“Transfi-what?”
“You convinced the book to show you its true self.”
“But…” All she did was approach it. “I don’t understand.”
“The reward is yours.”
“Reward?”
“The grimoire in your hands.”
“Grimoire?” Persephone looked down, gripped the book tighter. “It’s mine.” That was what she had asked for, what was hers. The library had answered the request.
“Your family grimoire.” Dorian studied the book in her hands. “The collection of Mayfair history and spells, of all things lost, relating to who you are, where you come from, and where you may yet have to go.”
“Mayfair.”
He nodded. “Yes,” he said with a smile, as she ran a hand over the spine of the book. “You are no longer unclaimed.”
Persephone startled, looked at him. “I am claimed.”
“Aye,” Dorian looked around. “And you’ve conjured another room.” He studied her. “The library wants to help, even if you did try to take me from it.” Dorian bit back a smile as he walked toward the door. “If you’d like to stay here, I think you’ll most likely find your way out, but if you prefer to come with me, I find the main room has the best lighting for reading.”
Persephone shifted the book in her arms. Her heart was a steady thrum in her chest even as her palms itched to crack open the book and devour the contents. She was claimed. Could it be true, was it too much to hope that the answers about her family, all the things she wanted to know and never could, were finally here after all these years—or, was this another trick of magic?
She took a steady breath and one last look about the room, and followed after Dorian, who once again surprised her by taking her arm.
Dorian led Persephone down a complicated series of hallways. It was a lot of left turns, a complex opening and closing of doors. While he might think the library had shown her favor, Persephone wasn’t at all sure she could find her way out of anywhere. She heaved a sigh of relief when they entered the main chamber of the library.
A new square oak table with a series of reading lamps outfitted with stained glass lampshades waited for them.
“I’d say that’s the place,” Dorian said, nodding at the table. He squeezed her arm once, and she sighed at the loss of heat from him when he let her go. He took his seat on the spare leather sofa, throwing a leg across the center and resting an arm along the edge.
“You aren’t planning to read over my shoulder?” she asked, smiling a little at how hard he was trying to appear uninterested.
“That wouldn’t be proper.”
Persephone set the book down, keeping a palm on its cover. “You haven’t read this already? You are the guardian.”
“It doesn’t quite work that way,” Dorian said, turning over a palm and pulling a book from thin air. “I am only allowed what the library wants me to read, or allows me to read. It’s rather a lot of fiction about sailing and mermaids, if I’m honest with you.”
She watched as he turned the book face out. Persephone’s lips twitched as she read the title. “How to Dance Like a Rake?”
“The lady is not without her sense of humor.”
Persephone sat at the table, the book calling her forward. “Are you certain your library is a lady?”
“Of course,” Dorian said, opening his book and turning the liner notes to find the first page. “A lady always keeps her secrets.”
Persephone couldn’t disagree … but she thought back to earlier when the library was speaking to her—if that is what it was doing inside Dorian’s Shanachie. Something about the laugh, it had been too full—too complete to be just one voice.
What if the library was more than a single lady?
It was, she decided, a puzzle for another time. Persephone had a book to read, and she placed both hands over the grimoire and watched as the cover opened on its own accord.
Persephone rolled out her shoulders, and she began to read.
Ten
THE WITCHING HOUR
THE BOOK OF MAYFAIR started with a simple opening:
Only those with blood of my blood may know me
Only those with eyes of my eyes may see me
Only those with hearts purer than mine may read me
Know this, child,
There is a right path
There is a wrong path
Then there is the forest beyond them both
The answers lie here.
This was the only page she could read. Try as she might, Persephone couldn’t turn the rest.
She pried, pushed, and whispered incantations over the edges, but the pages wouldn’t budge.
Persephone tried spells and might, begging and bolstering. Just when she was prepared to throw the book at the wall, Persephone ran her fingers over the words, and something pricked her palm. She pulled her hand back, and a perfect crimson tear of blood dripped onto the page.
The opening lines faded, and the pages fluttered as if passed over by a breeze. When she tried again, this time they turned.
The book of Mayfair was full of spells.
Simple kitchen spells, spells to enchant, spells to open locked doors, and others to quell a worried mind. Spells to protect, to aid, to sway, and make an unwanted object disappear. The more pages she turned, the more spells appeared, and …
Spells weren’t all the book contained.
There were journal pages, recordings of births and deaths, family recipes and lists, measurements and admonishments. Little love notes and poems, angry dictations and harsh curses.
There were letters from one member of the Mayfair family to another.
“There’s so much,” Persephone said, pausing hours in, after her eyes had begun to tear from reading and her neck muscles protested from the strain.
“May I?” Dorian asked, his voice a whisper’s caress.
Persephone realized he hadn’t spoken a single word the entire time she’d been reading. Dorian had shown her grace and kindness by leaving her the space to be.
“Please,” she said, touched by his restraint. She waved him over.
