Phantom of the Library - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,1

peace at all.” He was speaking right into my ear, his nose pressed to my hair, and this mild threat made me wet.

Oh god, what had I gotten myself into?

“Let’s…get to business,” I said, shoving Graham off, not without effort.

Graham’s BMW, Billie’s work truck and the Wolves at the Door company van definitely stood out in the quiet neighborhood. I didn’t love how close these houses were, considering how our plan was to use the maps to tear down the barriers between the magical worlds. How popular would this plan be with the locals? Probably not very.

At least the house was surrounded by some lush gardens. Probably one and a half acre lots, I figured. The house was one story in front, two in back, overlooking a hillside view. The house itself was all boxy shapes stacked on each other and large glass windows, typical of midcentury design.

“I’ve never worked on a midcentury modern before,” Billie said.

“Me neither, but there is a warlock around here who does midcentury design and restores furniture and stuff. Tom Atomic. I watch his videos sometimes and he’s pretty cute and funny.”

“Well, we’re not taking any advice from him,” Jasper said. “Cute and funny? Sounds like a fucking nightmare.”

I snorted.

Graham was still just looking at me in a seductive way, like the world had stopped for him, except for me, as he pondered my apparently sexy handling of his BMW. Then he ran a hand through his dark hair and fished the house keys from his pocket, striding to the door before stopping at the lock.

“Will there be a demon in this doorknob?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “You just have to man up and try it. Don’t be scared.”

He gave me a scathing look that was still plenty sexy, his dark green eyes piercing, and turned the key in the lock.

No demons. But something worse than a demon.

“Excuse me!” An old man with a withered voice tried his best to yell at us from the street. “Excuse me!”

We all turned.

The old man was bald but had an impressive mustache. He was hunched and pot-bellied, wearing all black—polo shirt, dress shoes and slacks. (You know he called them slacks.) He was wearing a big gold and crystal pendant around his neck like a rapper with bling. I guess this was wizard fashion around here.

“Who are you?” he demanded of all of us, Graham especially, since he had the keys. “Sam didn’t have any sons, did he? I never heard of it. You look like him, though, come to think of it.”

“I was a family friend,” Graham said. “He left the house to me. Graham Capello.”

“Capello! That sounds Italian! Capello… Hey, Hepzibah, where do we know the Capello name?”

A female voice shouted from somewhere in the distance behind the neighboring house, “That was Sam’s friend! Freddy or something!”

“Fiore,” Graham said.

“Fiore Capello!”

“So you got this house, eh? Well, you better take good care of it. We’re all watching you, eh, Graham? Keep it in the family, you know what I mean? My name’s Al.”

“Sure, Al, nice to meet you…,” Graham said.

“You know the history of this place?”

“Maybe not in the way you’re hoping to tell me.”

“Oh, you’re a funny one. An incubus, right? I can tell. I can always tell. Well, this neighborhood here, we’re all the kids and grandkids of the town founders who came out here because the elitist witches and warlocks out in New York and such didn’t want to make room for us. They’d all been here forever. And then we came over through Ellis Island, you know…and it was a whole little group of our grandparents who said, hey, you know what? What if we tried going out to Hollywood?”

He went on for a while. I resisted mentioning that we were a pretty long drive away from Hollywood. His entire story seemed like it held a grudge against my family, or at least any wizard who fit the exact description of my family. I was expecting him to actually namedrop one of my relatives at any moment.

“But who are the ladies?” the old man asked, turning his attention to me and Billie. “They look a little sweet to be Sinistrals.”

Is this a Sinistral wizard community? I immediately felt awkward. I didn’t know I’d be stepping into that. I assumed that the final house on our little tour would be as isolated as the first two. Nosy neighbors seemed like a bad mix with everything we were planning.

“We’re all Sinistral,” Billie said. “We just