by Linda Wisdom
The griffin’s beak opened in a broad yawn. “Password?”
“Hermione got better grades than Harry.”
The griffin squawked. “One day, young witch, your impertinence will be your undoing.”
“Maybe, but not today.” She waited for the metallic click and then pushed open the door that slowly swung open with the creak of ancient wood and hardware. She stepped across the doorway aware she’d also stepped into a different realm known to no human.
Jazz stood still as the door closed behind her, leaving her in a dim hallway smelling of ages-old dust, leather, paper, and materials that fairly screamed the magick embedded in them. As she ventured into the dim vestibule, torches adorning the wall burst into flame, lighting her way until she reached the end of a passage that expanded into a room that seemed to go on for miles. Rows of intricately carved shelves held ancient grimoires, books, scrolls, and parchments. Rumor had it that a portion of Alexander’s library was back among the stacks, but she had never found it.
She knew she didn’t imagine she smelled magick in the air. It was well and truly there. Just standing there she felt as powerful as the highest-placed witch. Not that she’d ever say the words out loud. It was a good way for her banishment to never end.
“What do you seek, young witch?”
She looked to her right, finding a man seated on a stool pushed up to a waist-high counter. He wore old-fashioned knee britches in bottle green, a faded waistcoat over a linen shirt the color of old parchment and a bottle green long tailed coat. Ancient scrolls, leather bound books, and what even looked like a few stone tablets were carefully arranged on the counter near his spot of power.
Narrowed black eyes peered at her over the rim of ancient half-spectacles perched on his beaklike nose. His thinning brown hair looked just as it had the first time she entered The Library with her class more than seven hundred years ago, when he had lectured them in the proper use of the facilities. A lot more “don’ts” were uttered than “do’s.” Even though today she had dressed appropriately in a black calf-length skirt and a roll-neck sweater with a silver belt for accent and black boots, he still looked at her as if she had shown up in a micro-bikini. His rules in The Library were as prissy as he looked.
“The Librarian,” she said, knowing if she didn’t address him properly and with the correct tone of respect, he would ban her from The Library as he had before. She had been barred from the premises for eighty years before he even deigned to hear her apology. To say she had issues with the prissy wizard was an understatement.
His narrow lips pursed as if he had just sucked a lemon. She wouldn’t put it past him to eat the tart fruit as a treat.
“The Librarian,” he corrected her, pronouncing the first word with a long “e.”
“Thee Librarian,” she repeated. Why couldn’t all of this be available online?
He sniffed. “Proper reference material must be read in its original form.” He smiled, pleased he’d startled her with his admission that he’d read her thoughts. “What do you wish to find here?”
Oh yeah, not going to be easy at all.
“I require information on astral projection when it is combined with other forms of magick meant to foul an object.”
He sniffed. “That is nothing new. Look over there.” He gestured to his right with a plumed pen and returned to his task, effectively dismissing her from his mind and his presence.
Jazz shook her head. “Excuse me, The Librarian, but what I seek would be found in a section we were taught not to speak of lightly.” She hated having to ask for formal permission, but she knew it was the only way she could cross the portal leading to the room holding the works that had to do with baneful magick.
The Librarian looked up and peered at her over the top of his half-spectacles before he straightened up and returned to the yellowed sheet of parchment before him. “You are not seasoned enough to enter that room. Ask me again in one thousand years. As long as you return any borrowed material in a timely manner, that is.”
She swallowed the argument that threatened to erupt. She had known it was going to be rough. She simply hadn’t expected it to be this bad. The man just plain didn’t like her! Yes, it was a bit late, okay, ten years late, but for Fate’s sake, she had returned the scroll eventually. She’d signed out Fifty Ways to Hex Your Lover with the intention of using every one of the hexes on Nick. She had even paid the grossly inflated overdue charges without one word of complaint! What more could the strait-laced fossil want? Not that she was about to ask. To this day she was convinced he deliberately inflated the late fee as punishment. She kept her voice level. “Please, The Librarian, I humbly ask your permission to enter the room holding Baneful Magick, because I am positive what I need is in that section.” She so hated doing the Miss Manners shtick, but The Librarian could give the diva of proper behavior lessons.
He looked up and stared at her with a piercing gaze. “Why would you think that what you require could be found in the room holding baneful magick? A room that is dangerous to many and only kept intact because the material must be protected from those who would use it for wrongdoing. If I had my way, it would have been obliterated centuries ago.”
Jazz resisted rolling her eyes. Where had this man been for the last thousand years? Like wizard guards would have stopped any wrongdoing when people were so inventive. The old wizard needed broadband down here big time.
“A man who supposedly died seventy-five years ago used astral projection along with baneful magick to try to frighten me.”
His smile held absolutely no humor. “I did not think you frightened easily, young witch.”
She took that as a compliment although she wasn’t sure he meant it that way. “Normally, nothing can scare me, but right now I’m facing something I’ve never dealt with before, and yes, he terrifies the wits out of me. This creep is using dark magick to destroy vampires in a manner that is cruel and wrong for any preternatural being. I need to find a way to stop him.”
