Antebellum Awakening (32 page)

“I have a few questions I’d like to ask,” I said, my voice sounding small despite my attempt to project it. She sized me up, her eyes narrowing.

“What kind of questions?” she asked, drumming the tops of her fingers on the counter.

“About your customers.”

She sucked on her front teeth, then gave a bored shrug.

“Sure. For a pentacle or two.”

Although I had a few coins and no plans to use them for anything else, it annoyed me to give them to her. But I needed her to talk. I pulled three pentacles out of the pocket of my olive green dress and held them up for her to see. She straightened, suddenly invested in the conversation, and extended her palm.

“One for security,” she drawled, her voice taking on a nasally intonation. “My name is Dahlia, by the way. What’s yours?”

I tossed her the coin.

“Doesn’t matter. Has a woman named Mabel come in recently? She has blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s very beautiful.”

Dahlia rolled her eyes around in thought.

“I have a lot of witches with blonde hair come in,” she finally said.

“Sure,” I said. “But are they all so beautiful it almost makes your eyes hurt?”

And do they all have enough evil power to incinerate you into ashes?

Dahlia stewed on it again. “Ya. I’ve seen her several times. Not for a few months now, mind ya.”

“Does she come in with anyone?”

“No.”

“Does she sit alone?”

Dahlia puffed out her cheeks while she thought the question over.

“No. Another witch always comes and meets up with her. Sometimes the other lady comes first, but not often.”

I tried to keep my heart from racing with excitement but failed. My thoughts flickered back to the woman I’d heard Miss Mabel talking to in the West. Could it be the same witch?

“Oh?” I asked evenly. I must not have done a very good job hiding my enthusiasm because Dahlia lifted one eyebrow and held out her hand, twiddling her fingers in expectation. I flipped her another pentacle.

“They sit in that booth.” She motioned to the back with a jerk of her head. “Neither of them take any food or drink, but they always leave a few sacrans behind so I don’t mind letting them in.”

“How often do they come?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Couple times a year, sometimes less. For a while they came once a month, and then it slowed down again.”

“Have they been coming here a long time?”

“Years now. Ever since I started working here.”

“What does the other witch look like?”

“Dunno. She keeps her hood on. I’ve never actually looked her in the eye. All I can tell ya is that the woman has black hair and a figure I’d kill someone for. Nice hourglass shape and everything.”

My heart hammered a little bit faster. What was it Miss Celia had said?
Angelina looked just like May. Black hair, curvy figure, and eyes that could cut.
Was Miss Mabel working with her mother? It shouldn’t have been a surprise.

“What did they talk about?” I asked.

“I may have heard a thing or two,” she said, jingling the coins in her hand and raising her eyebrows. I set the last pentacle down on the counter. She snatched it and all three disappeared, vanishing into thin air.

“Like what?”

“From what I remember, they talked about a book.”

My expression must have betrayed my confusion because she shrugged. Her eyes narrowed.

“Doesn’t make sense ta me either, sweetie, but that’s what they talked about. I heard a few snippets now and then, but not much. Best I can tell ya is that they’re looking for a book.” Dahlia gave a little shudder. “And let me tell ya, both of them give me the creeps. I don’t care how pretty they are. Something isn’t right about them.”

“Do they ever talk about dark magic?” I asked, breathless now. Dahlia’s eyes showed true trouble for the first time.

“Ya. Once or twice. Mostly just historical stuff, ya know. Speculation over the Almorrans, that one nasty High Priestess . . . what’s her name, Evelyn? Oh, and dragons. Stuff like that. Between ya and me,” she said, leaning in closer, her eyes darting around and her breath engulfing my face in a blast of what smelled like pickles. “I swear I saw a dragon over the castle the other day. No one believes me, but I know what I saw. Bad times are coming.”

“Is that all?” I asked impatiently. “Nothing else?”

