Page 36 of Liminal

Galileo watches in mute astonishment as I yank my hand away from his grip, cradling it to my chest. My other hand snaps out, finger pressing to his card before he can react.

“Your card is revoked.” The words are a pain-drenched whisper, and I can’t help but fall to my knees as he’s dragged backwards.

His piercing gaze hits mine, and I hate the calculating intelligence in them as he silently allows himself to be dragged from the hall.

The door slams behind him, and I choke back a tiny sob as I disappear and reappear beside my own crystalline corpse.

My entire sleeve-covered arm is now spider-webbed with cracks that branch all the way past my shoulder. Veins of thedark magic run over the square neckline of my dress, stretching like evil fingers towards my throat.

I examine the damage with pursed, trembling lips.

This confirms it.

Every single arcanist whose touch tingled as they entered the Arcanaeum is a threat. I just banished three of the five, but is that even going to stick?

Or will Lambert stroll in tomorrow, ready for class, with a perfectly unblemished library card, just as he has every other time I’ve given him a strike?

What if there are more arcanists out there with the same devastating touch?

My shoulders sink, and the building creaks sorrowfully.

“Why?” I ask, though it never answers.

Why is it that the biggest threat to my existence are the people it won’t let me keep out? Is this simply my time?

Is there some greater reason for the library’s decision? Or are they exempt by virtue of the same innate power that lets them harm me with just a touch? I don’t know, and the not knowing terrifies me, so I sit hunched against the altar with my head in my hands, trying to quiet my own racing thoughts.

Whatever the answer, I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow.

It seems fatalistic, but I can’t help but wonder if this is all predestined. Am I meant to die? And are they equally meant to be the harbingers of my destruction? The natural end of my unnatural life, decided by some cosmic power?

A hoarse, low, humourless laugh escapes me.

Death—true death—is on the line, once again brought to me by the arcanists I so envy, and yet, here I sit, pondering philosophy like the sad, pathetic little ghost I am. Perhaps death would be a mercy, stopping me from falling deeper into a truly awful stereotype.

Eleven

Northcliff

Idrive my foot into the sofa again, roaring with frustration.

“Fuck. Fuck.Fuuccckk!”

That couldn’t have gone worse.

“My sentiments exactly.” Galileo picks himself up from the doorstep and glares at me. “Congratulations on single-handedly fecking up my life, you stupid son of a bitch.”

His anger is making his Belfast accent stronger, and on a better day, I might take the piss out of him for it. But I’m not in the mood to laugh.

“We really hurt her.” Lambert is on his ass still, hugging his spread knees with his eyes glued to the floor as if the ugly fleur-de-lis carpet is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

“Hurt her?” I demand, rubbing a bruise on my own tailbone. “By taking a book?”

A book she doesn’t even have.

Fuck.

“She might change her mind.” Lambert is looking at Leo with pure, unfiltered pity in his expression. “She gets rid of my strikesevery day. I wake up, and my library card just poofs in front of my face, clean as a whistle.”