“That sounds more like someone performing a good deed to me,” he said. “The fewer vampires in our world the better.” He sniffed and returned to his work.
“But it won’t end there, will it?” Jazz fired back. “And once he is through destroying vampires it would be natural for him to feel empowered to move on to others. That’s usually what psychotic villains who want to rule the universe tend to do.” She stared hard at him with a mental, Get my meaning?
Jazz felt the pinpricks of magick swirl around her as The Librarian—with a long e—gauged the level of her sincerity. Over the centuries many a student wizard and witch had tried to gain entrance to the room on a dare. There was nothing more appealing, and at the same time daunting, than entering a forbidden area. And a room holding unlimited knowledge of baneful magick was about as illicit as you could get. Punishment for such a deed was not pleasant. The few who managed to cross that threshold without permission never spoke of what they saw and found there. Even the portal leading to that room was not for the faint of heart.
The Librarian snapped his fingers. A high-pitched sound echoed off the ceiling as a dark brown winged creature headed for Jazz. She flinched but stood her ground. She really hated bats! If that thing attacked her hair she was outta there.
“Felix, show the young witch to Section 22F,” he instructed. “Be sure she remains on the correct path.”
“I can find it on my own if you’ll give me directions or draw a map,” Jazz said.
“That is unacceptable. Felix will guide you and remain at the portal until you are finished with your research, so that you will have a safe return. Otherwise, it would be impossible for you to find your way back to our realm,” he said with a cold smile.
“Our realm? I know The Library is housed in a different realm than the mortal world, but are you saying the portal to the Baneful Magick room is in yet another realm?” She so did not like hearing this! Why couldn’t she be looking for books on rare herbs or talismans? Those sections
had nice plump-cushioned couches, big easy chairs, and excellent reading light. Not to mention she heard rumors cappuccino machines had been put in some of the reading rooms. What she wouldn’t give for a high dose of caffeine right now.
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Do you not recall anything from your Academy instruction on using The Library? Every section is housed in a different realm. The portal leading to the room holding baneful magick is not only the oldest portal but also the most difficult to find, and with good reason. After all, we cannot have just anyone stumbling upon it, can we? There could be serious repercussions if a young witchling or wizard wandered in there, which is why I must take so many precautions.” He picked up his plumed pen. “I suggest you follow Felix quickly. You have one hour to find what you require.” He picked up the two-foot-high green marble hourglass that suddenly appeared on the edge of his desk and turned it over. The sand immediately started flowing downward in an off-white stream.
Her jaw dropped. “One hour? There is no way I can find what I need in an hour. I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t take me all day.”
The Librarian glanced at the hourglass and at the sand drifting downward. He lifted a brow. “Fifty-nine minutes and counting.”
“You could turn it over and it would start fresh,” Jazz suggested.
He peered at her over the tops of his spectacles with a look that implied she should have remained silent. He tapped the glass. For a moment, it looked as if the sand flowed even faster.
Jazz muttered under her breath as she took off after the bat that flew off. She slowed down once to glance through one portal. A young woman wearing a medieval-style gown sat at a plain wooden table. She looked up from the ancient book of spells she was studying and noted Jazz’s modern clothing before presenting her with a smile.
Jazz had forgotten that time had no meaning in The Library. It was just as easy to run into someone from the sixteenth century as it was to see someone from the twenty-third. The bat’s screech brought her back to the present.
“You know, in some places deep fried bat wings are considered a delicacy,” she muttered, knowing the bat’s delicate hearing would catch the jibe. She grinned slightly when the responding sound from the creature resembled a sneer. It flew a short distance ahead of her, leading the way.
She felt a distinct damp chill in the air as they walked deeper into the bowels of The Library. She wished she’d worn a jacket since her sweater was proving not to be warm enough in the dank air. She crossed her arms in front of her chest in an effort to keep warm.
“Central heat would be nice,” she muttered, glancing here and there at portals displaying ancient bound books and scrolls. Some housed witches or wizards perusing the contents. Others were empty but the hum of magick was strong and every so often she noticed glowing red or orange eyes peeking out of portals bathed in darkness. She didn’t want to think what type of creatures might inhabit those areas.
She didn’t need the bat to hover about her head, its leathery wings slowing, to tell her they’d arrived at their destination. All she had to do was look ahead at the towering shiny black volcanic-rock entrance with its silvery-black spider web criss-crossing the entrance. She raised her head to stare at the upper left hand corner. The spider, with a bloated belly—no wonder there didn’t appear to be any bugs around—seemed to be repairing a tear in the web. Its head swiveled around and peered at her through blood-red eyes as if gauging what kind of meal she’d make. She resisted using a spot of witchflame on it. While she hated spiders with a passion, she also valued her ass and she knew if she turned the portal’s spider guardian into a fireball, The Librarian would do the same to her. She was also pretty sure he wouldn’t be banished for it either.
Felix hovered in the air, its wings flapping slowly as it directed a high-pitched squeak towards the portal. The cobweb parted in the center and the filmy barrier lifted like a theater curtain, except there was no popcorn, Diet Coke, or even a movie screen waiting for her.
