Spellcasters (31 page)

When we stepped outside, the evening was already growing cool and Savannah, dressed in a midriff-baring T-shirt, decided to run back in for a sweater.

Once she was gone, I pointed at the bag. “You really use stuff like that?”

“I use whatever works.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound …”

“A lot of magical objects aren’t things I would otherwise choose to handle. It’s like magic. You can refuse to learn the stronger, more distasteful spells, or you can acknowledge that they may, under some circumstances, be necessary.”

“I know that. With the spells, I mean. But I’m …” I hesitated, then pushed on. “I’m having trouble with it. Getting my head around the idea that I might have to …”

“Do bad to do good?”

I managed a small smile. “Good way of putting it. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Killing someone to protect Savannah. I know it might come to that, but I’ve never … And what if I had to do more than disable an enemy? What if protecting her meant hurting an innocent bystander? I’m really …” I took a deep breath. “I really have trouble with it.”

“So do I.”

I looked up at him, but before I could say anything, Savannah burst through the door.

“All set?” I asked.

She nodded and off we went.

I spent the ten-minute walk to Margaret’s thinking about the grimoires. What bothered me most of all was the realization that if only Savannah had felt comfortable talking to me about her mother, we could have cleared this up months ago. Now that I’d finally been ready to listen, it might be too late.

I was still working through Savannah’s story. She said that the Coven-sanctioned spells were primary spells, which you had to master before you could progress to secondary spells. Only once you knew the secondary spells could you hope to successfully cast a tertiary spell, like the ones in my secret grimoires. I’d never heard of such a thing before.

Although Coven spells are divided into four levels, hypothetically, a witch could start at fourth level. It would be excruciatingly difficult, but not impossible. It’s like programming languages. They start you out with something easy, like C. You learn that, then move on to the higher languages like C++. That’s not to say you can’t jump straight into a higher-level language. People do it all the time. But, if you’ve mastered something like C, the learning curve on other languages decreases significantly. You understand concepts like data structures and functions, which can be ported into any language.

What Savannah said implied something altogether different. If I understood her correctly, every Coven witch spell was a primary spell, the bottom building block for witch magic. Yet that didn’t explain why I’d mastered four spells from the “tertiary” grimoires. Savannah said Eve hadn’t been able to make any work. Now, I’d love to believe that I’d mastered them due to my superior spell-casting abilities, but even I’m not that smug.

Eve had stolen the grimoires from Margaret. I’d … well, I’d pretty much done the same thing. The Coven maintains a library. The books are kept in a fortified closet in Margaret Levine’s house. With advance notice, witches may visit the collection. Some books may not leave the house. Others may be borrowed. To borrow one, you have to fill out a card and return the book within a week. I think the only reason the Elders haven’t instituted late fines is because I’m the only one who ever borrows anything.

Coven witches aren’t even permitted to step into the closet and peruse the collection. Margaret keeps a list posted inside the door, from which they must choose their books.

Three years ago, as I was pestering Margaret for a better reference book on herbs, someone knocked at the front door and she took off to answer it, leaving the library. It was like leaving a kid with an open closet full of candy. The moment she was gone, I was in that closet. I knew exactly what I wanted. The prohibited spellbooks.

So why was I returning to Margaret’s house now? Because I wanted answers. More than that, I had a hope, a slim hope, that Savannah was both right and wrong. That she was right about the existence of a grimoire
that would unlock the spells I now possessed, and that she was wrong in thinking the Coven had destroyed it.

We arrived at Margaret’s place, a two-story house on Beech. I opted for the rear door, both as a courtesy and so she couldn’t freak out about me showing up on her front doorstep for all of East Falls to see. Being the village pariah does make social calls most trying.

I persuaded Savannah to wait outside with Cortez. Savannah understood her great-aunt well enough to know that Margaret would speak more freely to me alone.

I rang the doorbell. A minute later, Margaret peeped through the curtain. It took another minute for her to decide to answer it. Even then, she only opened the inside door, keeping one hand on the knob of the screen door.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.

