Chapter Seventeen
“This way,” Marcail said, leading us toward a room jutting off the library. “The grimoires are kept in here. I’ve asked the special collections librarian to meet us.”
Sure enough, an older woman wearing a black dress and a matching black capelet was waiting at a table when we entered.
Her long hair was pulled back in an intricate braid, brilliantly white against her dark skin.
I smoothed my skirt self-consciously, wishing again that Finlay had shared Marcail’s advice to look clean and respectable today.
“Good morning,” the woman said, nodding at each of us in turn. “I’m Agatha. I run the special collections here at the university. You’ll need to wear gloves to handle the grimoires.” She held out a box for us.
Marcail whispered something into Bri’s ear as Finlay and I each donned a pair of white gloves.
“I’ve pulled all the grimoires I think might be relevant. I’ll help you look through them, as they can be a bit finicky with strangers.”
I cast a panicked glance at Finlay, who reflected it back to me. “Finicky?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, they don’t always cooperate. They’ll flip to the wrong page just to be cheeky. Sometimes they tear a page out themselves, make you think you did it.” She chuckled warmly. “They’re like small children who have eaten too much sugar.”
I was about to tell Bri that I’d be browsing the botany section and steering clear of any bratty grimoires when Marcail leaned over and said, “Why don’t you take that one, Willow?” She nodded toward a tome with dark green leather binding.
“Me?” I asked, a note of desperation in my voice.
“We have a lot to look through. It will be faster if we all pitch in.”
Reluctantly, I took a seat at the table next to Agatha, but she was already moving the green book aside. “That one won’t help. It’s mostly healing herbs and potions.” She pointed across the table to a massive black grimoire. “Try that one.”
It was bound in thick black leather, the title embossed in gold.
It took a surprising amount of strength to flip open the cover, and I instantly pulled my hands free in case anyone wanted to accuse me of damaging it.
Inside, the pages were as thin as onionskin, each one limned with gilt.
It had to be over a thousand pages long.
As soon as my eyes fell on the title page, I felt as though the room around me had gone fuzzy and I was alone with the book. For a moment, I was sure it was written in a language I’d never seen, but then the words resolved themselves, and I was able to read it perfectly.
“The Book of Vanora,” I said out loud. “Who was Vanora?” I turned to find the four of them watching me with curious expressions. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Marcail said quickly, and I thought I saw her give the smallest shake of her head to Agatha. “Vanora was a powerful witch who lived three centuries ago. This was her grimoire. Search for the section on curses.”
I did as she asked, though it took Finlay’s help for me to open the book up to the midway point. “Curses and reverses,” I read. “This looks like the right place.”
“Finlay,” Marcail said. “Why don’t you start with that pile over there.” She pointed to a smaller side table. “Agatha will help you. Bri and I will start here.” As she and Bri took a seat across from me and Marcail began to thumb through a stack, I resumed reading the grimoire before me.
“What’s the difference between a hex and a curse?” I asked Agatha as she came to stand over my shoulder. “This has information about both, but I always thought they were the same thing.”
“A curse is a general wish for bad luck upon a person. Anyone can curse someone, given the right wording. Hexes are cast by witches and are far more specific.”
I glanced at Bri. “Is yours a curse or a hex?”
“It’s a curse,” Bri replied. “Montrose wasn’t a magician, at least not as far as I know. Just evil.”
“So he didn’t specifically wish for you to have magic?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say, without hearing his exact phrasing. I asked my mother to try to recall it, but she blacked out right after the curse was cast. My father only remembered bits and pieces.”
“Do you know those, perhaps?” I asked.
“No. He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was better to forget about the whole thing. As if that were possible for me.”
I exhaled in frustration. How were we supposed to find anything with so little information?
I thumbed through the section, hoping something would jump out at me, but it was archaic language, and I didn’t see anything about cursing someone with magic.
Most of what I could decipher involved turning people into frogs or making someone fall in love with a goat.
The only thing that caught my attention was a single paragraph:
If cursed by magic thou be, thy salvation layeth with the anticurse alone. However, the bloom of the waliwaga tree, if ground by witch’s hand and consumed below the full blood moon, can break a single curse.
