Page 36 of No Charm Done
“THOU SHALT NOT.” Louise’s voice thundered through the shop.
“If we went back to before we gave the demonstration,” Luna argued, “then we could just not give it. Problem solved, no?”
“No. If I send you back in time again, what fresh catastrophe would you unleash? No doubt you’ll create some greater calamity. Then, here you’ll come again, begging me to send you back to mend your latest disaster, only to birth yet another abomination that demands yet another journey into the labyrinth of time?” Louise rose from her chair, and her shadow stretched impossibly across the floor, like the wings of some primordial beast. “I decline ensnarement in such an ouroboros of stupidity.”
“So what’s the play here, ma’am?” Elias’s tone suggested he already knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
“You shall journey forward to the summer of 2026 to thwart him. ’Tis when this CastR abomination shall be unleashed upon the world. You must unite the warring factions of witches and magicians in common cause against this shared menace.”
“It’ll never happen,” Luna replied. “Witches and magicians have been at war for centuries. They’ll never collaborate.”
“It appears that Fate has gifted you with a common adversary.”
Elias was looking increasingly green, and Luna suspected it wasn’t entirely due to the tea. “You’re asking me to go even further into the future, ma’am?”
“I am commanding you to repair what your carelessness has shattered.”
“But I need to go home.” There was something almost plaintive in his voice that took Luna by surprise. “Listen, lady, you sent me all the way back to the dinosaurs, didn’t you? So surely you could just ship me back to my own time.”
“Your time?” Louise’s voice sounded like the night terrors of galaxies. “Foolish mortal, you have dwelt in the Void, severed from your temporal moorings for nigh on a century. At what juncture do you intend to cease this pathetic flight from reality and confront the present?”
“But this ain’t my present, ma’am.”
Luna rubbed her temples. “The point is, you want us to go to summer 2026 to stop this thing.”
“I’m not going anywhere but where I belong,” Elias said firmly. “Which for the hundredth time is Chicago 1926.”
“Look,” Luna said, “this might sound crazy, but what if we just went with the classic time-travel solution? You know, like how people say, if time travel exists, let’s go kill Hitler as a baby?”
“Kill a baby?” Elias looked genuine horrified. “What kind of monster are you, Melrose?”
“No, no, you misunderstand. I didn’t mean literally. It’s that idea of using time travel to go back and stop something before it even starts.”
“But what could this baby Hitler possibly have done to deserve that?”
Luna groaned. “Oh gods, we do not have time. . . Never mind, bad example.”
“You look so sweet and innocent.” Elias still looked shaken. “And then you want to murder an infant.”
“No, I wasn’t seriously suggesting—”
“The Melrose meatsack raises an intriguing point,” Louise interrupted. “And it is certainly true that infants are repellent creatures. But a temporal paradox of that magnitude may require me to spend eternity untangling the resulting chaos. Most tedious.”
“Right,” Luna said weakly. “Sure.”
“Precisely. So, you shall journey to the summer of 2026. You shall convince the fractured magical communities to unite in common cause. You shall thwart Ashton Vex and his blasphemous contraption. And thou shall not perpetrate any felonies, major or minor, chronological or otherwise.”
Luna turned to look at Elias. Singed suit, haunted expression . . . the way he was maintaining his dignity despite the shrieks of T. rexes still ringing in his ears. He’d lost a century to the Void. Now she was asking him to risk even more. But Oak Haven was her home. And if the digitization of magic succeeded . . .
Elias met her stare and something passed between them—not quite understanding, but a recognition that they were in this mess together. He straightened his singed lapel with as much dignity as he could muster. “Well,” he said quietly, “I suppose I’ve been in worse scrapes. Not much worse. But when this mess is resolved, I’m taking my reward in the form of a trip back to my own time. Understood?”
“Most excellent.” Louise clapped her hands with the sound of thunder, and the world dissolved again.
Chapter 12
Home Is Where the Tingle Is
It took a moment for Luna’s eyes to accept the shift from Louise’s shadowy nightmare shop to the warm light of the Stargazer Inn. She breathed deeply, taking in the comforting scent of polish on dark wood.
