Chapter 20 #2
I dried my hands and eyed the battered, iron-clasped book sitting on the shelf behind the prep table. “You make it sound like we’re about to perform a heart transplant, Oscar.”
He cocked his head, whiskers quivering. “In a way, we are. The book is at the heart of your legacy. We must treat it as such.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I walked over, running my fingers over the tooled leather. It looked ancient, older than any book I’d seen, and the sigil on the cover still glowed faintly when I brushed it. “Alright. Let’s maybe figure out why the Wyrdmother wants it so bad.”
Oscar hopped closer, his beady eyes sharp and bright. “Perhaps it is not the book itself, but the knowledge locked within.”
I pulled up a stool and grabbed a safety pin from the counter.
I gave my thumb a little poke and let the small bead of blood smear on the clasp and flipped it open, as carefully as I could.
I wiped my thumb clean and started turning pages.
There were notes in the margins, diagrams, stains of old herbs and maybe a scorch mark or two.
My mother’s handwriting danced across half the pages, but what caught my attention were the blank sheets.
Except, they weren’t blank. Not really.
I ran my palm over one, and it felt warmer than paper should. Not hot, but faintly alive, like it was waiting for something. I frowned and turned to Oscar. “Why would there be blank pages between written pages in a spellbook? Wouldn’t you want to fill every bit of space with something useful?”
He considered. “Some witches leave room for future generations, Miss. But more often, it’s a sign of spells too dangerous to be written openly. Hidden in plain sight, as it were.”
The notion made my skin crawl, but I couldn’t help myself. I flipped another page, then another, each blank but not empty. My fingers tingled. I leaned in closer, nose almost to the page, and caught the faintest whiff—iron and roses and something sharp, like ozone before a thunderstorm.
“You ever see this before?” I asked.
Oscar shuffled to the edge of the book and sniffed. “There is something locked within,” he whispered, his voice more reverent than I’d ever heard. “It’s waiting for the correct key.”
The bell above the door chimed, making me jump. A customer—just a regular, here for kolaches and coffee—poked his head in, exchanged the usual pleasantries, and left with a box of pastries so quickly I hardly remembered the exchange.
When I returned to the grimoire, it was as if it had inched closer, eager for attention. The light in the bakery flickered as clouds passed, and the faint glow from the page seemed to pulse with every breath I took.
I flipped another leaf and felt a sting on my thumb—a paper cut, quick and clean. I cursed under my breath, bringing the finger to my lips, but a bead of blood had already welled up and fallen onto the page.
At that instant, the room shifted.
The blood drop sizzled, spreading thin as ink across the paper.
Black words began to crawl up from the point of contact, letters twisting and unfurling, coalescing into a script that was at once familiar and deeply wrong.
Wisps of dark smoke rose from the book, curling into the shape of words and sigils I’d never seen.
The air smelled of burnt sugar and grave dirt, and my heart jackhammered in my chest.
“Bloody hell,” Oscar muttered, eyes wide.
The script that appeared was jagged, the lines trembling as if fighting to stay anchored in this world. I tried to read it, but my eyes slid off the letters, my brain refusing to latch on. It was like looking at a word in a dream—you could see it, but couldn’t hold it.
Beneath the crawling text, in a frantic scrawl that could only be my mother’s hand, a message appeared, written over and over in the margins:
DO NOT READ
DO NOT FEED IT
WIPE IT AWAY NOW
My breath caught. I sprinted to the bathroom, thumb throbbing, and grabbed the little bottle of alcohol and a handful of cotton swabs from the medicine cabinet.
I returned to the table and poured the clear liquid onto a cotton swab, pressing it to my bleeding thumb and then, hand shaking, dabbed at the drops of blood on the page.
Each swipe erased a line of the nightmare text, the smoke vanishing with a hiss. By the time I erased the last drop of my blood, the page was blank again, though it still felt alive, hungry.
Oscar had gone utterly still, like a hunting hawk. “Are you alright, Miss?”
I nodded, even though my hands wouldn’t stop trembling. “What the hell was that?”
He licked his lips, or tried to. “Some spells are too powerful and not meant to be used. They’re meant for witches who wish to do harm to other witches. There is a spell that can drain power from other witches. I suspect your mother was trying to keep you—and anyone else—safe from the knowledge.”
I stared at the page. “So if the Wyrdmother got her hands on this—if she knew it was my blood that could make that spell appear—she could…” I trailed off, stomach turning.
Oscar finished for me. “She could drain you of every last drop. Or worse.”
I looked at my thumb, blood drying, and wondered how much it would take to open all the secrets in that book. Every drop of my magic? Of my blood?
I slammed the grimoire shut, the clasp locking with a hard, final click.
“Promise me something, Oscar,” I said, voice low.
“Anything, Miss.”
“If anything happens to me, if I get taken, or if I…if I’m lost, you burn this book. Burn it and scatter the ashes in the canyon.”
He nodded, solemn as a priest. “It will be done.”
I exhaled, a little shaky, but clear-headed. I couldn’t figure out why my mother would have such a spell in her possession. Until I learned what else was in the book, I would continue to protect it.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of orders and frosting and customers, but every time my eyes glanced toward the grimoire, I felt its energy hum, hungry and patient and biding its time.
At closing, Papa called to let me know he’d be a little late. They were running extra security shifts; Arsenal needed backup. I told him it was fine, and not to worry, but the moment I locked the bakery door and drew the shades, the night closed in like a fist.
Oscar climbed into the window, visible only to me, gave me a curt nod, and said, “I shall keep watch from here.”
I smiled. “Good. I need to finish the crumb coat on the cake.”
He nodded, curling up on a folded napkin like a general preparing for battle.
In the kitchen, I piped frosting with hands that had finally stopped shaking, and let the comfort of sugar and memory do its work. My mother had known what she was doing when she hid the dangerous spells, and now it was my turn to keep the world safe from what lurked in those pages.
I finished the cakes, cleaned the kitchen, and climbed the stairs to my little apartment above the bakery. The window looked out over the street, and for a long time I sat on the sill, watching the empty darkness, wondering if the Wyrdmother was out there, searching for a way in.
If she came, I wouldn’t cower.
I was the last Waters witch, and I had work to do.