Witches & Words

by Elle Adams

  “Not well. I think he’s mad at Aunt Candace for not being quick enough on the uptake. Where’s your mother?”

  “Here.” Aunt Adelaide descended the stairs. “Where have you been, Rory? Estelle said you found bloodstains belonging to a vampire at the hotel.”

  “We did, but we don’t know whose,” I explained. “Xavier and I went after Mr Dreyer to persuade him to come back to town and tell the police he saw a vampire from his window. He confirmed what we know—the book was a fake created using a spell. It was never ours, and he has no interest in the actual book now.”

  “It would explain why there are no recent records,” Estelle added. “And the absence of the password sheet, too.”

  “I bet he moved it himself while he was here,” I said. “He might even have done it while I was putting the book in its room. Sylvester took the night off, so he wasn’t watching the ground floor like he normally is.”

  No wonder the owl was so miffed at the book for fooling all of us.

  Aunt Adelaide rubbed her forehead. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly possible,” said Aunt Candace from behind us. “And clever. I should have known the book was a fake when I failed to unravel the security spells.”

  “You might have mentioned that.” Aunt Adelaide’s eye twitched. “You kept trying out passwords regardless?”

  “Of course I did,” said Aunt Candace. “Just because the book isn’t one of ours doesn’t mean I can’t convince it to spill its secrets.”

  “It’s a fake,” said Estelle, emphasising the last word. “Cracking open the book won’t get you anything. If I were you, I’d look for the password sheet instead.”

  “The relic hunter said he left town as soon as he found out it was a fake,” I explained. “It sounded like the two vampire hunters thought they’d create a copy of this super-rare book order to lure over the vampires they were hunting. He said he found proof in their rooms, but Xavier and I didn’t find a thing when we searched.”

  “Is that so?” said Aunt Candace. “How vexing.”

  She was taking this better than I’d thought. In fact, I could almost see the cogs turning in her mind, figuring out how best to turn this into a story.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” said Aunt Adelaide. “If Mr Spencer wanted to put off all our customers by unleashing a screaming book on us, he certainly did a spectacular job.”

  “I don’t think that was his intention,” I said. “I doubt the two of them planned to end up dead, either.”

  “How careless of them,” said Aunt Candace.

  “Candace,” said Aunt Adelaide, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Need I remind you that the fake book is still in our possession, and everyone in town knows it by now? This isn’t over until the book is gone, and maybe not even then. The murderer has yet to be caught.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a downer,” said Aunt Candace. “There are no rogue vampires here. I suppose Evangeline and her people chased them off.”

  “It didn’t sound that way,” I said. “I think you should feed that book to one of Cass’s pets, to be honest.”

  Estelle snorted. “Rory’s right, you know.”

  “Edwin will want to see the book first,” said Aunt Adelaide. “Is Xavier with him?”

  My throat closed up. “No, but Mr Dreyer is, so Edwin will know soon enough.”

  “He’s welcome to keep the book,” said Aunt Candace. “Once I’m done with it, that is.”

  “Don’t do anything rash.” Aunt Adelaide looked up as Sylvester flew overhead, landing on the desk.

  “The book’s impervious to damage, too,” he said. “I checked.”

  “Oh, good.” Aunt Adelaide ran a hand through her hair. “We’ll go and deal with that, then, shall we?”

  She and Aunt Candace headed off, pursued by Sylvester. I hung back, unable to believe I’d overlooked the obvious.

  Estelle glanced at me. “Did something else upset you, Rory? Is it Xavier?”

  “Kind of.” I looked down. “The Grim Reaper was convinced I ticked him into believing Xavier was in danger when he wasn’t. He said I’m a distraction and a liability. Then he took him away, probably to put him under house arrest.”

  “Oh, Rory,” she said. “You know that’s not true. He’s—well, the Grim Reaper. He’s not even human.”

  “Neither is Xavier,” I said. “A fact both of us keep forgetting.”

