Page 67 of Witch and Tell

Lise. I stood and stepped into the hall. She’d come.

The books sensed a new source of magic, and their humming intensified until the library’s air vibrated like a beehive. Underlying the buzz sounded a baritone thread of warning:Don’t, careful, no, go.

Together, we walked down the hall toward my apartment. Lise’s penlight made a spot of white-yellow on the fir floorboards.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I whispered.

“I had to. I admit, though, I’m scared.” Lise glanced over the banister, into the library’s shadowy depths. “You live up here?”

“The old servants’ quarters were made into an apartment when Marilyn Wilfred converted her family home into the library.”

“Who’s Marilyn Wilfred?”

“Remember the portrait above the entrance to the foyer? The woman in the flapper gown? I showed her to you.”

“The one with the black cat at her feet,” Lise said. “Yes. She’s mesmerizing.”

I knew the feeling. I’d always wondered if there was something magical about her, but I never knew for certain. “That’s Marilyn Wilfred.”

We went into my apartment. A faint glow showed through Sam’s kitchen curtains across the garden.

“Stay back,” I told Lise, “and you’d better turn off your flashlight.” I led her to my bedroom, where a breeze through the window ruffled the partially closed curtains. “If we sit here, on the floor, we won’t be seen.”

“Next to the bed?” She pointed to the rag rug.

I nodded, although Lise couldn’t see me. I’d loved living in this apartment with its Victorian furniture and cozy fireplace. As before, I hoped these would not be my last few hours here.

“I’ll light a candle,” I said. “We’ll need it.”

I took the brass candlestick from my bedside table and set it on the floor. Candle lit, I slid the green trunk with my grandmother’s magic lessons from under the bed. Rodney was already purring. Would the trunk open with another person near? It wouldn’t open for my mother, even though she was also a witch.

I glanced at Lise. The candle cast a pink-orange light on her freckles. I hoped it wasn’t a mistake to involve her. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? I don’t know what Beata will do to protect her power.”

“I have the feeling she’d do just about anything.” Lise’s gaze wandered to the room’s dark edges as if imagining the possibilities. “You can’t do this without me. This is where I need to be.”

Whatever Lise’s magical drive was, it was moral— that much I now knew. I felt a bond to her, as if I’d known her for years. A sisterly feeling. Was it because we both had magic in our veins, or was it something more? “Thank you. I hope I can repay you someday.”

“By telling me about my gift, you already have.” She nodded toward the trunk. “We’d better get busy. We don’t know when she’ll turn up.”

I rested a hand on the trunk’s latch, and it sprang open without any effort on my part. Whatever was about to happen was fated.

The trunk’s letters glowed in a blinding blend of red, green, and golden light as if they were living. But it wasn’t the letters that caught my eye, it was the grimoire. On its own, the grimoire rose to the top of the letters.

“What is this?” Lise’s voice was breathy with wonder.

It took me a moment to be able to speak. “My grandmother’s grimoire. She kept her spells in it. Among other things.”

“It’s as if it’s alive.”

Lise and I both jumped back as Rodney dropped into the trunk and rolled on the grimoire, purring more loudly than I’d ever heard him.

More strangely, the library’s books were singing. Their voices wove together in an eerie music that was half symphony, half chant. They often spoke to me and sometimes sang—especially the books in Arts—but never had they sounded like this.

“Do you hear that, too?” I asked Lise.

“Hear what?”

“Never mind.” I slipped the grimoire from under Rodney. It was nearly too hot to touch, yet my hands closed on it like a magnet drew iron. Rodney leapt from the trunk, and I shut it, setting the grimoire on top. It flew open to a page I’d never seen.