by Elle Adams
“No,” said Aunt Adelaide. “Accidents are, though.”
“Especially in the library,” Cass put in. She sat on a bean bag with a book open in her lap. “This place is dangerous for the unprepared. Curses are in every other room. I doubt they’ll find who did it.”
“Ignore her,” Estelle said, taking a seat on my right. Dropping her voice, she added, “She’s in a foul mood because she split up with her boyfriend over the weekend. He left town, so the rest of us are getting the brunt of her annoyance instead.”
“Fun.” I looked up at the sound of rustling. Sylvester perched on the top of the shelf behind Cass, watching everyone with his large owl-eyes.
“Edwin is a decent police chief,” said Aunt Adelaide. “Lucky he is, and very lucky he works so closely with the library. This could have gone very badly if it were otherwise.”
“Yeah, he said you sometimes help the police out,” I said.
“We’re a close community in Ivory Beach,” she said. “With all the knowledge we have in here, we often find ourselves able to help where others fail.”
“So… only a witch or wizard could have cursed the book?” I asked.
“Yes,” Aunt Adelaide confirmed. “However, a non-witch or wizard might have hired or asked someone else to do it. That’s why the police want to question us individually. It’s likely someone who knew Duncan personally was responsible.”
Cass snorted. “Well, half the town had to suffer through the last poetry night.”
“Cass! Estelle!” Aunt Candace’s voice drifted from between the bookshelves. “I need your help in here.”
Cass shrugged and jumped off the bean bag while Estelle got to her feet. I followed them to another open classroom door. The room was free of furniture and Aunt Candace stood in the centre, her pen and notebook in her hands. The book Duncan had been holding floated in the middle of a glowing circle on the room’s floor.
“That’s a protective ward,” said Estelle. “It’ll stop the book from harming us if it turns out the curse is on the book.”
“But—hang on,” I said. “If the book’s cursed, how did it end up in Duncan’s hands? If it kills everyone it touches, the murderer couldn’t have handled it, right?”
Cass made a disparaging noise, but Aunt Candace gave an approving nod. “She’s right. That means he might not have been the intended target. If I was going to murder someone, I’d have put the curse on one of their personal possessions, not a book that belonged to a public library.”
“Please don’t say that in front of the police,” said Aunt Adelaide. “However—yes, Duncan might not have been the intended target.”
“Any of us might have been the target,” said Cass, with a not-so-subtle glance at me. “Still sure you want to live here?”
“Cass!” said Aunt Adelaide. “That’s no way to speak to your cousin.”
“It’s best she learns that lesson early,” Cass said. “Rather than having a nasty surprise later down the line.”
“If you don’t want to work here, why not leave?” I asked her.
“I never said I didn’t want to work here.”
Aunt Candace scribbled in her notebook, then she got out the black-covered book she’d used beforehand. To my surprise, Cass reached into her pocket and pulled out an identical book, albeit one that looked smaller. The two of them opened their books and spoke the same word at once: Reveal.
The word reverberated through my body, along with a rush of wild energy. The book floating in the middle of the circle glowed around the edges but didn’t move.
“Excuse me?” Edwin said from behind us.
“What?” snapped Aunt Candace.
“I need to question you,” said the chief of police.
“Can’t you see we’re busy?” she said.
“My sister means that she’s on the verge of undoing that curse,” added Aunt Adelaide.
“It might take a while.” Aunt Candace pocketed the book again. “Fine, do the questioning here.”
Edwin looked somewhat put out. “Do you have an alibi for where you were when Duncan died?”
“I was on the second floor,” said Aunt Candace.
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“Let me think… no.”
Aunt Adelaide groaned. “Sorry, she’s a little absent-minded when she’s highly focused on a task.”
“We all know who did it, anyway,” Cass said.
“Would you mind enlightening me?” the elf asked haughtily. It seemed he didn’t care much for Cass either.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Cass said. “Dominic made no secret of the fact that he despised Duncan’s poetry. He brought a whole group of vampires to the last poetry night to make fun.”
A whole group of vampires? I shivered at the thought.
“Oh, he’s harmless.” Aunt Candace gave Cass a disgruntled look. “He’s never bitten anyone on our property without permission.”
Estelle caught my arm and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”
We left the crowded room and returned to the Reading Corner. My gaze went to Dominic immediately, taking him in for the first time. He sat back in one of the armchairs, reading a newspaper. Like the other vampires I’d encountered, his features were eerily handsome, yet sort of… frozen. His face was expressionless, and he sat still, not a muscle twitching. Cass thought he’d killed Duncan? He sure looked creepy, and after my narrow escape yesterday, it was hard to look at him and not remember the terror of being cornered. But I had no business judging total strangers.
“Don’t worry,” Estelle said quietly. “Cass is just being… Cass. Personally, I don’t think anyone in this room is likely to have killed him. Vampires can’t use magic.”
“But they can bite people.”
Dominic glanced up from his newspaper and I tensed. I was too far for him to hear me, right?
“Not legal,” she muttered. “Also, they have enhanced senses and can read minds, so er, you might want to bring it up when he’s not so close.”
