Part 4

That day, after dinner and a few moments of mother-daughter quality time, I said my good-night and went up to my room. I hesitated for a moment outside my door. But when I finally opened it, I found there had been no reason to fear.

He wasn’t there and everything else was in its rightful place. For a moment I’d considered the possibility that the effects of his Magic might have worn off during the day and that, when I returned home, I’d find everything in pieces again.

My gaze fell upon the heavy book and anger took over me, but I immediately censured my childishness. That pile of paper wasn’t to blame for my idiotic decision. And a bright idea crossed my mind, which made me grab the book and open it on the first page.

I’d start there, I decided. If a spell from that book had set him free, then maybe the book contained the Magic formula that would imprison him again!

I read the book all through the night and Saturday morning, only putting it down to have some breakfast. I went back to my readings until lunchtime and, in the afternoon, Rachel and I went to the supermarket. I returned to its yellowish pages after dinner and was past five in the morning when I finally finished it, completely frustrated for not having found a single thing that might help me.

The book said nothing about how to Seal evoked creatures. In fact, if I understood correctly, the book’s author seemed to find the idea of anything materializing itself during a ritual utterly impossible, since the recipes on its pages worked solely with energetic and spiritual entities. As it was, there was no need to include spells to expel or cast away such beings back to their original dimensions.

I sighed, putting the book back on its shelf, and fell on the bed, falling asleep without even noticing.

The rest of the weekend went by in a rush. My research on mythical creatures and Magic Spells progressed on the Internet, and it didn’t take me long to understand that subjects like Magic and the Occult were in vogue everywhere. There were dozens of sites about the stuff, and they all said totally different things. Some even more absurd than some of the recipes included on my heavy book.

Still, and although I spent those few days under an absurd tension, waiting to see him appear out of thin air at any time, looking for him on every tree branch I passed by almost like a mad person, he didn’t return.