Page 31 of Witches of Dubious Origin
I waited. Just as before, right when I thought nothing was going to happen, the medallion began to turn and the metal bands popped out.
“Bloody hell,” Jasper muttered, and I couldn’t have agreed more.
Again, I had the sensation of the book sighing in relief and I did, too.
“May I?” Jasper gestured to my hand. I nodded and he gently dabbed an antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit on the tip of my injured finger and then put a bandage securely around it.
“Thank you.” My voice sounded stilted. I wasn’t used to people helping me. It felt…odd.
In an effort to escape his perceptive gaze, I turned my attention to the book. I opened the cover, letting it lie flat. I flicked through the pages. I still didn’t recognize the symbols. I had no idea what the dark brown ink was made of. I supposed it depended on how old the book was. I did note that the parchment in the beginning of the book felt very different from the pages in the middle and the end. They had a different weight and texture to them.
Jasper lowered his tall frame so that his elbows rested on the steel table. He didn’t touch the book, but I glanced at him and saw his eyes scanning the page as if looking for something, anything, that he might recognize. His frown deepened and I knew he was just as stumped as the rest of us.
“We need to collect any loose fragments,” I said. “Just five millimeters in size for the carbon dating.”
“Seems simple enough,” Jasper said. He grabbed a pair of tweezers and an empty vial out of the first aid kit. “Lead on.”
This seemed like a terrible idea, since I had no idea what I was doing. I glanced back at the book. Unlike yesterday, when I had been completely freaked-out, today I felt as if I was finally seeing the book for what it was. A mysterious little tome, full of strange symbols on a variety of parchment and paper types. This made me pause.
Why would the creator of the grimoire have used different materials? I picked up the book and studied the hand stitching at the top of the spine. Several tiny bits of dried parchment fluttered to the tabletop.
“Well done, Zoe. That certainly made it easy,” Jasper said.
I watched as he carefully tweezed the little bits and dropped them into the vial. I could feel the heat of him as his side was pressed against mine. It was a welcome warmth in the cold lab, but I refused to be distracted by it or him.
I put the book down and examined the cover. The calfskin and the Celtic-style lock seemed newer than the painfully fragile parchment used in the beginning of the book. It occurred to me that if what everyone believed was true and this was a family grimoire, then it could have been handed down through the ages, and perhaps whoever had bound it together had done so decades, potentially centuries, after the first pages had been written.
I flipped the pages. The ink changed color halfway through, the brown turning into black and remaining that color until the end. Despite this change, the pages were still handwritten and consistently used the same symbols, but it was definitely adifferent hand doing the writing. Several different hands, I suspected. I wondered how many Donadieu witches had contributed to the book. Had it been passed mother to daughter? Or grandmother to granddaughter?
“Oh, there’s another one.” Jasper tweezed up another fragment. This one was larger than the others and I felt my anxiety spike. I didn’t want the book to crumble under my inexperienced hands.
“It’s all right,” Jasper’s deep voice crooned. “You’re doing just fine.”
I tried to ignore the flash of awareness I felt. I was certain every woman alive between the age of nineteen and ninety would feel the same thing in his presence. It meant nothing.
I studied the book as a whole. There was a feminine energy about it. Maybe it was the precise way the cipher was written, like a handwritten recipe card for carrot cake you’d get from your favorite aunt. The symbols were softened with little flourishes and embellishments and what looked like notes in the margins—exactly like if an aunt had added little bits of wisdom to her recipe. Interesting.
“Any luck finding a fragment?” Tariq asked as he returned to the table.
“We found several,” Jasper said. “There were loose bits in every segment of the book.”
“Excellent.” Tariq beamed. “Which one do you want to use?”
“All of them,” I said.
His eyebrows rose in surprise.
“After looking more closely at it, I suspect this grimoire was bound centuries after the first pages were written,” Iexplained. “Judging by the difference in the feel of the pages, the ink, and the handwriting, I think these were recipes handed down for generations.”
“I’m sorry, did you sayrecipes?” Jasper asked.
“You know what I mean.” I waved a dismissive hand at him, focusing on Tariq, who looked as if he was trying not to smile.
“Spells?” Jasper asked. “Don’t tell me you can’t say the word, Zoe.”
“I can,” I protested. Never mind that hearing him say my name in that deep voice of his with his delicious British accent made my brain fuzzy. I blinked, trying to focus. “I’m just more comfortable not saying it.”
“Why not?” he asked. “It’s a grimoire; that’s what they’re composed of—spells.”
