Chapter Seven
The library was enormous, of course. Though even by the standard she imagined, it was pretty staggering. It made her gasp,
when she stepped through a pair of double doors that looked like nothing at all. They suggested something normal—but beyond
was anything but. It was too big for the building it sat inside. Like an optical illusion, like something from a sci-fi show.
It took her five minutes to get from the entrance to the main desk. Then another ten to find the section she needed, after
the iron-haired lady sitting behind the counter directed her to where it would be. Her legs were tired and her stomach was
growling by the time she got there. She was genuinely starting to worry about getting lost and then starving to death.
But god, it was worth it for the books.
Oh, the books upon books upon books.
Their spines glittered in the dusty lowlight. They tempted her, from shelves that towered over her head and seemed to teeter
under the pressure of them all. She found herself looking at the mosaic-patterned floors, head full of that story of a building
sinking because the architect hadn’t accounted for the weight of the books.
She would have gladly sunk with it.
She would have let herself be buried by all this paper and ink.
She barely paused for breath when she got to the right section.
She grabbed ten books without even paying much attention to the titles.
Clutched them to her, all higgledy-piggledy, one of them falling as she maneuvered to the table set between the stacks.
She snagged it as she sat down, and set it next to the biggest haul she’d ever managed in her life.
The closest before this was the time she’d visited her cousins in Essex, and they had a library nearby. But that had been
tattered paperbacks, full of secondhand tales of whatever people thought actual magic was like.
This was the real deal.
These were tomes bound in leather and filled to the brim with things she had only been able to guess at before. Like the fact
that several natural disasters had indeed been averted by magic—the slide of the Handermore shelf into the Atlantic, the flood
that threatened California, the asteroid that almost took out Melbourne. Hints at other things, in places on the other side
of the various schisms.
All spells, all kept under the shroud of secrecy that countries held over their magic use.
Or beneath a code of silence enforced against a population.
If you find you want to share with anyone not under the auspices of the magical authorities, or speak of magic to anyone ordinary,
you will find you cannot, she read, in a chapter of a book called Great Deeds of the Twentieth Century. Your words will get lost in your mouth, your messages will dissolve to nothing, your screens will turn to static.
And from what she could see, that was how most things seemed to work.
You could learn if you were allowed here.
You could make yourself great and perform feats within certain set parameters.
But you could never share beyond what was set by the authorities.
Those who decide that a fancy bandstand in Windermere should be saved from collapse but a tower block shouldn’t, she thought, as she scoured the pages for something less bitter and more useful.
And she found it.
It was in the third book she devoured, midway through a chapter on defeating creatures that your professor could allow through
a rip in the fabric of reality to randomly murder you. Werebeasts can be repelled by common stinging nettles if harvested in areas where the veil between the Underneath and the
real world has grown thin, she had written breathlessly, in the notepad she’d already filled with all kinds of hints and tips and facts.
And then there it was.
If a denizen of the Underneath has attached itself to you, you may find your mind affected. Concentration can prove abruptly
difficult, memory is often affected, in extreme cases the divide between reality and dreams could begin to erode, she read, and felt a great rush of adrenaline go through her as she did. Suddenly her heart was thudding, heavily enough
to almost hurt. Her mouth went dry; hair prickled where she hadn’t even realized hair was.
And not just because that seemed to describe her exact situation.
There was also what it said at the end of the paragraph.
Even the most advanced student will struggle to fend off certain creatures. Then even more troubling: The help of faculty should be enlisted. Because the problem was—what could she say? What could she report? He didn’t outwardly look like something that came from
that shadowy place. And if he did, somehow, nobody seemed to know it. Nobody seemed suspicious.
Even though there were other things that fit.
The poison, she thought. The poison should have made people wonder.
But it hadn’t.
And that meant one thing and one thing alone. He’s popular and important enough that they don’t want to face it, they don’t want to hear it, if you say anything they’ll
hate you, not him, her mind whispered, in a way she couldn’t really argue with. So now she had to reckon with the fact that she was in even
more danger than she had first thought. Tell and she’d be in trouble on two fronts. Keep it to herself, and she was going
to have to fight something potentially unfightable.
