Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

" N ot if I can help it." Paige wrinkled her nose as she took her foot off the brake and smashed the gas pedal to the floor.

The engine revved again, and the tachometer's dial flew into the red zone, but the car didn't budge.

"Keep going!" Dewey shouted over the engine's whine. "Rip the front end off if you have to."

"I'm trying. I've got it to the floor."

Ivy curled over the front of the hood, quickly moving toward the dash. Tendrils curled around the side mirror and snapped it off.

More vines wrapped around the roof of the car which soon began to buckle.

"Uh, Paige, we have a problem."

She glanced up at the crumped roof above them. "Yeah, I see that. We need to get out of this car."

Dewey fluttered from his seat and into the back. "We'll go out through the trunk."

Paige pressed the button to raise the hatch before she climbed over the console and into the backseat where she grabbed the backpack and slung it over both shoulders.

"Come on, Paige!" Dewey shouted as he flew through the open hatch and into the damp air. He continued a safe distance away from the vines' reach.

Paige struggled to climb over the back seat and into the cargo space. With the backpack on her back, she couldn't fit through the opening.

"Toss the backpack!" Dewey called through his cupped paws.

The roof pressed closer to her and the glass in the back windows shattered under the pressure. Paige hurried to shrug the pack off and toss it forward. It landed with a splat inches from the back of the vehicle.

"Come on, Paige!" Dewey grumbled as he flew closer to retrieve it.

A tendril of ivy curled around the strap, tugging it away from him.

"Help! The ivy's stealing the bag!"

Paige squeezed through the even smaller opening between the seat and the roof and tumbled into the back. She crawled forward, kicking her feet to propel her out of the car. As she fell onto the ground, a vine wrapped around her leg.

She scrambled to unwrap it and kick away from the car.

"Help! Paige, I can't get the bag." Dewey beat his wings hard as he tried to wrangle the bag away from the plant.

Paige scrambled to her feet and raced forward, grabbing hold of the strap and tugging. The ivy pulled back against them. Paige slipped, sliding forward toward the gate as another tendril reached for her.

"We have to leave it."

"We can't! We may need this stuff. "

Paige grimaced as she kicked at the other ivy that threatened to wrap around her leg. Another curling vine made its way toward Dewey.

"That's it," Paige huffed.

She stomped on the vine holding the bag and yanked back. The end of the tendril ripped away from the thicker piece. "Got it!"

She grabbed Dewey's paw and tugged him away from the chaotic scene as the ivy consumed the car, pulling it closer to the gate.

They quickly raced away to a safe distance. Paige then untangled the tendril that still clutched the backpack's strap and threw it down. She stomped on it until it squashed into nothing.

Dewey settled on her shoulder as she wiped away the sweat on her brow. "Wow, okay, that was awful."

"Tell me about it. And now we've ruined another rental car."

"I really hope we don't need to rent any more cars. We always have a bad experience. And how are we going to get home now?" Paige slapped a palm against her forehead.

"Since you got the bag, we can call for help at least. But we should have a look around and see if we find anything."

"Right. We need another entrance that's far away from the stupid killer ivy."

"Oh, that's not killer ivy," Dewey said with a shake of his head. "Killer ivy is way worse than that."

Paige frowned as she tried to consider something worse than what they'd just encountered. She trekked around the perimeter, keeping a good distance from the gate until she detected no more ivy.

She approached the wrought iron barrier and studied it. "No gate."

"Keep going and see if we find one. "

They finished their circle of the perimeter, stopping when they spotted vines wrapped around the metal.

"No gates, we're stuck," Paige said with a sigh.

Dewey fluttered in the air as they backtracked away from the ivy. "We'll have to climb over."

"I can't climb over that. There's no way I can shimmy up there and over the top. Look at those spikes." Paige frowned at the pointy tips poking toward the sky.

Dewey flew over top of them and hovered inside the cemetery. "They're not that treacherous."

"Says the dragon who just flew over them."

Dewey narrowed his eyes at her.

"Don't give me that look," Paige said with a huff as she crossed her arms.

"I'm not giving you any look, I'm trying to tell if…"

"If what? Now, what's wrong with me? Am I purple with pink spots? No, wait, I've got spikes coming out of my face."

"None of those. You look less green to me. I don't know if it's the moonlight or what." Dewey flew back over the gate and studied her face. "You're definitely less green."

Paige held her hands out and stared at them. "Are you sure? Maybe it's just the weird moonlight coming through the fog."

Dewey circled around her. "You're tail's shorter, too, and your horns are nearly gone."

She ran a hand across the top of her head. The pointy nubs were now just small bumps. "Maybe I'm cured!"

