" - that's a lot. The kid and the slave who run away from home."

"There are a lot of books! Way more than we have at the library."

She pulls the book off the shelf and sits nest to him on the couch and maybe hesitantly leans against him a little.

And these are the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Some of them, anyway, this book has three hundred and sixty six pages and they will probably not read it all in one sitting.

He listens, fascinated. 

This is quite expensive, which is good.

Karen has basically no idea how expensive anything is, but this honestly seems like a pretty good starter book. It has a not-very-literate runaway child narrator consulting an absolutely broken moral compass and ignoring it whenever the answers it gives seem too mean to him, and the adventures move along at a decent pace, unlike a lot of old novels. Also there's, like, people faking their own deaths and people falsely accusing the escaped slave of murder, that's kind of exciting probably.

After kind of a lot of chapters she will acknowledge that she is now tired, maybe.

"I liked that. Good night."

"Oh good. See you tomorrow."

It is almost like it was before, except the debt is much smaller.

Maybe that's okay.

She doesn't actually need him to watch Zana all day in summer, really, he only has to watch her on weekends. And she can declare that laundry and dishwasher things are her responsibility now, and then staying evenish should be easy, right?

They can even comfortably run a debt in her favor, though not a large one, if she keeps reading him stories.

She would like to keep reading him stories, if he does not mind being in her debt again.

It happens that he does not.

That's all right, then.

A couple days later, she decides to investigate the dusty old book that literally got her killed.

"The first page says 'this spellbook belongs to Karen Teller.'"

"I did not write that there."

"I figured if you had then you wouldn't have said it like that. So...were you destined to get it? Or did it, like, change once you took it -"

"I dunno, I haven't opened it until now."

She turns to the next page.

Spell: Eggdrop

When you drop things, they don't break.

To learn the spell, hold an egg in your left hand and your spellbook in your right hand. Read these words: moderock replitz mizule, lasap dizoolexa aloida. You do not need to read them aloud. Drop the egg. 

Spell: Whisper

You can at any time ensure that someone across the room is able to hear you, no matter how quietly you're speaking.

To learn the spell, stand alone in a quiet room. Say, loudly, these words: shorogyt, zestpond bistup reiltas. Repeat the words, more and more quietly, until you are whispering. 

Spell: Card Trick

You can make nonmagical playing cards.

To learn this spell, hold a deck of playing cards. Count to fifty-two. Then, say 'fifty-three'.

Spell: Envelope

You can fold paper into a few different shapes without touching it. 

It continues in this vein for a while.

She... reads the spell descriptions aloud, skipping over the magic words out of an abundance of caution.

"So, cool, but also...if magic is that easy and uncomplicated why doesn't everyone do it? I guess maybe the books are rare? But..."

"Super unclear!"

"Huh! Well. I guess now you can learn magic!"

"I guess."

...she frowns at her spell list and closes the book without learning any of them.

" - are you not gonna try one?"

She bites her lip. 

"Catholics aren't supposed to do... spells. Or whatever."

"Oh. Well, you want me to do it?"