Nothing immediately jumps out at him.

Well then he'll keep on looking. And probably sigh a bit.

"It's not here," she says after they've been looking for a while. "Does anyone wanna bet some crucial information on whatever happened is in the missing book?"

"Why don't we just go find the gym teacher, kidnap him, and see whether he does anything weirdly demonic while tied to a chair in my garage?" Theo asks, a bit sarcastically. "That sounds like fun, doesn't it?"

More fun than searching the library for a book that's not there, that's for sure.

"...I was going to suggest breaking into the librarian's house to see if the book's there after we've cast something on his body. Or before, depending on the time of day. Or night. We'll probably need to go check on his body at night."

"Cast… what on his body?"

"Some detection spell! See if we can't figure something out about whatever happened to him."

"Oh, okay."

"S-so, now we go to your place, then?"

"Yyeep, with all these books."

Theo waits until Sadde is done fetching all the books, then offers to carry some if necessary.

It will. It will be necessary. It is quite the pile of books, and it will require all three pairs of arms and bags.

Well, Theo is fine to help. Look at him, being all helpful.

And then: back to Sadde's place!

Indeed!

"Okay, so, uh... We need a plan of attack."

"… To get ahold of the librarian's body and do magic to it, or to get to the gym teacher, or what?"

"Yes."

"Okay, well, depending on what you can find out from the body – like what sort of demon decided to rip its face apart – we'll probably want to do that first and work out some sort of countermeasure for going against the gym teacher. Right?"

"Exactly! But it might also be a dead end, so..."

"So you want us to research possible face-eating demons," Willow completes, grinning.

"Lovely," he says. "Any books in particular that might make reference to it? Because I thought we'd decided that the applicable information was probably in that book that wasn't at the library."

"Probably, yes, but it'd be very remiss of us to not even check. And besides, even if I do get a magical signature out of the body, that doesn't mean I'll be able to recognize it as anything, so knowing more won't hurt."

"I—I could help! With the magical signature."

Sadde eyes her. "Thank you for reminding me, what the heck was that the other day at the Bronze?"

"What was what?" she asks innocently.

"So," he interrupts. "All the books, or is there some book that's probably better for 'face-eating demons'?"