"Yea–" Dewey winced as he completed his circuit.

"What?" she asked.

"Well, you're not as green, receding tail, receding horns. Which is great. But…also…receding height."

Paige stared down at her legs. "No! I'm shrinking again."

"Looks like it. You'll have to eat your growth spaghetti to grow into a big girl again. "

Paige's shoulders slumped as she swung the backpack around and started to dig for the packed food. "Maybe if I catch it before I shrink too much, I'll only need a few bites."

She pulled out the container and cracked it open, grabbing a noodle.

As she dangled it over her open mouth, Dewey shot a paw out. "Wait!"

"What now?" she asked before consuming the pasta.

"No, don't eat it. Let yourself shrink."

"Why?"

"Because then I can carry you over the fence. Then eat it."

"Ohhhh," Paige said with a knowing glance. "Smart. Yeah, I'll just sit here and shrink so you can help me get over this fence."

She plopped on the ground and pulled her legs into a cross-legged seat before she returned the noodle to the container and snapped the lid on.

Dewey settled next to her and lay back to look at the moon through the mist. "Ah, Scotland. You gotta love it. Hey, you know, you really should love it."

Paige drummed her fingers against her thigh as she waited to get smaller. "Why should I love it?"

"You're a wee Scottish lass," Dewey said in his best Scottish accent. "You're descended from Liam McKellan."

"Oh, right."

"You may as well be Braveheart, that's how Scottish you are. I can't believe you're related to Liam McKellan, though."

"Why not?"

"He's so super cool, and you're so…not."

"Hey, I'm super cool. I have literally fought off werewolves, vampires, unicorns, and tons of other stuff."

"Like proposals."

"Exactly," Paige said with a nod of her suddenly-smaller head. "I'm pretty super cool. "

"I guess so. He just seems so…smooth."

Paige recalled meeting the man and nodded. "He was pretty cool. Oh, and I guess the lady who looked just like me in the 1200s was also my ancestor, and she was pretty cool, too."

"Right. Too bad you haven't mastered the trick of floating like she did. This fence would have been child's play."

"Maybe one day. But for today, you can just fly me over. And soon, by the looks of things. I'm barely bigger than you."

"Yeah, you're shrinking pretty quickly."

Within moments, Dewey dwarfed here. She climbed to her feet and raised her tiny arms in the air. "Come on, partner, let's go explore this cemetery."

Paige climbed on top of his back as he rose into the air and flew over the railing with the backpack clutched in one paw. After they landed, Dewey opened the container of growth spaghetti, and Paige consumed her second portion.

They waited almost an hour for her to return to her normal size before they started their exploration of the decrepit, ramshackle cemetery. Threatening to blot them from sight, weeds choked the haphazardly placed tombstones. They weaved around the stone sentinels, shining a light on each in a search for anything that would lead them to the scepter.

"Is there any information on what we're looking for here?" Paige asked after eyeing a few tombstones.

Dewey shook his head. "Nope. Clue just said St. Philomena's Cemetery in Scotland. Didn't say anything else. Maybe it's obvious."

Paige kicked her foot through some of the tall grass. "Like the Scepter is just lying here on the ground for anyone to grab?"

"Maybe not that obvious."

She shined the light on a few more grave markers, finding nothing of interest before her beam fell on a large mausoleum in the distance.

"Maybe in there," she said as she hurried toward its cracking stone facade.

"And you thought the cemetery itself was creepy. This is the height of creepiness," Dewey said as they approached the building. Flanked by two massive gargoyles on pedestals, the worn stone glowed under the moonlight.

Paige shined her light on the heavy metal doors which stood slightly ajar, revealing an inky blackness inside. She shivered as she stepped onto the first stone leading toward the door and aimed her light at the plaque above it.

"Shadows Mausoleum," she said before the beam illuminated what looked like a scepter carved into the stone.

"This has to be it," Dewey said as he rubbed his paws together. "Oh boy. We're going to find the scepter and be legends again. Come on, let's get in there."

Dewey flitted toward the door before Paige grabbed him. "Wait. We can't just go in there. That would be so stupid."

"How is it stupid? That's what we're here for."

"Well, it's dark, and we have no idea what's in there. We shouldn't just plow in there without being careful."

"Well, obviously, but if we can scoop this scepter in the next few hours, we will clinch Best Library Team. Think of the glory of back-to-back wins. We'll be legends in our own time."

"Has no one else won back-to-back?" Paige asked as she took another step closer to the door and peered into the darkness.

"Yeah, National has. And it would be awesome to shove it in their faces that they're not the only ones who can do it. The pompous idiots."

