Hexed | ✔

six

"Is anything the matter?"

At once, the heartbeat ceased and the girls jumped at the sudden voice. It was Phoebe, she and her brother were the owners of the library and they were family friends of Fiye's family. Her eyes flickered among the three of them and when she looked away to glance at the lights. Kylie kicked the bulky book underneath the shelf and far from sight.

"I heard the screaming." Phoebe added, her perfectly shaped brows arched.

Fiye forced a smile on her lips.

"The lights went out for a jiffy," Mariam said, an abashed smile on her face.

"Oh, that was just probably the rain, strangely, it's returned back to the normal drizzle." Phoebe said, reaching out to push back book jutting from a shelf.

She squinted at the girls as if trying to sniff out a secret. Fiye offered a nervous giggle.

"I think we've had too much wine too." Kylie offered. The older woman nodded as if the mention of wine accounted for their suddenly skittish behavior. She gave them a conspiratorial wink.

"We close in thirty minutes, darlings, just wanted to let you know."

They didn't dare to breath until they heard her heels click off in the distance and faded, then they let out a collective sigh of relief.

"What was that?" Mariam breathed.

Hesitantly, Kylie bent to pick the book from where she'd hidden it, sure enough, the heartbeat was back, lower this time as if it were calm. Fiye and Mariam gave way as Kylie carried it down the aisle, until they reached the space where tables and sofas were arranged haphazardly. She dropped it on the table and collapsed on one of the seats around it.

After a moment, Mariam and Fiye did the same.

"It won't flip the pages," Kylie muttered. She tried and failed to flip open the next page, it was as if the pages of the strange book were glued together, or as if it had a mind of its own. Mariam shuddered to think of it, her week had been nothing short of humiliating, she didn't want to add strange to the mix.

"What kind of writing is that?" Although she was frightened of the possibilities, the history major in her was deeply curious.

"Latin?" Fiye offered with a snort. Mariam shot her a glance.

"I'm not so sure, I studied Latin during my high school years, this has similarities with it but it's not quite the same." Mariam echoed. After a second of deliberation, she reached out to trace the words on the left page and jolted when a sudden image flashed through her mind.

The smell of flesh burning,

Whispered goodbyes and the feeling of hatred coursing through her blood wildly.

Mariam flinched back, breathing hard.

It hadn't been an ordinary image, it was a memory, she realized. All doubts of a reasonable explanation for the book suddenly vanished, she knew without doubt now that whatever it was, it was powerful and it was very much living.

"You feel it too?" Fiye asked quietly as her own fingers danced lightly on the words. She soon quickly snatched her hands away too, with a guilty look on her face, like a child caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

"Guys, I don't feel safe messing with something like this. I mean, this is probably what the movies would call magic," Mariam said.

Kylie looked up, seemingly jerking herself from a thought.