Free Spirit Storm by E.J. Stevens Page B

freak out. I really didn’t want to be turned into a toad. They eat flies. Gag me.
    “Just keepin’ it real,” she said, nose already in a text.
    *****
    After three hours and eleven minutes of research, not that I was counting, we dragged ourselves to the photocopier. I fed the machine money while Emma made copies of any pictures we had found of Nera’s magic amulet. When we finished I lugged the books to the returns cart and we walked to the media lab.
    Finding an available computer we searched for the shop in Salem where I had last seen the amulet. Unfortunately I could picture the exact layout of the store, but couldn’t remember the shop name. Unless it was called Dark and Spooky, we were in for a long search. Emma called up a map of downtown Salem and I tried to visualize walking the brick and cobbled pedestrian streets with Calvin last year.
    Cal had always been into all things mystical which was what initially drew us to Salem years ago. We would visit the New Age shops, bookstores, and palm readers for Cal and then go shopping in the Goth clothing and accessory stores for me. Heck, I had found some of my favorite outfits in the year-round Halloween costume outlets.
    I suddenly remembered going into a witches’ apothecary shop that had these cool dark fairy prints in the window. Cal had gone to the back wall which was covered in small bags of dried herbs and other witchy ingredients. The reason the shop stuck in my mind was that we had nearly been kicked out. When I clomped up beside Cal and saw the price tag on a tiny bag of oak tree bark, I nearly had an apoplectic fit. Living in Maine meant there was no shortage of tree bark. Was my backyard a goldmine? According to Cal, I had made my exclamation a bit too loudly, and it didn’t help that the salesperson was standing right behind me. Before we could be scolded by the staff, Cal turned and led me out the door onto Wharf Street. I scrutinized the map and found Wharf Street down by the waterfront. I then followed the roads in the direction we walked until I came to a recognizable landmark. I recalled facing the Hawthorne Hotel, named after the Salem born author, and turning left. According to the map this was Essex Street.
    “Emma, try looking up occult shops on Essex Street,” I said, excitedly.
    “Okay, how about Crow Haven Corner,” she said. “Does that sound like the shop?”
    “No,” I replied. “I remember having to walk up stone steps to that one. The shop with the amulet was on street level.” My pulse was racing and I had to keep wiping my sweating palms on my cargo pants.
    “Here’s one,” she said. “The Cauldron and Noose?”
    “Oh my God, that’s it!” I yelled, belatedly remembering we were in a library.
    “Too much caffeine,” Emma said and shrugged at the glowering woman across the room. “Are you sure it’s the Cauldron and Noose?”
    “Absolutely,” I replied. “The name made me think of Bubble and Squeak, which is the name of that breakfast dish my mom makes with left over vegetables, and I remember looking at the sign and feeling all queasy. It stuck with me as kind of a morbid name.”
    “Okay, remind me not to go shopping with you and Cal,” she said. “Ever.”
    I started giggling and felt nervous energy bubbling up to the surface. Looking over at the still frowning woman across the room I tried to clamp down on my laughter.
    “Deal,” I said. “So do they have a website?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “Here’s their photo gallery. Look familiar?”
    Some of the displays had changed and they now had an entire section devoted to Egyptian sun gods and scarabs, okay that’s a strange coincidence, but the glass case was still in the same spot by the back wall. I clicked through more pictures in their gallery and gasped when I found a close-up photograph of the amulet.
    “Gallows Amulet, private collection,” I read aloud.
    “Yuki, it looks just like Nera’s amulet,” she said. Emma was holding our copies of