Chapter 3
By the time Bryn finally fell into bed in her guest room in the visitors’ corridor of the main castle, she was exhausted.
She’d worked later than she’d intended, after having mindlessly eaten the food Amelia had sent up and gone through an entire pot of tea.
Enough tea that she was a little worried she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.
But either someone had put decaffeinated tea in her pot, or she was just that tired.
She barely even had time to think before she was fast asleep.
Still, she woke up, as she often did, right around two o’clock in the morning.
The hallowed hour of second thoughts. Her younger sister Luna had been having some personal troubles, and their mother didn’t think that Bryn was the best person to talk her through them—not that she’d heard that from their mom, but from Luna, with many sighs and eyerolls.
Bryn suspected that her mom knew her advice would be: “Move away. You have nothing to lose.” And that was a fair enough concern, since Bryn had embraced moving far away as a helpful life transition.
Though when she thought of Denver, her apartment there, her neighborhood, she didn’t exactly feel longing.
She felt something more like obligation.
She really liked Denver, but she was no better now at making friends than she had been when she was in school.
She was lonely, she realized belatedly. Which was not a topic she wanted to be thinking about at two in the morning, while nestled in the Grimoire Academy castle.
What she needed to consider was how to cope with the job ahead.
She needed to sort the professor’s books, decide what she wished to leave to the school (for the library or anything else; that would be a question for Amelia), then box everything else up to be carted away in her rental car or shipped out.
She would keep everything with the professor’s notes scribbled in the margins, any books that seemed obviously spelled, and certainly any collection of papers that could be argued to constitute an unfinished manuscript.
She waved her wand at a candle, which immediately sprung to life, and reached again for the piece of paper Amelia had handed her the night before.
The one the professor had left with her final documents.
It was legible, barely, and only because she knew the professor’s handwriting.
But every stroke of that pen felt like a direct line, a telegraph from the professor, who had sat at her desk, dipped her pen in ink, and written Bryn’s name at the top of the page.
Her warm, Welsh tones came through as clearly as if she’d spelled the page to read itself aloud.
Dearest Bryn,
I am so very proud of you and your accomplishments. Your determination has always amazed and awed me. You are destined for such wonderful things. I only wish I could be there to see them.
I am leaving you my library, in trust, to do with as you choose. You may pass it on to the school if you wish. You may sell it off. Whatever it is, please feel free.
You owe me nothing. You only owe yourself. Your past self, your future self, but most of all, the you who is reading this note.
I had the great privilege of watching you go from stumbling, nervous adolescent to confident, bright, talented young woman. Of my few bequests, this is the second most important.
About the other, you may encourage Amelia to share it with you. It is her gift now, and her burden.
I leave you both the school. Not mine to give precisely, but I fancy I’ve been around long enough to have earned a bit of responsibility in that area.
The students are as they have ever been: some are more obviously in need of support and some less obviously, but all of them are still children, as you both were.
Seek allies. Don’t burn your bridges. And try always to see the magic that ripples beneath the words.
Yours, as ever, Antigone Herringbone.
Bryn wiped her eyes, wary of her tears staining the page.
She waved her wand again, setting the candle to flicker gently.
It was a small atmospheric spell she’d designed for when there were no adequate drafts to really make a candle flicker, and she had imagined its use in romantic settings, though she’d never used it that way herself.
For Bryn, the spell was usually for these moments in the middle of the night, when she contemplated things that could not be still and needed that bit of visual movement to keep her from becoming mired in her thoughts.
She had already boxed up much of what she desired to take with her, though she hadn’t gone through everything yet.
But the volumes that had special significance to her—those she had borrowed in the past, or that the professor had shown her—were ready to go.
Amelia had ordered more boxes and more tape to be brought up from town the following day.
Bryn’s mind spun with thoughts, and the notion of falling back to sleep seemed increasingly distant, as if receding in the rear-view mirror of a speeding car. She sighed. There wasn’t much point lying back down in this state. She might as well get back to work, the sooner to finish.
