Chapter 38 #2
“Do not speak of these things in the dark,” she said, her tone guttural yet saccharine. “They find you there.”
“What,” Max said, once we made it out of the cottage, “in the ever-loving fuck was that?”
“I don’t know, but I think we’re finally getting somewhere.”
“Getting somewhere?” Uncontrolled laughter burst from him. “Have you lost your mind? I was about ready for her freaking jaw to unhinge and gobble you right up.”
“At least then we’d know what we’re dealing with.”
“I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say that. Great, and she just leaves. Where are you going?”
“To look up the passage that she kept repeating. It’s got to mean something. Maybe she was giving us a clue. Telling us where to look.”
“Or she was just enjoying scaring the piss out of us. Cella, wait.”
We reached the library doors, and I pushed them open, Max still on my heels.
“Cella, I know you want to help Dani and all, but …” He shook his head.
“You were right. We shouldn’t have gone in there because whatever that …
thing is, is not Dani. It’s the remnants of the curse or hex or whatever was done to her.
And let’s not forget—she already, you know, murdered someone. ”
I nodded, roaming the aisles. I knew what I was looking for, but where would it be?
“I think we should forget it,” Max babbled, “abandon this whole thing, get her sent to an asylum where she is locked up twenty-four seven and can’t hurt anyone else.
Just cut our losses now. Look, I’m the last person to admit defeat, but we should be reasonable here.
The person that Dani was died when she killed Maya. There is nothing human left in her.”
He stood, panting in front of me, waiting for my answer. But I was barely listening. Because I’d found what I was looking for and was already flipping through the delicate, yellowing pages.
“Are you even listening to me?” he asked, running his hands down his face.
“I’m not abandoning her, Max. Not when we’ve finally got a lead as to what’s causing this.”
“I’m not saying you should abandon her; I’m saying we should … rethink the whole ‘saving her’ bit.”
“Besides,” I said, beaming, “I’ve found the passage she was referencing.”
For perhaps the entire time I’d known him, Max’s mouth fell open, and no words came out.
I pointed to the page in front of me. “It’s a Bible passage.
I knew it sounded familiar, and with the mention of demons …
* but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it before.
Then I remembered something from my old Ancient Magic and Christianity class with Dr. Perez.
He was always picking out different passages for us to read and study the context.
The full verse was in the context of foretelling the fall of Babylon, ‘the daughter of Chaldeans.’ It’s something of a rebuke, deriding the wicked city and all those who practice Magic within its walls.
Like if you’re so powerful, see if you can prevent it. ”
Keep on, then, with your magic spells
and with your many sorceries,
which you have labored at since childhood.
Perhaps you will succeed,
perhaps you will cause terror.
All the counsel you have received has only worn you out!
Let your astrologers come forward,
those stargazers who make predictions month by month,
let them save you from what is coming upon you.
Surely they are like stubble;
the fire will burn them up.
They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame.
These are not coals for warmth;
this is not a fire to sit by.
That is all they are to you—
these you have dealt with
and labored with since childhood.
All of them go on in their error;
there is not one that can save you.*
Max made a low whistle.
I thought back to the way Dani’s eyes burrowed into mine, and I shivered.
“It’s portraying Magic as a wicked deed.
? What else did she say? ‘These books are banned, they are forbidden.’” I flipped furiously through Dani’s notebook, an echo of something from the night of the frat party swirling in my mind.
The truth will set you free. The statement had seemed to be everywhere lately.
I found the journal entry from Dani. “That’s it … ‘The pages hold the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Some twisted version of another biblical passage: ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” I slapped the book shut. “The pages … She’s pointing us toward a book.”
Max rubbed a hand over his chin. “That’s what Strauss said, too, remember? That Dani was obsessed with some book when she first came to the school. Are there books that are banned from Catholicism?”
“Of course,” I said slowly. “Well, not so much anymore, but centuries ago, definitely. During the Inquisition, they even went so far as to burn the home of anyone harboring the books.”
“So maybe a book hunted to extinction. Something they really hated?” Max said.
