#the lesson here is actually go inside ur cupboards sometimes

[dogbunni]

I am way too autistic and disabled for this (cleaning my house)

[lids-flutter-open]

somebody read this scene especially if youve already read my book. it changes a key plot point slightly (Mr Weber helps Z try to steal books on necromancy; they  fail; Mr. Weber gets arrested--in this version Z is actually at the library with him) sorry it’s so long if ur on mobile

 Z didn’t know what hours the university library at Willamette University was open. When the sun came up slightly over the edge of the horizon, they were sitting at the window of Mrs. Dunnigan’s front room, looking out at the foggy street. Mrs. Dunnigan was up early even on Saturdays, and Z could hear her moving in her room, closing and opening drawers.

“Mr. Weber gave me a spell to disable the security on the Censored Materials room at Willamette,” Z said when the old witch opened her bedroom door and stood for a moment putting on her slippers.

Mrs. Dunnigan blinked. She looked for a second at Z with incomprehension, and then her face settled into an expression of displeasure. “He should have done more than that,” she said. “He should have gone there with you.”

“Do you think you can go there with me?” Z asked. “Or do you have the bookstore to take care of?”

“The bookstore is open today and I’ve sworn to myself that I’ll stay open in spite of the people who want to close it. You can come with me downtown if you want.”

“Do you think I have a chance at getting into the Censored Materials room alone, if I went today?” Z asked. “I could try to do like an invisibility thing.”

“Can you do an invisibility hex on yourself?” Mrs. Dunnigan asked.

“I’ve done it on a pencil,” Z said.

“I don’t think that’s very smart,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She cleared her throat and folded her bathrobe more tightly around her small body. “I don’t know that it’s safe. I wish it was the seventies so I would have the kind of thing you needed on the top shelf of the back room ready to give you, but they burned all my rare books about that kind of magic years ago and they do the same to anyone nowadays who tries to get at the ones they kept locked up.” She moved past Z into the kitchen and began making tea. “I wish he’d done more to help you. I read about that golem last year and thought, now there’s a sorcerer. I suppose this government makes us all cowards. Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”

Z didn’t say anything, and stretched their arms above their head, listening to their own bones crack.

The bookstore had not been badly damaged by the stone or by the angry people who had shown up to protest the werewolf rights display, but there was a long, uneven line of splintered glass down the length of the front window that had been patched up unevenly on both sides with clear layers of packing tape. Z followed Mrs. Dunnigan inside and sat for a while by the register, watching her do the accounts and pretending to read. They had carried the spell Mr. Weber gave them in their pocket. Z wasn’t sure what excuse to use to slip away, or if they should tell Mrs. Dunnigan in case they ran into trouble at the library.

“I think I want to maybe go to the library today and just scope it out,” they said. “Not try anything, just look to see where things are.”

Mrs. Dunnigan studied Z. “Do you think you can stay out of danger?”

Z shrugged. “I’ll wear a sweatshirt or something so people can’t see my scars.”

“Wear a hat too. But let’s see. You can wear my friend Sal’s baseball cap and sweater with the Oregon Ducks logo.”

“People hate the Ducks here.”

“If anyone asks you can say you’re from Eugene and you’re visiting your brother at school and showing your allegiance for the Ducks to spite him.”

Z nodded. “Okay.”

“Would you like a razor blade to cut some pages out of books if you find anything? Not, of course, that I approve of cutting up books.” Mrs. Dunnigan took a capped razor blade in a case from inside a drawer by the register.

Z took the razor blade and a canvas shopping bag. Mrs. Dunnigan put three large books about football history into it, in case Z needed the covers to hide anything they stole. As they closed the door of the bookstore behind them, the bell chimed so loudly that it almost covered Mrs. Dunnigan’s goodbye. They caught the bus at the corner. It wasn’t far to the university from the bookstore, since both were in the middle of town.

The library at Willamette had been built in the later eighties and was still fairly new. Originally it was going to be named after a U.S Senator from Oregon, but once the senator was investigated for affiliation with dissident magical groups, the committee in charge had decided to christen it the Wells Library instead, in honor of an executive at an airplane manufacturing company who had donated to the library’s construction. It was made of brick and glass and had a clock tower in the front that looked like it had been built more to represent the idea of a tower than to fulfill any real function. You could not climb into it, though it was true that if you stood in its shadow it blocked rain from falling. Z passed under the clock on their way to the sliding doors that opened inward on the interior of the building. As they passed the front desk a bored student employee looked up and then back down at the book they were reading.

