Her heart continued its quick pace, but for another reason now. She bent to duck beneath his outstretched arm. Once she stood in front of him, he held the candle out from her chest.
“Devil’s…”
Books were stacked in the hall. Flat on their covers and nearly to the ceiling on either side. A slim walkway had been created between the stacks, and Lux couldn’t see where it led. She stepped amongst them, plucking the candle from Shaw’s fingers as she did.
The hallway was mustier and held far more dust; it didn’t have the fresh air pouring in from a broken window like the bedroom. Lux trailed the flame’s light along the cobwebbed spines.
“Who would have thought,” Shaw said, and when he lifted his eyes they were bright with triumph. In his hands, he held a book. “Brilliant Brushstrokes.”
Lux’s eyes widened. Both at his luck and over the state of the book. It looked as if it would fall apart in his grip. “I can’t believe you found it in all this mess.”
“I hardly can either, but it feels real enough.” He flipped it open, even though she was sure he couldn’t read it in the shadows. “No devils. No saints,” he said after a few moments.
“I’d guess none of these have them. They look as old as my alcove does.”
Did,her mind corrected. That alcove was destroyed now, a tree root through its heart. And all the books and pages were gone. In the end, she’d only been able to save one. And in her biased opinion, it had been the most valuable. Regardless, the loss still smarted.
“Devil below, there are two of them.” Shaw picked up a second volume ofBrilliant Brushstrokesfor her to see. But when he did, a tear sounded. Lux gritted her teeth as the cover pulled free.
The remainder of the book plunked to the ground.
He swore and scooped it up. “One is enough, I suppose.”
“I think the collectors would agree.” One manipulated volume, which was then multiplied by a cold, uniformed printing press. “This cannot be the vault…can it?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “This seems more discarded than protected.”
Lux pressed to Shaw’s side in order to see the wounded book for herself. He gave it up, and it fell open to its middle in her palm.
Thiswas how books were in her experience. Stained, wrinkled, torn, and with the unique script of whoever had written or replicated it. She couldn’t trace the page with her hands occupied, but she could imagine the feel. She placed it carefully back in the stack.
“They’re not collecting,” she said, staring down the darkened hall. “They’re stealing.”
“But not destroying. Why keep them at all, I wonder.”
“Corvin said the loss of any knowledge would be a travesty.”
“Yet they keep them piled in this place to grow mold and dust.”
Lux shrugged. She didn’t understand it either. The manor was certainly large enough. Could they really have hoarded so many books and manuscripts to require overflow into Grimrook House?
Maybe their vault is reserved for hoarding only silver things.
Maybe they didn’t care for books so much as they said.
“If you see a book of necromancy, grab that too,” she told him as she picked her way through the hallway again.
“You forget you have the only light.”
She yelped at his voice near her ear. He’d been well behind her just a moment ago. She swatted his arm, but he only smirked.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll find another.” He set the book of art upon a random stack. Then he veered off through a door.
Lux huffed at his departure. His old skill in purloining rich trinkets and jewelry was on full display tonight, but she couldn’t begrudge him any of it. In fact, she was jealous. The hidden ladder below her childhood home? The tunnel beneath the mayor’s mansion? The manor mirror that was also a door? All were found by accident. While she was somewhat stealthy, she hadn’t ever learned any skill in the art of details. She stillcouldn’t fathom how she’d found the latch into Mothlock’s underground.
Lux wasn’t surprised when Shaw returned with more than a mere candlestick, but an entire candelabra. All five tapers were lit, and him grinning from behind it. She blew hers out and tossed it to the ground.
“A necromancy book, you say?”