“I know.”

I wrenched the screen door open and stepped inside. Rude, I know, but I didn’t have time for courtesy. “Where’s Savannah?” she asked.

“She’s safe. I need to talk to you about some grimoires.”

She peered over my shoulder, scanning the yard, as if I’d brought an entourage of reporters with me. When she didn’t see anyone, she closed the door and ushered me farther into the living room, which was filled with boxes of books.

“Please ignore the mess,” she said. “I’ve been organizing the donations for the library book sale. A nerve-wracking task. Absolutely horrible.”

I thought of offering to switch places, let her handle the Black Masses and walking dead for a while, but clamped my mouth shut and settled for a quasi-sympathetic nod.

Margaret was the volunteer head librarian at the East Falls library (open two evenings per week plus Saturday afternoons). She’d taken the position after retiring as librarian at the East Falls high school. If this gives the impression that Margaret Levine was a timid little old lady with a steel-gray bun and wire-rimmed glasses, let me correct that. Margaret was five feet ten and had, in her youth, been pursued by every modeling firm in Boston. At sixty-eight she was still beautiful, with the kind of long-limbed, graceful beauty that her gangly great-niece showed every sign of inheriting. Margaret’s one physical flaw was a blind insistence on dying her hair jet black, a color that must have been gorgeous on her at thirty, but looked almost clownish now.

The one librarian stereotype Margaret did fulfill was that she was timid. Not the studious timidity of the intellectual, but the vacuous timidity of the, well, the … intellectually challenged. I’ve always thought Margaret decided to become a librarian not because she loved books, but because it gave her a chance to look intelligent while hiding from the real world.

“Victoria is very angry with you, Paige,” Margaret said as she cleared books from a chair. “You shouldn’t upset her so. Her health isn’t good.”

“Look, I need to talk to you about a couple of grimoires I borrowed from the library.” I tugged the knapsack from my shoulder, opened it, and removed the books. “These.”

She frowned at them. Then her eyes went wide. “Where did you get those?”

“From the library upstairs.”

“You aren’t supposed to have those, Paige.”

“Why? I heard they don’t work.”

“They don’t. And we shouldn’t have them, but your mother insisted we keep them around. I forgot all about them. Here, give them to me and I’ll see what Victoria wants done with them.”

I shoved the books back into my knapsack.

“You can’t take those,” she said. “They’re library property.”

“Then fine me. I’m in enough trouble with Victoria already. Keeping these books isn’t going to matter.”

“If she finds out—”

“We won’t tell her. Now, what do you know about these grimoires?”

“They don’t work.”

“Where did they come from?”

She frowned. “From the library, of course.”

Okay. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. One look at Margaret’s face and I knew she wasn’t holding anything back. She wouldn’t know how. So I explained what Eve had told Savannah about the books.

“Oh, that’s nonsense,” Margaret said, fluttering her long fingers. “Absolute nonsense. That girl wasn’t right, you know. Eve, I mean. Not right at all. Always looking for trouble, trying to learn new spells, accusing us of holding her back. Just like …”

She stopped.

“Like me,” I said.

“I didn’t mean it like that, dear. I’ve always liked you. A bit impetuous, but certainly nothing like that niece of mine—”

“It’s okay,” I said. And, to my surprise, it was. I knew I wasn’t “just like Eve,” and didn’t want to be, but the comparison didn’t rankle as it
once would have. I continued, “You said these spells don’t work, right?

So how come I can cast four of them?”

“That’s not possible, Paige. Don’t be telling stories—”

“Shall I demonstrate?” I grabbed the first grimoire from my bag, opened it to a marked page, and thrust it at her. “Here. Follow along. It’s a fireball spell.”

Margaret clamped the book shut. “Don’t you dare—”

“Why? You said the spells don’t work. I say they do. And I think you know why.”

“Be sensible, Paige. If they worked, why would we keep them?”

