He gave me an enigmatic look and moved onto the next item that caught his attention. It looked like a desiccated paw.
"Hmm. This stuff was banned a long time ago. And here it is, just sitting out in the open, waiting to be exploited."
I reached out to pick it up and he slapped my hand away.
"Leave it!" He pulled me away. "It's dangerous."
"What is it?"
"A demon paw. With it, you can traverse the demon world without losing your way. Without it, once you enter their dimension, you can never find your way back to the portal that allowed you through."
He eyed the thing with distaste.
"Somebody must have taken a trip to that dimension and successfully returned to our world for that thing to be on this side of reality."
I was about to say something when Simon squealed with delight as his eyes lighted on another object. It was a human skull, sliced at the crown and filled with a number of silvery metal disks that looked like talismans of some type.
"What is that?" I asked him.
"Take a look!" Simon replied, tossing one of the talismans into the air. One second he was there, and the next, he was gone. The silver disk, however, was still spinning in the space between us.
"It made you disappear?" I asked the empty space that Simon had previously occupied.
"That's right." I heard Simon's voice coming from the same spot. "It's a light-bender."
"A what?" I asked as I stepped closer and tried to look around the side of the talisman, but seeing nothing more unusual than the levitating spinning disk. The disk was snatched out of the air by an invisible hand and Simon reappeared.
"Watch this." He made a motion with his hand and spoke a single Command.
"Huenhochilai!"
I stared with fascination, expecting something to happen.
When nothing magikal occurred, I gave him a blank look, not sure what to think. Simon was exuberant, however.
"Did you see the cool Command I just executed?" He indicated with his chin.
I nodded although the scope of the magik escaped me.
"Of course you didn't." He said with a laugh. "That's ok. See here?"
He indicated with his finger.
"I anchored the light bender to me so that wherever I go, it follows me around and bends the light away from me. Watch."
He snapped his fingers and disappeared. "I'm invisible!"
I smiled as I saw the talisman moving around as it followed Simon's movements.
"There's only one catch." Simon said wryly.
I laughed and reached out to pluck the spinning disc from the air.
As soon as I had palmed it, Simon reappeared. He gave me a monkey grin and acceded.
"Yep. The catch is that everyone can see the light-bender, so it's not really a good way to hide yourself. It's better to use a real invisibility spell."
He raised a hand into the air and gave a quick flourish.
"Rangdajiakanbujian!"
And promptly disappeared.
From across the room, the twins, who had been following our conversation, rolled their eyes and sniffed in disdain.
They were utterly unimpressed, but I laughed and clapped my hands in enthusiastic support.
Seeing a mage disappear using the Disappearing Command wasn't all that exciting, but he was barely fourteen, and it was an advanced senior level Command that was difficult to master, even for a mage several years his senior.
He truly was a gifted boy.
After giving me enough time to cheer him on, Simon reappeared looking quite pleased and proud of himself.
I could not help myself. I had to ask the obvious question.
"Simon, would it work just as well if you had the light-bender make what you want to disappear, vanish. And then make the light-bender disappear with the Disappearing Command?"
He said nothing, but his smug, self-satisfied smile reappeared as he turned back to the skull bowl.
I turned a blind eye as I saw him magik away the entirety of the talismans within the skull.
It was none of my business what the kleptomaniac did as long as it did not hurt anyone.
And any way, those light-benders were not doing anybody any good stuck inside a skull, gathering dust in this long-forgotten room.
If anyone could put something like this to good use, I could not think of a better mage than Simon.
After plundering the skull bowl, Simon moved onto the large world globe near the podium.
He reached out with a firm hand and spun the sphere around its axis, watching with fascination as the night side lit up with tiny points of light every time it spun away from the sunlight streaming through the glass-paned window.
I left Simon to play around with the globe and sought the twins to see what they were up to.
There was Corwin, standing by the large heavy bookcase, thumbing through one of the thick leather-bound books with keen interest.
I could not see what he was browsing, but I imagined it had something to do with magik—until I heard Connor's whistle from behind him.
"Man, that's one sexy lady!"
Corwin shut the book with a BANG and pushed it back into its slot.
"It's just a medical journal for mage healers." His face reddened.
"Yep! I guess even sexy women need their female parts healed sometimes." Connor laughed and made his way towards me.
I turned away, pretending intense interest in a lamp with a frosted glass ball for a shade.
The ball shade sat atop a skinny wrought iron base with an attached stuffed imp perched on the lamp's base.
The imp was about twelve-inches tall with blackish brown skin. It had bat-like wings, folded and tucked against its torso but looked to be at least six-inches long in either direction when stretched out to full length.
It looked so real that I had to lean in for a closer inspection.
The details were amazing, right down to the curly eye lashes and fuzzy inner lobes of its perky ears.
"I wonder how long that chiro's been dead." Connor spoke up behind me. I turned to look at him. Although he was making a comment about the lamp, his eyes were on me.
"Is it real?" I peered at it.