  “He’s not the type to string you along, is he?” she said. “He must still think you have a chance of remaining friends, at least.”

  “We’re talking about the guy who didn’t even know his boss had left me a threatening note.” I shook my head. “This time, he might do worse. To Xavier, even.”

  Yet I didn’t know if I could cut him out of my life again. Not now.

  “Give it time.” She hugged me. “Want to go and watch a movie? We haven’t done that for a while.”

  “Sounds good.” I smiled.

  Whatever happened, my family had my back. Now we knew the book for what it was, the truth would come out, one way or another.

  13

  This time, when Sylvester woke me up by hooting in my ear, I groaned and buried my head under the pillow. “Go away.”

  “That’s not very nice,” he said. “I thought you needed my help.”

  “I never said I did.” I yawned. “I know, I know, I shouldn’t have sent Xavier after Mr Dreyer, but if I hadn’t, I’d still assume the book was real and not a fake.”

  “Are you quite finished?” The owl landed on the bed, his claws digging into the duvet. He was surprisingly heavy.

  “You’re standing on my arm,” I protested. “What do you mean by offering me help? Are you inviting me for a free trip into the Forbidden Room?”

  “Free? You’re free to do whatever you like.”

  “Yes, I know that.” I needed a bucket of coffee to wake up before finishing this conversation. “But you said I’m only allowed one question a day.”

  “I did. You haven’t used today’s yet.”

  I hadn’t used yesterday’s, either. There’d been little point, since Sylvester could only answer questions about what was already in the library. The fake book had never been ours, while the vampires hadn’t set foot in here at all.

  “I always ask the wrong questions.” I buried my head in the pillow again.

  “Yes, you do.” Sylvester climbed up my arm and dug his claws in, making me wince. “So do most people, including your aunts.”

  “If this is supposed to be a pep talk, it’s not working,” I muttered into the pillow.

  “I might add that you’re the first member of the Hawthorn family in a long while who’s come close to guessing what I am, or how I’m connected to the library.”

  “I suppose I did.” I hadn’t thought of it that way. Knowing Sylvester’s secret hadn’t made me any better at managing the owl’s unpredictable nature, after all.

  “Also,” he added. “One of our books is rather overdue, and I am in charge of late fees, after all.”

  I lifted my head. “But it isn’t our book.”

  “It’s in the library, isn’t it? That makes it ours.”

  “You’re not going to stop until I get up, are you?” I rolled my eyes. “All right, I’ll give the Forbidden Room a try.”

  The owl took flight and left the room. I, meanwhile, gathered my clothes and my wits. When I’d first discovered the Forbidden Room, I’d thought it contained the answers to any question I might want to ask. Since then, the room had proven as capricious as the owl himself, and the limit of one question per day had led me into trouble more than once. We already knew the truth about everything except the killer’s identity and how the two vampire hunters had made the evidence of their deception disappear. The room wouldn’t be able to help with either of those questions.

  No… Sylvester wanted me to ask about the book, even though it didn’t belong to the library. That was our speciality, and while the book itself ha
d never been ours, perhaps the Forbidden Room would be able to shed some light on how to convince it to spill some secrets about its creators.

  I thought over my options as I walked downstairs and crossed the lobby to the front desk, retrieving the Book of Questions from its shelf on the way. A plain black-covered book with a question mark on the cover, it didn’t look like it contained information on every book in the library and a lot more besides.

  Sylvester swooped down and landed on the front desk. “Your aunts have both tried and asked the wrong questions, so it’s up to you.”

  “No pressure, then?” I opened the book. “I wish to enter the Forbidden Room.”

  At once, the floor disappeared beneath my feet, and I tumbled forward into emptiness. The next thing I knew, my feet touched the ground inside a room with black-painted walls, floor and ceiling.

  I took in a deep breath. “How would one go about convincing a stubborn book to give up its information?”

  Blair gaped at me. “You mean the book was a fake?”

