“Wait, did you say s-u-p-e as in supernatural entity, or s-o-u-p…as in split pea?” Her voice was tinged with ten layers of uncertainty, confusion, and pleading.
“Exactly.”
I dropped my sugary snack load by the register and hung up my cellular phone before Madison could respond. I would prove my worth, prove I hadn’t lost my edge, prove I deserved my office back. Being on probation was basically the same thing as being a new recruit. All of the merit I had earned had been stripped in one stupid, unfortunate instant.
“Dude,” the boy behind the counter said. His hair appeared to be styled like the top of a mushroom, which I could only assume was accidental. His eyes were red and sleepy.
“I would like to purchase these,” I told him.
“Hungry teenagers at home?”
“No.”
“The snacks are all foryou?”He looked me up and down and smiled like we shared some kind of nonexistent connection. “Right on. Love the munchies.”
I waited for him to scan the cakes and deliver the total.
Instead, he continued speaking. “I see you have one of just about everything here, good choice. But you missed the matcha cream rolls.”
My attention piqued, I raised a brow. “Matcha cream rolls?”
He pointed to a cardboard display a few feet to my left. “Matcha’s everything, dude.”
“Thank you for the recommendation,” I said, and put one of the matcha cakes on the counter. “Now please ring up my purchases so I can be on my way. I have work to do.”
“Work, yeah.” He laughed in a way that suggested this was some sort of joke we were both in on. Fortunately, he did his job and rang me up.
I paid, thanked the gentleman for his time, and carried my bounty in a plastic bag outside.
As the door shut behind me, I heard him call out, “Come back and tell me how you like the matcha.”
Never going to happen. Small talk was not my forte. I wouldn’t return even if there weren’t far more pressing matters to address, which of course there were. I was being pressed so hard that at any moment I’d be transformed into a panini. At least I’d make a well-dressed sandwich.
The key to survival as a librarian was preparation, which was why every time I visited a new town or city, I started a magical stockpile for future use. That forethought had served me well time and again. The tricky part was remembering where the stockpiles were hidden. To help with that, I kept a log in my bag.
Fortunately for me, I had visited this town—Gubbins, Georgia—twice before.
The manhole in the back alley was located in the same location as it had been three quarters of a century ago. The cover had changed, much like the face of the town itself, with strip malls replacing mom-and-pop shops and community parks replacing what had once been empty fields. I reached around in my magical never-filling bag to the section that contained hand-held tools, searching for the crowbar. Once I felt the correct series of Braille dots that represented the tool I required, I grabbed the handle and pulled it out.
With a bit of heft and elbow grease, I successfully removed the manhole cover. The task was slightly more taxing than I recalled, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
“See, I don’t require assistance,” I told no one in particular, as there was no one around. “Lily Fernsby is perfectly capable of accomplishing any feat with her own two hands and a bit of ingenuity.”
With the first hurdle crossed, I climbed down the cold, rickety ladder into the dark and dank sewer. The correct tool for this job was, of course, a flashlight.
Flashlight retrieved from my bag, I set off down a series of tunnels to an unmarked, ordinary-in-appearance section of slimy stone wall. I stepped straight through it.
On the other side of the mirage was my stash.
I looked over the shelves of treasures, relics, and weapons. A thick layer of dust both indicated that this particular stash had remained undisturbed during my absence, and acted as a reminder of just how long I had been gone.
“Nothing a cloth and cleaning brush can’t fix,” I said.
I set the plastic bag of cakes on one of the shelves and retrieved the item I had come here for—a salt shotgun, the perfect weapon for the job at hand.
I checked for rust and filled the barrel. The shotgun felt heavy and right in my hands. This was what I was supposed to be doing. I was a warrior, a hunter, a keeper of peace. I was a librarian.
Confident and ready to take on the world, I headed out into the sewer to complete the job I’d been given—hunt down and eliminate the eight-hundred-pound monster draining the life from this already sleepy little town.Technically,the file had only indicated a communication blackout, foul odor, and magical bad vibes. That meant the official mission was to determine the source of the problem. I inferred the rest based on the feeling in the air as soon as I arrived in town, plus my experience and expertise. Obviously I was more than capable of resolving the situation on my own.