I sprinted back into the house.

Lu and Theo were right on my tail.

“Maybe my cell phone isn’t getting through to them,” I said frantically. “I’ll try the home phone.”

I ran straight for the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and punched in Mom’s number.

“Where are they?” Theo asked.

“At the Tod’s Point marina. They’re going sailing.”

“Ooh, not good,” Lu said.

The phone rang….I got Mom’s voice mail again and slammed the phone down in frustration.

“Take a breath, man,” Theo said.

I forced myself to calm down and focus.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked Theo.

“Lu explained it all. That’s why I’m here, Marcus. Somebody’s got to be the voice of reason. There’s nothing supernatural going on here.”

Theo was dead serious. I looked to Lu.

Lu shrugged and said, “He doesn’t buy it.”

“There are no such things as ghosts and magic,” Theo said slowly and clearly, as if to a child. “If you keep thinking that way, you’ll never get to the real reason behind what’s happening.”

It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep from lunging at Theo, grabbing his shirt, and throwing him against the wall.

“You know it’s not just me, right?” I said through gritted teeth. “Lu’s been to the Library too. We can’t both be having the same hallucination.”

“I believe she thinks she’s been somewhere,” Theo said. “You both do. But a supernatural library run by ghosts? Seriously?”

I grabbed the Paradox key from my pocket and held it up to Theo’s face.

“Let’s go. Right now. I’ll take you there. Come on!”

I stormed over to the back door, ready to use the magic on it.

“No!” Theo shouted.

His voice stopped me cold. I’d never heard him yell like that. He stood there awkwardly, unable to look me in the eye. Something was definitely off.

“What’s going on, Theo?” Lu asked softly. “I know you’re being all logical about this, but at some point you’ve got to open your mind to the possibility that something strange is happening.”

Theo started shaking. Truly shaking. This was a guy who was always calm and in control. It was as though he was battling with himself to keep from exploding.

“I won’t accept it,” he finally said, though the words didn’t come easily. “I can’t. I know how the world works. This doesn’t fit.”

“That’s the whole point,” I said. “The Library exists because sometimes things don’t fit.”

“No,” Theo said adamantly, as if trying to convince himself. “If I believed that, I’d have to believe—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

“You’re not telling us something, Theo,” Lu said. “Why have you been fighting this?”

Theo wiped his forehead nervously and tugged on his ear.

“If I let myself believe in this library, I’d have to accept that I’m going through my own—what did you call it? Disruption?”

Whoa.

Lu and I exchanged surprised looks.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Did something happen to you?”

Theo sat down at the kitchen counter. He couldn’t look at either of us.

“I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “Maybe.”

“Just tell us,” Lu said.

Theo spoke slowly and carefully, as if he wanted to make sure everything he said was fully understood.

“About a month ago, I went to Playland Amusement Park with my older brothers. We found an arcade, where they had one of those silly fortune-telling machines with the dummy of an oracle inside who picks a card out of a box to tell your fortune. It was ridiculous but we all did it. My oldest brother went first. The fortune on his card read Beware of the bite. My other brother’s said You will receive good fortune from an unexpected source. We laughed and forgot all about them until the next day.”

He took a troubled breath.

“What happened?” Lu asked.

“The next day my oldest brother was running through the park. He saw a friend walking his dog. When my brother reached out to pet it, the dog bit his hand. He needed ten stitches. That dog never bit anyone before.”

“That’s just a coincidence,” Lu said.

“Later that same day, my other brother found out he’d been awarded a four-thousand-dollar scholarship to go toward college tuition. He hadn’t even applied for it.”

“Okay, a little weirder,” Lu said.

“What was your fortune, Theo?” I asked.

Theo slowly reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He was moving so slowly, it seemed as though the effort was painful. From out of the wallet he pulled a card and handed it to Lu. Lu read it…and gasped.

“Oh my God,” she said, breathless.

She looked to Theo; he kept his eyes on the floor. Lu handed the card to me. I read it. Then read it again. I understood the words but wished I didn’t.

It said: Life as you know it will end on your fourteenth birthday.

“Oh man” was all I could say.

“That’s why I can’t accept that these disruptions are real,” Theo said. “It isn’t how life works. There is no magic. Machines can’t predict the future. Nothing is going to happen to me on my birthday.”

I thought Lu was going to burst out crying, and that’s saying something. Lu wasn’t the crying type. I didn’t feel so hot myself.

It turned out that all three of us were in the middle of our own disruptions.

“Look, Theo,” I said. “I don’t know if this fortune-telling thing is real or not. It could just be a couple of strange coincidences. But after all the things I’ve seen, I know for sure that crazy stuff happens, and you can’t make it go away by denying it. People have died. That’s real, and I’m not going to let anything else bad happen just because it doesn’t make logical sense. And you shouldn’t either.”

