Nat heaved a dramatic sigh. “If only you could magic family into being happy with your decisions.”
Emma only managed a small smile. “If only you could magic family into doing anything.”
Her only family had been her mother. Since everyone else related to Emma had made themselves conspicuously absent—whatever she said or did—it was hard not to wonder if it was something about her that pushed people away. Like her father. And his wife, whom she’d glimpsed only once, through the window of her father’s Porsche. Emma had just turned eleven, on one of those rare birthdays spent in England. They had been outside the Natural History Museum. Her father had stood on the pavement and tugged at the collar of his blazer, although it was custom-tailored and there wasn’t a single wrinkle in it, as he explained why he couldn’t spend the day with Emma, after all. He and Amal had had a call from their son’s housemaster. Adam had fallen from his horse at school. He was only bruised, and the matron was with him in the dormitory, but you know how it is. They both wouldn’t feel right until they’d driven up to Ludgrove and seen him. He knew Emma would understand. Emma, who had never met her half brother or been within touching distance of a boarding school, had nodded. Her father’s hug was brief, and scratchy from his stubble. The woman in the car had not turned to look. She was very beautiful, even in profile. She had snapped the overhead mirror back into place as though she had wanted to break it. As the Porsche drove away, Emma’s mother had held her hand tightly.
Emma never found out how Adam recovered. She wasn’t sure if he or his sister, Poppy, had even heard of her. She had hoped,one day, her father might ask her to meet them. A family dinner at his house in Hampstead. Or a holiday together, crushed into the Porsche on the way to Devon, all three siblings in the back, laughing at their dad’s music choices. But no invitation had come.
When her father had called to talk about choosing her degree, he’d sounded so pleased at the idea of her studying law, she’d thought he might come to the University to visit. But he’d never quite been able to make that work out either.
If there was a trick to winning over family, Emma had never learned it.
“Forget it.” Nat shook off his gloom. “Now, normally I pride myself on being a supremely and exclusively decorative being.” He struck a pose. Emma laughed, glad to see his mood lift. “But I have some real good to do in the world today, I see. Emma, we are going to get you to the Library. Has it not occurred to you it might be of some help in your fellowship project?”
“But—”
“No, don’t try it. The Library has everything. Probably histories of the river, or archive photos and such. Wouldn’t that be useful?”
Emma’s feet slowed to a halt. The flood. The archives might tell her if there had ever been another like it. Or other freak events, like frogs mating out of season. And if she could prove the anomalies in the ecosystem were new, it could be the base for her case on climate change…
“You’re going to see what happens when you actually crack a book. You may even discover how clever you are in the process.”
At that, Emma snorted.
“Clever,” Nat repeated, in a tone that brooked no argument.“For one thing, you scraped through your exams last year without, apparently, having read a single book. Secondly, you are friends with me, which bespeaks a level of intelligence beyond most mortals.”
So Emma stopped arguing. But she also elbowed Nat in the ribs for good measure.
CHAPTER 7
The Library was astonishing. Emma had never seen anything like it. Shelf upon shelf of books soared upward in dizzying towers. Walnut desks crouched below, with brass lamps hunched over them like gargoyles. The lamplight caught glints from gold-embossed spines, sank without a trace into leather bindings, slid over carvings in timeworn wood. Shadowy librarians flitted through the gaps between bookcases, silent as fish.
Yes, one librarian said, there were archive photographs of the river. But they had to be ordered a week in advance. Emma put in her request and headed for the exit. Three steps later, she groaned and tramped back. Her next land tort tutorial was in two days. Her tutor would fall over in shock if she actually came prepared. And the reading list he had pressed into her hand was still in her pocket.
It looked as though there was no avoiding it. Emma started for the law section.
She was still walking ten minutes later. The map in her hand had begun to seem like an elaborate joke. Emma wandered through painted galleries, shelves filled with scrolls, rooms whose occupantslooked up as though she was the first person they’d seen in a hundred years. The quiet was oppressive. Emma was considering retreating the way she’d come, when she spotted someone her age in the reading room ahead. A student with spiked hair and leather trousers sat cross-legged at the base of a bookcase, bent over the volume in her lap.
“Is the law section near here?”
The girl’s eyes widened, and she dropped her book. She leapt to her feet as Emma approached, and fled into the stacks.
“Wait—”
The shelves stretched into darkness, a catacomb of books. There was nowhere in those empty avenues the student could have hidden. Yet she had vanished. Emma stooped to pick up her fallen book.
A History of Magickal Bargains.
Prickles rose on the back of Emma’s neck. Nat might have enjoyed the weird and inexplicable, but she did not. Quickly, before the part of her that wanted to investigate could lure her into the shadowed stacks, Emma shoved the book onto the nearest shelf and forged on.
The map finally came into its own. The rooms in this wing were modern, the books on the shelves no longer leather-bound. But if the rest of the Library had been quiet, this was silent. One floor from her goal, she found a creaky metal cage was her only way up. The lift screamed through the silence. Exiting, Emma found herself in total darkness.
The diabolical architect of the building had apparently decided that windows were an unnecessary luxury for the second floor, and dispensed with them. Emma’s nerves did not appreciate thisdesign choice. But she stepped bravely forward. The light above her switched on with a few sharp chinking sounds.Like a teaspoon against bone,Emma thought, and then wished she hadn’t.
The room seemed to run the length of the building. Seemed, at least, because the lights only switched on for a few feet ahead of her. Melamine bookcases stretched to her left.
The receptionist had scribbled the shelf location code onto the map. The numbers on the bookcases almost matched it. She had only twelve more to go.
Behind her, the first light began to gently, silently wink off.
