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do we do about it then?”
    It was an awkward silence. The elders were used to making difficult decisions necessary to defend their people, but no one wanted to harm a child.
    “For now . . . We keep a close eye on her. If she becomes corrupted by the spell as Warlock did, we must be prepared to strike her down.”
    “Jacques!”
    “Don’t look at me like that. If that happens, it is either her, or all of us.”
    “No!”
    “You would have us risk the safety of the entire world for one person?”
    The discussian descended into a general argument, spinning about wildly, as it often did when the elders disagreed.
    “We will do nothing until we are certain.”
    “We can’t—”
    “We’ll make sure first,” a calm voice interjected. “I have just the knight for the job.”
    “Very well.” The American sighed. “Watch her carefully. Test her. Have your knight try to discover the truth . . . And if she is the Spellbound . . .”
    “If she’s the Spellbound, then we must decide on a course of action,” Klaus insisted.
    “I will arrange everything.”
    “Browning and his men cannot know. They would never stand for it. Their fondness for the girl could blind them to her true nature.”
    “You would have us sit on our arses and wait to see if the most dangerous piece of magic in history has chosen to bind itself to an unstable child?” the Englishman exclaimed.
    Several of the elders replied at once, “Yes.”
    “And if she is the one?”
    “We will do what we must to survive,” Jacques stated.
    That matter was settled.
    “And what of the matter of this coming Enemy?” Klaus asked. “Faye and the new man, Sullivan, are both convinced it is real.”
    “The Chairman’s mythical beast?” the American openly scoffed. “Coming to devour the Power and all of us along with it? A fairy tale, nothing more.”
    “I hope you are right.” The Englishman shook his head. “If the legends of Dark Ocean are true . . . May God have mercy on us all.”

Crazy Guy

Chapter 2
     
     
    Dearest Devika. I have succeeded where all others have failed. They called me mad, but I have confirmed the truth. The Power is alive. What we call magic is the means by which it feeds. It grants a piece of itself to some few of us, and as we exercise that connection through every manipulation of the physical world, the magic grows. Upon our death, that increase returns to the Power. It is a symbiotic parasite. Grown fat upon us, the process repeats, more Actives are created, the cycle continues. The Power itself has a certain measure of awareness. Aware? Yes. I do not know yet if it knows that I have stolen from it, and if so, how it will react to my petty thievery. As the Power is using us, I intend to use it. I beg your forgiveness for what I must now become.
    —Anand Sivaram,
    Personal correspondence discovered in
    Hyderabad, India, 1912
     
     
    New York City, New York
     
    THE LIBRARIAN WAS FRUSTRATED. He had finally gotten through every single document, report, study, and book about magic in the entire rare books collection of the main branch, and though he’d found some interesting trains of thought to pursue, he was no closer to what he was searching for than when he’d arrived in New York. It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A sizable Stuyvesant grant had gotten him the title of visiting research librarian under an assumed name and free access to the entire Library of Congress. After months in D.C. devouring every work on magic in the largest library in the world, he hadn’t found anything about the Enemy. Weeks spent at the extensive Carr Library, devoted exclusively to magic, at the University of Chicago had been just as fruitless.
    His newfound title and more of Francis’ dough had gotten him a peek at all of the good stuff at the second largest library in the country. He knew full well that if New York didn’t pan out, the only other place that might have what he was looking for was in Europe, and he