Notes, notes. I needed my notes from the class. Vern came over as I opened Dr. Perez’s course website.
“There it is,” I said, looking through the course notes. “The Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.”
Max leaned forward. “Now what? How do we tell which one it is?”
I scanned the list, many of the works in Latin.
Candide and many of Voltaire’s other works, Madame Bovary, Paradise Lost, and the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Dr. Perez had broken the list down further into Magical texts and grimoires, supplemented with titles from his own research when possession of texts had been used as evidence in witch trials.
Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or the Lesser Key of Solomon, a demonology grimoire, and Picatrix, one of the foremost texts on astrological Magic.
* Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books of Occult Philosophy)—Agrippa’s complete works had been banned.
“Well, let’s look at the books on the list and see if there are any that reference any of the things Dani said, or the symbol we’ve been seeing around campus. There’s got to be something,” I said.
My mind raced, and my thoughts flew past faster than I could make sense of them.
We ended up eliminating many of the texts.
For some of them, not a single copy had survived into this century.
Others had been studied and were believed to be nothing more than the works of delirious alchemists poisoned from their own experiments.
Our list dwindled to two: Liber incantationum, exorcismorum et fascinationum variarum and Liber Autumnus.
Max paused, running his eyes over the words of the first. “Maybe there’s a reason these books are banned,” he said quietly.
I bit my lip. “Vern?”
Vern looked at the computer screen, nodding slowly. “I’ll see if we have either of them in the system. But …”—he spread his hands—“if these are indeed the old Magic texts, you need to watch yourselves.”
I knew the danger these texts posed. There were so few real Magic books left in the world, and the ones that were genuine were written to be intentionally confusing to guard their secrets from untrained eyes, shrouded in symbols that could only be understood by followers or other expert Magicians.
Spells were hidden between nonsensical statements.
You could be reading a paragraph for hours trying to make sense of it and have no idea you were casting a spell.
And all the while Magic would be dripping from your fingertips like a leaky faucet.
If Dr. Robetresse knew what we were looking into, I half-think she might’ve tried to stop us.
We were going against the entire system of Magic we’d studied.
Everything about the Three Arts focused on control, on limitations, on not jumping headfirst into spellwork that had been written centuries ago and never studied to ensure its safety.
Wild, reckless Magic like that was for students at Britton Arcane.
Or for people who ended up dead.
But while a part of me was afraid, I was also excited.
If I could study one of the real Magic texts, not only could I possibly find the spell to cure Dani but spells I’d never seen before, that no one had been able to decipher in centuries.
Who knew what kind of Magic was out there?
Magic to return in time and fix your mistakes?
To bring back the dead? To … I was getting ahead of myself.
I sucked in a deep breath. My fingers shook.
Vern tapped the screen. “This first one is better known as the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic. It’s a grimoire penned in the fifteenth century.”
Max closed his eyes. “Lovely,” he whispered.
Vern dug a key ring from his pocket and returned a few minutes later from a back room, holding a very old, very creepy-looking book bound in vellum. He set the book in front of Max, who visibly shivered when his hands touched it.
“But the other, Liber Autumnus, The Book of Autumn …” Vern said, returning to the screen. He looked back at the screen and shook his head. “That one’s going to be a bit trickier.”
Max still hadn’t opened the grimoire in front of him, so I pulled it over to me.
As soon as I touched it, I was overwhelmed with a sense of wrong.
Magic books sound a little like objects, so many spells swirling around at once, and this one emitted a frantic thump-thump-thump-thump, like the heartbeat of a small, tormented creature. I closed the cover immediately.
“Vern, has anyone checked this out recently?”
He jotted in his notebook, and I could practically taste his Magic swirling around. The sound of old, yellowing pages flipping, the musty smell of old books. It swept the icky feeling of the grimoire from me. He shook his head. “No one’s touched this book in many years.”
I nodded. “I’m inclined to leave it that way.”
Vern nodded and gingerly picked up the book to carry it to the back room. He locked the door behind him.