Twice Before Bedtime

Chapter One

"Seriously?" Ezekiel was grousing. "Busy work?"

"It's important work," Cassandra said. "The clippings book alerts us to serious threats and the appointment book to timely events."

Ezekiel rolled his eyes. "I know all that. And neither is going off so instead of making the most of our time off, you want to do busy work."

Cassandra rolled her eyes and went back to studying the list. It was the general list of objects that the Library wished to have in its collection. Many of them were lost or at least no one was sure where they were located now. Another group of them were in known locations but didn't pose any immediate danger or threat, usually sitting in museums or dusty attics of collectors, basically things that were passed down in a family and the present owners had no idea what they actually were. Or human nature being as it was, had laughed it off as being an old wives' tale.

"Well, you love a challenge," Cassandra said, writing a couple of objects down. "Why don't you just start trying to find these? Think of it as a treasure hunt, you like those."

Ezekiel sighed but took the list. "What are you going to do?"

Cassandra stared at the list of objects with known locations (or fairly known since it's possible they could have moved), Ezekiel couldn't see her but in her mind she was assigning them each a number and then rolling a many sided die to pick one at random.

"That one," she said pointing to one of the lists. "A Scottish charm-stone that can cure sickness and control the weather. Odd combination. Kept inside a cigar store Indian, in a small town in Oklahoma, of all places."

"A cigar store Indian? What is this, 1919? And how is a charm-stone from Scotland in Oklahoma?"

"It's a small town," Cassandra shrugged. "Probably these days in a corner of a tiny local history museum. And I'm not sure."

"Ah," Jenkins said walking over. "Those sorts of things get passed through generations. Immigration possibly brought the family to Oklahoma or the person who made the Indian carving accidentally sold the one they'd stored the stone in. Any number of reasons for its current location. What matters is locating it. These small towns are proud of their pasts, what if some volunteer gets in their heads to restore the old carving and accidentally unleashes a blizzard in the middle of May? Provided the statue wasn't destroyed long ago, that is, then Ms. Cillian should have no issues securing the charm stone without damaging the town's actual history."

"Sounds bloody boring," Ezekiel said. "Have fun in Woop Woop."

"It's not called . . . ."but Ezekiel was gone and Cassandra just rolled her eyes at his back.

Soon the backdoor landed Cassandra in downtown Wahya, Oklahoma. She'd done a little research before leaving. As was the tendency for modern small to midsize towns, most of the shopping and services were now away from downtown and nestled close to the state highway. There had been an interest in the last decade or so in revitalizing the old downtown, full of lovely turn of the 20th century buildings. There were several small shops, a bank, two restaurants, a coffee place, a library and what looked like one of the probably only original businesses, an old time general store. If she had a chance, Cassandra thought she'd poke around the store, it looked charming. But her sights were set on the low gray building that had a sign out front, "Greater Wahya Historical Museum". It wasn't going to be open much longer, so she headed inside.

--

"Mabel, please, I'm beggin' here. Can't you stay for another week or two?" Jacob asked his best employee, who was planning on leaving by the beginning of the next week.