6

6

I knew how to get into Camford Library after hours. The library was open until midnight most nights, and I was frequently there until the last possible moment. Only two weeks ago I had looked up from my paper in a daze to find that the clock was showing half past closing and the building outside the stack room was deserted. I didn't panic—honestly, the thought of being trapped in a library all night gave me a faint thrill, though I did wonder how I would explain it the next day and what I would do for food. I never got to find out, as Hero, Alden, and Eddie came to fetch me ten minutes later.

"I noticed you hadn't got back yet, Eddie remembered where you'd gone, and Alden knew a way in," Hero had explained brightly. "So we formed a rescue party."

The secret, apparently, was a door that opened to the locked gardens outside, which was often left unlatched in the warmer weather, and which could be reached if you were willing to risk life and clothing climbing over the garden wall. That night, when I crossed the quad to the library gardens, I really was just looking for a sign that I was right. If I saw the door unlatched, or even the glimpse of a light inside where it shouldn't be, I would know that Alden and Hero had gone into the library, and my suspicions about what they were doing at the lecture would be permitted to take flight.

I am not the tallest person in the world: I had to jump to peer over the walled garden, and when I did, I couldn't see enough to be satisfied. The door appeared to be closed; that didn't mean it was locked. An idea struck me, belatedly (I wasn't used to thinking in magic in those days). We had learned a spell only days ago in Basic Incantations that revealed echoes and after-images, the imprints that people left on places after they had gone. The imprints lasted only minutes, but the library hadn't been closed for long. Perhaps…

I found a large rock that gave me a better view of the garden and leaned precariously over the wall. My fingers slipped easily into the right positions—steepled together, then parted as I whispered the incantation. The Latin spell, at least, was easy to remember. "Echo."

And there they were, hurrying through the darkness, so clear I must have only just missed the real thing. They both wore dark clothing, as they had that afternoon, so that they half disappeared into the shadows of the trees. I saw the phantom door open, and saw them slip inside. The vision ended there—I felt a faint shiver as it departed, like a window opening to a draught.

So. I knew where they had gone, but not why, and not if it had anything to do with me. Perhaps, after all, I was paranoid to think Alden had noticed me for any particular reason, and this was none of my business. Perhaps I should leave well enough alone.

Then, on the lit path leading to the library entrance, a shadow flickered. I turned to look, shrinking instinctively against the wall.

Someone was coming.

I recognised few people at Camford on sight, this early into my time there. I knew this man. He was the sole librarian at Camford, a tall man with a curiously ageless face and wild white hair. The students called him Grimoire and claimed he was ancient as the library itself. I didn't find out for a long time that his real name was Henry Grimsby-Lennox, and he was in his fifties. And yet there was certainly something uncanny about the dry, precise way he could give you the location of any book in the miles of nonsensical shelving, the way he seemed never to eat or drink or go home for the night. I envied it, to be honest. I had never seen him out of the library, and plainly he wasn't staying out for long. Any minute now, he would be inside the front door.

I didn't think—or rather, I had only one thought. I had to warn Hero and Alden. They thought the library was empty; they would probably walk right into him. The fact that I might get caught myself didn't matter, not right now. They had come to get me out of the library, under different circumstances. I couldn't leave them.

The place where we had scrambled over the wall was difficult to climb on my own, in the dark, and I laddered my last good stocking. I didn't care. I landed roughly in the autumn leaves, scrambled to my feet, and rushed as quietly as I could to the door.

Hero and Alden were in the corridor just inside, Hero carrying a flickering candle. They turned, their faces twisting from alarm to astonishment when they saw me.

"Clover!" Hero whispered. "What on earth are you…?"

"Grimoire's coming!" I said, before she could finish. "He's on his way around to the front entrance. He'll see you if you're not careful."

Alden swore quietly. "Then we'd better hurry. This way, come on!"

I ran along with them—I had to, or run back straight into the head librarian myself.