Z had no idea where to begin to look for the Censored Materials Division. They imagined it would either be in a basement or on the top floor, and they decided to ride the elevator all the way up to see if they could find a promising locked cupboard or filing cabinet. The only other people in the library early on a Saturday were students who looked harried and sleep-deprived and carried with them large stacks of books or papers. Z’s feet made little noise on the thin blue carpeting as they made their way to the elevators. The elevator doors opened onto a flat, florescent expanse of shelving and computer banks, labeled in a way that Z couldn’t make heads or tails of. They circled the floor along the outer edge, looking for a hallway or narrow corner, but the top floor seemed to be mainly full of history texts on agricultural development. They took the elevator to the basement. It stopped on the second floor, and opened. Three students and one taller man got in. Z did not initially look up, pretending to study the buttons. When they felt the older man staring them down, though, they looked up to meet his gaze.

It was Mr. Weber.

Z nodded to show that they saw him and waited for the students to leave the elevator. He looked tired. At school Mr. Weber always dressed neatly, but today he was wearing baggy gray denim pants and a loose vest over a T-shirt. As the silver doors closed and the chain inside the elevator mechanism lowered Z and Mr. Weber to the basement, he cleared his throat.

“I thought you might be here,” he said quietly. “I felt terrible about leaving you to do this on your own. I never wanted to be that kind of person. I thought about it all yesterday and realized I had to help you. I get scared sometimes, but this is something I need to do.”

“Do you know where the Censored Materials Division is? If you could just tell me, I think I’ll be okay on my own.” Z was slightly taken aback by Mr. Weber’s presence and the way he was holding himself like a bent stick that might at any second snap.

“I can do one better than that,” Mr. Weber said. “I think it’s a good idea for you to be invisible. I imagined you wouldn’t be able to do that on your own.” The elevator reached the basement floor and the small chime rang out as the doors slid open. Mr. Weber gestured for Z to stay where they were, pressed into the space on one side of the door.

“An invisibility hex for a person is dangerous,” Z started to say, whispering in case someone was outside next to the long alleyways of filing cabinets. “We learned that last year. I could…”

“Suffocate, yes.” Mr. Weber smiled slightly, though his eyes looked tired and his body was tense. Z could see the bubble gum pressed between his teeth. “I don’t think that’s a concern here.”

“Oh,” Z said. “Right.” They squared their shoulders. “Then yes, all right.”

Mr. Weber pressed one hand lightly to Z’s forehead and muttered a rapid-fire incantation. Z recognized part of it from basic invisibility lessons the previous year, but it went on for far longer. Z felt a sensation along their spine and in their fingers and toes as if someone had just wrapped them in a thin, sticky bedsheet.

“The archives are at the end of the hall to your right,” Mr. Weber said. “It’s all in cabinets and lockers. You’re looking for the last four cabinets on the right side of the hallway. I know because of breaking in once before. You can probably unlock them easily once you’re through the outer security spell.”

“How will the invisibility work with me holding things?” Z looked down at the bag they were holding, trying to see if it was invisible.

“Whatever you touch and hold to your chest will be invisible until you get out of the building and probably to the other side of the quad. Duck behind a bush or something for a few minutes. Tap your foot three times when you’re on your way past me to the elevator so I know you’re leaving with books. Tap twice if you didn’t get what you came for.”

Z didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” they said through the plasticky invisibility hex, their words muddled.

Mr. Weber nodded. “Go as fast as you can,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll talk to the librarian to buy you time. Hopefully there aren’t too many staff.” He turned and walked slowly out toward the open office door a few yards from the elevator. Z followed behind him, unsure if they were really invisible. They looked down at their own hands and body and could see just fine where everything was, though at the same time there was a kind of mauve cloudiness around the edges of their elbows and knees and fingers. They felt as if they were encased in a spiderweb as they started down the hall toward the large black metal door with the inscription Authorized Staff Only, fumbling in their pocket for the spell Mr. Weber had given them earlier in the week. The paper was crumpled and torn on one side. Z tried to remember the incantation for fire. Z glanced behind them and saw Mr. Weber standing near the open door of the librarian office, looking at them.

“Incendi,” they muttered at the paper as they neared the black door. They felt at a distance the magic, as if it was entering their head from behind and shooting through their arms. It was a shock like a lightning bolt. The edge of the charmed scrap caught fire and began to send up a ribbon of smoke. When the red ember reached the sigil scratched in the middle of the paper, it sent up bright white fire. Z pressed it to the door, unsure if this was what they were meant to do. All at once, a bolt of brilliant blue emanated from their palm and a chemical acrid smell surrounded Z. They pulled back their hand, and the door swung open.

Inside, the cabinets looked at first just like the ordinary filing cases that filled the rest of the basement. There were no windows, though the room stretched further than Z had expected. It seemed to be organized in a different way than the rest of the library. Some cabinets were stacked one on top of another, and narrow ladders on rollers hung like long ship’s beams down the length of the walls. Z began to walk down the aisle of metal cabinets, looking for something about death, or necromancy. They remembered Mr. Weber’s directions and walked quickly to the back of the expansive room. The subject listings stood out on their small white placards, written haphazardly in a way that entirely contrasted with the orderly university shelves outside the black room. Cohens, Hattie Mae. Commune, Paris. Druidic Rites. Fey, American.