“Ya!” she cried, recoiling as if I’d burned her. “Look, it’s not my business what they want ta talk about. They pay, I’m happy. Although I’m happier when they leave. Got it?”

Sensing that she didn’t have any more information to give—and I was out of pentacles anyway—I ended the conversation. Dahlia had told me more than she could have possibly known.

Almorrans, Evelyn, dragons.

“Thank you, Dahlia,” I said. She waved me off with another twiddle of her fingers and I left the close little pub, grateful to get out of the dark corners and the overpowering smell of vinegar.

My thoughts whirled as I walked back to Chatham Castle under a cloaking incantation. Once I made it to Letum Wood, I found a familiar trail and jogged back to the Forgotten Gardens. The distance helped me work out some of my frustration and think clearly. The conclusion I came to was so dark, so frightening, I didn’t entertain it for long. I allowed it only in manageable blips and snatches, worried it would ignite my soul and consume me in Miss Mabel’s—and Angelina’s—evil.

I’d hear them talk about a book from time to time.

Instead of going to the Witchery, I headed to the library.

Book of Spells

“C
an you keep a secret?”

Leda’s lips twitched: I’d interrupted her studies. She didn’t move from her hunched-over position at the long table.

“What is it about?” she asked with a long-suffering sigh.

“I need help,” I said. “You’re the first witch I came to.”

“Yes, you do need help,” she agreed, looked down at her book and mumbling, “more than I can give.”

“I need help finding a book,” I said. “Or, at least, a book about a book.”

“You want me to help you find a book about a book?” she repeated in disbelief, her eyes cutting into me with a look that said,
You’re joking, right?

“Yes, and I won’t go away until you help me.”

She considered that with a glower. I was nothing if not determined. Perhaps she was using the chance to look into the future and see that I was being honest: I wouldn’t leave until she helped me.

“Fine,” she muttered, closing
Witches of the East
and folding her arms across her chest. “You have fifteen minutes.”

“It’s a history book,” I explained. Time was ticking, and Leda would hold me to the minute. “An ancient history book.”

“As ancient as the Mortal wars?”

“Yes! But maybe a little before that.”

Her pale brow wrinkled over her eyes.

“Before the Mortal Wars?” she asked in disbelief. “Bianca, there’s almost no information that predates the Mortal Wars. It was all destroyed. Remember?”

I rolled my eyes. “Right, but there has to be something.”

Leda shook her head.

“Not here in the Central Network. We have some old scrolls, but not many. Almost all the Almorran books were burned.”

Her words made my heart catch.
Almost all.

“Can you show me what we do have?”

Leda glanced around. “Fine,” she whispered, leaning in close. “But you have to follow me without question and don’t make a sound. I’m not supposed to know where they are. If the librarians catch us they’ll ban me from coming back to the library at all, and I’ll make your life a nightmare. Understand? A nightmare.”

“Agreed.”

Leda stood up, pushed away from the table, and started toward the far corner of the library without another word. She wound through several rows of bookshelves, leading me into a back area I’d never seen before. Once there, she glanced over her shoulder, reassured herself that no librarian had followed us, and whispered an incantation in front of a bookshelf of old scrolls labeled
Findings from the Southern Covens
. The shelf swung toward us with a low groan and Leda waved me inside ahead of her.

We stepped into a room beneath the grand stairs. The sloped stone ceiling gradually slanted upwards. A few beams of sun spilled into the room from a high window, illuminating the walls with dusty light. Bookshelves were cut and chiseled into the walls themselves. Leda strode into the gray room without hesitation, ducking when she turned a corner. I wondered how many times she’d been there before.

“How did you find out about this place?” I asked, running my fingers along the chilly walls as I followed behind.

“I made friends with one of the librarians, Rachael. She showed it to me. Don’t tell anyone!” she hissed, shooting me another glare. “They’ll banish me from the library.”

“Relax,” I muttered. “I’m not going to tell anybody your secret. The last thing I want is you sulking around without any place to go but the Witchery.”