At the heart of Camford Library was an atrium, a high tower walled by circular shelves and spiralling staircases, all extending up to a great domed ceiling made of glass. Underneath the dome was an enormous oak. In a university thick with trees, this one stopped me still the first time I had seen it: some seventy feet high, centuries old, its twisted branches reaching to the walls and in some cases through them. I wasn't surprised to find that Alden and Hero were leading me to that atrium—uncannily quiet now, the dark leaves and branches wreathed in moonlight. I was even less surprised when we ducked into the alcove that held a heavy wooden door, the door that led belowground. The oak erupted through the mosaic floor—the tree's roots, far beneath, were said to begin in the underground labyrinth of the archives where all the universities' forbidden material was stored. I had guessed their objective correctly.

We held very still as the circle of the lantern flickered under the door to the atrium, accompanied by the light tread of footsteps. Then the light faded, and the footsteps with them, going upstairs.

"It's all right," Hero said, with a quiet sigh of relief. "He must be going up to his office. Of course he'd pick tonight to leave his favourite pen there or some such thing…"

"What are you doing?" I hissed as Alden pulled the silver crest ring off his finger.

"What does it look like we're doing?" Alden asked. "We're breaking into the archives with a ring I stole from the finger of the head librarian."

"You didn't steal it from his finger ," Hero said with a roll of her eyes. "You requested a book from the Special Collection, he took off his ring and put on his gloves to handle it, as did you, and you swapped it out for your own at the end of the hour."

"Grimoire is a Lennox," he explained to me. "Our rings are similar. Easy mistake to make. I'll come by the library tomorrow very concerned about it. He'll know, of course, but he won't be able to prove a thing, and anyway I doubt he'll turn in a distant relative. And by the way, Hero, without me that ring would never have left his finger, so technically —"

"Shut up," she said, with a quick look down the corridor. "He'll be back any moment. We need to move."

"Why?" I finally managed to slip a word in edgeways. "What do you want in the archives?"

"This isn't the time or the place," Hero said. "Clover, thank you for the warning, but you might want to make yourself scarce while we both do something idiotic."

"Though you're welcome to join," Alden added. "If you're in an idiotic mood."

Perhaps I was. Seventeen-year-olds often are. I did, at least, consider for a fleeting second what the consequences would be if I were caught. But—they were breaking into the archives . I had imagined them many a time, ever since Everett Dalrymple had named them at our first tutorial. Miles and miles of great underground rooms, filled with books that nobody was allowed to touch—books, Dr. Larkin had strongly implied, that held information about the fae, about Matthew's curse, about all the research I longed to do.

And it was Alden and Hero. I don't think I realised then how great a hold the two of them had taken on my imagination. They lived firmly in the modern world, new and exciting and daring in a way that had never reached my rural village, and yet in themselves they were everything I loved about Camford—golden, glowing, elite, steeped in centuries of history and culture. They were what I wanted to be, and they made it look effortless. Perhaps I could have walked away from the archives; I couldn't walk away from them.

"I'll stay with you," I said. "Just… be careful. Hero's right; Grimoire hasn't gone far."

I don't think Alden had for a moment actually expected me to take up his offer. His eyebrows shot up, but he smiled.

"I'll try to be," he said. "This won't take a moment."

He pressed the ring to the lock.

For a moment, I genuinely thought it had worked. The door glowed, a gold burst around the edges, as though a light had passed on the other side of the door. My breath caught; beside me, on reflex, Hero caught my hand. I had just time to imagine those rooms below, the old dusty books surrounded by darkness and the roots of the tree.

Then, the light died, and the door turned black. It was as though the colour had seeped from the wood, darkening it to the ashy grey of a tree blasted in a fire or a badly exposed photograph.

"Oh," Alden said, in a voice that was just a little too calm.

Something struck me hard across the shoulders, knocking me forward; I bit back a curse as I caught myself against the wall. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask what it was, when I glanced up. The answer was obvious.

