by Kathryn Moon
Contents
Written
Written
Written
1. Joanna
2. Callum
3. Joanna
4. Joanna
5. Callum
6. Isaac
7. Joanna
8. Isaac
9. Joanna
10. Joanna
11. Aiden
12. Joanna
13. Joanna
14. Joanna
15. Joanna
16. Joanna
17. Joanna
18. Joanna
19. Joanna
20. Callum
21. Joanna
22. Joanna
23. Aiden
24. Joanna
25. Joanna
26. Joanna
27. Joanna
Epilogue - Callum
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Written
Written
A Reverse Harem Romance
By Kathryn Moon
The Librarian’s Coven - Book One
Copyright 2018 Kathryn Moon
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, business or events, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
To the coven of women who carried me through this book.
These pages are for you.
1. Joanna
I felt invisible, frozen in place. The Canderfey University campus was stuffed with people, pouring out of brick buildings and lounging in the grass under massive trees of the Hand Woods that surrounded us. Most passed each other like strangers on the walkways. At home I couldn’t pass a neighbor without making conversation for at least five minutes. Here people brushed against me and never said a word.
One crossed in front of me, blocking my view of the library, and I rose up on my toes. I knew my jaw was hanging loose, but I couldn’t stop staring. The building was larger than anything I’d ever seen before, and grander, with lamps glittering through the glass panes that stretched as tall as my whole house. Even from the outside I could see them, lining the walls like invitations—my books. The university’s books, really. But they would be something like mine while I trained as a librarian.
My hands squeezed around the handle of my small suitcase. I had brought so little with me. There were people passing me carrying more in their arms than I had in my possession—books, and papers, and goblets, and wands, and little potted plants, and instruments, and art.
“Joanna Wick?”
A wind picked up and brushed my hair—now too long to stay out of my eyes and too short to do anything with—across my face and I pushed the dark strands back. My stunned gaping settled on a small woman with bright red hair braided over her shoulder and a pair of round glasses bouncing the glare of the sun into my eyes.
“I can find you a job cleaning the windows, if you’d rather,” the woman called from the path in front of the building. “Or you might come in.”
“Yes,” I said, stumbling forward to the enormous wood and glass doors of the library. My voice was practically air. All of it had been stolen out of my lungs at the sight of my new workplace.
“Well,” said the woman, eyes flinty behind her lenses. “You look the part at least.” Then she pushed the door behind her open and waved her arm for me to enter.
We were dressed similarly, in our long dark skirts and buttoned gray blouses and gleaming black boots. I had never seen anyone dress any different but this woman and I seemed to stick out for our plainness here.
“It’s really all I own,” I admitted as a young student passed us in something feathered and flounced.
And then I was struck stupid again as we stepped into the lobby.
A library with a lobby. A giggle burst out of my mouth and I caught my breath, savoring the whispery dry smell of books in the back of my throat. Three chandeliers of candles and crystals hung above a long wooden counter that had fairies, goblins, and ghouls carved into the facade, wolves crouched and snarling along the floor. Behind the counter stood three librarians, stamping books in and out of circulation. Beyond them was one of the most beautiful sets of shelves I had ever seen, full to bursting with every shape and size and color of book.
“Am I supposed to be here?” I asked, starting to turn to the woman. Instead my eyes caught on the roof above me, made of cut and colored glass, casting a scene on the black tile floor of the changing seasons.
“So they tell me, dear,” she said.
I glanced at her long enough to catch the curve of a smile. And then was completely distracted by the bookshelves stretching beyond her to the left. The farther up I looked, the more stories of the library there was to see. Another wing soared up to the roof on the right, with wooden balustrades looking over the lobby.
“There are more people in this building than my entire hometown,” I said without meaning to.
The woman snorted and took my elbow leading me behind the circulation desk where the other librarians were smirking down at their tasks. She pulled at the edge of one of the shelves and it swung toward us, revealing a small room of dark armchairs and bright lamps glowing.
“Let’s have some tea,” she said and the bookshelf swung shut behind us.
Her name was Gwen Woollard and despite her quirking lips and the dry snap in her tone, she was patient with me.
“You start tomorrow and you’ll be shelving for us to start with, so there’ll be plenty of time for fondling spines and sniffing pages then,” she said as she led me through the stacks, orienting me with the arrangement, pointing out the places students ended up nestled together, and describing the rush hours.