  “You’ve got it.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes as the chill wind off the ocean sought out every gap in my cloak. Since Blair and Nathan would be going home on Monday, I’d decided to take one last chance to enlist her help in unravelling the magic that had created the fake book.

  And when I gave the book its final questioning, I needed the aid of someone who had the ability to tell truth from lie.

  “Wow.” She went silent for a moment as we turned our backs on the seafront and walked towards the town square. “That book always struck me as strange, but after everything I saw in the library during your tour, I figured you’d seen weirder.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I said. “In my defence, it fooled my entire family, too, and they’ve worked in the library for a lot longer than I have.”

  That was the only reason I hadn’t given up in despair, aside from Sylvester’s so-called pep talk. He might not want to admit it, but he was irked that the vampire hunters had got the best of him as well as the rest of us.

  “So you’re saying the real book is still out there, way overdue, and screaming at its owner?” said Blair.

  “Possibly,” I said. “Records go missing all the time. So do books. I mean, there’s an entire corridor that just vanished upstairs. I reckon Mr Spencer and Mr Blake were counting on us not guessing until it was too late, but neither of them intended to get themselves killed before they could complete their plans.”

  “And Mr Dreyer?” she said. “Do you reckon he’s going after the real book?”

  “I doubt he is, but he’s not the issue.” I reached the library door and pushed it open. “I’m more concerned with the vampires. The book stopped talking to us yesterday, but I have an incentive now.”

  Armed with what I’d learned in the Forbidden Room, I led Blair to the classroom at the back of the ground floor. The door was locked, the soundproofing spell in place.

  Here goes nothing.

  I opened the door and approached the book lying on the desk. “We’ve come to talk to you again.”

  The book remained still.

  “Playing dead, is it?” said Blair.

  “It was never really alive, but it’s been doing that ever since we found out it’s a fake.” I grabbed the book and flipped it upside-down. Then I gave it a shake.

  The book broke into a screaming fit. “Put me down!”

  “It’s over,” I said. “You don’t belong to the library at all. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t take you apart.”

  As the screaming continued, I flipped the book over and pulled out my pen. Then I pressed the tip of the pen to the spine, as the Forbidden Room had instructed. The nib dug in. One more second and the whole spell would unravel.

  The book stopped screaming. “I’m not here by choice.”

  “You don’t have a choice, because you aren’t alive.” I dropped the book back on the desk. “Is it true that Mr Blake and Mr Spencer planted you in here? Who exactly were they trying to lure to Ivory Beach?”

  “I don’t know! I’m only a prop.” The book flipped open, showing blank pages. “I didn’t deceive you, witchling. I showed you I had blank pages from the start. You just chose to believe otherwise.”

  I jabbed it with the pen again. “I can unravel the spell keeping you intact in a heartbeat. What’s your game?”

  The book gave a whimper. “I’m just a sentience spell, nothing more. I was told to stall you until the plan was complete. I don’t know what went wrong. I can’t see outside of the library, you know.”

  “It’s telling the truth,” said Blair. “So you don’t know the names of the rogue vampires?”

  “No,” said the book. “I told you, I’m just a prop. A wizard created me, and I’ve been passed around between owners ever since. They were careful not to share their names, and they kept me locked inside a box the whole time they owned me.”

  “Convenient,” I said. “Can’t you describe them, then?”

  “Of course not. I don’t have eyes.” The book shrank away from the point of my pen. “Talk to the vampires if you want to know about rogues. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  Evangeline. I’d always thought she was several steps ahead of me, but if the rogues were still at large and she didn’t know they were out there, then she had to be warned. The Grim Reaper, too.

  “We’re done here,” I told the book. “If it were up to me, I’d take you apart, but that’s not my decision to make.”

  “I’m lost,” Blair said from behind me, as I closed the door. “The book was a decoy, but its owners weren’t supposed to die. I get that much, but how do these rogue vampires fit into it?”

