The only sound in the room was our breathing. Aleetha eyed the thick book under Tank’s feet as if it might jump to life and attack again.

“That book is trapped,” she said. “I came up here looking for old maps of Slick City. That book was waiting for me.”

“Waiting for you?” I asked. “How can a book be waiting for you?”

“Never underestimate a book, Fizz,” Aleetha said. Her fiery red eyes pierced the gloom of the study hall. She approached the book slowly. “Even the most mundane tome has the ability to touch the reader.”

“That book definitely touched me!” I rubbed my neck where the scaly demon had grabbed me.

Aleetha examined the book, careful not to get too close.

“This book is enchanted with a guardian spell. That’s what attacked us.” She glanced up at the shelves around us. “This is the map room. Only maps and old sea charts should be up here.”

“But this book was here too?” Tank said, her foot still firmly pressing the book closed.

“Right beside the map I was looking for,” Aleetha said. “I took the map from the shelf and the book jumped off too.”

“Jumped?” I said. “Books can’t jump.”

“Tell that to whatever is inside these pages,” Aleetha said. She reached deep into the folds of her mage’s robes and pulled out something small and metallic. “This book doesn’t belong here. Someone put it next to the old maps of Slick City.”

“Someone who didn’t want you to see the maps,” I said.

“Exactly.” Aleetha gingerly fiddled with the side of the book. There was a solid snapping noise, like metal connecting with metal. When the lava elf stepped away from the book, a small but sturdy padlock held the covers of the book firmly closed.

“You can step away, Tank,” she said. “I think we have silenced the book’s guardian for now.”

“For now?” Tank said. She slowly stepped off the thick book. She eyed the padlock suspiciously.

“It’s just a practice lock for enchantments and stuff,” Aleetha said. “It’s designed to keep greedy roommates out of my food cupboard.”

“And now it’s the only thing keeping us safe from a magical guardian with a taste for goblins?” I moved behind a large table, just to be on the safe side.

“If this book was up here waiting for you, then that means...”

“Someone knew I was coming,” Aleetha finished.

“But who?” Tank said.

Aleetha’s eyes fell to the cover of the book on the floor.

A familiar face stared back at us.

“The Codex!”

On the cover of the book that had nearly eaten the three of us, the calm purple face of the Codex stared out at us.

“Azaralath: Keeper of the Fire,” I said, reading the cover of the book.

“Who is Azaralath?” Tank said. “And why does he look like the Codex?”

“Azaralath, also known as Az,” Aleetha said. “I knew I had seen the Codex’s face before. We studied all the old demons in history class. It’s hard to forget a face like Az’s.”

“Demons?” I said. The scales on my neck stood on end. “Az is a demon?”

Tank took another step away from the padlocked book. “I thought demons had all been banished back to their home worlds.”

“I did too,” Aleetha said.

“Codex the hacker is really a demon?” Tank said.

“No,” Aleetha said. “Az the demon was banished centuries ago. The Codex is probably just some monster using the demon’s face to scare us.”

“It’s working,” Tank muttered. She didn’t take her eyes off the book.

So the mystery hacker we’d seen on the jumbo screen at Slurp Stadium was using the face of a banished demon to scare Slick City. Tank was right. It was working. No matter where I went in that dark room, the eyes staring from the cover of the book followed me.

“Can we go now?” Tank said. “We saved you from big, bad and bookish.”

Aleetha didn’t answer. She took a dusty scroll from the shelf and spread it across a table. She stood on a chair and leaned over the scroll, studying it closely.

“Interesting,” she said. She was too deep in her own ideas to hear Tank. “Look at this.”

The scroll nearly reached both sides of the table. Faded lines ran across the parchment.

“A map,” I said.

“An old goblin map, to be precise,” Aleetha said. “It’s a map of Slick City before it became Slick City.”

“How’s that?” Tank tilted to one side like she was looking for a secret message hidden in the map.

“It was created by the goblins before the ogres came and settled Slick City,” Aleetha said.

“You mean before the ogres took the land from the goblins,” I said. “My goblin ancestors were here fishing in Fang Harbor long before the ogres showed up. They kicked us off our land so they could drill for slick.”

Tank nodded. “And they’ve been pulling the goopy stuff out of the rocks ever since.”

“All very true,” Aleetha said. “And it means this map is old. Very old.”

“Why are we looking at something old?” Tank said.

“Because I have a feeling old secrets are causing new troubles today,” Aleetha said.