CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Skye
I don’t have much of an appetite the next morning, even though my omelets came out perfect, if I do say so myself: the eggs fluffy and light, the cheese melty goodness, and the spinach cooked to tenderness without turning into mush. My fork scrapes across my plate, pushing my food around.
“By the goddess, cease making that infernal racket.” A large hand wraps over mine, stopping me before I can move my fork again. Luke frowns at me using grumpy number three, mildly annoyed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lie, forcing chipperness into my tone.
His brows slam together as his eyes narrow. Uh oh. We’re heading straight into scowl number four territory, really pissed off.
His touch makes me long to hold his hand for real, but I slip mine out from under his and push up to standing. “We should get to work. That spell isn’t going to break itself!” Though there sure is one thing breaking around here: my squishy jelly heart.
“More for me!” Princess Buttercup leaps onto the table and plants her face in my plate.
I picked out most of the cheese—I have priorities, after all—so she’s pretty much eating eggs and spinach, both of which are good for her.
“We’re not starting until you finish this.” Luke slides my coffee mug closer to me. He’s been helping me make cinnamon lattes at home. It turns out having fae super strength means he can whip warm milk into a froth by hand.
“Thanks!” The sweet gesture lights a sparkler of hope in my chest.
He grunts. “You work better when you’re caffeinated.”
Right. Of course. When will you learn to stop making everything romantic, Skye? I berate myself.
When we reach the reading room, Luke’s right behind me as I step up to the portal window, his looming presence a pressure I can feel all down my back. My skin prickles, my body tightening with want. Snickerdoodle. How am I supposed to work so closely with him without falling even more in love?
We step through into the witch collection, right in front of the next bookcase we need to sort.
I close my eyes and call upon my magic, and it leaps upward like a frisky kitten, excited and eager.
When I stretch out my senses, the books in front of me start to glow in a rainbow of hues.
I point to each, naming their colors, so Luke can sort them into piles.
We clear two bookcases without any luck.
As soon as he picks up the last book of the third bookcase, I open my eyes.
I inhale in surprise. There’s a book on the shelf, one I didn’t “see” with my magic. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to influence your perception,” he rumbles. “Such actions always muddy the data.”
Right. The research is the important part for him.
But for me…
My eyes slam closed, and I strain, “peering” at the book with my magical sight.
I finally spot the faintest glimmer of deep purple against the black of the empty shelf.
A sob hiccups from my throat as my eyes open, and I reach for the book with trembling fingers.
This is it. I know it deep in my gut. This is the book I need to control my magic.
I clutch it to a chest filled with a swirl of emotions, relief and anticipation mixed with heartbreak and sadness.
Luke reshelves the now sorted books with quick efficiency, his shoulder muscles rippling as he lifts heavy piles all in one go. The agile end of his tail helps to stabilize the books as they teeter in four-foot stacks.
The moment he’s cleared the aisle, I hurry over to the nearest transportation crystal and portal into the reading room.
After settling at the main table, I run my hand over the faded red leather cover, fingertips bumping over an embossed area.
Lingering bits of gold decorate where the raised letters were, but most of the gilding has worn away with time.
I open the cover to a handwritten page, covered in sharp, slanting cursive:
A Moste Accurate
Descripshon
of My Adventures
in Bookes
1721
Catherine Edgewater
The ink has faded to blue-gray. Catherine must have used a different type than Harriet. Her spelling isn’t quite the same as Harriet’s either, but the lack of standardization is typical of anything written before 1800.
Luke takes the chair beside mine, leaning close to read along with me. He pulls out parchment and quill.
I open my notebook to a blank page, also ready to take notes. Then I lose myself in the book.
The first several pages are slow going, as I get used to Catherine’s handwriting and her personal spin on spelling.
I’m also constantly distracted by Luke’s presence, his smoky scent filling my nose with sandalwood and leather and him mixed with a bit of cinnamon.
My body lights up every time his arm presses against mine or his tail brushes my calves.
Still, I soldier on. Catherine, it seems, never shared her magic with anyone else.
Not that I can blame her. She lived isolated on the family estate, a wallflower who became a spinster at the tender age of twenty-five.
Forced to survive on her brother’s generosity and good regard, she lived a careful, quiet life… on the surface.
