Chapter 16 #2
“Oh yes. Follow me,” Susan said, and stood up from her stool.
She reached behind her and parted a long set of purple velvet curtains, which I had assumed hid a break room or some other employees-only space.
Instead, as she ushered me through, I saw it opened up into a second, smaller shop.
The shelves were more crowded here, and the books smelled old and a little mildewy, but I knew just from that familiar smell that I was much more likely to find what I needed here.
“I do have things categorized,” Susan told me, and pointed to a yellowing label on the nearest shelf.
“Spell books are organized by affinity, and then the history and specialty practice sections are in the back corner. If I knew what you were looking for…” she trailed off delicately, and I could tell she was trying to determine whether I just wanted to be left alone.
“I think I’ll be okay,” I said. “But I’ll let you know if I can’t find what I need.”
Susan nodded with a knowing look, and slipped back through the curtains. One of her cats, however, slid fluidly beneath them, and looked up at me with a curious expression.
“Are you the shop assistant?” I asked.
The cat blinked up at me and lifted its fuzzy chin as though to say, “Of course.”
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with book dust, and began looking.
I had an idea of where to start, thanks to the book I’d found in my own library.
“Conjuration” had been the word stamped on the cover, and so that’s what I was searching for.
I knew enough about affinities now to know that any books on the subject should be in the section labeled for “Spirit Witches”.
I walked along the shelves, turned the corner, and at last found the peeling label that read “Spirit.” Starting in the top left corner, I examined every single book, pulling out the ones without titles on their spines, flipping through them until I was sure I could eliminate them.
It was slow work, but I was determined not to leave a single book unexamined.
I searched for a while before my fingers found a likely volume.
It was leather-bound and stamped with peeling gold leaf, nearly all of which had flaked off from the spine.
When I hefted it down into my hands from its haunt in the very top corner, I saw with a thrill of excitement that it had a very distinctive design on the cover: a conjuring Circle, nearly identical to the one in my book at home.
The title was equally promising: “Conjuration Moste Wycked.”
I sank immediately to the floor, my legs folding under me, so that I sat with the book in my lap.
This startled the cat, Tristano, who mewled his displeasure at me, and then immediately demanded atonement for my grievous sin by butting his head against my knee.
I scratched him behind the ears absently as I opened the cover of the book, and began to give it a quick look-through.
My eyes fell on a chapter heading that made my heart stutter in my chest: “On the Subjekt of Demons.”
I closed the book and clutched it to my chest. Tristano complained loudly about the abrupt end of my attentions.
When I plunked the book down on the counter, I hazarded a glance at Susan’s expression. I watched her eyebrows disappear up into her hair, and her mouth open, and then close. It took her a moment to compose herself, and then she looked up, attempting a bland smile.
“So you found what you were looking for?”
I nodded, trying to smile as well, though it felt wrong on my face. “Yup.”
“Just a bit of light reading?” She asked.
“Some research,” I corrected her. “Purely theoretical.”
“I don’t sell many books on this topic, you know,” she said, as she flipped to the inside cover to find the price. “People don’t like to be seen buying them.”
“I don’t particularly like it either,” I admitted, and I could feel the blood flooding my cheeks, staining them traitorously pink. “But people already think all kinds of things about me that aren’t true, so what’s one more for the pile?”
I hadn’t really meant to say it, but the words tumbled from my mouth anyway, tasting strongly of bitterness. I dropped my eyes to the countertop, feeling Susan’s piercing gaze on me. The silence spiraled for several seemingly endless seconds. When Susan broke it, her voice was very gentle.
“It’s never easy, standing out, especially when you aren’t a person who likes to stand out.”
For one horrifying second, I thought I might cry, but I managed to quash the impulse. I cleared my throat and said, “Yeah. Avoiding the spotlight is basically my entire personality.”
“Then stay in the shadows when you can,” Susan said, and I found the courage to look up into her eyes.