It seemed strange and almost surreal to walk the castle corridors in the dark, but not unwelcome.
Despite the ghosts said to roam the halls, she’d never had a negative encounter herself.
Only the tickle of a presence at the edge of sensation, a hint of something not-quite-seen lingering where perception intersected reality.
Contrary to many representations, ghosts were rarely unintentional; most were the result of deep planning and foresight.
The so-called “rough hauntings” tended to be either because the body had died before the complex ghost magics were complete, or because the person in question had been targeted from outside, their spirit trapped in the wrong realm.
At least Bryn didn’t have to worry about Professor Herringbone joining them.
The professor considered intentional ghosts short-sighted, and she would have never been successfully caught by someone else’s spell.
She’d written an entire text about protective magic.
In any case, none of the castle’s ghosts felt the least malicious.
Bryn fancied that if any were roaming the castle, they knew what she was about and only wished her well.
A little over an hour later, seated on the professor’s rug surrounded by her papers, eyes crusted from dried tears and exhaustion, Bryn pulled a throw blanket over her shoulders and snuggled into an armchair.
She needed to rest her eyes now that her mind had been lulled by the monotony of sorting books. Just for a minute or two. Or three …
The knocking startled her out of an uncomfortable sleep. Where the hell— Wait—
She blinked around, disoriented by her upright position and distantly familiar surroundings. Another knock. For a moment, she felt a stab of remembered fear. Had she slept in and missed the bus that would take her to the bottom of the hill? Was everyone else at school already? Was she in trouble?
Then she remembered that although her back brain was correct and this was the castle, she was no longer a student. She was a grown woman, and if she wished to sleep in, even at her old school, she could do so. Though, ideally—she rolled her neck and winced—not in an armchair.
Amelia’s voice called, “Bryn? It’s me. It’s Amelia.”
At which point Bryn scampered up with haste, tripping over the blanket and nearly going sprawling.
She had sweatpants on, and a tank top—but surely she’d been wearing— She grasped around, found her wand, and waved it at the nearest lamp.
Light helped and she located her discarded hoodie between two piles of books, one of which seemed to be leaning precariously towards the other.
“I’ll be ready in a second!” she called frantically as she tried to pull on her hoodie, right the leaning pile, and tidy away the blanket simultaneously.
And oh gods, her hair was a tangled knot. She grabbed a scarf hanging from the professor’s reading lamp and wrapped it around her head. She didn’t think it was hiding much, but it was certainly better than showing off her bed head (armchair head?) in front of Amelia Hexford.
“Sorry,” Amelia said, taking in her appearance once she opened the door. “I keep school hours now, and I figured when you weren’t in the guest room that you were probably already at work. Oops.” A grin seemed to be tugging relentlessly at the corners of her mouth.
“Are you laughing at me?” Bryn accused.
“I’m not, I swear I’m not. I mean, maybe a little, but only because you look so cute. I mean, adorable. I mean— I brought you some tea, and breakfast will be up soon, and I should definitely go so you can— So you—”
Bryn wanted to be offended that Amelia Hexford was laughing at her, when the woman had woken her up out of a dead sleep at 6.15 a.m., but it was hard to resist the playful amusement.
She sighed. Annoyed. Charmed. Something. “Don’t go. Have some tea. Just give me another minute.”
“I’ll pour,” Amelia said, discreetly backing out of the room. She may have giggled.
Bryn chose to ignore it. She finger-combed her hair, braided it back, and neatened her clothes. Damn, why hadn’t she at least got dressed in her rooms before coming to the professor’s office? And brushed her hair! That would have helped so much, but at least she was moderately presentable now. Ish.
“Tea is getting cold,” Amelia called, still sounding amused.
“So spell it hot,” she grumbled, then checked her reflection again and went out into the sitting room.