The books were flying off the shelves. The oak in the midst of that great circular room was thrashing, writhing, as though in a far-off storm; as it moved, the leather-bound volumes that spanned the shelves from floor to ceiling were hurled at us in a great cascade. I flung up my hands on instinct as a heavy volume flew at my face; beside me, I heard Hero cry out as one hit. Absurdly, amidst the panic rising in my throat, I felt a flutter of fear for the books. What if their pages got crumpled, or the spines cracked?

"Back," Hero said. "Quickly. We need to get out of here."

Alden shook his head in disbelief. "That should have worked!" he protested, or complained. "It was the librarian's—ow!"

That one had struck him on the side of his head. He put his hand to it, wincing, and his fingertips came away glistening with blood.

"Come on!" Hero shoved first him, then, more gently, me. "Door!"

We were too late. The shelves continued to pelt us with books as we fought our way across the room, only to find the doors to the atrium had swung closed with a determined clunk. I rattled the handle, desperate, and narrowly missed another impact.

God. We were trapped. We were trapped in the library, and if the books didn't batter us to death by morning, then we would be found, and that was the end of Camford for me. I couldn't believe it had been so quick.

"The roof," Alden said tightly. The blood was coming from a small cut at the corner of one eyebrow—if we were found here in the morning, he was going to have a very unglamorous black eye. "Our roof. It's the only way out."

He was right—there was no way to close off the great curved staircases, at least. And there was a way to get down from the roof without going back inside, clambering down the trees that grew beside the library. We had done it once, just to see if it could be done. I hated the thought of doing it in the dark, but not as much as getting caught. At least it would get us out of the line of fire from the books.

Hero glanced at me, and I nodded quickly.

"Very well," she said to Alden. "But if this doesn't work, I'll never listen to you again."

"I'm not sure I'll listen to myself," he conceded.

We were at the foot of the stairs when a shiver went through the library. The few remaining books stopped falling, and the giant tree stilled. The stairwell was darkening; in one breath, the candle in Hero's hand snuffed out. Against all common sense, my step faltered. I turned to look.

Far below, a shadowy shape was forming by the old oak. It was huge, the size of a bull; in the darkness all I could see was a confused outline of teeth, horns, long limbs. In the hushed quiet of the library rose a long, threatening growl. Slowly, one by one, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Then I blinked, turned, and ran for my life.

Too fast. My boots were second-hand and the soles overpatched; one shot out from underneath me on the stone stairs, and I came down hard. My bones jarred sickeningly, and the air was knocked from my lungs. For an agonising second, I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think , and behind me something terrible was coming. Then a hand grabbed my wrist, strong and sure, and Hero was yanking me to my feet. I stumbled, found my footing.

"All right?" she checked, looking me up and down quickly, and I nodded.

"What is that thing?"

"Grimoire," Hero said. "He's a ward. You didn't know?"

I had learned about human wards only the week before. Certain Family members could be bound to buildings like Family houses or the Camford Library, places rich in magic. Once a mage had been created a ward, the title was theirs for the rest of their lives; a successor could be created only when the old ward was dead and their replacement took their ring. It changed them—gave them new and often unpredictable magic, as long as they were within the walls of the house they had accepted as their own. I had imagined they had new enchantments, stronger spellcraft. I had never imagined anything like that.

We had to get out.

Up the stairs. Down the corridors. The library was all wrong. I knew this section; I could navigate it in the dark, with my eyes closed. Now there were passages that made no sense, stairs where there should be doors, doors that opened out to nowhere at all. I remembered the old claims that the library could swallow those it disliked whole, lost forever among the stacks. Behind us, the darkness pressed, and that terrible low rumbling grew louder.

Please , I thought, to the great expanse of books around us. Please, I'm sorry. Please let us get away.

We ran upstairs, through the narrow book-lined corridors, and then, at last, finally, down the familiar path to our study room. I had the sickening thought as Alden tried the window that it would be sealed shut like the door, and we would be found by whatever Grimoire had become and meet our end hovering among the driest tomes in the library. But it was only jammed—a furious push, and the sash window shot up. As I clambered through it onto the pitch-dark slates, I heard a long, echoing howl.