“People won’t understand you, and that’s okay.
They won’t understand why, for example, you might need a book like this.
But they don’t need to. Only you need to understand.
Let the rest of them wonder. Loudly, even. You just stay on your path.”
I didn’t know how to answer. But I did know she was right. So I managed to mumble, “Thanks.”
She nodded, and I could tell she had about a hundred more questions she wanted to ask me, but she swallowed them, apparently deciding either that she trusted me or that it was none of her business.
Either way, she rang up the book, and I handed over forty dollars.
She placed the book in a paper bag, and slid it across the counter to me.
“Good luck,” she said, “with the research.”
“Thanks,” I said, and practically fled the store before she could change her mind and start asking me more questions.
I managed to smuggle the book up to my room, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to examine it until everyone else had gone to bed.
My mom was much more attentive than usual since my episode the previous night, and she was checking on me so frequently that I couldn’t risk her walking in and finding me buried in a book about demons.
So I tucked the book deep under my pillows, where no one would spot it, and went through my day as normally as I could.
As much as I wanted to shake off the events of the previous night, the effects of it lingered.
I felt fatigued, and the walk into town and back only worsened it.
I brought a stack of the books Rhi had given me down to the living room sofa and curled up under a blanket, intending to do some reading; but within a few minutes, I had nodded off with the book in my lap.
My mother woke me an hour later by putting the little silver cup into my hand.
“Drink this,” she ordered.
I peered down into the cup. It was the same elixir as the night before.
“I don’t think I have a fever anymore,” I told her.
“No, the fever’s gone, but you’re still off-balance. This will help.”
I downed the elixir in one gulp. Then my mother pulled the stack of books off my lap, and pulled the blanket up over me.
“You’re pushing yourself,” she said. “Listen to your body, honey. Get some sleep.”
I wanted to argue, but my eyelids were so heavy that I gave in. I curled up against the pillows, and drifted off almost instantly. The sleep was deep and dreamless, and when I woke up several hours later, my mother examined me yet again, and proclaimed herself satisfied.
“All balanced again, I think. How do you feel?”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and considered. I felt… lighter. Energized. My head felt clear, and my body rested. I smiled at her.
“Better,” I said. “Definitely better.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” my mom replied. “At least one more day before you go back to divination lessons, though. We need to ease back into things, okay? No practicing on your own either.”
“Sure,” I agreed. At least, I wouldn’t be doing divination on purpose.
The truth was that I had very little control over my divination these days.
I hadn’t meant to scry, and yet I didn’t seem able to avoid it.
It was as though some other force was deciding when the answers to my questions would find me, and I just had to accept them when they came.
I didn’t like it, but at least I was starting to get somewhere.
It was a strange feeling, simultaneously dreading an experience, and feeling an insatiable curiosity about it.
I felt like I was getting pieces of a puzzle that didn’t yet form a picture, but as more of them fell into place, I might finally be able to make sense of things.
I wanted more pieces, but I didn’t like the randomness with which they appeared.
How could I be sure it wouldn’t happen again in public?
Or somewhere my mom or my aunts might find me?
Eva and Susan had accepted my vague explanations, but my mother would grill me like a police detective grills a murder suspect, until she understood exactly what was happening, and then I cringed to think how she’d react.
No doubt she’d try to find a way to stop the visions altogether, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Refreshed and feeling like myself again, I worked steadily through the stack of books Rhi had procured for me.
There were some more personal accounts of encounters with the Darkness, but after what Persi had said, I had a hard time taking many of them seriously.
One book seemed almost like a children’s book, telling the story of the Covenant in rhyming couplets, almost like a nursery rhyme.
There was no new information to be found here—it read like a fairy tale that I already knew, each detail predictable, each character more caricature than real historical figure.
I set them all aside with a sigh. I hadn’t really expected these books to help, but it was still depressing to come to the end of them with nothing to show for it.