Turpin regarded Oliver with a thoughtful frown for a long moment. “Dr. Barlow, do you know what my role is at the society?”
“Head librarian.” It felt like a trick question, and from the way Mr. Turpin stared at him expectantly, he was certain it was. “If you’re part of a committee or hold another title, I don’t know it, sir.”
“Let me ask the question a different way: what do you think my power is?”
Oliver had wondered that himself for years. There were times where Mr. Turpin felt and looked like a normal man, but then, there were those moments when the fabric of the world around him seemed to loosen and he became more.Like brushing against a leviathan in the dark, Oliver thought, remembering the moment when Mr. Turpin seemed to fall away and something massive stood in his place. Oliver couldn’t haveripped his attention away from him even if he wanted to, yet he hadn’t been afraid like he had been in the Dysterwood or in the desecrated cathedral. Turpin wasn’t monstrous, just strange. In the past, he had tried to puzzle out his power. He thought Mr. Turpin might be a sybil of some sort or that he was able to manipulate light and shadow. Other times, he wondered if he might even be able to read minds, though Oliver wasn’t sure people could actually do that. The problem was that people were born with one kind of magic, and while it could expand or shift a little with time and practice or trauma, it didn’t drastically change. From what he had seen of Turpin’s magic, Oliver couldn’t neatly fit it into one power.
“I’m… I’m not sure what your powers are.” Chewing his lip, Oliver hesitated but asked in barely a whisper, “Are you not fully human?”
Mr. Turpin released a laugh closer to a bull’s snort. “You’re closer to the truth than you think, my boy, but no, I am human. I am an anchorite for the Paranormal Society. Have you heard of them before?” When Oliver shook his head, Turpin added, “An anchorite stabilizes the magic that flows through the society. There are two of us: me and Mrs. Katherine Van Husen. Have you met her?”
“I don’t think so, but Felipe spoke to her on All Hallows’ Eve.”
“So she told me.” A look crossed the head librarian’s features that Oliver couldn’t quite parse before he said, “Do you remember the story of how the Paranormal Society began?”
Oliver blinked at the sudden shift. His head still buzzed with ideas of how being an anchorite worked and how it related to the magic that held the society together. Oliver had always wondered how his rooms in the lab and library appeared, but he couldn’t manage to see the connection to Turpin or Mrs. Van Husen when he never told them what he needed. The roomsjust appeared when he needed them. Turpin gave him a raised brow and a look that made Oliver feel like a student who hadn’t studied for an exam. The head librarian’s questioning was trying to gently lead him somewhere, but whatever that path was, Oliver couldn’t see it. Or didn’t want to see it, a little voice in the back of his mind said.
“It began with the Dutch, sir. They built the first meeting house for people like us when New York was still New Amsterdam, and the location moved several times before they finally settled here.”
Mr. Turpin nodded. “Glad to see you still remember that part of the tour after how many years. The people who founded what would become the Paranormal Society arrived in New Amsterdam after fleeing the witch trials in the Netherlands. They looked for people like them and quickly found that those fleeing their homeland were searching for the same kinship. Soon, they added Jewish members, then English, German, and people of every stripe until the meeting house grew into the Society for Unusual Friends,” Turpin said, his voice and eyes going slightly distant as if reciting a storybook from memory. “Along with new members came new threats from those who longed to purge the world of magic. The only way to destroy the magic was to destroy the people and their kinship, so the members of the society tapped into the magic burbling through the water and bedrock of Manhattan and pulled it over the building like a blanket to protect those who lived within its walls.
“What they didn’t realize was that once they opened the channel, the magic never stopped flowing. It was unwieldy and unpredictable, and the founders realized they needed someone to act as a conduit, or an anchor, if you will, to stabilize the magic. They ultimately picked Jacob Pietersen as the first anchorite for what would become the society. He was still young and strong but well-versed on channeling magic. Moreimportantly, he had no family relying on him, in case things went wrong. From then on, Jacob stayed within the building, sitting like a brood hen on the magical fissure that fed and nurtured the society. What no one realized was that over time you become one with the magic. You can’t change it, but it changes you. And you, in turn, change the world around you for better or worse. Jacob Pietersen took the Society for Unusual Friends from a simple meeting house to a place where magical people could learn and live. Over many years, he added room after room, not with lumber or nails but with ideas and magic. He brought forth dormitories, a theater for lectures, and a library like the one he had seen in Oxford years before he became rooted in place. Jacob once told me he had expected to be the anchorite for maybe twenty or thirty years, however long it took before his body was too weak to withstand the strain of the magic coursing through him. Instead, he lived to be over a hundred and thirty before he decided to pick two anchorites to share the burden of creating and nurturing the society. He knew it would mean his eventual death when he fully shed the magic and the years caught up with him, but he was confident Mrs. Van Husen and I could usher the society into a new age.”
