by Elle Adams
“I have.” He spread his arms like wings and I burst out laughing at how ridiculous he looked.
“You can’t actually fly, can you?”
“No, but I can glide.” He took my arm and we slid past another row of shelves. “Want to jump off here? On three.”
At the count of three, we jumped off the sliding floor, landing on an island between shelves.
“I swear I could live here a year and find a new corner every day,” I said, catching my breath.
“Have they told you about the invisible section yet?”
I gave him a suspicious look. “Are you having me on?”
“Nope. A botched spell a few years ago turned a whole corridor invisible. Nobody’s been able to find it since.”
I stared at him, then cracked up laughing. “Honestly, you could be telling fibs and it still makes sense for this place.”
He laughed, too. “I guess it does sound a bit outlandish to someone from outside this world.”
“Considering you’re a Reaper, I suppose nothing surprises you.”
“Rarely, but it happens.” His eyes were alight with mischief. “Besides, that was fun.”
“More fun than most of the pranks the library’s played on me this week,” I admitted. “Yesterday, it got me stuck on an endless staircase.”
I wondered if he knew about the sleeping vampire. I didn’t want to wreck the mood by bringing up the threat to my life again, so we resumed our hunt for the journal until Sylvester ambushed us on the second floor.
“Your aunt has requested your presence downstairs,” he said, eyeing Xavier. “Reaper, is it? Found your missing soul?”
“Not yet,” said Xavier.
Sylvester tutted. “Losing a journal is one thing, but losing a soul is incredibly careless.”
“You were here when it happened,” I pointed out. “Also, I bet you could find my journal any time you wanted to.”
“I have already expressed my thoughts on the subject,” he said.
“Fine, I’ll ask Jet,” I said. “Maybe he’ll find it before you do.”
“He would never,” the owl said indignantly, and departed in a swoop of wings.
“Oh, that’s how I can persuade him to do things,” I observed. “Offer him a little competition.”
“Who’s Jet?”
“My familiar. We’d better go see what my aunt wants.”
My two aunts and Estelle waited by the front desk. This time, even Cass was there, arms folded across her chest, wearing a disdainful expression.
“There’s been a new development,” said Aunt Adelaide. “Candace has made progress on the book.”
“I said, the opposite of progress,” said Aunt Candace. “I got the book open. It’s not cursed at all.”
I stared at her. “Are you sure?”
Aunt Candace pulled the small book out of her pocket and held it up, turning it around so we could all see it. The little book of curses sat in her hand, deceptively harmless. She didn’t drop dead or start screaming. After all that… the book wasn’t cursed after all?
“Was it cursed just to harm Duncan and nobody else?” Estelle’s brow crinkled.
“There’d still be traces left behind,” said Aunt Candace. “Trust me, I’d know.”
“Are you sure you didn’t remove the curse yourself by accident?” Cass enquired.
“I couldn’t remove the curse without removing the binding. There wasn’t anything underneath it.”
“Why would someone bind it shut, then?” Xavier asked.
“Exactly.” Aunt Candace opened the book, and a slip of paper fell out. She quickly snapped the book closed to catch it before it hit the ground. “Maybe that’s the reason.”
“What is that?” I asked. We all moved to the front desk as Aunt Candace laid the book down, opening it to reveal the loose slip of paper.
“It’s one of Duncan’s poems, by the look of things,” said Estelle. “Yes, I recognise it from the last poetry night. Three people feigned sickness to get out.”
“I’m not surprised.” Cass pointed at the opening line, which read, ‘Let the nefarious rites begin.’
Aunt Candace tutted, snapping the book closed. “That’s taken care of, then. The book isn’t cursed. Something else killed the boy.”
“But…” I said. “If the book didn’t curse him, then what did?”
“Precisely,” said Aunt Candace. If anything, she sounded excited at all the possibilities.
“Would the curse-breaker know?” I asked uncertainly.
