Page 13 of Witches of Dubious Origin
“Just for show.” He wagged his elbow at me. “Best get going before Olive comes back through to yell at us.”
Enough said. I slipped my hand through his arm, fully expecting to either burn because of the lasers or face-plant against the metal door. But instead, I felt as if I’d been cocooned in a soft, thick blanket. I could hear Miles speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words, as my hearing was muffled. It felt as if I were wearing earplugs. We took five steps forward and the cocoon fell away. We were on the other side.
I glanced back. The solid iron door was still there. Miles had said Olive and Tariq hadmagickedtheir way through, so we must have, too. I wondered if I would have face-planted right into the heavy metal without Miles to escort me through. Despite my resistance to the magical world, I had to acknowledge it was pretty cool.
Olive was tapping her foot and Tariq was smiling and said, “You made it, Zoe.”
I nodded. I was too fuzzy to speak. A long curved hallway lined with white subway tiles and lit with track lighting along the concrete floor, walls, and ceiling was revealed. Out of the darkness and into the light we went.
The tunnel ended abruptly at another metal door with the same web of lasers and Olive repeated the same process, disappearing through the metal, then Tariq, followed by Miles and me. It was very disorienting, and when I stepped into the main room, it took me a moment to get my bearings.
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a laboratory type of room where they examined old books under bright fluorescent lights with beakers bubbling all around them. Why beakerswould be bubbling I had no idea. My imagination was not that specific. Or perhaps I thought it would be a dank and musty dungeon-like room where the chairs were hard, the room was cold, and they worked by candlelight. This proved inaccurate as well.
Instead, the most beautiful library I had ever seen was spread out before me. We crossed a decorative parquet floor much like the one upstairs. Several wooden worktables piled with books filled the center of the room. Along the walls, three stories of bookcases ran floor to ceiling, with two spiral staircases leading to the upper levels, which were set back behind fancy wrought iron railings. I leaned back to take it all in and noted the glorious domed ceiling overhead. It was painted to resemble the sky, bright blue with fluffy white clouds, giving me the sense of being outside even though we were three stories below ground. My heart swelled in my chest as I immediately fell in love with the place.
“Glorious, isn’t it?” Tariq asked.
“It’s okay.” I shrugged and then sighed. The library deserved better than that and so did Tariq. “Honestly, it’s spectacular.”
He grinned and then laughed as if he appreciated my honesty.
“Shall we begin?” Miles asked. He gestured for me to follow him. I didn’t hesitate. We climbed the spiral staircase to the right. On the upper floor, the items were housed neatly on shelves with a lone papyrus on display in a thick glass case in front of the shelving unit.
“This is our collection of Egyptian papyri,” Miles said. “These particular scrolls are considered to be of the dubioussort because they contain rituals and spells and other arcane information.”
I glanced through the glass at the papyrus on display. “That’s the Egyptian god Set or Seth. Isn’t he the master of chaos in the form of storms and war?”
Miles nodded. “Which is exactly why we keep the papyrus down here. We wouldn’t want any spells involving such a trickster to get into the wrong hands.”
I frowned. As a librarian, I was a hardcore believer in the freedom of information. The only way to combat ignorance was through knowledge, and locking away books, or in this case papyri, was never a solution in my opinion. This was like keeping all tales of folklore out of the public’s hands. Wasn’t it? Doubt started to seep into my being like smoke under a closed door. I turned away from the papyrus.
The collection was vast and I tried to wrap my head around the idea that over the millennia so many writings had been created that were considered “of dubious origin.” There were more papyri, tablets, illuminated manuscripts, and printed folios in a wide array of European languages. We were leaving the third floor when I heard something purr.
“Do you have a cat in here?” I asked.
“No.” Miles said. He began to walk down the steps. I started to follow him, but I heard the purring sound again.
I turned to the bookcase beside me, thinking a cat was loose in the shelves. That couldn’t be good.
A dark gray volume caught my eye and as I peered closer, a tail dropped from the spine.What?!I reached out and tentatively stroked the furry spine of the book with my index finger. The purring became louder.
“Miles!” I stared at the book, watching the tail swish back and forth.
Miles climbed back up the stairs and joined me. “Oh, how nice. You’ve met Freya.”
“It’s a book,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But it purrs.”
“Quite loudly,” he agreed. He didn’t sound nearly as freaked-out as I felt he should. “She likes to have her ears scratched, too.”
“Ears?”
“Here.” Miles reached forward and gently removed the book from the shelf. “She’s usually shy around newcomers. She must approve of you.”
It looked like an ordinary book. You know, if books had tails. But when he turned it so the cover was facing up, a cat’s face blinked out at me from the center of the book, and the corners of the cover twitched as if they were actually ears. The eyes moved from Miles to me.
