door and slowly pushing it open, I eased my head out.

No one. At least not standing outside the door. Opening the door further, I checked the halls. Nothing. Slipping out and closing the door behind me, I looked over the railing. The second-floor balcony and the space around the first floor’s stairs were empty.

Moving as quietly as I could, I circled the balcony on my floor keeping an eye on everything below me as I did. The door to the library was closed. Opening it as slowly as I had the last one, I peeked through the crack. The room was empty. Slipping in and closing the door behind me, I scanned the room. There were thousands of books.

Heading to the nearest shelf, I began reading titles. There were a lot that sounded like mysteries. But as I read, I noticed something else. These weren’t just mysteries. These were supernatural mysteries. They were stories about magic and witches. There were even a few about fae.

I pulled out one that listed Agatha Armoury as the author and flipped through it.

“Magic exists right under our noses a worn traveler once told me,” I said reading the first line aloud.

I put it back and pulled another. Returning that, I pulled another. All of them began by proclaiming the existence of magic. Was this her clue? Was she trying to tell Lou that magic was real? Was Lou’s family magical?

Still looking for his grandmother’s message, I scanned the titles of the books again. How had I not seen it before? They were all about magic. As extraordinary as that was, it meant that no individual book stood out. She might have left Lou a message written within a book’s text. But, which one? And how would she have gotten her to open it?

It was as I thought about what all of this meant that I saw a book that Lou had told me about, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’. It was the book she had read to him when he was a child. If he were feeling nostalgic, wouldn’t that be something he might pick up? Hadn’t he already picked it up thinking about her?

I made a move to cross the room when a creak sent terror cutting through me. The sound was coming from the hallway’s aging wooden floor. There was someone outside the door heading this way.

Abandoning my path, I spun around looking for a way to get out. Finding none, I looked for a place to hide. There were bookshelves and a desk. That was it. I could hide under the shallow desk or I could…

There was a gap. It was between two of the standing bookshelves. It was where two perpendicular walls met each other. There wasn’t much of a space between them, but I could get in. It offered me a shadow to hide in. But if someone looked in that direction, they would see me.

It wasn’t great, but I had no choice. If I didn’t try, I was going to be discovered. I needed to at least try.

Compressing my chest against the bookshelves’ rounded edges, my body filled the gap. The shelves rocked back into place. I didn’t have time to consider if all of me was in. It had to be. The door was opening.

As I watched, a distracted man with grey hair entered and retrieved a book from a shelf. Mindlessly resting it on the empty desk, he patted his pockets. As he did something amazing happened. His reading glasses emerged through the desk. It was as if they were in a lower drawer and had floated to the surface.

Looking down and finding them, the man put them on. When he closed his eyes, the book silently opened flipping its pages. Peering down again, the man froze. He didn’t remember opening the book. But as quickly as the inquiry entered his mind, it slipped away. Without another thought, he sat and grabbed the book. With my mouth hanging open, I stared at him blown away.

He was doing magic and didn’t realize it. Why not? Was this how Lou’s ancestors got their luck? By unknowingly doing magic? What was going on?