A Pact's Peculiar Purpose

The musty smell of forgotten things tickled my nose as I heaved Grandma’s “spicy” spellbooks off the shelf. Spicy. Right. More like “might accidentally summon a dragon and have it eat your homework” spicy. I coughed, waving away a cloud of dust that seemed to have a mind of its own, swirling around me like a tiny, grumpy ghost. Bartholomew, perched on my shoulder, let out a little squeak.

“You know, Amy,” he rasped, his voice like dry leaves skittering across pavement, “I’ve always suspected your grandmother was less ‘gentle autumn magic’ and more ‘secretly a pyromaniac with a penchant for really old paper.’”

“Oh, shut up, Barty,” I grumbled, wrestling a particularly thick tome onto the table. The cover was dark leather, embossed with swirling symbols that looked suspiciously like angry eyebrows. “She was trying to protect me.”