“It’s in here somewhere,” June muttered. “I can feel it.”
Halima dangled her keys from one slender finger and gave them a jingly bounce. “I use a filing system, personally, but s’pose magical instinct is also an option.”
Peter ran a hand through his hair, knocking his computer glasses askew from where he’d forgotten them on his head. “I thought you didn’t have this room sorted yet?”
“Details,” Halima answered airily, and tossed her long black hair over one shoulder. “And you’re not supposed to be in the restricted section at all.”
June bit her lip. “Well, he does work at Paladin University now. A contract counts, right?”
“Doesn’t matter,” the archivist said with a wink. “I have to run to a meeting. Good luck. Don’t set anything on fire again while I’m gone.”
“That was you,” June protested, but Halima was already gone.
Peter wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “Aye,” he agreed. “But at least she can joke about it now.”
“Fair point.”
He let her go and walked toward several aisles stuffed full of boxes, books, and scattered parchment. “And she had one about magical intuition.”
June propped a hand on her hip and leaned against a precariously balanced metal shelf that rested on a torn physics textbook cover. “You think you can find it in this mess?”
Peter scanned back and forth, then headed down one of the aisles without answering.
She started to follow, then scrambled backward.
He gave her a sheepish smile. “We used to do magical finding charms at the embassy library. I grew up going to work with Dad on occasion. Got pretty good at it as a kid.”
She grinned and stuffed her hands in her blazer pockets. “You’re out of practice.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He turned on his heel and entered the next aisle, pulling a leather-covered book with embossed designs from it. “This is what you’re seeking, a chroí.”
She ran her fingers over the proffered text’s cover. “Wow. So how accurate is this charm?”
Peter plucked the book from her loose grasp and headed for the reading table. He balanced the book on its spine and let it fall open. “Sleep paralysis with terrifying dreams?”
“Yeah.” She peered over his shoulder and studied the woodcut image. “The bakhtak. A type of night hag. Description sounds right, though I’m not sure how it’s contagious. You think the image there is accurate?”
He nodded, his scruff brushing her cheek. “Though we’ll still have to figure out how nightmares are becoming contagious.”
***
A slight variant on Padre’s prompt this week: He found the book he was looking for, the one about…
My prompt went to Leigh: The song was lost to her now, but it had been wild and free and fey, with a hint of growing madness.