I had never been on our roof at night. It was beautiful—I saw it even as I lowered myself carefully onto the tiles beside the other two, shaking, gasping. The mist on the other side of the great wall glowed faintly silver; by its illumination, the shadows of Camford gleamed like a tapestry of dark blue and grey. Overhead, unfamiliar stars stood out piercingly clear.

We were safe. I couldn't believe it at first. Gradually my heart settled, and my fears with it. We had made it out. Grimoire clearly had no interest in leaving the bounds of his domain. Nobody was following us. But it had been so horribly close.

Hero clearly thought so too.

"We never do that again." She sat up, dishevelled, eyes blazing. "I mean it, Alden. I have no idea how you talked me into it this time. It doesn't happen again."

"Well, obviously not." He would have sounded more impressive had he not been struggling to breathe. "It didn't work. That ring can't open the door to the archives. You realise what that means, don't you? The archives are out-of-bounds even to Grimoire. Why? What on earth can be in them that the ward of the library isn't allowed to know?"

"What a shame it's none of our business and we aren't going to find out," Hero said. "No more rule-breaking. We find a different way."

"A way to do what?" I broke in before Alden could reply. I had caught my breath now, and feeling had come back with it. My shoulder ached where the books had pummelled me; my ankle throbbed and my palms were scraped from the fall up the stairs. I was bewildered and frustrated and angry in equal measures, and Alden's refusal to take things seriously wasn't helping. "What the hell are you two up to? What did you want in the archives?"

"You must have guessed." Alden sat up, wincing. The blood had darkened on the side of his face, and in the moonlight his fair skin was already starting to bruise. "You saw us in the lecture this afternoon, didn't you? I was sure I'd seen you."

"Yes." I wasn't going to betray any surprise. I'd known he couldn't have been as oblivious as all that. "And it's no secret why I was there. I want to find a way to break my brother's curse. I have no idea what you want."

Alden shrugged. "Similar. We want to find a way to safely summon and bind a faerie."

I stared at him. "That's not possible. Ever since—"

"Faerie country was sealed off after the Accord, yes, I know." He actually sounded amused. "We were in the same lecture as you, and certainly lived through the same war. We don't intend to attempt it ourselves, much less tomorrow in the quad. But the reason it's illegal is simply because it's unsafe. They don't know what went wrong at Amiens; they don't want to risk it again. If we could work out what went wrong—if we could come up with an alternative, something that would ensure it never happened again…"

"You don't think they would have found it already?"

"New discoveries in magic are made all the time. The best way is only the best until someone finds something better. And nobody's looking now, are they? The knowledge has been hidden away so well it barely exists. That's why we were trying to break into the archives, of course. It was worth a try, after what Larkin said."

It shouldn't have been a surprise. I had spoken with Alden about Agrippa—I knew he was interested in faerie magic. But to hear it put so seriously, so simply… It was too much to take in. I looked at Hero. "And you? Do you really want to find a way to summon a faerie?"

"I want to be a scholar," Hero said bluntly. "You were right, you know, about my father. I told you he was an indulgent old thing when the mood takes him, and he is, but he isn't as indulgent as all that. He's willing to pay for a bachelor of magic because university is a wonderful place to meet prospective husbands—assuming I don't marry Alden, which would satisfy him just as well. After that, I'm supposed to grow up and come home. I'm not like you, Clover—my family doesn't believe in earning a living."

Coming off my betrayal already, I felt a flash of irritation. I loved Hero, truly, but she really did seem to think me freer than her, as though having no money was less of a problem than having too much. "My family aren't exactly thrilled about me coming here either, you know! And if they were, it would hardly matter, since they couldn't afford to send me."

Hero shook her head, half-apologetic, half-impatient. "You know I don't mean that. My point is that if I want to stay, I need a Merlin Scholarship every bit as much as you do—you need one because your family can't pay; I need one because mine won't. They won't want to give it to women scholars. Unless we do something they can't ignore. Something brilliant."

