Chapter Five #2
“I knew it. You are entirely too kind. I rescued a snake last week from a shop that was not caring for her properly.”
“Stole a snake, you mean.”
“Pish. I could lend her to you. She’s very gentle, but she does have those fangs.”
“No, thank you,” Pippa replied firmly.
“Think of how disgusted Professor Marwick would be to find a snake in his desk.” The professor had been making Pippa miserable for years, from nearly the first day she had set foot on campus as a student.
“Tempting, but no.”
As if summoned, three assistant professors rang the bell at the desk, where it hung from a gilded tree branch. “Hello?” one of them called impatiently.
With gargoyles watching your every step and ivy tendrils plucking at your clothes if you were too careless with the books, the Library represented everything that was Hallow.
Study, diligence, wisdom. But also impatience, ego, a certainty that if you did not have the answers, you at least had the only questions worth asking.
The Library was a thing of beauty in a town already known for its devotion to art and architecture and witching history. Ogma, inventor of the Celtic script ogham, welcomed visitors out in the courtyard.
To walk over the threshold was to walk into the kind of sacred silence usually found in old churches and ancient stone circles. It was healing. Vehemently protected.
There was no one more vicious than a witch librarian of Hallow.
They were known to turn disrespectful patrons into toads.
A coat rack. A particularly ugly brass statue of a duck.
There was rumor that an entire family lineage was rendered mute when one refused to lower his voice in the quiet area.
He had frightened a book on hexes. The book had not responded well. Which had annoyed the librarians.
Two hundred years later, his descendants were still paying the price. And the water still ran purple out of the well deep under the Library.
Which was why Sorcha was consistently surprised that anyone dared to cross Pippa. They insisted on equating a certain shyness with weakness. She had a soft voice, golden hair.
They had no idea of the damage she could wield.
Would never wield. But absolutely could.
Sorcha was far less restrained. And she did not have the patience for the trio of assistant professors with delusions of grandeur who huffed irritated sighs when Pippa emerged with apologies that she was not currently on duty but would send for someone.
“I don’t care—you’re here, aren’t you?” One of the patrons had a lion familiar who circled Pippa threateningly. “We need the seventh grimoire.”
“I’m afraid that grimoire is already on loan,” Pippa said, gentle as whipped meringue. Her white muslin gown lent to the effect, fluttering in that strange breeze that sometimes went through the stacks of books. Uncovered candles were, naturally, a hanging offense.
One of the Library’s cats, Cheese, leapt down from a shelf. He sat next to her, wrapping his tail elegantly around his paws before hissing. Sorcha mentally promised a saucer of milk. An entire salmon.
“It was reserved for Professor Marwick,” the most impatient of the three said. He was as handsome as a Roman statue. It clearly had done nothing to improve his personality.
“I do understand,” Pippa said softly, though her chin lifted. “But Professor Bootle had a prior hold.”
“We’ll just see about that.”
“Foisting us off on a novice.”
Sorcha sent Elderberry to dive-bomb his head. The resulting yelp was very, very satisfying. The trio turned toward her as one, all equally outraged. She smiled. Unlike Pippa, there was no gentleness to her smile, no tentativeness. She was all teeth.
One of them blinked, recognizing her. “Lady Sorcha?” Having a duke for a grandfather might not be as impressive as being a professor in Hallow, but it still offered some significance.
“Yes,” Sorcha said. “Miss…?”
“Miss Howard,” she supplied tightly.
Sorcha was perfectly aware of the woman’s name, but her time in the trenches of Mayfair had not been forgotten. Or wasted. “Ah,” she said dismissively. “Miss Cavendish, I am still in need of your help. No one else has your understanding of the books.” Novice, my backside.
Pippa turned to Sorcha, covertly rolling her eyes.
Sorcha pinned the three with a haughty gaze. “Thank you, you may go.”
“But—”
“That will be all.” Frost edged each syllable. A pigeon pecked at the window pane. Something scurried underfoot.
The assistant professors departed. Hastily.
Sorcha smirked at Pippa, who only sighed, nudging her back into the storage closet. “I sounded just like Granny there, didn’t I?” Sorcha asked.
Pippa’s real smile was like the glow of the moon on a lake. “She is rather fearsome. It clearly runs in the family.”
“Why do you let them talk to you like that?” Sorcha demanded.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” she muttered darkly.
“Have some more tea while I search for that book.”
“You said Bootle had already borrowed it.”
“And so he did. But Professor Marwick might find another, similar title equally helpful. I’ll be just a moment. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not.” To know Pippa was to know that she might flit away at a moment’s notice if the books demanded it.
Her familiar, a white moth the size of a saucer, floated above her.
Some of the books she passed inched closer to the edges of their shelves, as though wanting to be nearer to her.
The sound of pages rustling was like the soft, constant murmuration of the ocean.
Sorcha remained in the closet with her tea for approximately four minutes. She was not particularly good at sitting still and never had been. There were always fields to explore, forests to wander through, birds and badgers to coax out of thickets and tangles.
And paper birds to follow.
She had been asked by the Head Librarian to bewitch birds that would track anyone who might get lost in the endless stacks.
It was more common than anyone liked to admit.
Not only did the shelves reach up like towers, but there were so many of them, some lost to the light of stained-glass windows or even the fireflies in the places where oil lamps were not permitted.
