She looks at me like I’m stupid. I fear I might be, because I’m utterly confused. How did she even think to bring that with us?
‘Of course not. There’s vials upon vials of it beneath the infirmary though. Anyway, I was reading a book the other day on enchantments and started to think that surely if this place is as secret as Xavier says it is, Bartollo must have placed his own enchantment on it to keep people out. According to the book, blood is the most common component used to bind enchantments. So, I stole two vials before the ceremony tonight, just in case.’
‘I don’t know how I thought I could do this on my own,’ I marvel, ‘because you’rebrilliant.’
‘I know.’ She winks. ‘Now, where do we start, because we’re running out of time.’
I spin on my heels and take a look around the room that stretches on for a dozen or more feet. It’s longer than it is wide, with narrow shelveslining the middle of the room. The wood looks old, ancient even, with dust settled on every surface I see as I tentatively start to walk deeper into the space. I can taste the dust in the air, smell the scent of old parchment that’s been sitting here for possibly hundreds of years.
‘I don’t think we should split too far from each other. If you go down the first row, I’ll go down the second. That way we can still see each other through the shelves.’
‘That sounds—’ Tilly’s words are cut off as her entire body goes stiff, her mouth gaping open, her head tipping back to reveal the column of her throat. I watch her eyes roll into the back of her head and hear a deep guttural groan that reverberates in her chest.
‘Tilly!’ I gasp, jumping into motion. My hands grab at her cheeks. I attempt to pull her head back down to face me but it’s like trying to move a statue. She’s so stiff … it’s terrifying.
Another groan rips its way out of her; she sounds like she’s in pain.
‘Tilly?’ I squeeze her arms to see if she’ll react, but she doesn’t. ‘Are you okay? Tilly! What the fuck is happening?’ I cry, scared and afraid. Is it the blood? Oh my god, what if it’s the blood? Or is it one of the crones? Are they doing something to her?
I’m reaching for the hand that she smeared the blood on when a loud gasp tears itself from her lungs jolting her forward into me, and I wrap her in my arms instead.
‘Black … book …’ She breathes heavily by my ear. ‘You’re … looking for a black book.’ Another breath. ‘With the wordsMortes Nex Magiaon the spine.’
My chest shudders in relief upon hearing her voice, especially when she pulls back and I see her eyes have returned to their usual warm hazel brown. ‘What in the Stars was that? You scared me. I thought you were poisoned!’
‘Not poisoned, just – Stars, that hasn’t happened to me in a long time.’ She shakes her head as if she’s waking from a bad dream and trying to come back down to reality. ‘I saw something though. You were holding a book. I saw the cover as I watched you open it. But Aria’ – her eyesstart to shimmer – ‘whatever you read inside of it, it isn’t good. I could feel it.’ She taps her chest, right over her heart. ‘Right here.’
I nod. ‘It’s okay,’ I say, steeling my voice as I fist my hands at my sides, forcing them to not shake. ‘I’m prepared for the worst at this point. I’m just glad you’re with me.’
‘So am I.’
With one last emotion-filled look, we head down our separate aisles and begin our hunt.
FIFTY-TWO
I’m in the fourth aisle, scanning shelves as quickly as I can as I know we’re running out of time before everyone will go to start the real Imber Stellarum celebration. The party. The towers will slowly start to fill with students and faculty again, making it more difficult for us to get out. I’m about to tell Tilly that I can’t bloody find this black leather-bound book, when I spot a shelf that has clearly been disturbed recently. Enough for the dust to have streaks through it that look eerily similar to fingers.
The black book resting atop the shelf sits alone. It’s on its side, with the end pages facing me. I feel something inside of me curl up, as if it wants to hide from whatever might be within, and that is how I know, before I reach up and pluck it from the shelf, thatthisis the book I’m looking for.
Sure enough, etched into the cracked leather, are the wordsMortes Nex Magia.
I open my mouth to call for Tilly, to let her know I found it, but no sound comes out. Just a whisper of a breath as I sink to the floor and rest the thick tome on my knees. With shaking hands and a racing heart, I carefully open the book. My brows dip as I flick through dry pages that make a scratchy sound as they turn, because I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at.
There are pages and pages of names and dates. Dates that go back so far my eyes bulge, unable to comprehend how long ago these must have been written. That my fingers trace over ink that dried hundreds and hundreds of years ago, written by people long dead.
The earliest entry is around four hundred and fifty years ago. There are four names listed, and beside each of their names is a black mark. The next entry is sixty-five years later, again, four names, each with a black mark beside them. Sixty-five years again. Four names. Fifty-seven years, four names. Fifty-three … Forty-nine … thirty-nine … I flip another page and scroll as the time stamps shorten until I get to the second to last entry.
It was less than twenty years ago and the names – in particular thesurnames, they’re familiar for some reason. I flip to the last page, the last entry in the book and my blood runs cold. My hands start to shake so badly that the fluid script written on the page starts to blur. It isn’t until a fat tear drop hits the bottom corner of the page that I realise I’m crying.
The last and final entry was written several months ago.
The names beside it …
Regina Abbott. Black mark.
Daymon Davis. Black mark.
Luca Finch. Black mark.