Aunt Adelaide wrinkled her nose. “I doubt Mr Bennet will have anything useful to say, not if there wasn’t a curse at all.”
Xavier stepped in. “If it’s okay with you, I can take Rory with me to visit the curse-breaker. I’ll make sure nothing happens to her.”
Cass snorted, and Estelle nudged her in the ribs.
Aunt Adelaide nodded. “Yes, if you’d like to get some fresh air. Best not to leave the library unaccompanied until the situation has been taken care of.”
And that’s how I found myself walking outside with the Reaper. As little as I wanted to wander around town when someone wanted me dead, even a vampire wouldn’t mess with Xavier, with his scythe in plain view. We attracted a fair few stares as we walked. Most of them looked at Xavier, then me, with undisguised surprise.
“What’re they gawking at us for?” I asked him in an undertone.
He shrugged. “You’re new in town and you’re hanging out with the Reaper.”
“Am I supposed to run screaming? After the vampires, you’re like a cuddly baby kitten.”
He coughed a laugh. “I believe that’s the first time anyone has ever described me using those words.”
“It works,” I said. “If you ignore the scythe, anyway.”
“Most people can’t ignore it. Hence the stares.”
“Ah. Can’t you like… leave it behind? You’re not on soul-catching duty all the time, are you?”
He paused for a moment before answering. “The scythe is part of the deal even when I’m not on duty. I never know when I’m going to run into a soul in need of saving.”
“Is that what your job is, then? Rescuing souls… to take them to the afterlife?”
“Essentially,” he said. “I rarely need to use the scythe. I can hide it, but I thought it’d make any vampire think twice before attacking you.”
Oh. As flattering as it might be to think he wanted to keep me safe, realistically, there was no reason for him to take the risk of running into murderous vampires other than to get one step closer to finding Duncan’s missing soul.
We reached the road along the seafront. “The curse-breaker wasn’t particularly nice to me last time. He doesn’t like biblio-witches.”
“Has he been questioned by the police?” he asked.
“Not that I know of. He claimed ‘customer confidentiality’ stopped him from telling me who hired him to help with a curse. I think it was that vampire, Dominic. But if the book wasn’t cursed after all, it’s irrelevant.”
“It’s worth asking him again.” Xavier pushed open the door to the shop.
Like last time, the curse-breaker waited behind the desk, tall and thin and scowling.
“We close early on Sundays,” Mr Bennet said.
“Not for an hour, last I checked,” Xavier responded, his voice cheerful. “Terrible weather, isn’t it?”
The curse-breaker visibly paled. “Reaper. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’m here with her.” He indicated me, his hand brushing my arm. Warmth heated my cheeks. Well, now I know how to get the curse-breaker to take me seriously: bring the Reaper.
“We have an update on the cursed book,” I told Mr Bennet.
“I don’t recall asking for one.”
Okay… “I just thought you might be interested to know that the book wasn’t cursed. My aunt broke open the sealing spell and there wasn’t anything underneath.”
He didn’t even blink. “I thought
so.”
“What, you knew?” I frowned. “Since when?”
“It was the logical conclusion. One person was affected and no others. A book in a library might have been picked up by anyone.”
“Then why seal it shut?” Had someone been trying to throw us off the trace, or was there something else hidden in the pages? I’d have to ask my aunt to know for sure. “You saw Dominic the vampire this week, right?”
“Customer confidentiality,” he said, his tone downright bored.
“It seems to me that the police would be interested to know,” said Xavier. “It’s pertinent to their investigation, after all. Whether the book was involved or not, it was definitely a curse that killed Duncan.”
Mr Bennet’s face reddened. “What do you want to know?”
“You helped Dominic,” I said. “He’s the one you needed the book for, right? Why bring it here rather than checking it out of the library?”
