Free Spellbound: The Books of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West

my Archimedes,” said Mrs. Dunwoody, who was sorting the contents of the drawers according to weight and density, gesturing invitingly toward a bucket full of water.
    Olive shook her head.
    After breakfast, Olive sat on the back porch, scowling. She had brought a green Popsicle outside with her, but she’d already sucked out all the juice. All that was left now was a water-flavored icicle in a bag, and the bag kept cutting the inside of her cheeks.
    She needed that spellbook. She felt sure that she’d been close to it last night, that it was somewhere upstairs . . . But what if she was only imagining this? Olive’s imagination had the tendency to kidnap her and take her to dangerous places. What if the book wasn’t even in the house? Or—worst of all—what if it had never existed in the first place?
    No. She squashed the thought down into a hard little lump. She had the lurking, lingering feeling that she had seen the book somewhere. But where ?
    Olive stood up and wandered toward the back of the yard. She tilted the Popsicle bag in her hand, letting a trail of droplets fall onto the strange plants in the garden, where they sparkled on purple velvety petals and spiny stems and leaves that looked like pointed fingernails. Very carefully, because you never knew what was going to sting or make you itch in this garden, she pulled up one little pink flower and held it to her nose. It smelled like a swimming pool.
    A warm, wimpy breeze floated across the yard, carrying with it the sound of someone humming in a rather tuneless fashion. Olive followed the sound. It led her toward the lilac hedge that separated the Dunwoodys’ backyard from Mrs. Nivens’s. Through a fence of thick green leaves, Olive could see flashes of a broad-brimmed sunhat, a yellow dress, an apron, and prim little shoes with curved, two-inch heels. Who gardens in high heels? Olive wondered to herself.
    And suddenly, Mrs. Nivens’s smooth, yellowish face was staring right back into hers. “Well, hello, Olive dear,” Mrs. Nivens said, bending down to peer through the leaves. “I thought I heard you over there.”
    Olive jerked backward, smacking her head on a branch. She could feel her face progressing quickly from red to fuchsia. “Hello, Mrs. Nivens,” she mumbled.
    “You look awfully warm, Olive,” said Mrs. Nivens. “Would you care for a glass of lemonade? I just made a pitcher. It’s waiting right over here.”
    Making conversation with Mrs. Nivens over a glass of lemonade sounded about as pleasant as juggling tarantulas. But if Olive said no, Mrs. Nivens would think she was an even stranger, ruder little girl than she did already. So Olive stumbled through the lilac bushes into Mrs. Nivens’s perfectly manicured yard and followed her to a little table with a ruffled umbrella that stood in the shade near the house. Mrs. Nivens poured Olive a glass of lemonade from a pitcher beaded with condensation. She didn’t take one for herself.
    Olive sipped her lemonade, feeling hot and sticky and itchy in places she couldn’t scratch in public—certainly not in front of Mrs. Nivens. Mrs. Nivens, on the other hand, appeared to be as cool as ever, as if she had been carved out of a cold stick of butter. The smooth, chilly planes of Mrs. Nivens’s body didn’t seem to want to move. Or maybe they couldn’t move. Maybe if Mrs. Nivens laughed or jumped or even looked surprised, she would shatter into a thousand pats of butter. Olive imagined Mrs. Nivens falling apart into a heap of small foil-wrapped rectangles. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
    Today, in spite of the late summer heat, Mrs. Nivens was wearing a dress with long sleeves, and her legs—what little of them the dress’s full skirt left exposed—appeared to be covered in panty hose. The thought of wearing panty hose in this heat made Olive itch even more.
    They sat for a moment in silence. Mrs. Nivens adjusted the brim of her white straw sunhat.
    “How is