Oliver froze as his pulse rushed in his ears. The math didn’t add up. He stared into Turpin’s careworn face in hopes he could find some sign of lying or jest, but there was nothing. The head librarian wasn’t delusional; he was one of the most practical and rational people at the society, but Oliver still couldn’t rationalize what he was hearing. People didn’t live that long. There was no wayMr. Turpincould live that long. It didn’t make sense. Then again, the dead weren’t supposed to come back to life or live normally like Felipe, yet he did.
“I’m nearly a hundred and fifty,” Turpin said, his voice suddenly weary. “Katherine is only a handful of years behind me, but our time as the anchorites is coming to an end.”
Oliver’s chest tightened, and the word left his lips before he could stop himself. “No.”
“No, what, Dr. Barlow? No, we can’t be so old, or no, we can’t stop being anchorites?”
Oliver opened his mouth but no sound came out.Both. The natural order said people could not live that long, especially not someone like Turpin who looked like he was in his late sixties, but magic was not the natural order even if it followed its own rules. Then again, there had been plenty of times when Turpin hadn’t felt like he was part of that order. In the special collections, he felt closer to the Lady of the Dysterwood or his mother than he did a man, though Oliver couldn’t smell his magic like he did theirs. While Oliver knew nothing of what an anchorite truly was or what their powers were beyond what Turpin had said, he knew death. Oliver’s pulse hammered in his temples at the thought. If what Turpin said was true, it didn’t matter if he had been near immortal because stepping down meant Mr. Turpin and Mrs. Van Husen would die. Was that why he asked him there? To tell him he was dying?
Tears burned the backs of Oliver’s eyes despite himself. He didn’t want that to happen. The man could be stern, but he was one of the few people at the society who knew Oliver for who he truly was and never treated him differently because of it. Mr. Turpin had given him advice, kept his secrets, and regularly visited him when he was recovering from being stabbed; he was his friend. Oliver logically knew that one day Mr. Turpin would die, but he always hoped it would be in the distant future, peacefully in his sleep. He didn’t want it to happen, and he especially didn’t want to know when it was coming. When Oliver stifled a rough breath, Turpin leaned forward and gave his knee a solid pat.
“I have been an anchorite since 1789. It’s time for someone else to have a turn. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of magicalbeings who lived unnaturally long lives. There is some truth to it, even if many of the tales are greatly exaggerated. In our case, the constant flow of magic through our bodies slows down aging and staves off death. It has to, or else it would kill us. The problem with such a prolonged life is that at some point, things start to slip. You find you’re not quite as solid as you used to be or that your humanity is a transient thing, and once you start feeling halfway between magic and man, it’s time to think about stepping down. I am hitting that point, my boy.”
“Are you… are you going to die soon?”
“God willing, no.”
Oliver let out a tight breath. “Good.”
“With Jacob, it took several years for him to pass once he started transferring the magic to us. Mrs. Van Husen and I are hoping that we can have our heirs chosen soon as we would like to begin the process of handing over the Paranormal Society’s magic to them in time for the new century in two years. Jacob gave us time to get our affairs in order, and we would like to do the same if we can help it.” Holding Oliver’s gaze, Turpin said softly, “That is why I asked you here, Dr. Barlow. We would like you to be one of the anchorites.”
“Me? You wantmeto be an anchorite?” Oliver cried, his voice rising an octave. “No, I can’t. I’m not—”
“You are. Mrs. Van Husen and I were picked by our predecessor because we were scholars of magic with strong powers and stronger wills. That was a mistake on his part. Mrs. Van Husen was widowed young, and I was a lifelong and rather reclusive, bachelor. Neither one of us was equipped to care for a growing community filled with people who were nothing like us. We were both too prideful to seek counsel from others and too stuck in our ways, and we blundered on that way for far too long. Looking back, we wasted so many years where the society could have flourished getting in our own way and hurting the peoplewho needed our help most. We eventually figured it out and got things back on track, but we vowed that we would pick two people who wouldn’t make the same mistakes we did. Magic and mental fortitude are important, yes, but the right temperament can make all the difference.”
“And you thinkIhave the right temperament?” Oliver scoffed. “I can’t be in the same room with more than four people for more than half an hour without wanting to claw out of my skin. You saw what a mess I was on All Hallows’ Eve.”
“That isn’t nearly as important as you think. What is important is that you take direction and criticism well, but you aren’t willing to change course for a fleeting fancy or go against your principles. You have a strong sense of who you are, but you aren’t prideful, not in that way. More importantly, you help others and serve them without thinking you are above them just because you’re a doctor or a man.”
“That’s just common decency! That’s like saying you would pick me because I keep my apartment tidy or rinse off my dishes before sending them to the kitchens. Is the bar truly so low?”
Mr. Turpin’s face tightened and his voice hardened as he replied, “One of my greatest regrets is not seeing everyone as my equal until it was too late. I made others miserable for years, and it is the biggest mistake of my tenure as anchorite. There isn’t a day that goes by that I do not regret what I have done. I do not wish that on our successors. Of course, there will be lessons you learn the hard way, but I hope they will be less consequential and that you will correct your actions far faster than I did. From what I have seen of you, I don’t doubt that to be true.”
“I— I still don’t think—”
