The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall by Janice Hardy Page A

drowned, and I hadn’t even said anything. What kind of friend was I? “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine. Shaky, lungs hurt a little, and I don’t want to go anywhere near water for a long time, but I’ll live.”
    I hugged her, then hurried up the stairs. The library was in shambles like the rest of the town house, but the looters had ignored the bookshelves completely. The heavy tomes were dusty, but the same as we’d left them.
    “Feel anything?” Danello asked.
    I stepped closer to the shelves, my hand out. At a few feet away, my stomach started quivering, just like it always did when I was near glyphed pynvium. “Here.”
    Danello handed Quenji the torch. He dragged the books away and set them on the floor in piles. The small box with the lock was still there, tucked in the alcove. My skin crawled, the sense of overwhelming wrongness just like before.
    Danello took it. “Heavy. Could be the box, though. Do you sense anything else?”
    “Not with that thing so close.”
    He took it into the hall. “Better?”
    The quivering stopped. “Yes, thanks.”
    “See what you can find,” Danello said, setting the box down and coming back inside. “I’ll clear the rest of the books. If he hid one thing back there, he might have others.”
    I walked slowly around the room, running my hand over shelves, checking drawers that had been yanked out and tossed on the floor. No quivers. Not even a flinch.
    Whoomp.
    Danello cried out a heartbeat before the prickling of fine sand blew across my skin.
    “Danello!” I ran to his side, fighting the instinct to draw away his pain the instant my hands touched him. He was woozy, but conscious.
    “I’m okay, no need to heal me,” he said, groaning. “Hands sting a bit, that’s all.”
    “What did you touch?”
    “The books. I was reaching for them, but I wasn’t really looking at them.”
    “That flash is a good sign,” Quenji said, grinning. “You don’t ward things unless they’re worth a lot. Danello, see if anything else flashes.”
    He grimaced. “I think it’s your turn to check.”
    I scanned the books above where Danello had collapsed. One spine poked out a finger width from the rest of the books. Dark leather, worn binding, the title so faded I couldn’t make out any words. Thin blue strips of pynvium ran along the edges of the spine, looking like decorations. Until you touched them.
    “Step back.” I reached out and ran my finger down the spine.
    Whoomp.
    Sharp pain washed over me, stronger than the typical muted flash. I pulled the book off the shelf. No flash this time.
    The entire front edge was covered with a leather flap, with locks at both the top and bottom corners. “It’s locked.”
    “Forget valuable,” Danello said. “Whatever is inside there has to be important.”
    “Let’s see what it is.” I set the book down on the floor and motioned Quenji over. “Don’t open it, just unlock it. Odds are something else will flash.”
    Quenji gulped but started on the lock anyway. It took him longer than any other lock I’d seen him pick, but he eventually got it unlocked. He stepped back and ducked around the corner. “Your turn.”
    “I think he has the right idea,” said Danello, joining him in the hall. “That hurt before.”
    “Yeah.” I braced myself and lifted the cover. No flash. But the pages were filled with enchanting glyphs and notes and drawings that made my fingers itch. And my heart race. “It’s some kind of enchanter’s book,” I called over my shoulder.
    “Worth anything?” said Quenji.
    “To me, everything. This might tell us how to fix Tali.”
    “How?” Danello asked.
    “I don’t know, but there must be something in here that says how the kragstun works.”
    “Do you read enchanter?”
    “No, I don’t.” My hopes sank, then rose again. “But Onderaan does.”
    Three days until he was supposed to meet us at Analov Park.
    “Keep searching,” I said. “Maybe’s there more here.”
    “Told you,” said