Chapter 12 Artorius Day

12

Artorius Day

THE LIbrARY OF Hecate House looked similar to the courtroom but was darker, sleepier and mustier. The smell was sort of coffee, sort of chocolate, earthy and dusty and sweet. Like the bookshop, if it had been operating underground for a few centuries. There must have been thousands upon thousands of books inside. They left little room to even shuffle oneself between the corridors of endless pages and waxy spines. Belle and Bronwyn were forced to repeat their steps more than once, bringing a whole new meaning to getting lost in a good book. Belle noticed several piles heaped so high that they swayed precariously, only holding their balance through the presence of an invisible enchantment stringing them up to the ceiling.

The single sound was the turning of pages against the soft crackle of burning fireplaces. Some of the books seemed to be reading themselves, unless their readers were invisible, which, Belle thought, was entirely possible.

Leading the way through the library's maze, Bronwyn cast out her palms, each hand emitting an illuminating beam like a torch and leaving a trail of glittering magic dust in their wake. Belle followed the magic like breadcrumbs, attempting to find her footing. In her clumsiness, her elbow knocked a clothbound copy to the floor. She stooped to pick it up. Merlin-Worthy Millinery: Stitch a Modern Take on the Classic Sorcerer Hat.

"Plenty of time for browsing later, deary. We're over here, in the Lore and Resources section."

Careful to keep both elbows in, Belle stopped in her tracks. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noticed reading nooks nestled deeply between the towering shelves. Each nook, with desks and armchairs and lamps poised to help escape into someone else's words, was in front of a large window. One showed the rolling countryside. Another the bustling city. The beach, the desert, the night sky, the morning sunrise. A woodland, a glen, a cottage, a poolside. The past, the present, the future.

"A neat little bit of bewitching, don't you agree? Something Rune rustled up…For himself more than anyone else, I think. Don't tell him I said that. Fixed to transport the reader to wherever they may wish to go. The magic adapts to reflect the pages they're reading."

Bronwyn carried on ahead as Belle stared in wonder at the window to her left, which showed an inviting forest cabin, and made a mental note to try it for herself if she ever returned. She hastened to catch up as the sage witch beckoned her to the main desk, which lay at the centre of the library. Behind it stood a lady who Belle could only assume had been living down there for several hundred years and not missed the fresh air enough to leave at any point.

She was bent almost double in her old age, a huge knot in her spine protruding through the form of her cloak. Although stitched with the coven's constellations, the brilliance of the thread was fading, dimmer and fainter than those of her younger peers. She was hazardously leaning her frail frame against a gnarled walking stick while she catalogued a pile of titles in slow motion. Belle felt like she should run over and lean her back the other way to stop her from toppling straight over. Smoky grey hair reached her knees in a thick plait, with wilting flowers and thistles the colour of tea stains entwined through the braid. She herself looked translucent and brittle, like she may be fading away before their eyes.

"Bron!" the old librarian croaked, and creaked as she turned, pivoting dangerously on her stick. "I've put a stack of new romances to one side for you. One about a captain and a scullery maid which is right up your street, and…"

"Not today, thank you, Sybil. Although do keep that to one side, it sounds a bit of me. I need to fetch the Lore Key from you, please, my love."

Sybil's eyebrows shot up in surprise with a la-di-da expression. She spoke with a strong Welsh accent. "All business today, eh? Oh, is this the EquiWitch I've heard so much about? Bonnie's girl? Lacquered lizards, don't she look like Alvina? Got the nose and the nervous fidgeting and everything."

Sybil grinned at Belle, revealing several missing teeth. Belle, instantly self-conscious, dropped her hands from picking at her cuticles and held them firmly at her sides.

"Syb is the long-time librarian here at Hecate House. She's your woman for any book you could ever need. Potion recipes, incantation writing, Earth Sorcery theory…Or a spot of fiction. She knows I'm partial to a swashbuckling sex bomb. Spent a summer with a handsome pirate once. Never got over him, truth be told."

"Lovely to meet you," Belle said quickly to the librarian, who continued to look her up and down with curiosity.

"The Lore Key, Syb?" Bronwyn reminded the woman. While Bronwyn spoke to Sybil, Belle absent-mindedly picked up a copy of Thine Newborn Toad . It croaked a wet belch as she opened the cover, which, to her horror, was thickly slimy to touch.

"Ferns and figs, the Lore Key? That old thing. Now, where did I last see it?"

Belle privately marvelled that these two were the perfect example of "the ones you least expect."