“Because Alice already had it,” the curse-breaker said. “Your library is very particular about the rules. When I heard Alice had a book on advanced curses, I borrowed it to help Dominic look up a fang-shrinking curse. The book turned out to be unnecessary, so I returned it to Alice.”
“And then she put it back in the library,” I mused. “Did Duncan visit you before he died?”
“No,” he said. “We’ve never spoken.”
Hmm. “But he was looking up curses for a reason, right?”
His eyes narrowed. “We’re a paranormal town. Maybe things are different wherever you came from, Miss Hawthorn, but most people deal with curses in their day-to-day lives without feeling the need to consult a curse-breaker, especially witches and wizards. I would expect your family to have told you so themselves rather than sending you to bother me with inane questions.”
“That’s enough,” said Xavier sharply. “You have no reason to be rude to Rory.”
“Never mind,” I said. “He’s right, I didn’t know. But I know where not to come if I need help with curses.”
I turned around and left the shop, marching down the road. Despite my furious pace, Xavier easily kept in step with me.
“Less than a week here and I’m already burning bridges.” I muttered a curse—not of the magical variety. “He hated my grandmother. They argued over the library, according to Estelle.”
“That’s no excuse for the way he spoke to you,” he said, with a disgruntled glance over his shoulder. “If you ask me, he was irritated because you reminded him that most witches and wizards don’t actually need the help of a curse-breaker. A ten-year-old could remove a basic curse, so he’s stuck working for people like that vampire.”
“Ah, that explains it,” I said. “I swear I wasn’t trying to insult him. I’m just slow to learn the new rules here.”
“You’re doing fine,” he said. “Considering you knew nothing at all about magic until a few days ago.”
“There is that.” If the book wasn’t cursed, that opened up the case again… in theory. I’d read enough from the beginner’s textbook to know some curses took a while to act. Which meant if someone had cast the curse on Duncan a week ago and timed it to go off at that particular moment, we might never know who did it.
My shoulders slumped.
“Something wrong?” Xavier asked.
I shook my head. “Curses can be set on a timer to go off weeks after they were cast. If it wasn’t the book, it might have been anything that cursed him.”
“That doesn’t explain where Duncan’s soul went,” said Xavier. “If the curse was on an object, he’d have been touching it when he died, and if a person cast it, they’d need to be there in person.”
“So the caster was there in the library?” That brought us to same list of suspects again. “What did they curse, then? He wasn’t holding anything else. Unless they cursed his shoe or something.”
Xavier shook his head. “No, only a powerful magical object can hold a person’s soul. I assumed the boundary spells on the book held it captive, but I was wrong.”
Ah. Being the person who dealt with souls, he was definitely the expert out of the two of us.
“Maybe a different book was cursed,” I said. “And the murderer put that one in his hands to throw us off the trace.”
“Huh. It’s possible,” he said. “I have to get pretty close to be able to pick up on the presence of a soul, and with so many books in the library, it’d be hard to pinpoint. At this rate, I’ll have to bring my boss in.”
“At least that might put off the vampires,” I said.
His mouth tightened. “That vampire must know the library is protected by the most powerful spells in the whole town, to say nothing of your aunts’ power.”
“Maybe, but vampires are faster and stronger than any person, by far, and they nearly got into the library once already.”
“You got away twice, didn’t you?” he asked. “I assume you did, since you’re still in one piece.”
“I did, but they let me go because they wanted my dad’s journal,” I said. “Which I managed to lose anyway. Not sure that counts as a victory.”
“But you did use magic, right?” he said. “You put yourself down too much.”
“Maybe I do,” I admitted. Laney had said the same, but spending my days being berated by Abe for every reason under the sun had made me used to criticism and not so much to praise.
But he was right: I had used magic to get away from the vampire, and I wasn’t even properly trained yet. “Now all I have to do is find a missing book in a library. There’s a joke in there somewhere about needles and haystacks.”
“I was refraining from making that one.” He grinned. “Come on, I’ll walk you back. My boss will be wondering where I am.”