“Maybe I should have let Nick come with me after all.” She drew in a bracing breath and stepped across the rocky threshold, feeling a brief sense of disorientation as she crossed into another realm. Her nose wrinkled at the strong scent that enveloped her and burned her throat. Sulfur definitely didn’t mix well with her perfume. She doubted it would blend with any scent known to man, including eau de skunk. “Oh, gross! A truck-load of room deodorizers would be useful here. Whoever said sulfur smelled like rotten eggs was seriously wrong. It’s way worse than that.” She pressed the back of her hand against her nose. The urge to breathe through her mouth was strong, but the knowledge she would then taste what she smelled kept her mouth firmly closed. Memories of old London, where all sorts of refuse, and worse, littered the dirt roads also helped her take in shallow breaths.
The lighting in the chamber was poor with pitch-covered torches stuck in the walls at random intervals. The cavelike structure appeared endless, with not even a broken-down couch or chair in sight, much less a three-legged stool for the casual visitor to perch on.
“No wonder there’s only an hour time limit. That’s all anyone could stand to be in here before they pass out from the fumes,” she murmured to herself. “And I thought Foulshadow was bad.” She cringed at the faint sound of something, or maybe somethings, if whatever it was didn’t have many legs, skittering off in the far shadows. Jazz wasn’t a total girl when it came to creepy-crawlies, but some sported venom-filled pincers and fangs, so she knew when to be careful and wear heavy boots. She studied the area waiting to make sure the creatures were heading away from her instead of toward her.
Instead of shelves holding the contents, the stone walls revealed carved-out sections that reminded her of the catacombs in Paris, but instead of human bones, carefully stacked books, parchments, and scrolls were arranged according to size in the hollows. She feared the faint tendrils of smoke drifting up from some of the books had nothing to do with the chance of fire and more to do with the contents of the books themselves. She hoped she wouldn’t need to look through any of them.
She stopped at a tall barrel standing by the portal and pulled out a pair of protective gloves that glimmered with a layer of defensive magick. She knew many forms of baneful, or dark, magick could be absorbed through the skin, and she wasn’t taking any chances of being infected. She didn’t want to discover what The Librarian’s methods of decontamination would be.
Jazz hadn’t been in the room long before she felt the same overpowering emotions she had experienced when Reeves magickally violated Irma and the car. That identical suffocating sensation seemed to ooze its way over her skin like thick oil. She ignored the feeling as she moved through the seemingly endless room pausing here and there to study titles written or stamped on ancient leather tomes and skimmed scrolls that automatically translated themselves from their original languages to give her a hint of their contents.
“There is no way I’m going to be able to find what I need in an hour,” she muttered, experiencing frustration before she’d barely begun her quest. “Even spending a year in here wouldn’t be long enough.” She spun in a tight circle, allowing her senses to roam freely. She knew it was risky because even the air reeked of something so dark and forbidding that she knew she had to be careful not to get sucked into whatever ruled the room and its contents. So much power hovered here that it would be easy to allow it to overtake her. But she felt she had no choice if she was to discover what she needed. “I ask for assistance. I ask that my questions be answered. Show me what can touch the non-living without fear of reprisal. Show me what one might use to bring the non-living into the light of day without loss of existence,” she asked out loud. Then she waited, hoping the answer was there. “I’ll even take a hint,” she said with a bit of desperation. “A direction to take! A map would be nice!”
A tiny pinpoint of light appeared in the distance. She took it as the first clue that her question had been answered.
The light didn’t brighten the closer s
he got to it, but remained a soft steady glow that beckoned to her. She found nothing comforting about the light that hovered over a stone table. The very old stone table set against a wall with inscriptions in an ancient language engraved along the edge wasn’t very reassuring either. A large brown-edged parchment sat atop its rough surface and she had a sick feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that the red ink forming the archaic words and symbols on the parchment wasn’t fashioned from a form of colored water. Even with the protective gloves covering her hands it took all of her courage to reach out to the parchment.
“Please let this be really old animal skin or some sort of handmade paper,” she murmured, gingerly touching the edges.
The papyrus felt like a living thing under her fingertips. Even through the gloves she felt sullied by the feel, as the letters moved with her touch. Now she truly understood why The Librarian limited her time here. She was convinced if she spent even one minute longer than her allotted hour, she would run screaming from the room. She was almost ready to do that now. Jazz was not known as a coward. But she did have a strong sense of self-preservation. This place dictated she keep that sense as powerful as possible.
“He who feeds on the life force of those who walk in the shadows shall take their strength for his own by taking what keeps them alive,” she read out loud. “He who steals the life force of shadow walkers shall require more sustenance as moons pass by. He will rule those he has conquered until the night a shadow sends him to the land of eternal oblivion.” She stepped back, resisting the urge to wipe her hands on her skirt. She hoped the icky residue she imagined coated her gloves wouldn’t find a way to leave with her.
As she stared down at the letters and symbols on the aged parchment, they took on a life of their own, creating pictures that were repellent, that portrayed creatures and things of a darker nature. Even worse, it felt as if what she saw tried to burrow its way inside her head. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if the scream came from her mind or her lips.