I stared dumbly at my parrot for a moment rendered speechless. Finally I was able to formulate a coherent thought. "Chaucer! What in Dickens does that mean? Explain yourself!"

"Awk! I'll be a monkey's uncle!"

"Huh?" I said. I was momentarily utterly confused before I remembered the futility of trying to interrogate a parrot. He couldn't elaborate on his ominous statement. Most likely it was something he'd heard somewhere and was repeating.

"So your bird thinks the world ended," Antony said. "But we're still here. They always say it ain't over until the fat lady sings and I haven't heard my nana sing a note, have you?"

"No, I agree it isn't over yet," I said. "The two of us are keeping the torch alive for the world at least."

"Awk! What am I, chopped liver?"

"I mean the three of us. Still, it would be quite a shame if we're all that's left. As you were so kind to point out a minute ago, who's going to read my novel? Something tells me neither of you two are going to appreciate the symbolic nuances and rich metaphors that drip from each of my carefully chosen phrases."

"Yeah, I don't read," Antony said. "But if it makes you feel better, it's probably not just the three of us left. I mean, that witch is probably still around, too."

"Maybe she would have an appreciation for an elegant literary allegory," I said as my thoughts returned to the image of a melted scoop of ice cream that had consumed my mind and refused to let go.

"That brings us back to the problem of what are we going to do about this witch? It seems really likely she's going to turn up tonight and cause us more trouble than we're already in."

"Yes, and it's true, it'll be hard to complete my latest masterpiece if I've been transformed into a toad or something," I agreed as I reluctantly pushed thoughts of my novel to the back of my mind for the time being. "I suppose we're going to have to deal with this. But how?"

"I still think we need to fight her with magic," Antony said.

"That would be nice, but where are we going to find anything like that? It's not like we're in Narnia or something and there are magical items just laying around everywhere."

"There's a magic store in town," Antony said. "Maybe they would have something we could use there."

"Don't they just sell trinkets there like trick decks of cards and cheap plastic magic wands?"

"Well, I don't have any better ideas. Do you?"

"No," I sheepishly admitted.

"Then let's go check it out. Come on, get in my car. I'll drive us there."

"You want me to get into that thing?"

"Yeah, you can leave your bike here. It's not like anyone's going to mess with it. Come on, it's going to get dark before we know it and then we'll have our hands full with evil witches. We don't have time to waste."

I hated to admit it, but he was right. We really couldn't afford to dawdle. I sighed and climbed into the passenger seat of his sports car as Chaucer settled in on my shoulder. I must say, I was left thoroughly unimpressed by the interior. I found it quite cramped with very little leg room and his cheetah-print seat covers struck me as tacky, to say the very least. Not to mention I found it to be unpleasantly noisy when he gunned the engine. I do have sensitive ears, but still I think the vehicle's engineers could have spent a little more design time on sound dampening. Then things got even worse when he flipped on the stereo and began blasting the most god-awful racket I've ever heard in my life. I believe it might have been his own music.

On the plus side, we did get to the magic shop quite quickly, although at one point he had to swerve to avoid smashing into an old pioneer-style covered wagon that was sitting haphazardly in the middle of the road.

It turned out the magic store was located just a few doors down from the coffee shop I had attempted to visit earlier. Like all of the businesses on the street, it was boarded up, but Antony pulled a crowbar out of his trunk and managed to pry off enough to expose a completely shattered window. It was a matter of no difficulty for the three of us to slip inside.

The lights weren't on inside the store, but enough sunlight came in from outside to illuminate the scene well enough. There were many display tables in the room covered with crystal balls, candles, and liquid filled vials that claimed to be love potions or other such nonsense. There were also a lot of trinkets and knick-knacks, which all appeared to be worthless junk to me.

There were bookshelves covering the entire back wall and Antony suggested we examine them in case there was a useful spell book somewhere. I didn't think that was very likely, but I do enjoy perusing books, so I started scanning various titles. I saw books on various subjects such as card tricks, illusions, and how to read tea leaves. Eventually I found one that purported to be about necromancy, which seemed somewhat interesting. As I tried to tug it out of its spot, the bookshelf suddenly swung open, revealing a staircase leading upward. There were some low-wattage electric candles ensconced in the wall that provided a little bit of light. At least there seemed to be some source of power that was still working.

"Good find, bro," Antony said as he made his way towards it.

"What are you doing?" I whispered. For some reason I felt uncomfortable talking too loudly. "We don't know what's up there?"

"It's probably some sort of back room where they keep all the really valuable stuff. Come on, if there's any real magic to be found in this place, that's where it'll be."

Trespassing goes against all of my natural instincts, but I couldn't really argue with Antony's point. I still thought we were on a fool's errand and the likelihood of finding any actual magic was close to nil, but if there was any hope at all we had to exhaust all options. And with everyone gone, it wasn't like anyone was going to care if we poked around a private area.

I didn't want Antony to show me up, so I leaped in front of him and started up the stairs first. The steps creaked noisily under my feet, but they seemed solid enough. We reached a landing that was dominated by a large stone fountain. The base of it was covered in carvings of mythical creatures like satyrs and nymphs. At the top of it was a statue of a centaur holding a jug from which water spilled out into the bowls below.

Behind the fountain, a tapestry hung on the wall. It depicted a woman with pointy ears dressed in a dark blue cloak. She wore a diamond studded tiara on her head and a brooch around her neck with a prominent sapphire at the center of her throat. She was conjuring a swirl of light between her gloved hands as her fingers stretched and bent as if she were clasping a large invisible basketball in each hand. All in all it was a striking work of art and I took a moment to admire it.

Both of these items were admittedly quite interesting, but I didn't see how they could help us in our current mission. There was nothing else on the landing itself, but another staircase off to the left ascended still further up. Figuring we'd come this far, I led the way up it.

I'd only made it about six or seven steps up before I came to a dead halt when a voice called out "Who are you?" as the barrel of a shotgun was shoved into my face.