Theo pulled on his earlobe. His analytical mind was in overdrive as he tried to come up with rational reasons as to why we weren’t actually dealing with the supernatural.

He couldn’t.

“I’m scared,” he finally said.

“We all are,” Lu said. “What are we going to do about it?”

Theo finally looked up at us.

“You really believe this is about an evil spirit that feeds on fear?” he asked.

“I do,” I said with authority. “And I believe if there’s a disruption that caused Lu’s cousin to disappear, and that’ll cause you to get a nasty fortune, then we’ll find those stories in the Library. And finish them. The way they should be finished.”

“How can you be so certain?” Theo asked.

“Because we know how things should work. We know what’s supposed to happen. I don’t care what mystical forces are at work. This is still the real world, and we can use real-world logic to fight back. And you know what? There’s nobody who’d be better at that…than you.”

Theo sat up a little straighter.

Lu actually smiled.

“Please help me save my parents,” I said.

Theo looked between the two of us, then tugged on his ear and said, “All righty, Marcus, what can I do?”

I clapped him on the back and said, “Come with me.”

I ran across the kitchen, to the stairs that led down to the basement.

“I’m not going back down there alone,” I said.

We went down together. There were no spiders or spider bodies anywhere. Illusions don’t leave remnants. But the fallen tools were still on the bench, along with the hammer that nearly clocked me. That much was real. I led them to the workbench and picked up the metal box. The vessel.

“Twelve years ago my biological father crossed paths with the Boggin. Somehow he trapped it in here. It was locked inside for twelve years, until Michael Swenor broke the seal and released it.”

“Michael Swenor released it?” Lu exclaimed. “Why?”

“I don’t know. He thought he was doing the right thing, but it backfired, and he paid the price. The Boggin killed him trying to get the key to the Library. It failed, and I got the key instead. Now the Boggin’s been haunting me, and it’s going after the people I care about to force me to give up the key.”

“So how do we stop it?” Theo asked.

“We trap it back in here,” I said. “In its spirit form. Once it’s inside we seal it with copper. That’s how it’s worked for centuries. I came down here looking for something copper but came up empty.”

Theo took the box from me. He examined it, squinting, deep in thought, pulling at his earlobe.

“It doesn’t have to be a real lock?” he asked. “I mean, with a combination or a key?”

“We’re talking spiritual power,” Lu said. “The book said copper is the Boggin’s weakness. It’s about the material, not the physical strength of the lock.”

Theo ran his fingers across the box’s latch, which had a slot for a padlock.

“As long as it’s pure copper, all it needs to do is seal this latch?” he asked.

“I think,” I said. “Sounds simple, but I don’t know what to use.”

“I do,” Theo said with confidence.

He handed me the box, reached for the hanging tools, and selected a heavy-duty wire cutter. We followed him upstairs, where he led us into the living room.

“I’m assuming you’ve got the same setup as most every other house in the civilized world,” he said. “You’ve got to promise me one thing, though.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Don’t throw me under the bus with your parents when they find out what I’ve done. Your mother scares me.”

“We’re trying to save their lives,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll be upset with anything you do.”

Theo went straight for the cabinet that held our TV set. He pulled it away from the wall to reveal the wires that fed it power and data.

“Coaxial cable,” Theo said. “It’s the standard conduit that carries a cable signal.”

He used the wire cutter to clip off a two-foot section of cable.

“Ooh, no,” Lu said. “Your parents aren’t going to like that.”

“Is that copper?” I asked Theo.

Theo held up the thick black cable.

“This isn’t,” he said.

He expertly clamped the wire cutter around one end of the cable and stripped off a section of the soft black material to reveal the thin metal wire that was its core.

“But this is,” he declared.

He quickly stripped off the rest of the covering and was left with a clean length of wire.

Copper wire.

“Feed this through the latch of that box, and presto, you’ve got a lock made of copper. As to how you get the spirit inside in the first place, I can’t help you.”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” I said. “But first I have to make sure my parents are okay.”

“My dad’s ski boat is at that marina,” Lu said. “Only one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going with you. Dad will kill me if I let somebody take his boat out without me.”

“No. Too dangerous.”

“Then you can’t have it,” Lu shot back.

“Really? You wouldn’t let me take it?”

Lu looked ready for an argument but backed off quickly.

“Of course I would. But I want to go with you. Everett said it. You need help.”

“I’m going too,” Theo said.

“Besides,” Lu added, “what if the Boggin realizes you’re going to warn your parents and decides to come after us instead? I think it’s better if we all stay together.”

I couldn’t argue with the logic. I hated putting my friends in danger, but they were already in danger just for being my friends.

“Did you ride your bikes here?” I asked.

“Yup,” they both answered.

“Good. It’s a mile to the marina.”