We made our way back from the seafront to the towering shape of the library. Already, I was starting to think of it as home. Now if only it would cooperate with me and help me find Dad’s journal.
I waved goodbye to Xavier and entered the library, which was quieter than usual. A few of the regulars were around even though it was Sunday, but if not for the faint background noise of rustling pages, the place seemed deserted.
I walked in the direction of Aunt Candace’s testing room where she’d been trying to break the curse on the book. If the book wasn’t cursed, I was at a loss as to what might have caused Duncan’s death. Much less where his soul had ended up.
The classroom door was slightly open. Frowning, I pushed it inwards, and there was a clunk as it connected with something hard.
The book of curses lay on the floor. So did a man’s body, his hand inches away from the book, a lopsided green hat beside his head.
Tad, the local eccentric. He was dead.
11
I screamed. The sound didn’t echo and nobody came running. There must be an alarm, right? Wait—the emergency button. I scrambled in my pocket for the piece of paper Estelle had given me on my first day and tapped the word help.
A wailing noise sprang from the paper, echoing up to the heights of the ceiling until the entire library reverberated with the noise. Then, Aunt Adelaide materialised on the spot.
“Rory, what—?” She broke off at the sight of Tad’s body. “Oh, goddess.”
“I found him like this,” I said. “I just got back a minute ago.”
We both looked at his sprawling, inert body, and the book lying half open beside him. What had he been doing, trying to sneak a look at the book of curses? Aunt Candace had touched it. It couldn’t be cursed. But then—what had killed him?
“Who would kill him?” she said softly. “He was harmless.”
“I know.” I wrenched my gaze away from Tad’s staring eyes and bright green hat. “Where’s Aunt Candace? She must have left the room unlocked, and I guess he tried to take the book.”
And someone had killed him for it.
“CANDACE!” Aunt Adelaide bellowed. “Sorry, she probably put her alarm on mute. She always does that when she’s working. It’s rare that we have an a
ctual emergency.”
“Cass and Estelle are out, then?” I asked. “So—is the killer still here? Would the library know if anyone left?”
“I knew I should have asked Sylvester to watch the doors,” she said. “But he went to keep an eye on Estelle in case she ran into those vampires.”
My stomach turned over. The place still looked deserted, though the sound of the alarm ought to have alerted everyone within hearing distance.
Was the killer still in the library? The book must be involved—there was no way it was a coincidence that it’d wound up next to two dead bodies—but if it wasn’t cursed, then what had killed him?
Aunt Candace materialised next to us, an aggravated look on her face. “This had better be good.”
Aunt Adelaide cleared her throat and indicated the body. “He was found here.”
“I found him,” I added.
Aunt Candace swore. “I thought I locked that door. What’re we going to do with him?”
At that moment, the front door opened and Xavier strode in. “Hey, Rory,” he said.
Ah. What was I supposed to say? ‘Nice to see you’ wouldn’t cut in, since someone was dead. “Hi.”
He spotted Tad’s body and walked over, holding his scythe in both hands. There was a long pause, then he said, “I thought I felt his soul, but it’s gone.”
My heart sank. Just like Duncan.
“I found him here.” I indicated the half-open door and the book on the floor. “I think he picked up the book, but we already know it’s not cursed.”
Xavier paced around the body, frowning. “I think it’s the same as the other time. Was he holding anything else?”
“No, I found him like that.”
Xavier paused with his scythe poised over Tad’s body, looking into space as though seeing something I couldn’t. Then he shook his head. “No. His soul is definitely gone.”
Aunt Adelaide cleared her throat. “If I had to guess, he came here to get the book and was ambushed from behind.”
“No witnesses,” I said. “When was the last time anyone came near this room, or through the Reading Corner? He’s normally over there.”
“I checked on the book first thing this morning,” Aunt Candace said. “At least three hours ago. I’ve been working on my manuscript since then.”