"Something like find a safe way to use faerie magic again." My heart was thrumming in my ears like the rattle of an engine. "You think that if you present those findings to the Faculty, they'll have to grant you the scholarship to look into it."

"I don't see that they can help it. Or if Camford are too stuffy, somewhere else will fund the research. Paris, or Rome, or even Berlin. I'd prefer that, in a way. The magical academies in France let women graduate long ago. Either way, I'll have something to trade." I heard the defiance in her voice, careless and brave, and saw at the same time that she was trembling. That was the first time, I think, I realised how much of her courage was sheer bravado, how aware she was that she lived her life in a constant state of trespass. My irritation faded, and something fierce and protective awoke in its place.

I shook my head, trying to clear it, and turned to Alden. "And what about you? You can't tell me you're desperate for a Merlin Scholarship. You're Alden Lennox-Fontaine. If you mentioned you wanted one, they'd probably give it to you for the asking." That sounded bitter, even to me. I didn't care. I couldn't help but suspect that Alden was enjoying this greatly, and of course he was. He had the luxury of not being overly worried about the consequences. "Why are you going to these lengths?"

"Curiosity?" he suggested, unfazed by my anger. "Ambition? Or perhaps I just want to do something brilliant too."

Hero rolled her eyes, her composure back in place. "Alden's always been obsessed with faerie magic," she informed me. "He was the one who roped me into this endeavour last summer, when Father made it clear how much and how little he was willing to allow."

"I don't agree with the Accord," he said, more seriously. "I want to persuade them to lift it, break the seals, and let faerie summonings resume. I think if we can find a safer way to bind the fae, we can make a case for it. Right now, everyone's afraid to so much as look at it."

" I'm not afraid to look at it." I tried not to say it accusingly, even though I had realised by now what was bothering me. I had no right to feel hurt. Hero and Alden had known each other their entire lives and me a few scant weeks. Of course they hadn't trusted me yet. But I'd told them about Matthew. I'd thought we were friends.

"We were hoping to tell you, of course, in time." Hero understood at once what I wasn't saying. "We'd almost made up our minds to do it before the Christmas break."

"I had made up my mind, personally," Alden said. "I made up my mind the first day we met, do you remember? Hero was kinder than me. She wanted to protect you."

"I know how important Camford is to you," Hero said. "Faerie magic is illegal. We won't be arrested just for trying to study it, of course, but we could very well be expelled if we push too far. At the very least, they would revoke your scholarship, and that would be the same thing as far as you're concerned."

The reminder did stop me in my tracks. Hero was absolutely right. For all the difficulties of being here, I couldn't imagine losing Camford. Camford was my chance to build a new life, a life of magic and scholarship and possibility. My chance to help my family, to fix what the war had torn up.

But they were looking for a way to lift the Accord. The possibility was dizzying. I had been focusing on finding a counter-curse to heal Matthew. If the Accord was no more, I might not need one. I could bargain with the fae for his life, as the old mages had once done. All it would take was research, study, practice, and everything could be put right.

Camford itself was impeding that research. Sam had been right—as much as I loved it (and I truly, truly did), it was set in its ways, determined to cling to the mistakes of the past when the world outside was struggling to remake itself. I remembered the books Hero and I had been reading, and their exhortations to set aside the old Victorian values and embrace new ways of thinking and talking and being. Wasn't this what it meant? To not be afraid to smash the world to pieces and make it new?

"I don't care," I said, and almost meant it. "I want to help you, if you'll let me. I know I'm a scholarship girl from a nonmagical family, but I've been looking into this in my own way too. And I'm good at binding spells."

"You don't need to convince us," Alden said dryly. "You outscored me our last two tests in a row in Basic Incantations. I'd be delighted to have you."

"I am too, of course," Hero said. "But if you want to stop at any time, just say. Don't let this idiot manipulate you."

"Him?" I laughed. "I have the most invested in this out of anyone. You should all be worried about how I might manipulate you ."