Despite her words, she let me trail behind her, my eyes soaking up the sight of the shelves and their precious cargo. Had I ever even imagined there might be so many books in the world? The trip to Canderfey from Bridgeston where I’d grown up had taken the night and the better part of the morning, but still. I would have tried to find my way here sooner if I’d known what I’d been missing.
“These next two floors are for faculty and library staff only,” Gwen said.
I had to race up a set of stairs to catch up after staring too long at a painting of a crowd of people in gossamer clothing, twining together under moonlight. The artist’s subject was an old fertility festival and the canvas shimmered with life and magic and left me blushing as I joined my new boss.
“Even then,” Gwen said, pausing at the top of the steps, likely waiting for me to catch up. “Keep your eyes on the professors. They’re as bad as the students, most of them. Always trying to sneak books away or cozying up in corners.”
“I know you aren’t talking about me, Gwendolyn,” a man’s voice purred from behind a bookshelf. I leaned around Gwen and saw him, stretched out in the window seat sunning himself like a cat. He was wearing a vivid a green jacket that looked soft even from where I stood. His skin was dark and smooth, and there was silver at the temples of his short black hair. He grinned at me with full lips and a sharp smile, dark eyes flashing.
“Professor King, I absolutely am,” Gwen answered, her tone biting. But her smile was easy as she added, “You’re nearly late for class and if I haven’t been saying that same thing for the past twenty odd years I don’t know what I’ve been doing.”
“Nearly late,” he agreed, rising up from the bench seat with a grace I envied. He added to me, “Don’t let her bully you.”
“I’m not easily bullied,” I said, and his grin widened as he winked at me and passed us. If Gwen noticed the book he tucked against his
side under his arm, she didn’t say a word.
“Be careful,” she said.
“Of him?” I whispered, glancing back at the man who was retreating down the flights of stairs.
Gwen stared at me, eyes narrowed for a long moment, her lips twitching. “Of the books,” she said. “The reason the students aren’t allowed up here is because this is our…more sensitive catalogue. It’s a devil to keep organized and every last page is ornery and soaked in magic. They’ll shift around or go missing entirely.”
I wondered if Professor King had anything to do with the latter, but kept the question to myself.
“When you aren’t busy elsewhere, this will be where we need you,” she continued, walking ahead.
I bit my smile as one of her hands floated up from her side to brush her knuckles across the spines lining a low shelf.
“Do what you can to keep it tidy, but don’t be shy or stupid about calling for help if you need it,” she said, turning in place on the toes of her black boots.
“Help?” I asked, glancing at a bookshelf. It all seemed to be a smaller version of the organization in the greater library. And while it was on a scale larger than I’d ever had the imagination to fathom, it was the same system we used at home in our own little branch. It would be easy work for me.
“You’ll see,” Gwen said, smiling at the books. Then she turned and looked over the rims of her glasses at me. “Go on. Say it now.”
My forehead knotted, not sure what she meant.
“What’s been running through your head since you got off the bus,” she said. “Probably since you got the letter of employment.”
I took a breath and held it, staring up at the lamps above and then at the deep row of bookshelves surrounding us. There was a shuffle of pages farther off, and a quiet echo from beyond the balcony—steps on tile and whispering voices.
“Are you sure I’m right for the job?” I asked. It was a magical university and I was…a country bumpkin. I’d never shown any aptitude at real magic, not more than the little basic charms everyone knew.
“Yes,” Gwen said, without any hesitation. “We know what we’re doing here. Soon you will too. Now let’s get your suitcase and I’ll tell you where to find your rooms.”
The directions Gwen had given me seemed clear enough while we were alone in the quiet little break room behind the circulation desk. But out on the campus grounds with classes changing and people flooding the paths that curled around massive old trees, the words were pouring out of my thoughts as they became flooded with new information. My steps slowed as I stared at the collection of towering buildings of brick and stone. A beautiful variety of people rushed around me, the kinds of people who passed through Bridgeston without stopping. Faces and clothing and lives I would only have gotten glimpses of through windows.
