Several bookshelves lined the wall of Van's study across from his nearly empty desk — a desk that set my mind racing when it inevitably caught my eye. Why had he kissed me? Why had he been so eager after being so cold for so long? It was a nice change, don't get me wrong, but…I just couldn't trust it. How could anyone trust something like that without an explanation? The phrase "Too good to be true" existed for a reason.
But it was the bookshelves that were important here, and I mentally shook myself as I searched my way across them. A surprising number of the books were about law and business, I discovered, and I wondered if becoming a professional magician had been his first choice of career. There were books on nutrition, too, and on caring for plants. They surprised me only a tiny bit more than the ginormous series of texts on various types of bugs and animals that took up the entire top shelf. Why the hell did he need all of these? Had he wanted to be a friggin' zoologist or something? I didn't find any magic books until I reached the five-shelf bookcase clear to the right, and even those were mixed in with several of his historical novels, which already took up the entirety of two of the middle bookshelves.
"What the hell, Van?" I mumbled as I scanned the titles of the books. Most of them pointed to white magic, to the things that I was allowed to practice and that wouldn't entertain me nearly as much. I worked from the top down, discovering novel after novel of history and historical fiction and book after book of light magic. Finally, though, on the very bottom shelf, I found a few tomes with darker covers and more battered spines than the rest.
"Aha," I murmured with a wicked smile, pulling out a book with a particularly dark-sounding Latin title. It was made of leather, the front and back covers scuffed and torn in several places, and reddish-brown stains colored a few spots. Blood, perhaps? My smile only grew.
I turned to the first page, the very first spell. My Latin wasn't very good, but I could figure out that the title said something about small animals. "Nah," I mumbled, turning the page. The next spell mentioned pulling a person's teeth out from afar, and I was quick to turn the page, cringing. "Ew. No." The next two pages contained a pair of love spells, which were tempting, but I restrained myself and moved on to the next page. The illustration of the next spell had my interest piqued before I even knew what it was. It looked like a black-and-white depiction of some sort of feline creature, its teeth sharp and curved and bared menacingly, stepping out of a wall of flames. "Me like," I said with a nod of approval. The page opposite the pretty picture spoke of summoning a Hellcat. I read through the instructions with my broken Latin, nodding each time I managed to understand a step. "I can do this," I said, suddenly excited. "I can totally do this!"
I straightened from my crouch beside the bookshelf, my eyes glued to the spell even as I made my way out of the study and into the hall. I jogged down the stairs and turned right at the bottom, heading down a small hallway instead of into the living room as I usually would have. At the end of the hall, past a couple of shut doors that I knew belonged to storage rooms, was a nice sitting room that was about half the size of the living room. It, unlike the majority of the house, had an uncarpeted floor, the dark hardwood shining up at me in polished perfection, and an elegant stone fireplace was set into the wall beside the door. An antique piano was pushed against the wall opposite the fireplace, and a single black leather couch was situated perfectly in the center of the space with a mahogany end table to either side, but otherwise, the room was empty.
"Any kind of ashes, right?" I asked the spell book as I stepped into the room and shut the door behind myself. It didn't answer — thank God — but I assumed so. Kneeling before the hearth, I began step one of the summoning spell, pulling a handful of old gray ashes out and spreading them in a big, chalky circle on the floor beside me. Once that was finished, I dusted my hands off on my jeans and returned my attention to the book. "And then, I turn the lights off," I murmured, standing up and making my way to the switch beside the door. The room darkened drastically the moment I flipped it, the two large windows that took up almost the entirety of one wall covered by thick black curtains that allowed no exterior light to sneak in. "And then, I...set fire to the ashes with the kindling spell?" I cocked my head to one side, a bit confused. "Couldn't I just use a lighter? Ah, whatever." I turned my gaze to the circle of ash and said confidently, picturing in my mind flames that didn't touch the floor, "Accendo." The ashes sprang to life, burning with an impossibly bright blue-orange flame, and I continued quickly to the last part of the spell: the spell word, the Latin catalyst for the magic — the one thing that would start it all. "Accio, Feles Flamma!"
YOU ARE READING
Illusory
RomantizmI'll never understand why he accepted me as his assistant -- me, a college dropout with the sense of a squirrel. I'll never understand why he won't teach me the magic I want to learn -- me, the stubbornly determined twenty-something who knows where...
