I recently turned, eh, let’s make it a solid 18, and now was as good a time as any to have my kitten scratched.I considered Craigslist for a moment,...but I am a spontaneous type of girl, so I slipped into my Crocs and walked across the street to the Adult Theater. I extended the sleeve of my Hello Kitty hoodie over my hand, and cautiously tried the door. Locked. It wasn't until I had tried the remaining 7 doors on the blinded-out facade of the structure, that I finally noticed the faded. “What book have you read?”“The book from the bookcase at the cabin,” she answered and rose to get the book, and presented it to me. I looked at the title and the author’s name before smiling.“This was written by one of my ancestors many years ago by our time. He did have a penchant for spelling Magic with a ‘K’,” I told her with another smile.“There are many other books on Magic available, and we will supply you with a number of them. You have already been visited many times by the ‘Book of. Even though everything your dad was doing was Top Secret, our Naval Intelligence knew the Japanese were aware of your fathers work, and there was a bounty on his head. As the time grew closer for us to start mining Tokyo Harbor, things became even more hush-hush. For a while they told your dad and I that they were not going allow us to room together, but finally calmer heads prevailed, and they left us alone."The Admiral stared off over the distance across the ocean and I could tell he was back. The old woman lightly stroked her forehead and whispered a mantra in an unknown language. Alma drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep. * * * Countless hours later, a loud noise woke Alma with a start. She looked around and found herself in a metal-framed bed under a crisp white sheet. A machine off to one side had a screen showing her heart rate and blood pressure. There was a night table on the other side of her bed upon which stood a plastic jug of water and a small glass. The sound that.