by Lily Velez
When I looked back to Jack, the flicker of shadows on his face was so mesmerizing I couldn’t respond at first. I was acutely aware of so many things at once. His fingers gently cradling my elbow and the way my skin woke up to his touch. The set of his lips; how they were perfect and thin like a longbow. His steady gaze studying me, holding me; how he knit his brow with worry. I was surrounded by a host of dead kings, but even if they had risen from the grave, I wouldn’t have noticed, and with Jack shielding me from them, I wouldn’t have been afraid.
“Scarlet?”
I blinked, my face blushing furiously. I instantly looked away. My only consolation was the hope my red cheeks weren’t too noticeable in the dimness of the catacombs. Shaking my head, I straightened. “I’m all right,” I said. “We should catch up with the others.”
The others were waiting at a second set of doors, these as tall and as old-looking as the ones at the abbey’s entrance. Finally, I thought with relief, the end of the catacombs. Zoe placed her hand upon one door, using a whispered set of Irish words as a key. Hidden gears whined and shifted and clicked, and then a large, metal bolt on the other side slid free in a sound like a sword blade dragged across stone.
The doors swung open as a drop gate just beyond them slowly lifted to offer us an unobstructed view of the space beyond. Candles flared to life atop more chandeliers and sconces, instantly flooding the room with soft, dancing light. In the immediate vicinity, there were about half a dozen rustic tables with bench seating. Beyond them were endless rows of bookshelves, reaching so far back the light couldn’t penetrate the furthest end of the room.
The books came in all shapes and sizes. There were manuscripts bound with leather cords, ancient tomes with covers made of animal hides, books small enough to fit into my back pocket, and others as tall as my upper half. To my left, there was an entire section dedicated to scrolls, which were stored in pigeon hole cabinets. Clustered together as they were, their centers looked like hundreds of eyes staring ominously into the distance. Glass table cases protected scraps of yellow parchment from the elements, and dusty volumes that had to be hundreds of pages long reclined in wooden book holders, opened at the center.
I breathed in the smell of old pages, letting it fill my lungs. While I hadn’t been overly fond of the walk through the Hall of Kings, I had to admit it’d been well worth it for the opportunity to be inside a secret library filled with magical books.
“So where’s The Book of Fates?” I asked.
“And therein lies our problem,” Zoe said. “Most of these books know how to behave themselves, but grimoires as powerful as The Book of Fates can be ornery little things. They’re pure magic, and as such, they can do as they please. So it doesn’t matter where they were last set. They almost always relocate themselves. And they never use the same hiding place twice. I think they do it just to make our lives more difficult. Here, let me show you.”
She led us to one of the glass table cases, this one bearing medieval latches and locks. She gestured to the vacant space inside. At the bottom of a red, velvet cloth, a tag read, ‘The Book of Fates.’ I assumed this is where it was returned whenever a witch finished studying it.
“It just left?” I asked. I almost asked how, given the measures that had been taken to secure it, but then I remembered: magic. Right.
“Like I said, ornery little things. But at least we know it’s somewhere in here. There aren’t any records of it being loaned out since its last return.”
In light of the enormity of the library, it wasn’t exactly solace. There had to be thousands of books here. Possibly even tens of thousands. I hadn’t thought our search would be so ‘needle in a haystack.’
“Let’s start looking through everything then,” Jack said, undeterred.
Lucas swept a gaze over the library’s vast inventory. “Everything?”
“At least we don’t have to scour every druidic library across Ireland. Besides, there are four of us. It’ll cut down our search time considerably.”
“Six of us,” I amended. “Right?”
“Wrong,” said Zoe. “Only a member of a clan can read that clan’s spell books. To anyone else, the pages would appear to be something else entirely.” She pulled a heavy hardback off a shelf and dropped it into my arms. “See for yourself.”
My arms sank past my waistline under the book’s weight. I hefted the tome onto a table and opened the cover, waving away flecks of dust. The pages were brittle, and I turned them delicately until I came to the title page. “An Exhaustive History of Eighteenth-Century European Thought?” I continued turning the pages. Sure enough, they were filled with nothing but unending blocks of text.
“That’s what you see,” Zoe said. “But if you were a son or daughter of the O'Manacháin clan, you’d see a spell on every page like I do. The glamor serves to protect the knowledge contained within the pages. That way, should a book turn up in someone’s private library, or in a museum, used book store, Sotheby’s auction, and so on and so forth, our secrets stay with us.”
“But I thought The Book of Fates was given to all witches by Brigid?”
“As the story goes, Brigid appeared in a dream to seven Elders during the height of The Burning Times. They each transcribed her wisdom into what would later be known as the Sacred Grimoires, each for one of the remaining druidic clans. It was around this time that The Elders went on to form The Council, to give hope to our people. The Book of Fates happens to be the Sacred Grimoire that belongs to the Connellys’ clan, hence why their mother directed them to it.”
“But how do the books know whether or not you’re a member of the right clan?”
“Through blood spells,” Zoe said. “A witch can bind a grimoire with his or her blood, so that only witches who share their bloodline are able to see the spells. If you’re not of that bloodline, the glamor automatically kicks in. Those of us who have to fulfill loan requests from other clans usually have nothing to go by except what a grimoire’s cover looks like, as it’s all we can see.”