“Oh.” That’s why he was looking at me. I averted my gaze, flushing. “Mind-reading?”
“Yes, most vampires can do it,” she said. “It’s a bit unnerving, but we’re used to it. Their powers are restricted to anyone in the same room as them. I think it might be linked to eye contact, too, but they’re pretty tight-lipped on the subject.”
That must be how those strangers had known my name. Before they’d arrived at the shop, they’d expected my dad, not me. Until they’d seen me and read the truth straight from my mind.
I shoved the memory aside, with difficulty. We had more pressing matters to concern ourselves with. Like the murder. Not everyone had alibis. Cass and Aunt Candace hadn’t been around, for one. I hoped they wouldn’t say anything unfortunate during the questioning. Part of me couldn’t help wondering if the killer had wanted one of the library’s owners to take the blame.
“What’s the book that killed him, do you know?” I asked Estelle. “I didn’t get a good look at the cover.”
“That’s the weird part,” she said. “It’s a book of curses.”
6
The book of curses remained shut despite Aunt Candace’s best efforts. While the chief of police called each of the other people in the Reading Corner in for questioning, Estelle and I went to see how our aunt was getting along.
Aunt Candace faced the floating book with a scowl on her face. She didn’t appear to have made any progress. The book itself was unremarkable, bound in leather with yellowed pages.
“How can someone put a curse on a book of curses?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they need to read the book to use the curse?”
“I assume they got what they needed then sealed the damned thing shut,” said Aunt Candace. “Unfortunately for all of us, the counter-spell will be inside the book, too.”
“Can’t you use your biblio-witchery to get it out?”
“That’s not how it works,” said Cass. “We can’t use our magic on any old words. Just the o
nes from our specialist books. I suppose you don’t have one, so you wouldn’t know.”
“Cass, stand there for a moment, dear,” Aunt Candace interjected.
Cass looked up. “What for?”
Aunt Candace’s hands glowed, as did the circle. We all braced ourselves, but the book stayed where it was. “No. If there was a deflector spell, it would have gone off.”
Cass frowned. “The spell would have been aimed at where I’m standing.”
“I thought it might knock some sense into you.” Aunt Candace waved her hands over the circle. “Someone did a good job sealing this thing up. If it does have a soul trapped in it, it’s under the magical equivalent of a steel cage.”
“The dead man’s soul is inside the book?” I asked.
“Where else would it be, floating around the library?” Cass rolled her eyes at me. “It’s clever, really. The curse trapped the guy’s soul in the book. Then the killer sealed the book so nobody can get it out.”
“Which means it’s staying here and not under Edwin’s watch,” said Aunt Candace. “I won’t be made a fool of in my own library. I’ll crack this.”
“And if you get the book open, you’ll find out who cast it?” The leather-bound pages looked too fragile to support a human soul,
“I have to undo the shields first,” said Aunt Candace. “There are at least three layers on this thing. Curses are tricky to work at the best of times.”
“Because they have to be cast with intention,” Estelle said to me. “You have to really want to harm someone to use one, and each curse has different requirements. They’re the most complex type of spell there is. Add in the fact that they put multiple layers of protection on the book itself, and it’s most likely a witch or wizard who did it.”
“A witch or wizard with unusual skill levels,” added Aunt Candace. “Foolish, really. If they wanted the man dead, they could have used any old mundane method and yet they decided to use the showiest, most complex one possible.”
“Then they wanted to make a statement,” Cass said. “That, or their ego got in the way.”
“And do you not think it’s odd that they picked the library?” I asked. “I mean, they cursed one of our family’s books. Is there anyone who’d be out to frame one of us for murder?”
Cass gave me a disdainful look. “Everyone in town uses the library. It’s the best place to cast a curse and hide the body without inviting in too many questions. If it’s someone with a grudge against our family, we’d have already dealt with them.”
If you say so. “Aunt Candace, are you sure the curse was specifically aimed at Duncan?” I asked. “I mean, anyone could have picked it up.”
“I wouldn’t waste a curse this complex on a stranger,” my aunt muttered. A pen and paper floated at her side, the pen writing by itself.
“What spell are you casting now?” I pointed at the paper.
“I’m not. I’m taking notes. This is going in my next space mystery novel.”
Cass rolled her eyes. “Here we go again. Right, I’m done.”
“You can’t leave,” Estelle said. “The police haven’t removed the body.”
“They’re doing that now,” said Aunt Adelaide from behind me. “Everyone, come back into the library.”
We all moved, even Aunt Candace. Aunt Adelaide was the one in charge, after all.
Edwin stood next to the front desk, flanked by two huge brutish men in identical blue uniforms. They had grey skin and huge arms.
“Trolls,” Estelle whispered. “Nice guys, actually. Just don’t get on their bad side.”
Aunt Candace halted behind us, her floating pen still scribbling away in her notepad. The trolls had covered Duncan’s body, and another couple of uniformed people stood talking to the Reaper at the entrance. Aunt Adelaide strode towards them, while the rest of us hung back along with the rest of the crowd. The two elves exchanged whispered words. Tad lay in the hammock, his hat lopsided. And the vampire—
—was right behind me. I stiffened.