"Wow, you really have some issues with them, huh? "

"I don't like them at all," Dewey said with a shake of his head.

Paige shined her flashlight's beam into the opening between the doors. It did little to illuminate the cavernous space. "Well, I guess we'd better get to it then."

"Let's go!" Dewey plowed into the mausoleum with Paige following him.

She let her beam rise to the ceiling before being it back down to along one wall. "There's no coffin in here."

"Because it's a fake. It's just designed to hold the scepter." Dewey fluttered around the room as the light bounced off the walls. "Too bad it's not just lying here on a pedestal. Looks like we'll have to do some exploring to find it.

"Of course," Paige grumbled. "I don't like when we have to do some exploring."

"Well, they can't just leave it lying around for any old idiot to grab."

"We're not just any old idiots, though."

"Right, we're special idiots." Dewey poked a claw at her before he rubbed his chin and studied the space. Something caught his eye, and he flitted across the room to a set of stones. "These look odd."

Paige glanced at them. "They look okay to me."

"No, look. There's a clear outline here. I think this is a doorway. We just have to figure out how to trigger it."

Paige let out a nervous chuckle. "Oh, perfect. Then we can go deeper into the tomb. Maybe we'll get stuck or trapped with thousands of pounds of dirt on top of us and have to claw our way out through a tunnel."

"If that's your thing, sure. I was hoping it would just open to reveal the scepter inside, we'd grab it, call Ronnie, and be on our way."

"After she sends a new rental or something. "

"Right, because you wrecked another rental…your track record is really bad with those, Paige."

"I'm sorry that supernatural things keep attacking us on the regular." Paige pressed a few of the stones making up the panel, but nothing triggered it to open.

Dewey pounded his paw against the decorative trim at the corner. "So, am I. Before I met you I had a pretty tame life."

"You sat in the archives for a decade."

"Right. Nothing really ever attacked me. Oh, except for the one time, I accidentally let a Cyclops loose in there. Atticus was super mad about that."

"Well, Atticus was an ass, so that's not surprising." Paige stomped on a few areas of the floor.

"And I'd love for him to see me win BLT for a second time. The jerk. I bet his jaw was on the floor when he saw that." Dewey grabbed hold of a torch holder and tugged on it.

Stone ground against stone. Paige snapped her flashlight toward the panel, finding it open. The scent of musty air filled her nostrils. "Dewey, you did it!"

He offered her a smarmy smile. "Best Library Team, here we come. Tell me the scepter is just sitting in there on a golden pedestal."

"Sorry, buddy, just a set of decrepit old stairs heading into a creepy basement."

"Technically, that's not a basement, but sure. Looks like we're heading into Creepyville. Let's hope the scepter is right at the bottom of the stairs."

"And that there are no traps."

"Traps?" Dewey said as he landed on Paige's shoulder. "This isn't an Indiana Jones movie."

"Yeah, well, the last time we were in Egypt it almost turned into one. There were traps there."

"But this is Scotland. The Scots wouldn't do that. "

"Famous last words," Paige said as she descended further into the dark, damp space. She shivered from the cold penetrating her as she swept the flashlight beam around the narrow space.

"Nothing here but a passage. Let's keep going down it."

"Right, by all means, let's keep going deeper into the creepy tomb." Paige inched her way forward, hoping her light would glint off of the scepter at any moment.

Unfortunately, the passage curved and continued to slope down further into the ground. Paige winced as she let her flashlight rise toward the stone ceiling. "Really hope the Scots knew what they were doing when they built this."

"Those archways can withstand thousands of pounds of pressure," Dewey said. "I mean, unless the stone is falling apart or they forget something vital."

"Please stop saying those things while we're down here."

Dewey thrust a claw forward. "Look! A door. I bet that's the scepter room."

"Also, stop betting things. You've been wrong every time, and then we just have to keep on going deeper and deeper and deeper."

"It can't go that much farther. I bet that's it. Come on, Paige, we're nearly there."

Paige continued toward the thick metal door at the end. Her fingers caressed the cold metal as she pushed it. Rusty hinges protested the movement with a loud groan that echoed off the stone walls.

She stepped inside and crossed to the center of the room, letting her light splay on the bare stone walls. Her shoulders slumped as her eyebrows tugged together. "There's nothing here."

"Au contraire," a snarky British voice said from behind them.

The door slammed shut as Paige whipped around to face it. A bright light shined in her eyes, and she squinted against it while she held up a hand to block the beam.

The beam shifted, illuminating the holder's face. "So lovely to see you again, Paige."

Paige's heart skipped a beat, and she swallowed hard while staring into the eyes of Ivy Delacroix, a deadly Venompire.