“Maybe he’s confused because he was knocked out twice and has a concussion,” I said. “What happens to demons who cross the salt line?”
“I think they melt,” Glo said, “but that’s secondhand information.”
Josh gave Ammon a shove, and Ammon stumbled across the salt line.
“Hunh,” Glo said. “He’s not melting.”
Ammon tipped his head back and howled.
“Omigod,” Glo said. “He’s a demon werewolf. We need to shoot him with a silver bullet. Who’s got a silver bullet?”
Josh and I shuffled around. We didn’t have a silver bullet. We also didn’t have a gun.
“He hasn’t got fangs like a werewolf,” I said. “Are you sure you did the right spell?”
Glo thumbed through Ripple’s. “Here it is…uh-oh.”
“What uh-oh?” I asked. “I hate uh-oh.”
“I might have made a mistake when I lost my place in the van. I think I might have put the man’s-best-friend spell on him.”
Ammon was on his knees licking up the salt. He moved to the work island and lifted his leg.
“Bad dog!” I said. “No!”
He put his leg down and looked up at me.
“Do something!” I said to Glo. “Change him back.”
“That could be a problem,” Glo said, “since I seem to have made a combination of two spells. But here’s the good news. I didn’t have any powdered newt snot, so the spell is most likely temporary.”
Diesel walked into the kitchen, set the map on the counter, and went to the refrigerator. “How’s it going?”
“Not so good,” I said. “Ammon thinks he’s a dog.”
“Not my bad,” Diesel said, grabbing a meat pie. “And I’m not walking him.”
“So this is the map,” Josh said, staring down at it. “Hard to believe it will lead to such riches.”
Diesel ate the meat pie cold like a sandwich and washed it down with a beer. He removed the map from the frame and placed the map back on the countertop. I thought Josh was right. The map didn’t look like anything that would lead us to a treasure. It was a round piece of old parchment. On one side was the inscription “Denarius clavis ad chartum est.” There was also a rudimentary sketch of a collection of islands below the inscription. One of the islands had an X drawn onto it. The other side of the map was filled from top to bottom with seemingly random letters. A series of concentric circles drawn on the round map were the only things that seemed to separate one group of letters from another. It looked like an archery target.
“This isn’t a slam dunk,” Glo said. “The treasure could be buried anywhere on those islands. We could dig holes for a thousand years and never find anything.”
Diesel turned the map over to the side with the letters. He put the coin on the parchment. Nothing magical happened. Josh tried to rub the letters with the coin, as if it was a scratch-off lottery ticket. Nothing happened.
“How did you get the seven pieces of coin to stick together?” I asked Diesel.
“Superglue.”
“Maybe it’s like a Ouija board,” Glo said. “Maybe we just need to put the coin on the map, and we all put our hands on it, and the coin will move around while we chant.”
“It’s some kind of a puzzle,” I said. “I’m sure we have to figure out how to use these concentric circles.”
I put the coin in the center circle…the bull’s-eye. It was a perfect fit.
“Omigosh,” Glo said. “There’s a letter peeking out through one of the little holes in the coin.”
I rotated the coin and there were more alphabet letters.