And that, I believe, was the smartest thing Margaret Levine ever said. No one was covering up anything. The Coven really didn’t think these spells worked; otherwise, they wouldn’t have kept them. What a horrible thing to admit, that the very group designed to support and aid witches would have destroyed their strongest source of magic.

“I want to see the grimoires,” I said. “All of them.”

“We aren’t trying to hide anything from you, Paige. You have to stop accusing us—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want to see the library.”

“I don’t think—”

“Listen to me. Please just listen. Why do you think I’m here? Some sudden whim to learn new spells? I’m here because I need to know that I’ve done everything I can to protect Savannah. To protect your niece. That’s all I want. Let me see the library and, I swear, when this is over, you can tell Victoria what I’ve done. Tell her I stole the grimoires. I don’t care. Just let me see what’s up there.”

Margaret threw up her hands and headed for the stairs. “Fine. If you don’t believe me, come up and see. But you’re wasting your time.”

T
he first thing I did was inspect the library closet for hidden compartments. You know, sliding panels, loose floorboards, massive books with incredibly boring titles that really contained forbidden grimoires—that sort of thing.

While I looked, Margaret paced behind me making noises of exasperation. I ignored her. Finally, though, I had to concede that there was no secret niche of hidden books, so I scanned the rows of titles, looking for the ceremony tome. When Margaret paced out of sight, I slid the thin volume into my knapsack. She probably would have let me take it anyway, but I wasn’t taking the chance.

With the ceremony book in my bag, I turned my attention to looking for potential secondary-spell grimoires. That didn’t take long. Of the forty-three books in the library, there were only four that I hadn’t read before. A flip through each assured me they were just as dull and useless as their titles implied.

“The grimoires are all right here,” Margaret said, waving at a half-shelf near chest level. “All of them.”

“All of them” comprised exactly six books. One contained the current collection of Coven-sanctioned spells. Another held spells that had been removed in the past few decades, which my mother had let me copy from her grimoire into my journals. The other four were books of spells long forbidden to Coven witches. There were two reasons why these hadn’t been destroyed. First, my mother would never have permitted it. Second, the damn things were practically useless.

For years, I’d known that these “forbidden” spellbooks existed. For years, I’d pestered my mother to let me see them. She finally capitulated by sneaking them out for me as an eighteenth birthday gift. Inside I found useless spells, like ones to evaporate a puddle of water or extinguish a candle. I hadn’t bothered to master more than two dozen of the hundred-odd spells in these books. Most of them were so bad, I almost
didn’t blame the Elders for removing them from the Coven grimoire, if only to conserve space.

As a last resort, I flipped through one of these grimoires. I paused at one spell I’d learned, an incantation for producing a small, flickering light, like a candle. The Coven-sanctioned light-ball spell was far more useful. I’d learned this one only because it involved fire, and I was always trying to overcome my fear of flames.

When I glanced at the spell, something in it snagged in my brain, made me pause. Under the title “Minor Illumination Spell” the writer had added “elemental, fire, class 3.” I’d seen that notation before … just a few minutes ago, in fact. I yanked one of the two secret grimoires from my bag and flipped to the dog-eared page for the fireball spell. There it was, under the title: elemental, fire, class 3.

Oh, God, could that be it? My hands trembled as I flipped to another spell I’d mastered in that grimoire, a wind-summoning spell. Beneath the title: elemental, wind, class 1. I racked my brain for the names of the two dozen spells I’d learned in the forbidden manuals. What was that one … Yes, that was it! A spell for extinguishing fire. A silly little spell that summoned a mere puff of wind, barely enough to blow out a candle. I’d tried it a few times, got it to work, then moved on. Grabbing another grimoire from the shelf, I flipped through until I found it. “Minor Wind-Summoning Spell: elemental, wind, class 1.”

These were the secondary grimoires. I knew now why I’d mastered four tertiary spells, because I’d learned the secondary spells from these books. Eve had been unable to cast any tertiary spells because she’d probably taken one look in the secondary spellbooks and decided they were too useless to risk stealing.

The doorbell rang. Margaret jumped like a spooked cat.

“It’s Savannah,” I said.