There were books on magical herbs, spells to unlock doors that probably ought to remain locked, grimoires dating back three thousand years, family histories, journals, but also portals to Fae worlds and other, less savory places trapped in ink.
A paper bird, made from the parchment on which the Library’s ethos was written in swooping script, dove at her.
It did not seek out a Librarian, only came to find Sorcha.
She had spelled them for various people and purposes, but they did tend to ignore those spells if she was nearby.
“Hello,” Sorcha said softly. “Who are you looking for?”
The bird circled her again, before landing on her outstretched hand. If a paper bird could look impatient and imperious, this one did.
“You’ve spent too much time with the librarians,” Sorcha murmured.
“I heard that.” Sulis was in charge of the main floor of books.
She was tiny, severe, and terrifying. Also, somehow sweet as strawberry wine.
Even if she did make both first-year students and seasoned professors cry on a regular basis.
She wore a green dress, as always, her goat hooves peeking out from under the hem.
Glaistigs were Fae and they always wore green.
Sorcha grinned at her and pointed to the covered basket on the desk. “I brought dill-and-cranberry bread. Granny’s recipe.”
“You’re forgiven.” Sulis took the basket even though no one was foolish enough to steal bread from her. Not any kind, but especially dill and cranberry. It was rather an acquired taste. “Why are you here in my closet? You’re not a librarian.”
“I was visiting Pippa. Urgent business, I assure you.”
“Hmph.”
“And then one of the birds found me.”
“Some fool let loose a piskie in the reading rooms. If the bird’s ignoring that, he’s woken for you specifically. I ought to get a discount for a spell that is only partially tethered to the Library.”
“You never paid me,” Sorcha reminded her.
“Good. Get out.”
Sorcha grinned again and risked life and limb to kiss her wrinkled cheek. “Granny says hello.”
“You tell her she still owes me the recipe for her lavender-lemon scones.”
A push of magic slid Sorcha out of the closet and shut the door firmly behind her. It did not slam; it would not dare make such an undignified row in the Library. But it considered it.
Sorcha wandered between the bookcases, familiars darting around her. A red bird, a snake curled around a table leg, a dog racing underfoot.
And just there, Aidan.
Naturally, he looked as though he were made for the Library, and it for him. He was poring over a leather-bound tome, rich brown hair gilded by the light through the stained glass. He made a stern sound of disapproval over something he read, and it shot straight to her thighs.
Her mind knew that he did not care for her, that he clearly thought nothing of that kiss they’d shared, but her body, inconvenient, ungovernable thing, did not seem to care.
He was so handsome and serious, with those wide shoulders. Such a contradiction. A gentleman, a curator. Mild and softly spoken but fierce and dedicated. She wanted to unravel the mystery of him.
But he did not care to be unraveled.
Not by her.
And here she was, hair in a braid, wearing a faded dress that her grandmother considered unfit even for a scullery maid. It was perfectly serviceable, if a little plain. There was flour dust on the hem instead of embroidered violets.
Sorcha abruptly wished to be anywhere but here.
She had hunted him through the cobblestone streets, buzzing with questions. A veritable beehive of curiosity. Most of her questions were impertinent and none of her business. A great number of them centered on where he had learned to kiss like that.
But abruptly, she felt itchy in the way Mayfair had made her feel itchy by the end, before she moved to Lyonesse.
She had miscalculated. As much fun as it was making him squirm awkwardly through polite, stilted conversation with her at the Winterwell ball, it had also made her feel inexplicably sad. And that would not do.
The paper bird hovered by her nose. “Well, that was spectacularly unhelpful, thanks very much.”
Aidan was not in need of her help. The spell should not have woken a bird to lead her to him.
His head snapped up as if he’d sensed her presence, but she had already stepped back into the stacks, heart hammering for no good reason.
Time to go.
She darted away, breath coming fast, as though she were being chased. She wasn’t, of course. Aidan would never chase her. He was too well mannered for that. And far too indifferent.
This was all far too much to contemplate on a breakfast of toast with blackberry jelly.
She headed to one of the side doors. Pippa would understand. In all likelihood, Pippa had already forgotten Sorcha was here at all.
Sorcha picked up her pace. She would not be caught mooning like a girl fresh out of the schoolroom. No blushes. Not for the likes of him. She could approach him later, with a little dignity.
Assuming one could purchase dignity at the shops.
She murmured an apology when she startled someone’s sleeping ferret familiar. The air felt different. Her skin prickled. She hurried, feeling followed, hunted.
Had someone read aloud from a restricted book without the proper safeguards or authority?
It happened sometimes. A rhyme read aloud, and suddenly magic made it snow inside the Library.
Once, every patron grew a tail that did not fade for a fortnight.
Lady Soliloquy had shut herself up in her house and refused to leave, not even for her sister’s wedding.
Sorcha had only been mildly disappointed that she had not been there to get her own tail.
Most of her friends had tails, after all.
Sorcha ran headlong into a warm, sturdy chest.
She might have bounced right off again had equally strong hands not gripped her by the shoulders. She made a little “oof” sound that was neither ladylike nor dignified, nor likely to have been approved of by Granny. The air changed again, electrified, shimmered.
“Sorcha.”