My hurt was receding now, and the gap it left was flooding with unexpected sunlit joy. I had known there was something lurking beneath our friendship, and I had dreaded what it might be. This, though, was everything I wanted myself. Not the sneaking into the archives at night, perhaps—Hero was right, that was too dangerous—but the work, the challenge, the feeling of pushing the bounds of magic in a way that would truly change the world. To do it alongside these people I so liked and admired felt like finding a gift where I'd been looking for a trap.

A thought struck me. "What about Eddie? Have you asked him to help too?"

Alden frowned. "Eddie? I wasn't aware he was interested in faeries."

"He's interested in faerie plants. The curse that struck my brother—according to Eddie, it was from a dryad. We talked about it. He knows a great deal of folklore about using plants to ward off the fae, or to counteract curses. There hasn't been a good deal of literature on them, but they might—"

"They might." Alden sounded interested. "I've brushed against superstitions like that myself. I should have thought of asking Eddie."

I wasn't surprised that he hadn't. Alden, I had already noticed, often overlooked Eddie, despite or perhaps because of their shared childhood. Eddie was too good at making himself invisible to make his presence felt.

"I assumed he wouldn't be interested too," Hero said. "If he is, of course, I'm thrilled to have him. Do you want to ask him tomorrow? You'll see him before us, in Botany."

"Four musketeers," Alden said. "I like it. You see, Hero, I told you we needed Clover's help."

His face had softened, brightened; his eyes twinkled with excitement that bordered on exhilaration. I suspected mine were doing the same. It wasn't that I thought Alden had befriended me just to get my opinion on faerie magic. At my most paranoid I couldn't see Alden cultivating a friendship for weeks on end with a scholarship student he didn't like when he could have just asked. But it made more sense now what had drawn us together. I felt more secure in what bound us, like a harness that had been proven and tested. I was needed . We were at last resuming the conversation that had started on the day we met.

"I never doubted it," Hero retorted. "My only worry is that getting it isn't going to be particularly helpful to her. I know how to keep you from getting me into trouble, for the most part. Poor Clover still thinks she likes you."

"And yet you were the one I persuaded to sneak into the archives after dark, and Clover's the one who just strongly implied I was a spoiled idiot who gets everything I ask for." He winked at me. I actually blushed, like my little sister Mary when the boy who delivers the post smiles at her.

"Well, she's right," Hero said briskly. "Unfortunately, she still came in after you."

Eddie was in with surprisingly little hesitation. I cornered him at our Botany lecture, sitting in the drizzle at the front of the amphitheatre. I had brought an umbrella—Eddie never seemed to care about the weather, and in fairness the weather didn't seem to care about him.

"I'd like to help," he said at once, almost before I had finished my account of the night before. "Especially if it might help your brother."

"We might get in trouble if we're caught," I warned him. "Alden promised that we won't break the rules as obviously as last night, but the Faculty won't be happy if they learn what we're doing before we're ready to tell them."

"I don't care what the Faculty thinks," Eddie said, with more bitterness than I'd ever heard from him. He must have caught my surprise, because he gave a small, embarrassed smile. "Sorry. It's just that my tutor keeps turning down anything I give him for my end-of-term project. He says none of them are ambitious enough. What he means is that botany isn't real magic."

I made a face. "What a skunk ."

Eddie's smile became more real, either at the support or the insult, which was one of Hero's current favourites. My indignation was real, though. I didn't share Eddie's passion for botany—I'd had enough of growing things on the farm—but even I could tell that what Eddie did was real magic, and what's more, it was real science, with a rigour that was often lacking in magical scholarship. The Camford prejudice against the study of plants was ridiculous—the more so given that every inch of the university was entwined with them.

"He's all right," Eddie said, with something more like his usual generosity. "He's only saying what everyone would say."

I gave him a comforting nudge with my shoulder, the way I would one of my siblings. "Well, it's his loss. You can change the Faculty's mind about that at the same time as Hero and I are changing their minds about women in scholarship."

"I don't care what the Faculty thinks," Eddie repeated, with more certainty this time. He turned to me. "So where do we start?"