“We use an electronic tagging system for most books in the shop, which I can read out on my phone,” she explains. “But it’s not good for older books like this, so we affix Braille instead. Ah, here you are. This book probably has what you need.”
Mina pulls a small, leatherbound volume from the shelf and sets it down on the plinth. My heart hammers in my chest as I carefully lift the cover?—
Ew.
I wince away at the grotesque image of a demon rampaging through a village, snapping people in its monstrous jaws.
“Will you be okay in here on your own?” Mina asks. “I should get back downstairs before a customer asks Heathcliff for a book to match their outfit and his head explodes. I have to lock you inside, because we can’t have just anyone wandering in here. But if you ring that bell over by the anthropodermic bibliopegy shelf, I’ll come up and unlock you.”
“What’s anthropodermic bibliopegy?”
“It’s probably better that you don’t know,” Mina says with a laugh. “Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And stay away from the books on that shelf under the window. They get a little bitey.”
“Wait, which shelf?—”
She’s gone, the door banging behind her.
As soon as we’re alone, Rafe leaps off my shoulder and stalks around the room, sniffing books and smooching the ones that smell agreeable.
I think I know what anthropodermic bibliopegy is. You donotwant to know.
I ignore him as I turn to the book in front of me. There are no indices in old books like these. The writers of grimoires expected a witch to simply hold the pages and feel the energy of the spell they require. I try it, closing my eyes and imagining Rafe’s mischievous smile, but when I turn to the page I’ve chosen, it’s for a love curse.
What’s that?Rafe leaps up beside me, peering at the rather explicit image of a witch copulating with a man tied to a tree. His whiskers twitch.Oh, that looks absolutely delicious.
“That spell won’t help you.” I quickly turn the pages, my cheeks burning. Rafe sits on the edge of the plinth, batting the pages as I turn them, until I come to a section about transfiguration curses.
“It says here that when a witch turns someone into an animal, it can be a metaphor,” I say.
I’m a metaphor for her being a lonely cat lady?
“Read for yourself.” I tap the page.
He jumps up on the table. Thankfully, I can listen to his thoughts as his tiny head scans the page.
‘The nature of the animal chosen reflects the crime the cursed party has committed against the witch. Killing the witch does not reverse this type of curse – the cursed party must undo the initial slight.’ Oooh, and there’s an example – a vizier in an Egyptian pharaoh’s court who was caught selling secrets to his enemies and was turned into a snake. He broke his curse by slithering across the desert into the enemy’s throne room to listen to their battle plans, then slithering back and drawing pictures with his body in the sand to tell the pharaoh where his enemy would attack. Ew. Count me out. I don’t do sand. I hate when it gets in between my toe beans.
I look at Rafe, who chews the edge of the book. “You were turned because you were caught thieving, which is selfish. I think to undo the curse, you have to perform a truly selfless act.”
I don’t know how to do selfless things,he says.I’m a cat.
“You were a man before you were a cat.”
Yes. Aselfishman. No one ever said, “Hire Rafe to steal orchids because he’s such a nice guy. It’s never going to happen, so either you find another way to break my curse, or you are stuck with me for the rest of your life. Does it offer any other alternatives?
I keep reading. “Yes. To curse you, Old Widow Hardcastle would have had to write down the curse in her grimoire. If we can find the grimoire page and destroy it, it should reverse the curse.”
That’s much easier.Rafe prances across the page.
“Except that we have no idea where her grimoire could be.”
It has to be hidden somewhere in the shop, right? Do you have a homing-pigeon spell for magical books?
I grin, remembering a spell Mum used to find her glasses. “Actually, yes, I think I do.”
XI
Celeste: Mina and I have been doing some investigating about Old Widow Hardcastle.
