Witches & Words

by Elle Adams

  Unless the book had started yapping at him, that is. If I were a collector of rare books, there must be something seriously special about that one to put up with its terrible attitude.

  “No…” Aunt Adelaide paused. “I intend to speak with Frederick about his guests, once the police have finished their questioning. In the meantime, I think we’d better take another look at that book.”

  “Why bother?” said Cass. “We know what happened. Someone pushed him downstairs to steal a book he didn’t even have. So, we double our security, leave the book alone, and the police will take care of the rest.”

  “Cass, you weren’t even there,” said Estelle. “That Mr Blake… did he seem suspicious in any way?”

  “He admitted to arguing with Mr Spencer not long before he fell,” I said. “I’d leave it up to the police, but I doubt Edwin wants to have a conversation with the book.”

  Neither did I, for that matter, but if the book was linked to Mr Spencer’s death—and if he’d really been trying to give me a warning before he’d died—then it was better that we knew sooner rather than later. Whatever Cass said, the case wouldn’t end with Mr Spencer’s death, not if the book was the killer’s target.

  “All right,” said Aunt Adelaide. “You lead the way, Rory. I admit I haven’t been in that section for a while, so I might need a refresher.”

  “I remember the symbol, don’t worry.” After the last day’s events, I wouldn’t be forgetting that book for a long time. “It was near the very end of the back row of doors.”

  As Aunt Adelaide and I climbed the stairs, the sound of growling came from somewhere above our heads.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Don’t tell me Cass left the door to the Magical Creatures Division open again.”

  “I thought she got rid of the manticore.” As we reached the third floor, I halted at the entrance to the Magical Creatures Division. Furred books lay scattered all over the carpeted floor, as though they’d crawled off the shelves of their own accord. Some of them were shuffling across the floor, making distressed snapping noises, while others hid in the corners.

  “Honestly,” said Aunt Adelaide. “Would you go ahead and make sure that book is where it’s supposed to be? I’ll catch up to you.”

  Did the book do this? The last thing I wanted was to confront it alone, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have magic of my own. Pulling out my Biblio-Witch Inventory, I made my way around the corner, following the path I’d walked along yesterday. To my relief, the room from last night remained in the same place as before. Drawing in a deep breath, I tapped the word open.

  The door sprang open, revealing the small room. The book lay on the table where I’d left it, silent and unmoving. I stopped about a metre away and scanned the cover. I couldn’t be sure the text was exactly the same as the journal’s, but the book did seem like the type collectors of rare artefacts would do anything to get their hands on. On the other hand, if the murderer had kept tabs on Mr Spencer, they’d know he’d returned the book to the library. Right?

  “You again,” the book said, its tone dripping with disdain.

  I approached the desk. “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Come to give me to another person, have you?” he said. “For people who claim to care about books, you have no concept of loyalty.”

  “The person who last took you out of the library is dead,” I informed the book. “Someone murdered him this morning, and I think you were the reason.”

  I’d hoped to shock the book into playing nice. Instead, it screamed. “Murderer! Murderer!”

  “Quiet!” I said. “Stop that. We’re not sure who killed him, but if you can tell me—”

  The book’s yells drowned out my voice, and I grabbed for my notebook and pen. I’d never tried a silencing spell before, but for a biblio-witch, any word could become magical.

  I pressed the pen to the page and wrote the word silence!

  Tingles ran from my hand to the page, but the book kept screaming.

  I tried again. No result. The third time, I dug the pen so hard into the page that it ripped a hole in the paper, and the book’s yells didn’t cease.

  “You’re not powerful enough to subdue the likes of me!” the book crowed.

  “Who was the man who took you out of the library?” I bellowed back. “Was there a reason someone might have wanted him dead?”

  “No need to shout, my little biblio-witch,” said the book.