Dorian stepped close, and peered over her shoulder. He asked her to turn pages and flip ahead or back. After a few exceedingly long minutes, he stepped back.
“What are you looking for, in particular?” he said, his voice a low rumble. “These are the lost pages of your ancestors. Everything written that was lost found its way here.”
“And the things written that aren’t lost?” Persephone asked, turning a page.
Dorian didn’t respond.
She turned to look at him. “I was joking.” She studied the furrow in his brow. “But your face isn’t laughing.” Persephone leaned back. “If there is a Library for the Lost, does that mean there is a Library for the Found?”
Dorian’s lips compressed into a tight line. He looked like he was trying to say something, but couldn’t get the words out.
“You can’t tell me, can you?”
She waited for him to answer, knowing confirmation of any kind would be its own answer.
He smoothed out his expression. “Logic would certainly intimate that one may exist.” Dorian offered a tight smile. “What is it you’re looking for? If you’re specific, the book may better be able to handle your request.”
Persephone put the knowledge of the other library in her back pocket, and focused on the grimoire before her. She wanted to know everything, but everything took longer than a day, and she didn’t think even she had that much time to give—regardless of how the library manipulated the ticking of the clock.
She didn’t know the right question to ask—it was all too big, too daunting. “I … I’d like to know about my mother and grandmother, for the book to show me how to save the island, how I can help my family.”
Dorian studied the book, glanced back at Persephone.
“Well then,” he said. “What are you waiting for?”
Persephone shifted back in he
r chair. Good question. “I just ask it?”
“Won’t know if you don’t try.”
She cleared her throat and a command, not a question, rolled off her tongue. “Show me.” Persephone watched the color and shape of the words she exhaled glisten like bubbles blown into the air. They fell like tears onto the pages, absorbed in an instant.
The book didn’t shift pages forward or back, instead it shuffled like a typewriter trying to reset its keys. Soon pages were spit out of the book, up into the air, and dropped back into the seam, reknitting along the spine.
Persephone stared at the unfamiliar handwriting as a chill trickled down her back.
Dearest Persephone,
If you are reading this, I am gone and you are truly lost to us. My darling girl, were there any other way, we would walk it. To say you are loved is a severe understatement, and yet love is often brave but not always enough. Forgive your grandmother and me, leaving the island was the only way she knew to protect you. Giving you up was the only way I could continue to keep you safe.
Prophecies are a tricky thing, and my mother saw you coming. She saw what you would have to face and give up, and could not bear it. When the vision passed to me on the day you were born, I understood.
Love is giving up the whole world for the people you love. I gave up mine for you, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The only way to keep you safe was to give you a fresh start. I may not have been beside you, but I have always been with you.
All my love—
Your mother,
Artemis May
A breeze stirred the page, and Persephone did not feel it.
She did not move. She could not.
Tears leaked soundlessly from her eyes.
Artemis May. Her mother.
Persephone had been loved. The words were right there. Loved … but abandoned. She reread it once, twice, and tried to hear her mother’s voice. To give way to a new inner narrator, but it was no use. She couldn’t hear her mother’s voice because she had never known it in the first place. Even with this new knowledge, Persephone felt as alone as ever, and that broke her heart.
Dorian shifted beside her, and she turned to him.
“It’s a letter to me. From my mother.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, and she cleared her throat, trying to suck back up the tears she couldn’t prevent from escaping. Persephone did not understand how to heal this ache, the pain clinging to it.
“She is lost then,” he said, his words soft but their meaning hard. “I am sorry, Persephone.”
She nodded, picked up her grimoire, and walked across the circular room to a small reading chair on the other side. The lighting was poor and the chair was lumpy. Dorian brought her a handkerchief that looked as old as the library. She let the tears come and watched as they soaked the book, but never made it wet.
She thought of the words her mother had written. Love is giving up the whole world for the people you love. She didn’t know that she agreed. If you really loved someone, you found a way to stay.
When her tears had quelled enough for her to catch her breath, Persephone held a hand over the book. She thought of Moira and Hyacinth in her vision, dead beneath her feet, and shuddered.
She closed her eyes and asked: How do I break the curse and keep them safe?
The book quivered in her hands, and moments later the ground beneath the library shook. Dorian let out a lengthy string of words that promised he was a sailor yet, before the lights flickered and went out.
The library was silent.
Persephone gasped as the book began to glow. Pages fluttered back and forth, rustling and shuddering. Persephone heard her heart thump loudly and pressed a palm to her chest, only to realize the sound did not belong to her.
The book’s heart was racing.
It shuddered again, and spit out an envelope. Persephone caught it in one hand. The paper was yellowed from age, the edges worn.
Addressed to no one, Persephone used her pinky nail to slice it open.
A handful of rose petals tumbled out, browned from time. They were followed by a few spare pages, ripped from a journal. Here was a letter the writer had known would never be sent.
September 20, 1958
Beatrice,
This morning I left the island for the first and final time. I am sorry to go like a thief in the night, to leave you without answers.
