The Superstition Spectrum (Danny Phantom)

Chapter 14

Thursday afternoon~

The books were being devoured fast, and Dude had found a need to consume even more. This greed for knowledge had initially startled him, but after a number of days of living at the coven house, he had grown accustomed to it. This was probably just a side effect of being brought into this strange new world a little too quickly for his liking. 

Seated on a couch that had seen better days in the living room, Dude groaned after closing the last book he had to study. "Why don't I ever have the motivation to study this much on schoolwork?" he wondered, though he knew exactly why. None of what school tried to teach him was nearly this interesting, nor did it have the cultural significance to his heritage. 

Having nothing left to read, he swung up onto his feet and padded over to the back door, where he expected to see Allie working somewhere in the yard or the gigantic greenhouse she almost singlehandedly maintained. He saw her on her knees by a flowerbed, practically elbow-deep in dirt and weeds she was wrangling. "Hey, Allie!" Dude called out.

"Yeah?" she answered similarly without turning around or looking over her shoulder. 

"Where are some more books I can read?" he asked. Though barefoot, he picked his way across the yard via the flat stones that made up a footpath that swung around pretty close to where Allie knelt. 

She sat back on her haunches and finally looked at him. "Did no one show you where the library is?"

"Kordelle did, but he told me not to go in there without someone else," Dude explained.

Allie made a face at that and rose, dusting her dirt-caked hands off on her capris. "That's dumb. As long as you don't read the books in the red bookcases or practice magic in there, you don't need anyone to go with you."

"What's in the red book shelves?" Dude blurted out before he could stop himself. 

"Stuff you're not allowed to know about until you become a coven leader," Allie explained easily. "Don't worry about it, Dude. There are lots of other books in the library."

"I know-- it's huge!" he gasped, starry-eyed at just the memory he held. Magic had definitely been involved in the process of storing those books because it was way too big of a room to feasibly fit inside the outwardly small house. "So you're sure it's okay if I just go in alone?"

"Yeah, go for it!" she said brightly. "Just don't get lost, okay?"

"If I'm not back in a few hours, you'll know where to look for me," he laughed, turning and leaving her with a wave over his shoulder. The library was on the first floor, though its entrance was obscured by an illusion of moving boxes stacked up in front of it. He stepped through the false image and turned the knob, entering a world of shelves stuffed to the brim with that old paper smell that was somehow both musty and enthralling. 

Dude ran a hand through his green fohawk and ruffled the dyed strands. 'Time to get to work. But what to read...?' Just browsing the stacks could take days; Dude couldn't help but be reminded of Adam's library in Beauty and the Beast every time he looked around the impossible room. Each area was labeled with a broad topic and then split into smaller, more specific categories, some of which were made up entirely of personal field journals that were hundreds of years old and probably should have been interred in a museum. He clapped his hands together once, but immediately regretted how the sharp sound cut through the air too loudly for such a serene space.

As he wandered among the rows of shelves, his black opal eyes picked out the most intriguing books, but each time he saw something that might have held his interest, their titles etched in the spines only disappointed. A Comprehensive Index of Potion Ingredients, Humanity: The Myths We Hide Behind, Hexing the Unsuspecting: A How-To Guide, Anatomy of the Ghost...