  I glared. My throat hurt, but I’d successfully broken through its screaming. I was beginning to understand why all the books in the Magical Creatures Division had tried to escape their shelves overnight. “Mr Spencer called me and mentioned you a minute before he died. If you know anything, tell me, or else the police will get involved.”

  “I’d like to see them try,” said the book. “I won’t talk to you, witchling.”

  Great. I’d offer compensation, but what could I possibly use to bribe a book? While it seemed sentient, it didn’t have Sylvester’s ability to change forms or affect the world around it. For all its screaming, the room looked exactly as it had the night before.

  “This room’s a bit drab, isn’t it?” I tried. “If you like, I can ask my aunts to help redecorate the place. Paint the walls, maybe bring you a friend or two…”

  “Friends!” The book gave a derisive snort. “Friends. The other books are pathetic and shallow in comparison to my supreme intelligence.”

  That sounded familiar. “You might get on with Sylvester.”

  Then again, the idea of the book and the owl teaming up wasn’t particularly appealing, either.

  The book shuffled its pages together. “Pick me up again, I dare you.”

  “No thanks. Have you ever met a vampire?”

  What was that for, Rory? Sure, Mortimer Vale and his fellow vampire collective were known to be hunters of rare artefacts, but there was nothing connecting them to Mr Spencer’s death. As far as I knew, all the guests at the hotel had been human, Mr Spencer included. The vampires weren’t the only people who coveted rare books, besides.

  The book screamed again. “Evil bloodsuckers! Burn them all! Burn them!”

  “All right, all right!” I stepped back as the noise bounced off the walls, amplified by the narrow space. “I meant—"

  The book’s yells drowned out my words, making my head pound. There must be something I can do to stop it from screaming.

  I reached into my bag, my fingers skimming my dad’s journal. Then I pulled it out and flipped it open, looking from its text to the symbols on the book’s cover. Now I saw both alongside one another, it was clear that it wasn’t an exact match after all.

  The book ceased mid-scream. “What are you doing?”

  I put the journal away. “What’s your title? I can’t read it.”

  “None of your business.”

  “Can you at least show me what language it is? Or let me look inside you without biting me?”

  “Fine.” The book flipped inside-out and showed me a set of blank pages.

  “Hilarious,” I said. “I doubt anyone would want to go to the trouble of handling you if you didn’t contain any useful information. I’m ordering you to show me, or I’ll see if my aunt can’t use her biblio-witch magic to pry you open.”

  The book gave another full-volume yell. I pressed my hands to my ears, backing away. Even outside, the walls and floor vibrated with the noise. Ow.

  “What is going on in here?” Aunt Adelaide appeared behind me. “Stop that at once!”

  She walked into the room, pulled out her Biblio-Witch Inventory and tapped a word. I didn’t see which it was, but the screaming died down to a low moaning noise.

  “Tell me what you know,” she commanded.

  The book gave another long, drawn-out moan that ended in a series of unflattering insults.

  “We’re lucky it’s not mobile as well as vocal,” I remarked. “Did it scare the books outside the room into jumping off the shelves?”

  “I’m starting
to suspect so.” She gave the book a disgruntled look. “Someone was a little too thorough with the security spells, I think. I’ll have to lock the door until it calms down.”

  “Will it calm down, though?” I said. “I mean, it’s a book. It’s not like it can tire itself out.”

  The book was theoretically capable of continuing to scream indefinitely—so how were we supposed to question it at all?

  Aunt Adelaide rubbed her temples. “I’ll think of something. Did you manage to get anything useful out of it before it started screaming?”

  “It started yelling as soon as I told it Mr Spencer died,” I said. “Then it calmed down when I started suggesting decorating the room… I was trying to think of how to bribe it into giving us answers.”

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll go downstairs and talk about our options.”

  Aunt Adelaide re-locked the door, and we made for the stairs down to the ground floor. On the way, we passed Aunt Candace coming towards us.

  “No luck?” she asked. “May I?”