“Aurora Hawthorn,” Dominic said.
Up close, he looked even more like a waxwork statue. His face was chalk white, his hair glossy black. His clothes were casual, but his way of standing echoed the other vampires I’d encountered. He sounded nothing like the men who’d come into the shop, but I found myself wanting to dive behind the nearest shelf.
“Relax,” he said. “I mean you no harm. I simply wanted to introduce myself. I am Dominic.”
“Uh. Hi.” He extended a hand. It’d be rude not to shake it, so I did so, trying not to shudder. His hand was icy cold. About what I’d expect from a vampire, then.
Did he look like the sort of person who’d put a brutal curse on someone because he didn’t like their poetry? Maybe.
“Not in the slightest,” he said. “Personally, I find curses a crude method of dealing with one’s enemies. I prefer a more direct approach.”
“Er…” Did he mean biting people? “Sorry, I just found out about the mind-reading thing a few minutes ago.”
If I was going to spend any more time around vampires, I’d need to work on controlling my thoughts.
“We can only read via eye contact usually,” he commented. “And it’s restricted to people within the same room. If that makes you feel more at ease.”
“You can read minds,” I said, inspiration striking. “Does that mean if the killer was in this room, you’d know who it was?”
He tilted his head. “Yes, unless the killer was adept at shielding their thoughts. It’s possible.”
“And they’re not here? For definite?”
“No, but I wouldn’t expect so,” he said. “The book was in the victim’s hands. That suggests the curse came on the instant he picked it up.”
“So… the curse was already on the book before he picked it up, and the killer isn’t in the library at all?”
“That would be the logical assumption,” he said.
“Then the killer might have returned the book at any time, not today.” I looked for Estelle. She and Cass stood by the stairs, in what appeared to be a whispered argument.
“That’s also possible.” His gaze went to the two trolls. “I don’t think Edwin is going to get what he came here for.”
Hmm. He thought the killer wasn’t here. Then again, it wasn’t like I knew for sure what he was thinking.
“I heard you were at the last poetry night,” I said. “Er, with a group of vampires.” Wait, what was I doing? I had no business questioning anyone. He’d already talked to the police, besides.
“Oh, that,” he said. “I wasn’t here for the poetry night. A group of my colleagues and I were invited by your aunt to make corrections to certain historical books, and we witnessed that abomination of a poetry reading. My friends were a little too direct about expressing their disdain.”
“And how did Duncan react?” I asked.
“He didn’t seem bothered,” said Dominic. “He remained cheerfully oblivious to his lack of talent until the end. I can see the advantages of not having the ability to read minds in that particular case.”
Hmm. “So you said my aunt invited you to correct the history books? Why?”
“Vampires live long lives,” he said. “And I work in the local university’s history department, so it’s important that I fact-check all the books for my students. All the centuries blur together in the memory, so I occasionally need a refresher.”
“Uh—how old are you?”
“Old enough.” Another flash of fangs. Ah, forget I asked. What was I doing, making casual conversation with a vampire?
“Give it time and this will be far from the strangest thing you’ve done, Aurora.”
I took a step back. “Can you not eavesdrop on my thoughts?”
“You’re fairly transparent. I apologise.”
Of course I’m transparent if you’re in my head. Maybe it wasn’t his fault that he could find out everyone’s secrets at any given time, but it was still creepy.
Maybe hell would freeze over first. I managed a grimace. “I’m still getting used to the paranormal thing.”
“Naturally,” said the Reaper. Once again, I hadn’t seen him cross the room, let alone sneak up behind me.
“How did you move so quietly?” I asked.
“Trade secret.” He gave me a smile, too, thankfully fang-free. If anything, it made him look positively angelic… for the angel of death. “Did your aunt manage to get anything from the book?”
“She can’t get it open,” I said. “There’s some sort of shield spell on it. So you can’t get Duncan’s soul until the book’s opened?”
“Not until the curse is removed.” He pushed back his blond curls with one hand, and I noted that he’d strapped the scythe to his back again. “I’m leaving now, but I might come back later to have another look around. I’ll see you soon, Aurora.”
Coming from the Grim Reaper? Not exactly reassuring.
The vampire laughed under his breath. I gave him a warning look and went to join Estelle, who stood talking to Aunt Candace—given Cass’s absence, she must have failed to convince her to stick around.
“They’ll be back,” said Aunt Candace, jerking her head at the police trolls’ retreating backs. “I still can’t get a handle on the bloody book. Stubborn thing.”
“So you don’t know who might have cursed it?” I asked. “Dominic—the vampire—he said that since he can read minds, he might have been able to identify the killer. But he didn’t pick up anything from the people in the room.”
“That means nothing,” Aunt Candace said. “Some people are more adept at shielding their thoughts than others.”
Yet another thing I needed to work on, apparently. “Well, if someone else is the killer, they could have cursed the book before returning it to the library, right?”
“You’re right,” Estelle said, slapping a palm to her forehead. “I should have thought of that. If the curse was put on the book beforehand, it didn’t take place in the library at all. That’s why nobody saw it.”
“That means it might not have been directed at Duncan,” I said.