Page 127 of Liminal

“Hey! I’m not an escort.”

“No,” she agrees. “They get paid. You’re just a manwhore.”

Lambert snorts, and I…find myself ghosting backwards without meaning to. It’s subtle—I don’t think either of them has noticed yet—but the Arcanaeum has noticed, brightening the lights around us as a way to cover my escape.

I’m harder to see in the light.

“Have fun.” There’s a breeziness in my tone that completely belies the yearning there.

If I were a better person, perhaps I wouldn’t resent the fact that they can leave. If I were sensible, I wouldn’t have let them all grow so close to me that I began comparing myself to them.

In a blink, I’m back in the clock tower, looking at the jarring difference between my side and Eddy’s. Since she arrived, she’s been steadily encroaching on my space with her colourful cushions and beanbags and even adding a vanity full of modern makeup that I watch her put on with fascination each morning. The result? What used to be her ‘corner’ has truly become her half.

I don’t really mind, since she steers clear of my little shelf of gifts, but the stark difference between my sombre jewel tones and her bright ones is another nightmare reminder.

“Magic damnit!” I curse, eyeing the messy sheets on her bed compared to the lifeless, neatly made ones on mine.

This is too much. The last time.

In all my years, I’ve never been one for self-destructiveness like this. I’ve kept a strict boundary between me and everyone else to avoid exactly this situation. I am not a mopey, whining caricature of a ghost who so longs for company that she throws herself into situations where her existence is imperilled just to assuage the loneliness of death.

Whatever it is about the six heirs, and now Eddy, that has me wound up tight and conflicted like this, it needs to stop.

I have a duty as Librarian. I have to protect the Arcanaeum, and to do that, I have to remain in one piece. If the cracks weren’t warning enough, then perhaps watching them slowly getting on with their lives away from here will be.

I don’t want to kick Eddy out, but once she’s safe… No more law of sanctuary. No more tutoring. Once the semester is over, I have to call a stop to it all, because even though I can’t feel, I still…hurt.

Thirty-Six

Galileo

“Ad Arcanaeum!”

The dozen pieces of paper I’ve been working on all morning threaten to slip from where they’re pressed against my chest as I shove through the door and into the library. I’m a mess. My curls are in my face, and my eyelids feel like they’ve been replaced with sandpaper, but none of that can dim the excitement coursing through me.

I’ve done it.

“Librarian,” I blurt, almost dropping the pages in my haste as I cast about the hall in search of her. “Kyrith. I have it!”

It’s after closing, but nowhere near midnight. She should be here?—

Her ghostly form appears before me in a wave of her unique ice and lily scent, making the hairs on my bare forearms stand to attention. For a second, I’m struck speechless by her, and I have to take a second, heft the paper in my arms higher, and breathe before I can remember why I’m here.

“I’ve deciphered it. Or at least, the first part,” I tell her, staggering to the nearest desk—part of a long line of others that run the length of the Shrouded Hall—and depositing my work on top of it.

My hands are shaking as I swipe through the charts and pages, pulling forward the ones that I had in front of me just minutes ago at my desk.

“If you look here, the constellation of Porthodines matches. It’s rarely used now because older charts didn’t realise that the eighth star varies in brightness, so its efficacy is unreliable?—”

Kyrith floats closer, and I step away to give her space to look through my workings. I’m practically vibrating like Lambert before a magiball game, but I don’t care. If this works?—

“I’ve already drawn up a template for a nullification spell that’ll begin to undo the first layers of the ensorcellment.” I draw the runeform I was working on closer.

“I’m not so sure,” Kyrith begins, slowly, after several seconds of study.

Irritation flashes through me, but I force myself to keep my cool. “I’ve checked and double checked. Porthodines is the only match.”

I haven’t even slept since the discovery. “If you remove the eighth star and align the remaining ones with?—”