"I tell you, it's been a long while since anyone's dug that out, Bron. I haven't got a clue where it is, I won't lie to you. Let me concentrate for a moment. Pardon me for a second, Ms.Blackthorn. Much obliged."

Belle expected Sybil to start searching through the drawers and cupboards set within the desk, which curved around her in a rich oak crescent. But instead, Sybil simply closed her eyes. Wobbling dangerously as she righted herself onto her stick, she waved one palm over her other. A small ball of silver light formed in her fist and opened to reveal a tarnished key.

"Knew it was in there somewhere," Sybil muttered to herself. "Not as easy for me to conjure these days as it once was."

She handed the key to Bronwyn, who wrapped both her hands around Sybil's to shake it with gratitude. "Many thanks, Syb. That's good of you." There was a pause as the old witches smiled affectionately at one another.

"Oh, Bron! Wasn't expecting you today. What can I do for you?" Sybil's glassy eyes suddenly seemed to glaze over. She turned back to Belle. "And who's this young thing? My, you don't half look like…"

Bronwyn smiled sadly. "You come by my office for a cup of tea when you've finished for the day, Syb."

The old woman waved the pair away, already forgetting their brief encounter.

"One of life's kindest and cruellest gifts, old friends. Anyone's Achilles heel," Bronwyn said sadly. "I miss her and she's still here. Love does leave you vulnerable, if you allow it to endure."

Moving through the endless aisles again, the pair finally reached an intricate iron structure buried in the shadows. A gate stretched all the way up to the high ceiling and was wide across. Its bars of iron twisted and turned together like immovable roots of ivy, marking off a separate chamber. Its branches sprawled out all the way across the roof overhead and wound downwards like an unnatural twin to the willow tree above. The ossuary stood like a giant birdcage but devoid of any life inside.

"An unlocking spell won't work?"

Bronwyn was roughly digging the small key into a thick lock on the cage's gate, wiggling it about with great effort. She laughed aloud at the apparently ridiculous idea.

"Heavens and hell's bells, girl. Safely storing sacred magical information requires a good old lock and key. Any witch or warlock can work out a spell if they think about it hard enough. But the Lore Key is one of a kind that only Sybil can mind safely. No one stands a chance."

With a satisfying click, the lock opened. The key vanished from Bronwyn's grasp as soon as it had completed its duty, leaving no trace but a few miniature sparks amongst her fingertips.

"Oh, where did that come from?" Belle heard Sybil across the library, sounding faintly far off in the distance as she received the key back in her possession.

"Foolproof," Belle muttered in amazement.

As the ossuary gate swung open, a cold breeze sent Belle's hair flying backwards, and she only just managed to catch her hat from sailing several shelves behind. The coldness carried the scent of winter. Crisp frost, misty rain, pine needles.

Belle felt her breath catch in her chest as more of the space came to light. A blanket of pale, blanched bones covered the entire back wall. It must have contained hundreds if not thousands of skeletons, all artfully arranged and thoughtfully positioned in an eerie but undeniably joyful way. A startling chandelier of bones of every shape hung hauntingly from the ceiling, swaying slightly in the cold air amidst draped garlands. The sight was all at once both deeply horrifying and strangely beautiful, bringing an awareness of the skeleton under her own skin, which was a feeling she wasn't sure she loved. Despite the sentiment Bronwyn had described—lost souls finding friends and chosen family to rest beside—she couldn't help but shiver.

"That's the badger!"

As well as the macabre decor, the ossuary also held a vast selection of chests, trunks, cabinets and cupboards slotted together like building blocks. It looked like the most cursed Lost Property Department of all time. Finding her footing on various knobs, handles and jutting drawers, Bronwyn climbed up to one particular cabinet. With a huff, she shoved aside a box brimming with newspapers, a plinth holding a golden cauldron and an inexplicable statue of a screeching cat head. Eventually giving up and clambering back down to instead direct Belle with hands on hips, the pair brought down what looked like an ornate library card catalogue system.

"This," the sage witch began as she pulled out the first drawer with a flick of magic and immediately began rifling through the contents, "is the coven archival register. Hasn't been updated for a while, in truth. But I'm sure there's some folk in here who'll be keen contenders for your mentorship, lovey."

Belle frowned. "And if there's not?"

"Then it's Plan B, I suppose. Although, actually, this should probably be considered Plan B. Plan A was that you pass your hearing and head off for a lovely birthday dinner. I think we're past that one. Plan C remains unconfirmed as of yet, poppet."

She replied brightly, as though Belle's powers were not hanging by a fine thread. Bronwyn continued rummaging through the drawers, pulling out from each oddly shaped compartment a stack of what looked like old sepia postcards with a holographic quality to the film.

