Lowe and Gray: The Atavistic Box

Chapter Six - Jace St. Clair

AURORA TOOK A bite of her toast and looked up at her mother. "Can you drive me to the library today?"

Her father walked in, only half-dressed, with his tie hanging loose around his neck. "We don't say the L-word in this house, Cinderella, you know that," Aurora scowled at the princess reference as Alice sighed and tied his tie for him.
"Library? It's the summer after your exams," Alice frowned.
"Yeah, exactly," Aurora said, trying to think of an excuse. "If I sit on my phone all day, you'll make comments about teenagers and 'this generation' but if I go outside I get hay fever. So I thought I'd go find some books to read through the summer."
"Really? Is there a boyfriend we should know about?" Her mother put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows, the way she did when she thought Aurora was lying about something.
"Boyfriend?" Her father asked, his mouth full of cereal.
"What? No!" Aurora said, shaking her head vigorously. "I'm supposed to be meeting someone there and then going shopping after."
"Someone?"
Aurora bounced her knee and said the first name that popped into her head that her parents would recognise. "You know... Isabelle. Isabelle Reed, from school." Isabelle Reed was a popular girl at Aurora's school. She hated Aurora. "She mentioned something about a sleepover but never confirmed anything."
"Isabelle's the one with the dog, right?" Aurora's mother asked, pushing her husband's bowl back onto the table before it fell. Andrew continued eating, oblivious.
"Yeah, that's the one," Aurora said, relaxing. Thank God her village was a small one. "The Jack Russell Terrier." She only knew that because she'd overheard Isabelle boasting about her new dog at school.
"I've always been a cat person," Andrew said, his mouth full with cereal.
"You lost our kitten within two weeks of getting him." Aurora pointed out.
"I didn't know they didn't need walking!"
Aurora turned to her mother. "Can you drop me off, Mum?"
"Sure, when?"
"Uh, now."
"I have to take Lily to baby massage and that's all the way across town from the library. Can't Isabelle give you a lift?"
"She's getting the bus."
"Well, you can too."
Aurora threw her hands up in frustration. "Mum, I hate the bus!"
"Buses are a fundamental part of society," Andrew nodded.
"They're gross and I always forget what to say to the bus driver and then I fall over trying to get to a seat and-"
"You're getting the bus, dear," Alice said, and she picked up the remote to the kitchen television and began changing channels proving the conversation was over.
"Fine," Aurora muttered.

Her mother paused. "I found one of Adrian's old rings. I think it would fit you if you want it," she said kindly.

"Really?" Aurora said, her eyes widening.

"It's upstairs in my jewellery box. Silver with a blue stone. Honestly, if you'd told me you were going to the library earlier, I could have rescheduled the baby massage."

"Don't worry, it's fine," Aurora said. "Thank you for letting me keep the ring!"

Secretly, she was glad her mother couldn't take her because the library she wanted to visit wasn't the big one in town where the librarian fell asleep all the time and never had any decent books, it was the one in Valden she wanted to visit, to research sorcery and magic and everything Jensen had told her.

She waited until her mother had left with Lily and she left the house at the same time as her father left for work. She waited at the bus stop and then walked the rest of the way to Valden. She had to ask for directions a few times, but tried to remain unsuspicious by asking directions to the post office outside the town since normal people didn't see Valden the way she had.
It turned out that the library was attached to Valden Academy. It was a building of mirrors, like the Haven, yet where the Haven was tall and thin, the library was wide and short. The library was open for public use, however, it was still accessible to the students should they need it.

Aurora picked the first book she saw that had the word 'Sorcery' in the title and sat down. It was written in ancient Latin or Greek, by the looks of it, but Aurora rested her eyes on the pictures of swirling fire and wands with detailed hilts. She'd missed drawing - she hadn't had much time to do any since Adrian's death.