Despite the fact that she could barely fight at all.
She’d only managed magic that one single time in the maze, and had no clue why that was the case. What she had done differently
then, to what she had tried at other times. It had felt just as clumsy as it had when the fireball had almost hit her. Just
as clumsy as it did now, as she brought her hands together.
Clumsier even.
Of course it had been clumsier. She had done it with him between her legs. With his face above hers, expression so full of fury and
loathing it had made her hands shake. It had made them fumbly and frantic. They hadn’t locked together perfectly; she knew
they hadn’t.
But the spark had happened all the same.
So what had been different? When I want it to happen, I just picture the top of the maze, the darkness, the way it made me feel when it bloomed in my
hand, Anaya had said to her, as they tried to get her out of that damned tree.
So she closed her eyes and attempted just that.
Tried to think of every detail, every nuance, every feeling.
The shadow slanting across his face, cutting it cleanly in two.
His hand on the stone by her head, close enough that she had felt his thumb brush her cheek.
Or had it been the charged air between his skin and hers?
She didn’t know. She only understood the sensation that seemed to flood her, when she closed her eyes and thought of it. When
she slowed her breathing and considered his face. Something seemed to part or open inside her, and through it flowed that
strange kind of warmth. That silvery feeling, like her veins were filling up with mercury. Then she opened her eyes, and oh.
There was a glowing flower in her cupped hands.
Beautiful, glorious—she could have wept to see it.
She probably would have done so, in fact.
If it were not for the shadow that suddenly slanted across the sweetness she had conjured. And the voice, deep and sardonic,
cutting into the focus she had only just managed. “Well, what do we have here?” he said.
And of course it was him, of course it was.
Who else was it going to be, ruining her moment?
Yet still, somehow, it shocked her. She stood so fast and so violently it knocked the table. Two books spilled onto the floor,
heavily enough that the bang they made echoed up to the rafters. She heard what sounded like birds up there flutter in the
aftermath. Someone somewhere shushed loudly.
But they needn’t have.
The only sound that followed was her harsh breathing.
And him speaking so softly no one but her could have ever heard it.
“I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me to find that you think your salvation can be unearthed between the pages of a few dusty tomes.
Yet oddly, I think I am. Like I thought better of you, somehow.
Even though you’ve given me so little to go on,” he said.
Casually, like he was talking about the weather.
Instead of being so scathing it felt like getting a paper cut clean through her skull.
She couldn’t reply, for a second.
She had to take a calming breath first.
“Five more minutes, and maybe I’ll have a lot more for you.”
“Was that a threat, little bookworm? Well, aren’t we getting bold.”
“Not bold. Just honest about what I might soon be able to do.”
He gave her a withering look—eyes rolling and then sliding sideways. “Yes, I saw you practicing. Your form is dreadful, by
the way.”
“It was enough to grab you in the maze.”
“You got lucky.”
“So maybe I will again.”
“Let’s see then, shall we,” he said; then just as she was about to argue back, he added one last sudden spat word.
“Draw.”
Like a gunslinger, she thought wildly.
Though she didn’t expect him to actually go for his wand. That seemed ridiculous, impossible—until his hand whipped down, and then up, so fast she didn’t even have
a chance to move out of the way. All she could manage was grabbing the nearest book and holding it in front of her body. Like
a shield against whatever spell was emerging from the end of the sharp little thing he had jabbed at her.
Something violent, she thought and braced.
But the book didn’t just explode, or maybe end up with a hole through the middle.
Instead, it seemed to collapse in her hands.
It spilled between her fingers and poured over her palms, so quickly she didn’t at first understand what was spilling and pouring.
She just felt it; she just had the impression of something brown and in bits.
And then she realized the brown and the bits were soft.
They were small and furry.
Spiders.
He had turned the book into a great writhing heap of spiders, scurrying and sliding and scampering to get away. They flowed