In reality, she disappeared into every novel she could find.
There weren’t many back before Dickens and Austen and so many of the books now considered classics, but she made do.
Catherine dipped into various Canterbury Tales for humorous frolics, adventured with Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver, and lived as a sensual woman via Moll Flanders.
She credits them with saving her sanity. Fore I have lived as many lives as any one womyn may live. Where wuld I be without my bookes? I wuld go mad. They are the only thyng to offer me the worlde.
“This is the power of books,” I say. “Even if you don’t have book magic like mine or Catherine’s, stories have a magic all their own.
You can read a book and go anywhere, do anything, be anyone!
It’s one of the things I love most about being a librarian: finding someone the perfect book and seeing the look on their face when their world expands for the first time. ”
Luke grunts his agreeing grunt. “You speak of fiction, yet even nonfiction can provide an escape, a way for the mind to focus on that which is outside oneself.”
“Exactly.” I nod. No one’s ever understood how important books are to me before, but he gets it. He’s the first person I’ve met who I know feels as deeply as I do about reading and knowledge.
“Although I must admit I’m beginning to see the benefits of fiction,” he adds.
Does that mean the romance books he’s been reading are more than research to him now? I bite my lip, remembering how good he looked asleep with The Princess Bride spread open across his stomach.
“I enjoy research as well as fiction.” I tap a finger against Catherine’s journal.
“But I gotta say I’m really, really ready for Catherine to go ahead and tell me how she used her magic.
” Because it’s clear she controlled it. She couldn’t afford to go missing for days—it would look too suspicious to miss the formal dinners her sister-in-law held each evening—so she often went into a book for only a scene or two before returning to the real world.
“We have confirmation that she controlled it, which means such control is possible,” Luke growls. “That’s more than we knew an hour ago. Keep reading.”
“You’re right.” I turn the page with a little sigh.
He slides his chair back, reaches into his invisible pocket, and pulls out a packet of cinnamon hearts. “Here.” He extends them to me on his open palm. “For you.”
“Oh, I’d love some.” My heart pinches again at the reminder he carries around the candy I like best. “But I don’t want to handle a book this old with sticky fingers.”
There’s the crinkle of plastic, and his fingers brush against my mouth, offering a treat.
Before I can second-guess myself, I open, my lips feathering over his skin as I take the cinnamon candy.
He grunts again, deep and guttural, but when I glance at him, his expression is resting grumpy face one, confirming he’s not affected by me.
Focus, Skye, I tell myself. You need to find a way to break this spell so you can return home before you fall even harder. I turn another page and start reading again.
Hours later, Luke comes in with coffee from Grounds for Celebration and food from Cake My Day. He bought a selection of meat hand pies as well as a couple of cinnamon rolls. The pink baker’s box sends up a delicious smell that makes my stomach growl.
“I didn’t know you left!” I blink up at him.
He grunts and sets out plates. “Eat.”
I pick up a hand pie and nibble at the corner. Chicken, peas, and carrots wrapped in a flaky butter crust—yum!
“Is that chicken?” Princess Buttercup emerges from beneath the wisteria, little bunny nose lifted and wiggling.
“Snickerdoodle, you’re good at that.” I laugh.
“It’s a gift.” She leaps onto the table and starts nudging Luke’s arm with her head, purring up a storm.
“I don’t have chicken,” he says.
Her amber eyes swing toward me, huge and pleading. “Mommm.”
“As you wish,” I say, pulling a little cube of chicken out of the open corner of my hand pie.
She gulps it down, then hits me with the big, pitiful eyes again.
“Let Skye eat,” Luke growls. “You already had half her breakfast.”
“But this is chicken!” She jabs a paw toward my lunch.
“Eggs are chicken, too,” he counters.
“They are not!”
“Where do eggs come from?” He lifts an eyebrow.
“Chickens,” my cat mutters.
“And what do eggs turn into?”
“Also chickens.” Her tail flicks. “Stop with the logic. Logic and stomachs have nothing to do with each other.”
I chuckle and take a big bite. He’s right that I’m hungry. Not eating breakfast finally caught up with me. But I also know how to appease my cat. I save another chunk of chicken, hiding it in my hand until I finish my last bite. Then I hold it out for her.
“Yesssss,” she hisses in delight and gobbles it up.