In the text box below the greeting I typed “hi thanks” and pressed enter.
The pop-up disappeared, giving me access to the library’s custom search engine. I typed “keeper” and “ring” in the box and pressed the search button.
Another pop-up appeared on the screen: “Are you sure you want to search for that?”
“Yes,” I typed.
“Lots of people aren’t, you know, sure.” The smile on the smiley face widened.
“I’m sure.”
“Sure, sure?”
“YES!!!” I pounded on the keys, trying to get the point across.
The smiley face frowned. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
At last, the stupid thing displayed the results, and I sighed in relief. There were three sets, one from the library archives, one from the ordinary Internet, and one from the e-net, which was magickind’s version of the Internet. The “e” stood for enchantment, naturally.
I scanned the library results and selected one that looked like an encyclopedia entry:
A Keeper is a generic term reserved for a living being whose life force or force of will has been used as a key component in a magical spell. The binding of such a force makes the spell unbreakable for as long as the being in question remains alive, or in the case of the latter, remains committed to holding the spell. Death is usually the only effective means of breaking a Keeper spell.
Oftentimes, magical objects such as a ring, necklace, bracelet, or in rare cases, tattoos were used as the primary lynchpin of the spell. Generally, the lynchpins would seal themselves to the Keeper’s body, requiring force to be removed. These lynchpins were virtually undetectable and impervious to many spells and charms, including those to locate, vanish, break, etc. Widely considered to be a form of black magic, the practice of using Keepers was banned by the Black Magic Purge Act of 1349.
A chill went through me as I finished reading. So Rosemary had been the Keeper of some kind of spell that the killer wanted to break. Well, that explained Lady Elaine’s comment about Rosemary’s age. Eighteen seemed awfully young to commit to a spell where the only way out of it was dying.
I skimmed through the rest of the library results, hoping for something more detailed, but found nothing. Next I tried the e-net results, but they contained only more simple definitions. Not that this was a big surprise, considering the practice of Keeper spells was illegal. The magickind government blocked any questionable material on the e-net.
With zero expectations, I clicked on the Internet results. The first few were advertisements for rings designed to keep other rings in place. One was for a romance novel for sale on Amazon. A couple more had to do with World of Warcraft.
The title of the last entry on the page stopped me cold:
Death at Coleville, First Seal Broken
What was something like that doing on the Internet? I clicked the Web link, taking in the name of the website as I did. Reckthaworlde.com didn’t exactly give me a warm fuzzy.
Another pop-up message from the computer appeared on the screen, the smiley face frowning again. “Sorry, Charlie. No can do.”
“Why?” I typed.
“That site is restricted. No social media access in the library.”
I frowned. Was Reckthaworlde.com some kind of antisocial Facebook? Seemed a little contradictory.
I closed the search engine on the library terminal, then pulled the eTab out of my bag. Social networking sites were perfectly allowable on personal devices. I performed the same search and clicked on the link again, appreciating how fast and normal the eTab responded. I wondered if it would ever show symptoms of animation. If it did, I bet it would have a cool personality. That would be nice. My desktop computer back in my dorm had already been two years past warranty when I moved in last spring, which meant it now had the personality of a crotchety old man, constantly complaining about how tired and overworked it was and always going to sleep on me the second I stopped using it.
This time the screen popped up with a log-in box asking me to either enter my username and password or register as a new user. I clicked the latter and typed in my throwaway e-mail address. Another message appeared on the screen:
Welcome, [email protected]. In order to complete your registration, please enter the name of your initiator.
Say what? I’d never heard of such a thing. Was this some kind of online secret society?
Frustrated, I set the eTab down on the table harder than I meant to, almost dropping it.
“You might want to be more careful with that,” someone said from behind me. “Those things can be pretty fragile.”
Both startled and annoyed at the interruption, I said, “Really? And here I thought it was made out of rubber.”
“Yeah, people make that mistake all the time.”
I looked over my shoulder and did a mental stutter. The speaker was a seriously good-looking guy, maybe seventeen or eighteen, a senior probably. He was standing in front of a cart loaded down with library books ready to be shelved. He was tall and on the thin side, but still muscled. He wore his blond hair in a short ponytail at the base of his neck, but some of the strands had worked loose and now hung in his eyes. Cute. I realized I was staring and blushed.
He didn’t seem to notice. “Did you just get it? The eTab, I mean.”
“Yeah.” Okay, Dusty. You’ve got to do better than the one-word sentence.
“Mind if I take a look? I’ve been thinking of getting one.”