  “Feel free,” said Aunt Adelaide. “I wouldn’t advise touching it, though. It bites.”

  “Excellent.” Aunt Candace hurried along, wearing an expression as though twelve Christmases had arrived at once.

  “She might regret that later,” I said.

  “If there’s one thing my sister has alarmingly few of, it’s regrets,” said Aunt Adelaide.

  “I figured.” I followed close behind her down the stairs, the part of me relieved not to be dealing with the book warring with the part of me that was certain it must be connected to Mr Spencer’s death.

  When we were almost at the ground floor, Aunt Adelaide spoke. “You know something, Rory.”

  There was no accusation in her tone, nor a question. I drew in a breath. “The book… I don’t know if you got a good look at the cover, but the text kind of reminded me of the code in my dad’s journal at first. I asked the book if it had ever seen a vampire, and that’s what set it off screaming again. My biblio-witch magic wasn’t strong enough to stop it.”

  “It’s certainly a tricky one,” she said. “Let’s have a look at that journal again when we’re downstairs.”

  When we reached the ground floor, I pulled out my dad’s journal again, skimming through the pages to find a sample of text to compare to the cover. Close up, it wasn’t exactly the same, but similar. I’d thought Dad had made up the code himself. Then again, I’d also thought he was normal, non-magical, up until three years after he’d died. Either way, no way to translate the journal had been found, either in our house or in the bookshop where he’d worked.

  Aunt Adelaide shook her head. “No, it won’t be the same. The text on the cover of the book will be on record, I don’t doubt. I wish Candace would keep better track of these things. She keeps borrowing our translator spells to assist her in making up her own languages.”

  “Sounds like her,” I said. “When I tried to look inside, the book showed me blank pages. That can’t be right, can it?”

  “There’d be little value in the book if it was unreadable,” she said. “The person who locked it added a large number of security spells. It might not have been one of us, either. Our mother purchased books from all over the world when she opened the library.”

  Great. For my sanity’s sake, I was probably better off leaving it up to Aunt Candace. “Do you need me to do anything else?”

  “Can you send Estelle my way?” she asked. “She knows the archives best. We aren’t likely to have many visitors today, so handling the desk won’t be a huge bother.”

  “Sure.” I made my way across the ground floor, trying unsuccessfully to put the screaming book out of mind.

  As for Mr Spencer? The Reaper alone had witnessed his last words, but he’d told me everything he’d heard and there was no sense dragging him into this. His job was to help lost souls, not solve murders—and definitely not get involved with the living. Me included.

  “The archives?” said Estelle, looking up when I reached the front desk. “Sure, I’ll help out. I don’t think anyone’s coming in here today. They’re too busy nursing hangovers.”

  Or being questioned by the police. “I don’t mind taking over the desk anyway.” I’d be more useful here than trying to squeeze answers out of that screaming book.

  On the desk, the logbook lay open on a date almost a year ago. Estelle must have been looking through it to find when Mr Spencer had borrowed the book, and by the looks of things, she hadn’t found it yet. I hadn’t progressed to covering long-term loans in my biblio-witch training yet, so the logbook made little sense to me. I turned the page over, starting to understand why my aunts couldn’t recall loaning out the book. The number of clients they’d handled in the last year must be in the thousands, if not more.

  A clicking noise drew my attention to the door, which drifted closed as though prompted by a faint breeze. The small hairs rose on the back of my neck at the sight of a beautiful woman standing in front of the desk.

  “Oh, am I interrupting something?” said Evangeline, the leader of the vampires.

  5

  The vampires’ leader smiled. As usual, her appearance was impeccable, her dark hair glossy and styled, her lips painted blood red and parted just enough to show her pointed canines.

  I kept my gaze on the desk, forcing my mind to focus on that without letting any thoughts sneak through for her to leap on and use against me. “Is there something you’d like?”

  “A book,” she said. “Why else would I visit the library?”

  To get your hands on my dad’s journal. Which we both know, but I won’t mention it before you do.