"Oh yes. Very real—and very dead," he chuckled. "I haven't seen a chiro around here in ages. I hear they are quite common in the Northern Realm.
I recoiled in horror. "Ugh! What a nasty thing to put on a lamp."
Connor patted my head. "It's ok. He's been dead for a very long time. But never fear. If he dares try anything on you, I promise to protect you from his evil magik."
I gave him a dubious look and turned back to the corpse with something akin disgust. "How did he get captured?"
"With this." Connor pointed to a metal star-shaped disc with wicked pointed edges. It was the size of a large coin.
I gasped as I saw the wicked points of the pentagonal star lodged within the imp's body.
"What is that?"
"It's an iron shuriken."
"Iron?"
"Yes. Iron is a poison to the chiros. This shuriken was specifically designed with magiked iron that does not oxidize. Look. No rust, even after all these years."
I stared at the tiny weapon, amazed at its efficacy. "Is there no other way to capture a chiro without killing it with this type of weapon?"
"Of course." Connor gave me a gentle smile. "But that has to do with mind control, which is much more involved than simply throwing a dagger at a chiro."
"But I would think it's more humane. I have bats as pets and they are super intelligent."
"Nana, he's not just a bat. He's part human and is capable of rational, intelligent thought."
"You mean like Katrina, the lady who owns the MagiKat Coffee Shop?"
"Yes. She's half-lion. This guy was half-bat."
I shook my head. "Then it is even more tragic that he was killed in this fashion. He was a human being. This was murder and he wasn't even given a proper burial. Instead, he's magiked into a lamp decoration."
"I agree with you; however, when a cauldron of angry chiros are flying at your head and you have to act quickly to avoid turning into a ghost, these iron shurikens are good to have around."
He spread his fingers into the air and three similar shuriken appeared between the digits of his hand.
"Let's put him to rest finally, shall we?"
Connor fluttered another hand into the air and the chiro dissipated into a puff of smoke. The iron shuriken that had been embedded into the chiro dropped, clanging onto the lamp's metal base.
Another twist of his wrist and he now had four shurikens in his hand.
I looked at the lamp base. That ancient shuriken had joined Connor's collection.
One more flutter of his fingers and all the weapons disappeared.
I grinned at the skillful display. Not only was Connor a good mage, he had also mastered to a high level, the art and skill of slight-of-hand.
"Speaking of demon control," Corwin called out from behind, "how are you doing with the Demon book?"
I shrugged and turned in Corwin's direction. "I don't know. I haven't had a chance to look at it."
"Where is it?" He asked with that point-blank curt voice that I had come to expect from Corwin.
In answer to his question, I reached into my bag and pulled out the book.
It had been weighing me down ever since Simon had turned it over to me and I was glad to have the chance to pass it back to the mages who knew better, what to do with such an item of importance.
As if on cue, Simon wandered back into our immediate vicinity. He gave me an odd look as I inspected the tome in my hands.
"Do you feel anything special when you hold the book?" Simon's blue eyes flashed with curiosity.
I shook my head. "It's just a book that feels like all its pages have been glued together." I shot him a leveled gaze.
"Is Dean Blackstone even sure that this book can be opened?"
"What are you suggesting," Simon eyed me askance, "that old Blackstone is clueless about magikal seals?"
"No," I protested. "I'm just thinking maybe this is a gag book, or maybe a decorative object that doesn't actually open at all."
I shrank as Simon's gaze chilled. "Not on your life. It's the real deal. I saw how Dean Blackstone handled it last night. It's so real that it scares me.
In fact, even though I was the one who hounded you earlier to get the book open for me, right now, I'm really not looking forward to knowing what's inside those pages. It kinda gives me the creeps." He shivered.
Corwin reached out and took the book from me, turning it this way and that, examining it closely for any surface anomalies.
"There aren't any weird markings or stray scratches. It really is in excellent condition for having been in existence for over a hundred years!"
He rubbed his chin and handed it back to me. "And yet, it is now the only one left, out of—how many?"
"Oh, easily thirty or forty books," Simon spoke up. "There were six of us, seven if you count Nana here, and each of us was hauling five or six of these fat babies in our arms."
"The books were delivered to this room," Connor said. "Do you think they might still be in this room?"
The three exchanged glances.
Without warning, they jumped into action, rushing around the room, pulling things off shelves, digging through drawers and file cabinets, making a cluttered mess of an otherwise clean room.
After about ten minutes of frantic searching, the room looked as if a hurricane blew through and left a wide wake of destruction.
Scrolls and scattered papers littered the floor, and books of all shapes and sizes stacked haphazardly in random groupings threatened to topple over onto the floor.
I stood at the center of the room, assessing the messy situation around me.
"You guys do know that there is an easier way of doing this, right?" I asked, unable to keep the smug superior tone out of my voice.
"Pray tell," Connor said.
Holding the book up in one hand, I spoke a single word of power.
"Lingyibanhueilai!"