Then, at the end of the long room, Z heard the sound of someone closing a drawer and the noise of footsteps. They froze in place.

“Augustine?” a voice called out. “Did you re-organize this section?” A woman’s head peered around the corner, wearing a surgical mask and glasses that had a slight tint. She was otherwise dressed with exacting plainness, in a brown sweater and courderoys. “Augustine? Are you here? Is this door open?”

Z edged past the woman as she made her way rapidly towards the open door, looking at the labels on the shelves. They were at the N section now. They opened the nearest cabinet, where the slightly peeling label Necromancy, Practical shone in the florescent lighting. It squeaked on rusted hinges, and Z froze before edging it the rest of the way open.

The drawer was empty. Z’s heart plummeted into their stomach.

Outside in the hallway, Z heard a shout and a sudden loud high-pitched screech that continued to drone on in a pulsing monotone. The lights above them in the room of censored materials began to flash red. They realized after a moment of horrified paralysis that it was an alarm. The noise was followed by the noise of running footsteps. Z frantically opened the remaining drawers in the cabinet. They were empty—folders divested of contents, and spaces where the books should have been. They moved in on the next one, which was empty too, and then desperately opened the drawers labeled with Naiad, Nazis, Nigerian Exorcism, and Nostradamus. These drawers had volumes and folios inside them, but from what Z could see they all had to do with the designated subjects on the labels.

The noise of the footsteps got closer. Z heard a shout and realized that the voice was Mr. Weber’s.

Z had only moments to react. They shut the drawers with a bang and raced back down the corridor to the black door. Two people were standing near it, and Z slowed to look, their legs aching. It was a large security guard in a dark navy uniform, standing pressing something into the back of Mr. Weber’s neck. Z almost cried out, but remembered at the last second to stay silent. About ten feet away, the woman Z had seen in the Censored Materials room stood, mask off, next to another librarian, watching.

“We had a notification that an unauthorized person disabled the security spell on the Censored Materials Division door,” the guard said. “You’re the only non-faculty personnel in the area. Hands above your head, sir.”

“You have the wrong person,” Mr. Weber said. He looked to and fro as if he was seeking out Z, but he could not place where they were. Z tapped their foot twice, as loud as they dared. Mr. Weber jerked his head toward the elevators and nodded in their direction. The guard pressing him into the wall didn’t notice.

“We’re going to have to take you to the campus police station and conduct an inventory of the room, unfortunately,” the guard said. “Willamette staff takes the security of their federally protected censored materials very seriously. I need you to remain still and not perform any magic. Any failure to comply will be interpreted as assault of Willamette faculty.”

“I swear I was just down here to look for a volume I need on lizards,” Mr. Weber said.

“I’m going to need you to remain silent,” the guard said.

Z ran for the elevators, and then at the last moment decided to use the stairs instead. They hauled the door open. As they raced up the stairs, they stumbled, and began to feel the sticky spiderweb feeling lifting from their face and limbs. Z grabbed the railing to right themselves and scrambled up to the ground floor. They tried not to run for the exit when they left the stairwell and limped as carefully as possible for the door.

Out in the foggy morning, Z threw themselves down on a bench across the quad from the library and held onto the wood on both sides of their legs as tightly as they could. Their heart was not pounding and they were not breathing, but the muscles that remained to them were pulled as tight as a string about to snap. Z didn’t know how they sat motionless under a drooping bare black tree and the shadow of a square concrete lecture hall. As they sat and tried to think about what to do next, they heard a wail of police sirens approaching. Z did not want to run or move more than they already had, and so hesitated, frozen, watching a black and white cruiser pull slowly down the wide footpath to the library. They did not wait to see the people inside get out.

When Z told Mrs. Dunnigan that Mr. Weber had shown up to help them and had been arrested, and that Z had opened the door to the Censored Materials Division only to find the books on necromancy gone, Mrs. Dunnigan did not say anything at first, and then walked forward and enveloped Z in a bony embrace.

“At least he turned out to be brave,” she said finally. “He did the right thing. And at least you’re all right.”

“Will he be all right?” Z asked. “I feel like I did the wrong thing, asking too much of him or something. He’s been arrested.”

“We’ll check up on him,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “But you didn’t do the wrong thing. You were protecting yourself. And he’s a grown man. He chose to help you.” There was such a tone of conviction in her voice that Z almost believed her for a moment, until they remembered the stance of the security guard and the thing pressed into Mr. Weber’s neck.

Z felt a deep ugly sensation in the pit of their stomach, and pushed Mrs. Dunnigan away.