What in the blazes was a waliwaga tree? I’d never heard of one, and I certainly didn’t know how to find one. It sounded like nonsense from a children’s book, or a superstition from a time long ago.
Agatha had taken Finlay and Bri to find a toilet, and though I still didn’t trust Marcail completely, I cleared my throat to get her attention.
“What is it?” she asked, coming to stand over my shoulder.
I pointed to the line about the waliwaga tree. “Is this true?” I asked.
Marcail squinted down at the grimoire. “It may have been, once. But the waliwaga tree went extinct over a century ago. I’m afraid even if someone has kept one in a private garden somewhere, we’d never locate it.”
I must have looked disappointed because she patted my shoulder. “Not to worry. I’m sure we’ll find what we’re looking for much closer to home.”
Again, I had the sense that she could see right into my scheming liar’s brain, that she knew I was holding something back. “Did Bri tell you we put an advertisement in the Ardmuir paper?” I asked.
Marcail nodded. “She said it hasn’t turned anything up yet, but I’m not surprised. Magical items have become so rare, people keep their treasure to themselves. But go on looking. We might find something useful.”
After searching through several more grimoires, I glanced out the window to see that the sun was past its zenith, dipping toward the horizon.
At some point, Marcail and Agatha had left the room.
Bri was asleep, her head resting on her folded arms. I looked behind me.
Finlay was passed out in his chair, his head lolling back at what had to be an exceedingly uncomfortable angle.
I rose quietly and stretched, my own back stiff from crouching over the massive books for so long. I left the room in search of water and found Marcail in the main part of the library, speaking in whispers with Agatha.
“Any luck?” she asked when she saw me. “You’ve been reading for hours.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea so much time had passed.”
“That’s all right,” Agatha said. “Reading grimoires can be exhausting work.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t find anything useful. There were a lot of curses and hexes, but none that seemed to match what Bri has.”
“I assumed as much,” Marcail said. “I’ve asked Agatha to have a look in the special collections, now that I’ve had a chance to speak with Bri, but those grimoires are kept under lock and key.”
“The senior librarian who works with grimoires is rather backed up, I’m afraid,” Agatha said. “I’ll speak with him first thing tomorrow, but it could be several weeks before I know more.”
My stomach sank at her words, and I realized how badly I’d been hoping we’d find an answer here, not only because it would let me off the hook for lying.
The days were melting into weeks, and before long, Bri would have to return to Carterra.
“But Bri is desperate to have this curse lifted. Surely you can find something before then.”
“We’ll do our best,” Marcail said.
Now, a voice insisted, and this time I didn’t shove it down. It was time to tell someone what I’d heard at the docks. “Is it important that we find The Oxblood Book itself?” I asked. “That’s where the curse supposedly came from.”
Marcail studied me. “Do you know something about The Oxblood Book, Willow?”
“Only gossip,” I said, avoiding her gaze. “But I heard that a trader in Ardmuir had it, at one point.”
“Have you mentioned this to Bri?”
Every instinct in me told me to lie, but I shook my head. “No. The trader seems like a dangerous man, and I was worried what he might do to Bri if he found out she had magic. But you said she’s safe, and since we didn’t find anything here…”
Marcail was silent for a long, weighted moment. “If this man knows of its current whereabouts, he’s unlikely to divulge them. Family grimoires are particularly powerful, linked to the magic of generations of witches, and this one is undoubtedly worth quite a bit of money on the black market.”
My brow furrowed. She’d seen the same line I had: the anticurse was the only way to break a curse, besides an extinct tree I’d never find.
Was she trying to warn me of the dangers ahead because she couldn’t in good conscience advise me to continue down this path?
Or was Bri’s cause completely hopeless? I was about to ask when Bri stirred.
“Are you children heading back to Ardmuir today?” Agatha asked. “It’s a long journey and there’s a storm heading this way.”
I glanced out the window at the darkening sky. It had been bright, if blustery, this morning. It wasn’t entirely surprising that a fall storm would roll in this close to the coast, but it could make for an unpleasant trip home.
Bri sat up, rubbing her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize how tired I was. What did I miss?”