  “You heard he died,” I said. “Mr Spencer. Right?”

  “Yes, I did,” she said. “But I’m not here to fish for gossip. I already know what I need to.”

  Hmm. “Then why are you here?”

  “I was interested in the book the hotel guest had in his possession. I heard he returned it to the library, so I’d like to check out the title now it’s available.”

  That wasn’t a confession, surely. Not that I could make an open challenge against her, considering her authority.

  “The book,” I said, “is not taking the loss of Mr Spencer well. It’s throwing a tantrum, actually. So it’s… not available. Not to anyone.”

  Her brow arched. “Oh? That’s a shame.”

  “Do you know who Mr Spencer was? The man who had the book?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never met him in my life. I merely heard the book was returned, not who last checked it out.”

  “You heard… you read someone’s mind, didn’t you?” I said. “You haven’t seen any of us since before he died. Who else knew what book he had?”

  Mr Blake, perhaps, which meant she’d been snooping around the hotel.

  “There’s no reason to act so suspicious, Aurora. I heard the thoughts of some of the hotel guests after the police let them go. I was looking for something quite different at the time, but if it’s too soon to ask, I can come back later.”

  “My aunt is working out how to handle the book,” I said. “It’s likely to be at least a day, if not more.”

  Okay, perhaps I was being unfair. It might be simple curiosity that had driven her to come here, not a guilty conscience. Not that I was certain Evangeline had a conscience. Some vampires, like my Aunt Candace’s ex, Dominic, acted more or less human, but people like her seemed to get a kick out of scaring the living hell out of people. The mind-reading advantage alone was reason enough to be wary of her.

  “I will come back tomorrow, then,” she said. “Such a strange murder case. A tragic one, really.”

  The day Evangeline felt concern for a human would be the day Aunt Candace retired from publishing books.

  There came a shrieking noise from somewhere above our heads. Speaking of Aunt Candace, I’d bet she’d done something to tick off the book even more. The leader of the vampires raised an eyebrow as the screaming rose in volume.


  “Is someone having difficulties?” she asked.

  “That’s the book,” I said. “My aunts are trying to subdue it, but it’s dangerous to let it out of the library until it’s calmed down. And even then, I’m not sure it’ll let you read it.”

  “Let me?” She arched a brow. “I doubt a simple book will be that much trouble for me.”

  I had to admit, part of me would be all too happy to foist the screaming book on her so we’d have it off our hands. But whatever her reasons for wanting the book, I’d bet they had nothing to do with solving the mystery of Mr Spencer’s death.

  “I’ll see you later, Aurora.”

  And in a blink, Evangeline was gone.

  I released a breath, the tension I hadn’t been entirely aware of seeping out of my body. Perhaps she didn’t have ulterior motives, but I’d eat my notebook before I admitted she wasn’t interested in whether or not the book had caused Mr Spencer’s death. The last time we’d spoken, she’d tried to bribe me into handing over my dad’s journal, and while I now knew the code inside it didn’t match the book upstairs, Dominic’s last message to me before his death had warned me not to trust her.

  The screaming grew even louder, and my pounding headache came back with a vengeance. Covering my ears, I headed into the archives and found Aunt Adelaide and Estelle surrounded by stacks of old logbooks. “What is she doing to that book?”

  “If I had to guess?” said Aunt Adelaide. “Candace decided to probe the book for information. Would you mind having a look up there?”

  “I’ll deal with it this time.” Estelle bounded to her feet.

  “There’s no need,” said Aunt Candace’s raised voice from the stairs. “We’re coming down.”

  “No, we’re not,” yelled the book. “I won’t have this! I won’t!”

  Oh, no.

  “What’re you bringing it down here for?” said Aunt Adelaide in irate tones.

  “Because it’s a fascinating piece of work as well as potential evidence in a murder case,” said Aunt Candace, raising her voice even louder over the book’s screaming.