“Over here,” she said, gesturing with a jerk of her head to a lonely bookshelf against the far wall, swathed in shadows. She pulled a wooden chest off the bottom shelf. “The oldest records that the Central Network has are here. They are mostly first-hand accounts of the Mortal Wars. Rachael told me that the High Priestess has Esmelda’s journal.”

My eyes popped open. “Esmelda’s journal? Really?”

Leda nodded.

“That’s what Rachael said. I don’t know if it’s true or not.” She grabbed the lid and pulled it open. It protested with an ominous groan. Dozens of scrolls tied with twine or leather strips awaited inside.

“No books,” I observed, my hope sinking.

Leda shook her head. “I told you we didn’t have any. Besides, they used mostly scrolls back then. The magic and culture were different back around the Mortal wars. It was a rougher, less precise magic. They used it for big things, not little ones.”

Probably more powerful that way,
I thought of saying, my mind slipping to Michelle’s reluctance to use magic for anything but what was necessary.

I knelt in front of the chest and pulled a scroll out. Miss Mabel had me learn several of the ancient languages while earning one of the marks in my circlus, the Esbat. I’d studied Almorran and Declan, two secret languages that few people inside or outside our Network ever cared to learn. It wasn’t until now that I realized how strange it was that the Almorran language was even a part of the Esbat curriculum. Why would they want us to learn the language of a race destroyed because of inherent evil?

“Are any of these scrolls written in Almorran?” I asked.

Leda’s face clouded over.

“Perhaps. Mostly Declan, I think. In addition to the common tongue that we speak now, Esmelda and her people spoke Declan. The Almorrans used their own language, of course. What book are you looking for again?”

Her eyes had taken on a suspicious glint.

“I’m looking for a book about a book,” I corrected, shuffling through the scrolls, avoiding her studious eyes. Surely there had to be some information in the aged papers. “It’s an Almorran book.”

Leda bit her bottom lip. “Are you sure it’s not a scroll?”

I recalled the conversation between Miss Mabel and the mystery woman in the Western Network. It was hard to know what I was working with. Really, I sought a legend, a tale conjured in the darkest night meant to scare children. But I couldn’t be sure anymore that reality wasn’t just an extension of what I once thought was fantasy.

Honestly, how difficult can it be to find a book?

“I’m sure.”

One particularly ragged scroll stuck out. I grabbed the thin paper and unrolled it while Leda shifted on her feet and dazed out into one of her visions. The paper of the scroll was brittle. It had been curled so long I had a difficult time holding it open without shattering it. The ink had faded, but I could just make out a few words in Almorran.

“It’s a letter,” I said. Leda shook her head, snapping out of her vision. She stood up.

“I have to go,” she said. “Come on. We need to leave.”

“No!” I cried too loudly and lowered my voice. “I can’t go yet. I just found a scroll that may help.”

“I have an appointment I can’t be late for,” Leda said.

“I’ll stay without you. I promise I’ll be quiet and leave soon. Please, Leda?”

She hesitated, one foot already headed toward the doorway.

“What are you going to say if a librarian finds you in here?”

“I’ll tell them that I overheard the incantation from a different librarian. I’ll be fast, I promise. I just want to look through these scrolls.”

“Fine,” she muttered, one finger raised in warning. “Make it fast.”

She cast one last look at me over her shoulder, then left by the entrance we’d come in through. It whispered shut behind her and I dove into the tattered scrolls with earnest. Most of them were letters. Fathers to sons. A witch to a mortal, warning of a raid on his village. A few lovers. Two of the scrolls were notes from a meeting with Coven Leaders. I couldn’t read at least five of them. Time and humidity had taken their final toll, blurring out the words entirely. The pile of unreadable scrolls grew, as did the pile of scrolls that didn’t help me at all. It wasn’t until I unfurled the second to last scroll that I found a clue, a little note hidden in a line of a letter from an Almorran witch to his wife.