Cursing

When Cassandra entered the Annex, confusion reigned. Ezekiel stood by the table, a rusty watering pot, presumably the artifact Flynn had been looking for, in his hands, laughing madly as he poured its content all over the clippings book.

Flynn stood halfway between him and Eve, a furious look on his normally smiling face. He had obviously been trying to stop Jones from whatever he was doing, protecting Eve, which was, as Cassandra thought about it, not the way it usually worked between them. As the redhead hurried closer she saw, to her immense surprise, that the Librarian was frozen like a statue, mid-step, and that he was completely dry. Eve, a meter behind him, was the same, petrified with a shocked expression on her face, just as Jenkins, just as Stone. None of them moved. Cassandra couldn't even see them breathing.

And in the middle of all this, still pouring water, stood Ezekiel and laughed and whooped. It was one of the most horrible scenes Cassandra could remember since she started to work at the Library, not because of what it looked like, but because it felt so very surreal, creepy.

A cold shiver went down her spine as she tried to carefully get closer to Jones, who hadn't noticed her yet. Finally, when she was almost able to touch him, the thief looked at her, but seemed to have problems to focus at her face. He looked this way and that, avoiding her eyes, while he kept doing whatever it was he did with the magic artifact in his hand.

"Ezekiel", she said, trying to give her voice a steady sound, "it's me, Cassandra. What are you doing?"

"I did nothing", he said, looking guilty, and stopped his crazy laughing.

Somehow Cassandra was sure that he was not in control of what he was doing, maybe not even aware that he had done anything at all.

"What is this?", she asked, pointing to the watering pot.

Jones looked at it like he had never seen it before and, visibly trying to shake it's hold on him, he shook his head: "I have no idea", he said and tried to set it back down on the table, but the pot suddenly seemed to be incredibly heavy, because Jones dropped to his knees with a surprised look.

"Can't you just let go of it?", Cassandra suggested.

"It feels like my hands are glued to the handle, I can't loosen them. Not even an inch."

The rain got worse with every minute and Cassie was sure that she heard thunder rumble in the distance. It sounded like a big storm was coming. A storm. In the Library. Full of books. Books made of paper – she stopped her thoughts right there, trying to focus on the situation on hand rather than thinking about what it might cause.

"Flynn brought it here, didn't he?", she asked and suddenly remembered what Eve had told her about the artifact.

It had been in the possession of an old lady somewhere in a village in Germany, who used it to 'help the weather along', as Eve had phrased it. Without it, the village would long have been drowned in heavy rains or storms which were common there because the land on which the village was built had been cursed by a really pissed-off sorcerer.

The watering pot had been handed down from one generation to the next, used to catch the storms when they were still more or less harmless, and storing them inside. But, unfortunately, the curse and the pot became linked over the years, so that the one influenced the other and the weather got worse with every use of the pot, almost overflowing with magical contents.

When the old lady died without heirs, people hadn't known what to with the rusty watering pot because none of them knew what it did. To stop the demolition of the village due to the villagers lack of knowledge, the clippings book had sent Flynn in to retrieve the pot and, because of the close link to the curse, remove both of them to the library for save storing.

Obviously Flynn had not been able to secure it before Jones had let loose the collected storms of a few hundred years, that now began to start in earnest with heavy wind and hail, making it hard to talk to each other.

"He did!", Ezekiel shouted, fighting to get away from the pot.

"He must have touched it and nothing happened to him!" Cassandra hurried over to the frozen Librarian. His hands were bare, but the could see a thick looking pair of gloves tucked away in his right trouser pocket. She pulled them out, put them on and returned to Jones. The water had risen to her knees, so she couldn't even see the handle of the pot anymore. Kneeling down besides the thief, shivering because of the cold, she tried to find the handle in the dirty water. Finally, she did and as soon as the gloves touched it, Jones fell backward into the water. He came back out, coughing and spluttering, just in time to see Cassandra straightening the pot.

The rain stopped immediately and the water on the floor retreated back into the pot.

Flynn, now unfrozen, staggered against the table, turned around and saw that Cassandra and Jones had already stopped the almost-drowning of the Library. He smiled at Cassandra: "Good work!", then grimaced and rubbed his right hip with which he had run into the table.

"Ouch", he commented drily.

Most of the water had returned to the watering pot, but not all of it. Luckily, most of the books were on high shelves or on the second floor in the Annex and had not gotten really wet, but the clippings book did not have that much luck.

The others had long gone home, when Jones was close to finish with his work. Because it had been his fault, starting to pour the water and all that, he was the one who had to clean up the mess now, using an empty bucket and a mop, and then a hairdryer for the clippings book.

Jenkins was the only one who had stayed with him, not to help, but to monitor if he did it right. Jones, even though feeling guilty about what happened, had of course heavily objected to doing all the work, but no one had wanted to help him in the end.

Jenkins knew, just as well as Flynn did, that there were artifacts in the Library that they could have used to dry off the Annex much faster, but they had decided to leave Jones in the dark on this one for now. Neither one of them had liked to be frozen for almost half an hour before Cassandra had freed them.

Jenkins had been smirking the entire time while sitting at the table with crossed arms and whistling a tune to himself. He would tell Jones when he was done with the book and then use the artifacts to dry off the rest of the them. But until then, he enjoyed watching the tired, cursing thief with the immense hairdryer in his hand, bent over the wet book.