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around here recently, most of it down by the schools, but some of it up as far as these hills. If I had a single scrap of evidence to connect you with what I saw in there you’d be on your way to Juvenile Hall right now. As it is, I’m giving you just one minute to get on your bikes and disappear. And I don’t ever—and I repeat
ever
—want to see you within five hundred yards of this place again. Get it? Now, move!”
    Charles pulled Alys toward their bikes. There was nothing else to do.

Chapter 5
THE SPELL
    Don’t cry, Al,” said Charles, when they had turned off onto the first side street from Morgana’s. Alys was standing exactly where she’d come to rest, straddling her bicycle, her face buried in her hands. Charles looked away in embarrassment and addressed a bougainvillea bush across the street. “You did your best,” he told the bush. “You
tried
.”
    Alys’s shoulders heaved and she said nothing. Claudia leaned over to put a small, sweaty hand on her arm.
    â€œAnyway,” said Charles, “it was a good idea.”
    â€œIt was a terrible idea,” said Janie. “Of course an expert graphologist would be able to tell she wrote it.”
    These words accomplished what Charles’s solaceand Claudia’s sympathy had not. Alys raised her head.
    â€œYou knew that?” She looked at Janie through swollen eyelids and Janie exhaled sharply and looked away, lips compressed. “And you just stood by and let me go ahead?”
    Janie turned back and met her gaze defiantly.
    â€œNext time, don’t tell me to shut up,” she said.
    â€œYou
crud
—” began Charles, but Alys broke in.
    â€œRight, Miss Genius,” she said. “Well, while you were standing aside and having yourself a good laugh, did it ever occur to you that our only chance of help was disappearing forever? And that the solstice is only twelve days away? And that now it’s up to
us
?” Alys shook her head hard, once, then turned to Charles and Claudia.
    â€œOkay,” she said. “You were right and I was wrong. Let’s go.”
    â€œWhat?
Where?
” said Janie.
    â€œBack to the old house, of course.”
    â€œBut what can we
do
?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Alys. “But someone has got to do something.”
    â€œAnd what about the police? They said we weren’t supposed to go within five hundred yards of that house.”
    Alys smiled faintly for the first time in a long while.
    â€œActually,” she said, “they said they didn’t want to
find
us within five hundred yards of the house. And they won’t. We’ll see to that.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œNo one,” said Alys, “is forcing you to come.”
    But Janie did come, walking her bike slowly behind the others with an odd, set look on her face.
    â€œThe vixen said the spell for making the amulet is written down somewhere,” said Alys, when they were inside the house again.
    â€œIn a grimoire,” said Charles. “What
is
a grimoire, anyway?”
    Claudia leaned a little closer to Alys. “Is it a big book?” she asked huskily. “A great big book on a stand with funny handwriting in it and a black cover?”
    â€œYes, very likely,” said Alys, turning back toCharles. “It’s a book of spells, and what we have to do—” She stopped. “What do you mean, ‘Is it a great big book on a stand with a black cover?’” she asked Claudia.
    â€œI found one like that in a little room beside the kitchen,” said Claudia simply. “When Charles sent me there to wait. I didn’t know what it was.”
    Janie was looking at Alys with unconcealed horror. “And so we’re just going to whip up a spell on our own, is that it? As if it were a recipe for banana bread?”
    â€œWe don’t have any choice. You saw to that.”
    The grimoire turned out