“We must hurry. This has to time out correctly. We’ve got to get our hands on a book or two, go back, and get them to your aunt just as the issue in the children’s room becomes known so she’ll check them out without paying much attention.”

This library was a big place, two floors and full of stacked shelves.

“Try not to be seen. Blend in.”

She took a spot a few paces back from a mother and two children and as soon as they were toward the nonfiction area she broke away. They’d spotted Ant a ways back, near the romance section, and made it past her safely.

“I wanted to get a psychology book.”

“Yes, well, priorities. If we have time grab the thinnest one you can find and that goes for this one as well. Anything too thick will tip her off.”

In the end they both walked away unsatisfied. The book about magic was trash, he said, and the psychology book was little more than a primer, but it was something and it was more than they had before.

“It wasn’t a total waste,” he reasoned as they returned to the children’s room. Everyone was still fussing over the crying child. “The books might be useless, but I think you learned a lot and it will be easier to deal with next time. Before then we’ve got to convince your aunt that you aren’t entirely helpless, while maintaining their sense of normalcy.”

“I thought you were against letting anyone know I’m capable of more than stuttering?”

“That specific bridge is already crossed and we won’t go much further, but we’ll never get access to anything if she keeps up the heavy supervision.”

An ambulance arrived and all the children not already interested in the incident flocked to the window to see it, so Luna did the same. The injured one didn’t look too bad to her, there was no blood or anything.

“They have to call paramedics,” Donner told her. “It’s a procedural thing. Precautionary.”

The child was sitting up and looking rather pleased when loaded onto the gurney with his mother by his side.

“The pain was fleeting, the attention he’ll enjoy. What sort of connections his brain made aren’t our concern.”

Ant arrived in the midst of it all and, as Donner predicted, was too intent on leaving to notice which books she was checking out. So, while the plan worked, the reward was small in Luna’s opinion. Donner put more emphasis on its execution, especially the use of magic because, “Though we don't know how to do it yet, you will need to learn to handle your power so it can be leveraged in getting me out.”

“And getting you a body,” she added, despite knowing he didn’t want to hear it. “Because there’s no way your old one is okay or you would have said so and had us trying to get it.” Which was true, but he refused to acknowledge it. “That’s a problem we can’t keep ignoring,” she warned.

“I will deal with my problem when it’s relevant.”

“So, you think you’re going to wander around like a ghost, trying to possess someone else? I don’t think that’ll work.”

“It’s been done before,” he said harshly and it was clear to Luna that it wasn’t the option he wanted to go with, but she left it there. Trying to discuss it would make him madder than he already was.

Besides, she had magic and psychology to think about, both subjects she’d never considered before. She wondered what Snowman would think of it all and decided that the next order of business, after finding some way to get Georgia with her newfound powers, would be to get back to the bridge so she could tell him. His life there must be terribly boring, but he did say he would wait for her return until she told him not to anymore.

It was a little bit romantic, in a tragic way.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

She’d thought about it a lot, the things he told her. About the way they were walking down a hall, both of them in places that could never cross. That bridge was a meeting room for them and for everyone else, it was a passing point. If they waited long enough, she felt sure they’d see someone come through and unlike Donner, they wouldn’t stop no matter how much she talked to them.

Pink would pass through there; where she was going Luna didn’t know and to hear Snowman tell it, she never would either.

She didn’t understand what he was talking about, even now. She would need more books because she still couldn’t bring herself to look at a screen for more than a few seconds in passing, but as little help as the library was for Donner, she thought it might be even less for her. What she wanted to know about was life after death. She wanted to know what would happen to Pink. Whenever she could get back to the bridge she’d ask Snowman more about it, but until then she did have something else to do.

Magic.

Never had she thought something like that could be real; then again she’d not thought much of other dimensions either.

The world was full of stuff and she was pretty sure she knew it all at this point.

“Not hardly,” Donner scoffed.

Back in the place called home there were hours left before Georgie would return from school and even longer before Ungle would get back, so at the direction of Donner she pretended to be tired, which Ant bought hook, line, and sinker, and got to bed with her books.

As it turned out, the psychology book wasn’t as worthless as she’d assumed it would be. She learned the very basics of the mind and how it worked, and read a bit about famous experiments. One in particular sparked her curiosity because she could test it on Georgia.

Conditioning sounded simple enough. Choose a target, pick an object, and choose the behavior.

“It’s not that easy.”

She didn’t care about what Donner had to say, he was protesting her reading this book in the first place; the truth was that it was much more useful than the supposed book on magic. She’d given it a glance in the car and he knew damn well it was a bunch of hooey. Before the episode in the children’s room, she would have been intrigued, but even with that cursory introduction she knew more than the book’s author could ever hope, and she knew that because Donner was so irritated that he was dropping knowledge about how magic worked and how it didn’t.

“Seasonal?” Sarcastic. “Really? By the seasons? Well, it’s obvious this fool knows nothing about the arts in any capacity. A dime a dozen, this type. Peddling hocus pocus to the uneducated, seeking masses. Latin words to be used in conjunction with the moon and the rain, requiring arbitrary circumstances to align or else, whoops! Missed your window better try again some other time. I’m almost convinced these rumors were first created by true practitioners to keep the riff-raff from finding secrets. And they fall for it. Books like this. Trash. Full of meaningless platitudes joined with impractical nonsense. It is strange enough to pull in middle school girls attempting to draw the eyes of their crushes without scaring them with blood and gore. The reality, of course, is not so clean. If one desires true power one must be willing to go to certain lengths.”

“But I got those screws out with no problem.”

“Because that is nothing in the larger scheme of things. When you receive your invitation to Nyx and Aether they will teach you fluff. It is not for all make no mistake, your aunt and uncle and cousin would have no place there and neither do the vast majority of humanity. They are at the level of the nurse who now finds herself imprisoned. Doubtless, she will never realize what she’s done. No, she will spend her life blaming everyone she can think of and filling the hole she has dug for herself with sand, but her life is as meaningless as the books in the library. All our race is capable of such mediocre acts. There are few who go beyond in the natural and even fewer in the unnatural, claiming power that was not theirs by birthright. I might argue though that if you can claim it, it is rightfully your own. You will quickly learn that those in high places like to pretend such aspirations to be of evil intent. Evil, I say, is in the eye of the beholder. Do you think the murderer believes he is wrong? No. Of course, he does not. He is sent into hiding to avoid punishments legally stipulated by people other than himself. No one cares to think he might have had a reason to kill and his reason, no matter what it is, is valid in his own eyes. It is the majority who hold him back, who refuse to hear, to see. What does he see? They will never know because they are too afraid to look for themselves.”

Gosh he was on a tangent and she’d fallen asleep by then, so they sat in a carpeted room with two chairs. It was small and the floor shone with a reddish glow. A chandelier hung low from the center of the ceiling, lit with candles.

He wasn’t finished yet and though she didn’t think he expected her to pay attention, she did. Donner had a lot to say and she wondered if he’d never had anyone to say it to before. If she asked, he wouldn’t answer, so she kept the question to herself and listened to him pontificate on the human condition as it related to the realness of magic.

“Of course, that is the natural way of the world and the people in it. One must accept it and work through it, determined to see their goals accomplished. Anything less than complete dedication will result in abject failure. This is why we set small goals.”

The room shifted. They were dressed in camouflage and a table appeared.

On the wall was a map of the house and its yard, front and back.

Operation Get Georgia Gold.