I handed the O'Manacháin book back to her. She took it and slid it back into the gap on the shelf. Her ouroboros ring glistened in the candlelight. The serpent’s eyes were made from green gems, and I was reminded of all the red-eyed demons I’d encountered thus far—both in the real world and in Alison’s mental prison. I rubbed my arms to keep the goosebumps at bay.
“Are all grimoires loaned out only by request? Can a witch not visit a library themselves to check out a book?”
“They’re more than welcome to, but the perimeters of this and every library are spelled. No book can leave this place unless it’s in the hands of a Guardian, which is what those of us who maintain these libraries are called. Usually, we simply hand-deliver any book that’s requested, no matter how far away the witch lives.”
“What happens if a non-Guardian tries to carry a book out?”
“They’re struck dead on the spot,” she answered, her shoulders bouncing up in a quick, carefree shrug.
My insides spun. “Good to know.”
She twisted the ouroboros ring around her finger. “It may sound like a bit much, but it’s for the common good. A witch who’s trying to steal a grimoire without anyone knowing is typically up to no good. The irony, of course, is that not even these precautions are enough to stop the most determined of witches.
“Some decades ago, there was a traitor who could possess the bodies of other witches. She used the ability to mentally hijack Guardians and spirit away a number of grimoires in a single night. The boundary spell allowed it because it just senses a Guardian’s flesh, not what’s going on in the inside. Fortunately, she was caught before she could make use of the grimoires and sentenced to The Citadel, where she lived out the rest of her life in exile and without magic.”
“Wow.”
“I know what you’re thinking. Not even a slap on the wrist first? But we witches live in a dangerous world. You’ve only been a part of it for a few days, but by Jack’s account, i
t sounds like you’ve been through a lot already. I, for one, live by a strict code. Once someone’s lost my trust, they can never win it back. It’s the only way I know to survive.”
For the next few hours, the Connellys went through book after book, spreading out to the four corners of the library. It was a tedious task. First, they had to leaf through the first few pages of every volume to determine if it was even a grimoire from their own clan. If it was, they then had to conduct a more thorough read-through to determine whether or not the grimoire was The Book of Fates in particular. Apparently it was too much to ask that every single spell book have a helpful title page, and Zoe couldn’t remember if The Book of Fates was one such grimoire, much less what it looked like exactly.
“It’s been years since I’ve come to this particular location,” she said with a shrug.
Despite what Zoe had said, I tried my hand at opening a few books, willing them to reveal their secrets to me regardless of my bloodline. But sure enough, the pages I handled would hold tight to their glamor, protecting the spells hidden on their surface. I came across books about art history, books about the reigns of legendary kings, and books about traditional Irish cuisine, the description of Irish stew and soda bread making my stomach growl, but not a single word I read was about magic. Zoe knew of no libraries containing preserved grimoires or other texts from The Lost Clan, so by process of elimination, it seemed a telling indication that Jack had been right about my heritage. If I was a witch and couldn’t read any of the remaining six clans’ grimoires, I had to be descended from the mysterious seventh.
Feeling useless, I took to wandering around the library, running my fingers along the leather spines, occasionally swatting away a cobweb overhead. Save for the sound of turning pages, and the occasional muttered curse tumbling out of Connor’s mouth, the library was as silent as a mausoleum.
Upon one wall of the library, there was a colorful mosaic. It was three times my height and stretched several dozen feet wide. It depicted a garden scene. At the center was a giant tree made entirely of elaborate, complicated Celtic knots, its branches stretching to the very edges of the mosaic. Its leaves were a vibrant green, and it bore bright, shiny fruit. All around the tree were animals of every species, a colorful assortment of flowers, and a flowing river. Where each animal’s heart would’ve been, there was a triskele instead. The triple spiral also appeared in the currents of the river and on every last flower bud.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Zoe stepped up beside me.
“Is it supposed to be The Garden of Eden?” I asked.
“It’s our own origin story. That’s the Tree of Life. The legend is that the first of our people sprung from its seeds. Our most important rituals are held before it.”
“You mean it actually exists?”
“Of course. It’s located Elsewhere.” She crossed her arms, leaning a shoulder against the mosaic. There was a sharp glint in her eyes that made my heart skip a beat. I hadn’t been sure how Zoe would receive me when we first met, if she’d be as distrusting as Seamus and Connor had initially been. Or as Connor still was honestly. It looked like I was about to find out.
“Listen,” she said. “I want to be real clear about something. I’ve known the Connellys for years. I care a lot about them. Whatever happens with this Reaper, they’re still going to be pariahs when it’s all said and done, so you need to make a decision about where you stand now.”
“Where I stand?”
“Meaning, are you just using Jack and his brothers because you have something at stake here? Or are you going to stay by their side even after you save your father?”
I opened my mouth, but I was too taken aback to produce any words.