I couldn’t decide where to look. At the group of young women huddled together on the grass, painting sigils on each others skin with blue-black ink? Or the boy who was walking up a set of stairs into a building, juggling flames through his hands while no one but me seemed to pay him any attention? I was distracted from them both by the woman coming toward me, book floating in front of her nose as her fingers were busy with small needles knitting a pair of socks.
But the walkways were too crowded for all of my gawking. A group of students, running to class with their bags beating at their hips, knocked into me and I crashed sideways into a pair of arms full of rolls of paper and weapons.
“I’m so sorry!” I said and it was echoed back to me just as quickly in a man’s tone, low and gentle.
“It’s my fault,” he said. He was still standing, cast in sunlight as I scrambled on the ground to gather up the mess I’d made. There were maps unrolling and a knife that had dropped, blade down, into the dirt.
“It really isn’t,” I said, a nervous laugh bubbling up in my throat as he crouched down, plucking weapons up out of the grass with long, pale fingers. “I think you’re meant to be walking on that path and I was too busy…” I looked up, arms full of paper and one ragged edged axe, and my voice caught in my throat. His eyes were very blue. And he was very…lovely was the word that came to mind. Handsome in a gawky, bookish way that made my belly squirm and my cheeks heat. A shy smile grew over his face, framed by a coppery beard.
“Staring,” I said. I pulled my gaze from his face, all the long narrow lines of it and tried not to distract myself with the breadth of his shoulders or the white shirt sleeves that had been rolled up to his elbows.
“You’re a new student,” he said, hands reaching out to where I was starting to crush the maps in my hold.
“Trainee, in the library,” I said, passing over his belongings. I had no idea how he’d managed to hold it all at once. But he was tall and long limbed and he seemed practiced at the process as he gathered it up into a tidy arrangement. The blades and axes seemed to vanish as he arranged the bundle in his arms.
“Staff,” he said, nodding. “You’re looking for the housing?”
“Yes!” My breath came out in a relieved huff of laughter.
He came up to my side, and shuffled everything into the crook of one arm despite the fact it had been previously overflowing both. His free hand settled at the center of my back and I held my breath at the touch and the pool of prickling heat it created. He nodded down the path.
“Stay on this as it curves north, head west at the oak and the housing is a row along the side street at the end. Look for the red doors,” he said, and then his hand was gone from my back, plucking up a pair of glasses from his collar and sliding them up his nose. His eyes flicked over my face. “You’ll find it,” he said.
“I can always knock someone else over if I don’t,” I said, ducking my chin as I stepped back onto the walkway, letting the traffic carry me forward. I could hear his laugh following behind me, a brighter, livelier sound than I expected.
The directions weren’t any more specific than Gwen’s, and there were more than a few oak trees at forks in the path. But there was an instinctive tug in my belly at a great mossy old beast of a tree that arched over the path with rounded knots where low hanging branches had been cut away. At the end of the narrow road of shops and a small grocers was the side street of narrow houses pressed together with doors in all shades of red.
I found mine on the left side of the street, in the middle of the block. My heart was doing happy somersaults in my chest as I stared up at the narrow, shabby little building, as if it was as grand as the library.
The iron railing leading up the steps was rusting and whatever plant had tried to make a home in the window box was wilting. The key turned in the lock and while the space inside was small, it was simple and entirely mine. Ahead of the front door a set of stairs led up to the second story and off to the left was a thin room with a square table and two chairs facing each other. At the end of the room was a bookshelf, modest and plain compared to the ones I had just visited. There was a tiny kitchen at the back of the house with a smudged window streaming foggy light in over the sink.
The bathroom upstairs had barely enough room to turn around without falling into either the tub, sink, or toilet. Still, it was clean and bright and there was a stack of towels stuffed onto a shelf. I could take a bath and no one would come knocking waiting for their turn.
My bedroom was as little as any of the rest of the house. I could see the street through the window from where I sat down on the bed. I set my suitcase on the floor and scooted back on the mattress, springs squeaking beneath me as I moved. I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes. For the first time in my life I was living alone. There were neighbors next door, sharing the same wall with me, and I had no notion of their name or what they did or who their family was. I turned my head to press my cheek against the plaster and tried to imagine them in my head.
Instead I ended up picturing two people, Professor King from the library and the man from the lawn with the gentle smile and the arms full of weapons.
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sp; I opened my eyes and chewed at my lip. Did I have to wait an entire day to go back to the library?