“Deal!” He giggled. “Now…” Ollie eyed the ghost kitten. “What should I name you?”
Looking at her light-gray coloring and stripes, he once again was leaning toward her possibly being a red tabby when she was alive, but it was hard to really know for sure because of the black and white. But it wasn’t like he needed to name her based on coloring anyway.
“I’m gonna name you…Pumpkin! Yes, Pumpkin, because I found you on Halloween!”
Red let out a super judgy, monotoneMeowas Pumpkin just blinked up at him.
“What?! It fits, and it’s a cute name! Besides, all that matters is that Pumpkin likes it.” He tickled the kitten as he gushed, “And you do, don’t you, Pumpkin? Yes, you do!”
Meow, the ghost kitten said happily as she tried to grab his hand with her paws.
Smiling brightly, he straightened up and moved to the bookcase labelled ‘Ghosts’, with literal scary ghosts carved into the edges. Like screaming faces pressed up against a sheet type of creepy.
“Now…onto the next task at hand. How to help that diner ghost… The main issue is that I don’t know how they died, and I don’t think I can purposely look at a Death Mark again without coming off as a weirdo…”
That and the fact he hadn’t managed to successfully do it again since that first time. And okay, so they still didn’t have a name for the woman, but that was mostly because he hadn’t had a chance to research yet… So, really, the main issue was the death part.
Ollie pursed his lips as he eyed the shelves. Most were bound in leather, all of various heights and thickness, but very few of the books had actual writing on the spines, and the ones that did were handwritten and very vague. Vague, as in, some just said ‘Ghost’, and more than a few were in other languages.
The fact was, while Ollie would love nothing more than to just sit down and read every book one by one, that wasn’t the best use of his time… Not to mention, he didn’t actually have the spare time to do that—as Ollie still needed to run the library and all that.
“The question is, what book will help me do what I need to…” Ollie trailed off, blinking when a dark-green leather-bound book on the fourth shelf began to glow. “Well, that’s helpful,” he said with a laugh of disbelief as he pulled it free. The glow disappeared as soon as he did.
Taking a seat at the table, he was about to open it when he quickly set the book down with a gasp. “I need to wash my hands!”
Red scoffed. “Ollie, these books are preserved by magic. The little oil on your hands won’t harm them.”
He hesitated for a moment, before carefully flipping open the cover. He found a handwritten title page in cursive, which simply said:‘Visions of Ghosts, guide written and illustrated by Ashton Garmond’.
Turning the page, he found a table of contents and, based on some of the wording in the chapter titles, he was assuming it was late Middle English, possibly from the late 1400s. While the pages certainly showed their age with their yellowed coloring, to the touch, they felt nowhere near as brittle as they should. In fact, they felt quite pristine and sturdy, which really reinforced how well whatever magic had been cast on them was working, while easing some of his worries about damaging them just by touching them with his not-recently-washed hands.
He was sure the rest of the book would likely be helpful at some point in the future, but based on the chapter titles alone, Ollie flipped ahead to chapter twelve, as it was titled‘Death Marks’. As he flipped through, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the hand-drawn illustrations.
On reaching the correct chapter, he started to skim through it. A lot of it was what he had first been told about death marks. But the book did have some illustrations showing what internal marks would look like on the skin, along with a few gruesome external ones that he didn’t think were really necessary. There was also more detail about the marks themselves, and it clearly stated that to see a mark, one had to view it in the reflection of something else. Followed by an emphasis on just how difficult they could be to see, even for skilled Death Callers…
Ollie skimmed a bit more, stopping with a thrill of excitement when he came across a subsection titled‘Death Mark Mirror’. He started to read aloud, pausing briefly to paraphrase as he went, as it helped him better interpret Middle English. “‘Death Mark Mirrors, an arcane object…that allows a Death Caller to…view a spirit’s Death Mark…without exerting effort. Creation steps’—which there are only two of—‘First, get a mirror and…a handful of sand. Second, sprinkle the sand on top of the mirror…chanting the following…’” Ollie trailed off, as he was hesitant to read the actual verbal spell part out loud.
He eyed the spell before looking at the drawing that was to the right of the steps. Drawn on the page was a circular mirror with a rather thick frame, which had, what he thought must be, Lichtenberg lines carved into the wood.
Ollie stared at it for a moment more before frowning and looking down at Red. “Would my grimoire happen to have this information inside it already?”
“While grimoires do often hold more knowledge than their witch may have, they are still limited. And what’s inside tends to be more basic knowledge, rather than advanced.”
“So, it’s up to me to grow it?”
“Pretty much.”
Ollie eyed the instructions again. “It doesn’t seem too difficult to make. Just need a mirror and some sand. Not sure if the size or shape matters, as they aren’t specific, but I assume a pocket-sized one would be best, as it’s easier to carry.”
Red jumped onto the table, and looked down at the book. “See those droplet marks underneath the name?”
Ollie’s brow rose as he glanced at the droplet-like marks—well, droplets if the drops spiraled a tiny bit at their tips—that he had assumed were just page ornaments when he had noticed them while randomly flipping through. “Yes?”
“It’s the spell’s difficulty ranking.”
Well, that explained why the number of them seemed to change. “What does seven mean?”
“Well, as the system usually goes from one to thirteen, with thirteen being the highest difficulty and one being the lowest, anything above a six is considered advanced magic. But…” The familiar tsked, before drawling, “I mean…considering what you have managed so far, I suppose all you can do is give it a try?”