"In this archive is every single member of this coven, past and present, who, in different ways and circumstances over the centuries, have proven themselves to have the hallmarks of legendary Selcouth magic. As the note in the grimoire plainly said, they would all make worthy mentors."

Bronwyn shuffled through the cards, glancing fondly at each as she went.

"You could put all of this on a computer, Bronwyn. It might be a bit easier to keep on top of everything," Belle said, trying to be helpful.

"A what, love? Ahh, see, I would have loved you to meet Elagoria. Fabulous, she was," Bronwyn said affectionately. She extracted the card in question from the archive stacks. It showed a grinning woman with her witch's hat covered in tropical flowers and a few pieces of fruit. "So gentle. Loved animals above all else. A perfect magic mentor—if she hadn't met an unfortunate end a couple of years ago. Poor Elagoria. That's what happens when you try to moisturise a dragon's tail. They don't like to be groomed."

Bronwyn handed her the card for a closer look. Elagoria's photo featured a bold red line, which looked alarmingly like blood, slashed right the way through.

Name: Elagoria Tippleton

Last known location: Leeds, United Kingdom

Special arts: Animal Affinity, incense burning

Next to "Status," an updated detail had been written: Deceased. Dragon fire.

Bronwyn sighed. She dove back into the cabinet, trying the next drawer along.

"Arjun Christophate…" She flashed a picture of a man with piercing eyes and a dense black beard. "The less said about what happened to him, the better. All I can say, Belle, is never trust a siren when you're on holiday. It never ends well. His poor wife." Belle, aghast, caught the phrase driven to madness, drowned at the bottom of Arjun's card.

Things didn't brighten up from there. Once they'd removed everybody with a vested interest in her trial, the pool of potential mentors dwindled drastically. The handful of remaining Selcouth members seemed to have followed one unfortunate fate after another. Poor Lira Draculite had suffered a miserable demise from something that Bronwyn would only mysteriously describe as "the pox…but not that pox." Ethellius Hartingham had attempted a transference to Hull, but had ended up in hell thanks to his strong Scottish accent, which seemed particularly unfortunate luck. Marigold Drefus had fallen down the stairs. Her family swore that spirits had been to blame.

"You can say that again. Always on the drink, that one" was Bronwyn's cutting assessment.

When they finally reached the end of the archive, Bronwyn clutched just one solitary card.

Belle reached for it. "Are they still kicking? Can I take a look?"

Bronwyn hurriedly stashed the card in her cloak pocket. "This one should have been removed a long time ago. I've only kept it with me so Sybil can make sure he's stricken for good."

"Who is it?" Belle asked.

"Trust me, Belle," Bronwyn said, uncharacteristically stern. "You do not want this person as a mentor. Bloody Sybil needs to update things more than once a century. Remind me to tell her—"

"Bronwyn, please."

The witches locked eyes.

"I need to make this work," Belle said, panic in her voice again. "Otherwise, that's it. Like you said, we don't have a Plan C. I'm going to lose my magic." Saying it aloud again felt terrible. "Whoever it is, they can't be that bad. If they're a member of Selcouth and they're technically still alive, then I'll take it. In fact, I'm not even too bothered about the last part. I'm open to the undead at this point, now that I've seen the ossuary. They have a great eye for interiors."

The elder witch paused for a moment. She hesitated, poised to say more, but something changed her mind. Bronwyn sighed and pulled the card from her pocket. She took a long look at the photograph, examining the face in the picture. "Artorius Day."

Belle glanced down at the photograph on the card as Bronwyn offered it to her. In tones of sepia brown was a young man with dark eyes, slightly too big ears and a lost look.

"Oh, that's him all right. Categorically the most good-for-nothing weasel of a warlock to have ever stumbled his way into this coven."

Belle was surprised to hear the hard tone in Bronwyn's voice. Artorius Day, like a rabbit in headlights, seemed to stare straight back at her from his photograph. His hair stuck up all over the place, as though he'd quickly dragged his fingers through it the moment the camera captured him. His round face was covered with a healthy smattering of freckles. Whether it was the lost expression or the fact that this warlock was her last hope, Belle found herself instantly warming to him.

"Not who I would have chosen in a million years, Belle. But like you say, this may be your last chance, and this is what the universe seems to have presented to us in its infinite wisdom."

"The universe seems to like keeping me on my toes at the moment. Can you tell me more about him?"

Bronwyn gave a resigned sigh. "I think we're going to need some more tea."