They continued on the path, letting the library guide them when they lost her trail. It led them to an area in the far back near to the whispering sound.
“I don’t think that’s Loegrian,” said Keir. “I can make out some of the words now, but it doesn’t sound like any language I know.”
The trail through the books on the ground seemed to lead to a door, but the library was dropping books nearer to the whispers. “What do you think?” asked Alison. “Left or right?”
Keir picked up one of the books the library had just dropped. “Grimoires of Turtle Island: A Collector’s Guide.These are magic books.Codex Voynich. The Principles of Elvish Spellwork.”
Alison lifted her candle in that direction. “There’s a possibility that whatever you encountered in that office could have gotten to the library.”
“I don’t feel it here. Do you?”
“No,” said Alison. The whispers didn’t sound angry, but Alison had some sort of innate distrust of talking inanimate objects that was hard to shake. She sighed. “I guess we better see where it leads.”
The answer was an ordinary bookshelf. It contained more whispering magic tomes—Mystical Properties of Gemstones, Ritual Sacrifice in Antiquity,and a book that seemed to be vibrating on the shelf.
“On the Study of Portals and Doorways—portals?” asked Alison. She tugged on the book, but she felt resistance.
It wasn’t a book. It was a handle.
She heard the click of a switch, and the bookshelf swung open, revealing a hidden passage.
“Whoa,” said Alison. “Do you think she went this way?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Keir, leading her inside.
Chapter Fifteen
THE CURSED CHILD
Idris
The door to the storage closet was unlocked but not by magic.
The lock had been clumsily picked, likely with a screwdriver and a hairpin, judging by the scratches.
“Idiot,” muttered Idris. He was thinking of himself as much as Leo.
He had been hard on Leo, but he had done it as much for Leo’s own safety as for everyone else’s. Curses were dangerous and often unpredictable, and the fact that Leo lacked the ability to sense the inherent danger meant he shouldn’t be trusted with his “enchanted” objects.
But Idris, having seen Leo’s dedication to his research, should have done a better job of locking them up. Things had just been so busy at the start of the term. The demand for his courses had far exceeded his expectations, and frankly he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to manage without some help. He had hoped that his intimidation, clumsy though it was, would have been enough to deter Leo at least long enough for him to get a handle on the job he was brought here to do.
Of course, there was another possibility. It was a stone he didn’t want to unturn, but with Ceri nowhere to befound, he couldn’t afford to ignore alternatives, no matter how improbable.
There were some curses that had a way of corrupting the mind. Idris hadn’t had a chance to study the objects Leo had collected, but it was very possible that one of them was cursed with something that could have overtaken his conscious will. He may have had no choice but to steal it back.
This was a far more dangerous notion. A curse like that could push him far past the threshold of what he was normally capable of. It could force him to remove any obstacle in his path.
Any obstacle, including one petite dragon princess with a taste for trouble.
The storage room had clearly been disturbed. Several cases had been picked or broken open, all of them with items missing. All of the objects he’d collected from Leo—the lighter, the dagger, the locket, the doll, and even the horn, which was the only object that Idris couldn’t immediately identify as cursed—were gone, as were two other items: an exceptionally old watch, with a curse Idris hadn’t yet identified, and a sapphire ring, which had the power to turn nightmares real.
“Godsdammit,” said Idris when he realized the ring was gone.
The ring was a particularly nasty piece of work. He was grateful that he had discovered its ability by showing up to class one day in his underwear rather than through any of the far worse things that could have happened.
Idris needed to get that ring back before Leo or Ceri fell asleep. Or sooner. In combination with the other objects, it could have done anything to anyone.
That was the other thing about curses: they liked to work together. A nightmare ring on its own was only as dangerous as the dreamer’s worst nightmares. Most dreamers tended to wake up before actually dying, so the ring only did its worst in rare cases. But in combination with something else, even somethingrelatively benign like a spoon that made you eat after you were full, the results could be disastrous. The ring could make you eat something horrific: a pie made from a beloved child, or that awful porridge they served in the dining hall, and the spoon would force you to keep eating it until you no longer could.