  “Honestly, Mr Spencer is the one who confuses me the most,” I admitted. “Why did he call the library? Because he got cold feet and decided to warn me?” And he’d died. Right in the middle of that conversation. I groaned and pressed my hands to my eyes. “What a week.”

  Blair cleared her throat. “It’s not just the book stressing you out, is it? Do you want to talk about it?”

  I lowered my hands. “Let’s just say I made the Grim Reaper very mad.”

  Her eyes rounded. “You mean the Grim Reaper? That’s a thing?”

  “You didn’t know?” Then she couldn’t judge me. “I’m sort of dating his apprentice. Well, I was, but it all went wrong. I led the Grim Reaper to believe there were rogue vampires after me so I could take his apprentice with me to investigate, and he wasn’t happy to find there weren’t any. I only have Mr Dreyer’s word for it, and he said he was half asleep when he saw a vampire from the window anyway.”

  “I’ll see if Nathan remembers anything else any of the guests said,” said Blair. “I have to go back to the hotel and pack, but let me know if you figure anything else out, okay?”

  “Sure.” I stepped back when something furred brushed my legs. Blair’s cat followed after her, though I was sure I hadn’t seen him come in. That’s familiars for you. I hadn’t seen Jet in a while, but he’d been avoiding the book, no doubt. At least we’d have it off our hands soon, if nothing else.

  I paced back to the front desk. Because I wasn’t looking where I was going, I didn’t see the trapdoor until I fell into it. Tumbling headfirst into darkness, I landed face-down on a mattress, groaning.

  “Ow!”

  I groaned and sat up. That hadn’t happened for a while. The trapdoor didn’t seem to stay in one specific location on the ground floor, but Cass had made a habit of pranking me with it when I’d first come to the library.

  The only thing the small room contained was a coffin, in which a vampire slept. Pale and dark-haired, the vampire lay still enough to seem dead, yet still alive. I stared at him for an instant, my mind starting to connect the dots.

  There were no rogues, no vampire hunters… and only one possible explanation.

  I pulled out my Biblio-Witch Inventory and levitated myself out of the trapdoor, landing on the edge.

  “Did you fall in there again
?” said Cass. “I thought you were supposed to be hunting a vampire. How can you do that when you freak out every time you see one?”

  “That’s not why.” I closed the trapdoor on the vampire. “I didn’t think… but it’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  “You’re not making sense,” said Cass. “What’s the problem? What did that damned book do now?”

  I sucked in a breath. “I need to call Edwin.”

  And then? I’d need to have a chat with the Grim Reaper, and hope that this time, I didn’t push him over the edge.

  14

  After I’d finished speaking to Edwin, I hung up the phone. Then I left the library and walked through the square, heading for the uphill slope leading towards the church where the vampires lived, and the nearby cemetery which was home to the local Reapers.

  On the left-hand side of the road, shadowy gravestones loomed from the darkness, and a cold breeze drifted over the rusty iron gate. I opened it, holding my breath when it creaked, then slipped inside. The cemetery was shrouded in darkness even in daylight, and the sun didn’t seem to touch it at all. Reapers didn’t need to be able to see to do their jobs, but it didn’t fit Xavier’s personality one bit.

  I edged through the darkness towards a building hunched at the back of the cemetery. I’d expected the Grim Reaper to live somewhere fancier, but the plain brick house was modest compared to the vampires’ church. Dark curtains filled all the windows, making the place look even gloomier. I reached for the old-fashioned door knocker, which looked like it would make enough noise to wake the dead—hopefully not in a literal sense.

  “There’s no need,” said a cold voice at my shoulder. “My apprentice won’t hear you.”

  My insides turned to ice. I turned on the spot to face the figure who’d crept up behind me, a blot of darkness against the already shadowy cemetery.

  “It’s not him I’m here to see.” My heart thumped too hard, too fast, but I managed not to bolt for it and jump over the fence. Instead, I looked the Grim Reaper in the eyes—or where his eyes should be, anyway.