My Dark Lord

Chapter Eighteen: Greenhouse Ghosts

The Hogwarts Library -- A Week After Halloween

The scent of old parchment, wax, and ink had once been a comfort to me. But today, it clawed at my patience like a dull, insistent mosquito.

I drummed my fingers against the table, quill forgotten beside my open book. A tome on "Magizoological Entities of the British Isles: Obscurities and Anomalies" stared back at me, the runes inside barely comprehensible, even to my trained eye. No mention of shimmering serpents, lake spirits, or the silver-eyed creature that had risen from the waters that night-- my night-- with Cadmus.

I'd scoured half a dozen volumes already.

Still nothing.

Not even a whisper.

Calliope giggled beside me, her polished fingernail tracing a nonsense shape on her parchment as she "studied" an upside-down essay draft. Across from her, Cassian nudged her foot under the table for what had to be the fifth time.

Calliope squeaked and kicked back half-heartedly.

"Honestly," I snapped, "if you two are going to reenact your betrothal vows in the middle of the Ancient Runes section, at least pretend to be literate."

Calliope rolled her eyes, barely suppressing a smirk. "Sorry, Layla. Didn't mean to distract you from your usual date with a dusty first-edition."

"It's third-edition," I muttered, flipping the page harder than necessary. "And some of us are actually trying to learn something."

Cassian smirked. "Learn what, exactly? If the lake monster prefers virgins or a particular blend of shampoo?"

I ignored them both, biting down on the corner of my tongue to smother the snarl building in my throat. Their presence had been a mistake-- I'd brought them along on the lie of a group project to throw off Tom and his many watching eyes.

Now they were a hindrance. A noisy, irritating, footsy-playing hindrance.

I turned another page, then another. Nothing. No marks. No annotations. No faint scent of fire-charms like the ones Tom used to dry ink when he copied from restricted texts.

He hadn't been here.

There were no traces of him in the shelves I'd expected him to haunt.

That should have relieved me.

It didn't.

I shifted in my seat, spine stiff. If Tom had abandoned the creature in the lake, if he had deemed it unworthy, then what did that say about my instincts?

Had I chased a myth?

Or worse... had I overlooked the real threat?

I shut the book with a soft thud.

"What if it wasn't important?" I murmured under my breath.

Calliope looked up lazily. "What wasn't?"

"Nothing."

But it wasn't nothing.

The creature I saw had not been illusion. Its presence had turned the air to glass, its eyes had looked through me, not at me. It had to mean something.

Unless Tom had already found something better.

Something deeper.

Something closer to power.

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the drafty library walls.

"You should relax, Layla," Cassian muttered as he stood, stretching lazily. "Whatever's got you twitching, it's not going anywhere. Trust me. You'll find it when it's ready to be found."