Chapter Three: Empty

“You can’t be serious,” Aidan said.

“Look for yourself,” Bryn said. They walked to the locked gate and saw rows of empty bookshelves.

Aidan was undeterred. He asked Beca to cast the same spell that let them into the library upon the iron gate. She obliged, and he passed through. Relying on his memory, he found the shelf with the invisibility spell book and moved his hand to pull out a book.

His first two attempts retrieved the wrong volumes, but his third grab was successful. He carried the book out of the restricted section and sat at a table to review the spells inside. His disappointment could not be measured when he saw all the pages were blank.

“Is it a trick?” Beca asked.

“Maybe it was written with invisible ink,” Bryn said.

Aidan tried several spells to reverse invisibility. It took eleven attempts to reveal the text, but the words finally appeared to him. He could read Latin as well as he could speak his native Welsh, and he scanned through the pages rapidly.

“Anything good?” Bryn asked.

“Nothing I haven’t already tried,” he said.

“I guess that’s our adventure for tonight,” Beca said.

“Hold on,” Aidan said. “This mentions another spell, but there is no incantation or instructions. Only where to find it.”

“Where?” the twins said in unison.

“Inside the headmaster’s office,” he said.

“Remember what he threatened to do if he caught us in there again?” Bryn said.

“That’s why we’ll be invisible,” Aidan replied.