The curse is not yours to break, and it is not mine. It will be not be our daughters’ but those who come from them. I have foreseen it, and I won’t let it happen. I won’t let it claim her as it claimed the others, I see her strength
[Persephone held the page up, trying to find the rest of the sentence. It was as though it had been scrubbed away, only faded markings left in the wake of what once were words. She read on.]
Amara and True wanted power. Now magic is failing, the island revolts as the witch tries to cross the boundary and bring back that which must remain lost. It is from her I must hide the truth.
Beware the worlds, ward your hearth and home, and ward yourself. Know I am with you always, and I am sorry.
All my love,
Viola
Viola. Her grandmother. She ran a finger across the name, pressing hard into the page.
Then, flipping back and forth, Persephone tried to determine what the smudged letters could say. The pebble of unease in her stomach had grown into a boulder of worry.
“Dorian,” she said, turning to face him. “Who was Beatrice?”
He lowered his book, and stood. Dorian crossed to the shelves and ran his hand along the spines of the books closest to him. “Your great-aunt Beatrice. You would know Beatrice Mayfair as Beatrice Way. She, too, changed her name. The aunts in your family are fond of doing that.”
“Oh.” Persephone sat on the ground, her legs giving out. “Of course. I keep forgetting, or perhaps choosing to forget, that Ariel and Ellison are my family, too.” She gave her head a shake. “I don’t understand the letter, or what my grandmother wouldn’t let happen.”
Dorian, who was preternaturally still to begin with, did not blink. The only show of his emotion was how fast his chest rose and fell as he watched her.
Persephone gripped the grimoire, trying to process so much new information. “I wish I understood.” She looked at him, and his eyebrow twitched.
“Dorian?” she asked, as he ran a hand over his hip.
“Hmm?”
“Do you know what she meant?”
He closed his eyes, reached up, and rubbed at the space between his brows. “I cannot say enough,” he said, his words so low she barely heard them. “I can only say what is available to me.” He opened and closed his mouth, looked like he was trying to say something. After a moment he threw his hands in the air like he was surrendering. Persephone thought that would be that, when his eyes widened.
He raised a brow, tilted his head, and dropped one of his hands.
A very attractive smirk crept over his wide mouth. Dorian made the remaining hand into the motion of a gun, and pointed it.
Straight at her.
She looked at him, and how he trained the finger gun at her. Did he mean…? She pointed to herself and raised her brows.
Dorian lips parted but no sound came out. He held the finger gun up to his mouth. The universal librarian sign for shh, with an edge.
Persephone’s thoughts spun. Was she the thing to be protected? If so, it made a certain kind of sense why her grandmother left the island. But protected from what? The curse?
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, staring at the letter before her. “I thought this would tell me who I am, and now I feel more lost than before.”
Dorian hesitated. He ran a hand over his face, winced, and then gave himself a nod. Dorian reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen. He brought it to her, and nodded for her to pocket it.
“You are who you have always been,” he said.
She tried to smile and failed. “I know who you are.” She
looked down. “What is this for?”
“Emergencies,” he said.
She slipped the pen in her pocket. She wasn’t sure what emergencies a pen could fix, but if he meant for her to have it, she would gladly take it. Because Persephone might not understand the layers of her story, but she knew without a doubt, somehow in the past few weeks she had grown to trust this man.
She went to reach for him, but stalled. Her fingers fisted.
“How do I help you, Dorian?”
“You cannot,” he said, failing to keep the surprise from his face. “Or rather, you help me by helping yourself.”
Persephone looked around the room, heard the murmur of the voice from before urging her on. She looked back at him. Dorian believed in her. This library of extraordinary things believed in her. Her cousins, Moira and Hyacinth, believed in her. She did not understand what her grandmother’s letter meant, or how to change the vision she’d had, but Persephone finally understood.
If she wanted to break the curse and save her family, it was time for her to believe in herself.
“I have to go back to my cousins,” she said, and then she did the one thing she’d never dreamt she would be brave enough to do.
Persephone reached out, drew Dorian’s face down to hers and brushed her lips against his.
Once.
Twice.
She let out a soft sigh, and Dorian’s hand came to her waist. His grip tightened as he pulled her closer. In the brilliant candlelight of a place that existed neither here nor there, Persephone learned a new definition to the word hungry.
Dorian’s mouth was not gentle, his touch not light, nor sweet. His was the call of a drowning man, breathing her in like she was air, like she was life. Persephone answered, her mouth claiming his as his lips sought, savored, devoured. He deepened the kiss again and again. Testing. Tasting. It was the shifting of weight, the brushing of fabric against her stomach, a moan rolling from her mouth into his, and his answer growing taut against her thigh.
Dorian backed her into the edge of the sofa, and she shifted onto the arm. Persephone wrapped her arms around his neck, fisted her hands in his hair, and slid her leg up and around him.
A bell chimed, long and low, from far off.
The Orphan Witch Page 22