“I know,” Zoe said. “Blunt. But sometimes you have to be. Because I don’t put my neck on the line for people who aren’t fully committed. If you intend on leaving the Connellys high and dry once you’ve gotten what you want, then I’d appreciate it if you let me know up front, girl to girl. No hard feelings. I’d understand. I wouldn’t respect the decision, of course, but I’d understand.”
“It sounds like you’ve been through something like this before.”
“Oh, I have. Want to know what’s the fastest way to clear a room in witching society? Show up with a Connelly at your side. Want to see a witch break out in hives? Drop the name Jack Connelly into polite conversation. My family would be raging if they knew I was even here.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why?”
“The majority of the clans fear Jack. No single witch has ever had as much power as him, and with all the tragedies and misfortunes his family’s faced in recent years—Redmond, Alison, Neala, Bree—some say it’s only a matter of time before he lands on the darker side of magic.”
My heart missed a beat. “They think he’ll start practicing dark magic?”
“Scarlet,” she said, her face growing serious. “Some people believe he already does.”
29
The streets of Dublin were packed tight with hordes of people, making any sort of forward-motion quite the feat. I’d learned the city was the stomping ground for one festival after another throughout the year. Tonight, music was everywhere. The foot-tapping, spirit-lifting kind that made it nearly impossible to stand still.
To my right, a ring of people had formed around a group of musicians playing on the fiddle, flute, and drums. Pre-teen girls in ringleted wigs and bright, boldly-patterned dresses commanded the attention of their onlookers, performing traditional Irish step dance on wooden boards in a percussive battle that made my pulse spike. Their legs moved so quickly their perfectly synchronized kicks were a blur. As the music raced to a crescendo, the girls picked up even more speed, jumping in circles and fast-changing formations that had their audience roaring with delight in a thunderous applause.
Jack and I continued forward, squeezing through slivers of space between the crowds. As we progressed through the city, the gaiety of the people never once dimmed. In pubs, friends toasted to each other, knocking their pints of Guinness together in a resounding clink. The mouthwatering smell of each establishment’s food wafted out into the streets, filling the air with the sweetness of scones and the peppery spiciness of sausages. Live music played from both indoor and outdoor venues, rivaling with street performers who showed off everything from breakdancing and bagpipes to magic tricks and unicycling.
It was almost enough to make me forget why we’d ventured into the city to begin with, but when we finally broke away from the masses and regrouped at a lamppost, the reality of our situation was inescapable. We’d been in Dublin for days, and while we’d continued our search for The Book of Fates, we had little to show for it. At this point, Jack was willing to take creative measures, so we’d visited a small apothecary on the edge of the city, just the two of us, so that he could pick up ingredients for a locator spell. Zoe had already advised such a spell wouldn’t work for a grimoire as powerful as The Book of Fates, but the general consensus was there was no harm in at least giving it a try.
As I thought about it, a red pennant flag caught my attention. It flapped against the lamppost in a gust of wind. ‘Bram Stoker Festival,’ its white lettering read. Jack followed my line of sight.
“He was born here in Dublin,” he said. “And he went to Trinity College. The city holds a multi-day festival in his honor every year at the end of October, complete with ghost tours, costume parties, and a parade overrun with vampires, zombies, and goblins.”
We continued walking. The crowds eventually thinned out, the streets becoming quieter until there were only pockets of people here and there, the lively music from earlier a distant melody I could barely hear. At one point, Jack pulled his phone from his pocket, checking the screen.
“Is Seamus still coming today?” I asked.
“I texted him earlier to check, but he hasn’t replied yet. He might still be busy with The Council, especially if they’ve decided on a course of action. As one of their former student
s, it would make sense for them to insist he stay close. The clans respect Seamus, so if The Council plans on rallying the others, Seamus would be the perfect spokesman.”
“You seem worried, though.”
He glanced at me, his smile tired. He led us away from the clamor of the city onto the green lawns of a secret garden hidden in the very center of Dublin. ‘Iveagh Gardens,’ a plaque announced.
“Is it that obvious?” He pocketed his hands, letting go of a long sigh. “I’d just rather have Seamus here in Dublin with us. As the eldest of my brothers, I’m used to leading the way all the time, to having the answers to the hard questions. But in this, I feel more lost than ever. I don’t know what our next course of action would possibly be if we don’t find The Book of Fates. At least if Seamus were here, he could provide some sort of guidance.”
“It sounds like you’re very close to him.”
“I am,” Jack said as we passed a beautiful water cascade and continued on down a tree-lined promenade, gravel and dry leaves crunching under our footfalls. “We were always close to him as children. He was the uncle who indulged us with the birthday toys we’d asked for all year long, who took time out to coach the youth rugby team Connor and I were a part of when we were younger, who whisked us away from home when things were strained between our parents and mentored us in our magic for hours. Nevermind the way he stepped up once our mother was admitted to Serenity Falls. Raising four boys all under the age of thirteen certainly hadn’t been a part of his life plan, but he never once complained. For the past six years, he’s been like a father to us. I don’t know how any of us could ever repay him.”
In the moonlight, the trees cast long, skeletal shadows onto the lawn. Our own shadows moved across the portrait of pitch-black branches in a slow progression, like passing ships. There wasn’t a soul in sight, transforming the gardens into an intimate, peaceful sanctuary.