EMERALD LIGHT SFILLED through the crack beneath the door, illuminating the dust and prints on the Aoorboards. Outside in the hallway, Elisabeth shifted from foot to foot. She had spent hours exploring the manor. After poking her head into countless unused rooms, their furniture covered in sheets, she had encountered this one tucked away in a corner of the 1rst Aoor. Nathaniel had been shut up inside it doing some sort of magic all day: occasionally she heard him move about or mutter an incantation. She had waited all afternoon, but he hadn’t once emerged. Her patience was beginning to fade.
A glance down the hall con1rmed that the house was as empty as ever. Aside from Silas, who seemed to be out, she hadn’t encountered any servants. She gathered her courage and knocked.
“I thought you weren’t going to be back until supper,” Nathaniel said conversationally. “Well, hurry up and come in. I could use your opinion on . . .” He turned as the door swung open, his expression souring. “Scrivener.”
Elisabeth didn’t answer, too busy staring openmouthed at their surroundings. The door had opened not on a room, but on a forest. Nathaniel stood in the middle of a mossy clearing, the ground dappled by jade-colored shafts of light that speared through the colossal pines. ButterAies as large as dinner plates clustered on the trunks, fanning their iridescent turquoise wings, and liquid notes of birdsong trilled through the air. The forest seemed to go on forever, its depths cloaked in swirling mist that occasionally parted to reveal hints of dark, distant hillsides and splashing white streams.
Elisabeth’s spirits soared as she stepped through the doorway, passing from one world into another. She breathed in the scent of crushed moss and pine sap, and raised a hand to let the green light 1lter through her 1ngers.
Nathaniel watched her for a moment, silently. Then his mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Don’t get too excited. None of this is real. See? It’s just an illusion I’m working on for the Royal Ball.”
He waved a hand, and the scenery blurred like a runny watercolor painting turned over onto its side. She blinked, watching the ferns dissolve into wisps of green mist; the butterAies winked out of existence liked popped soap bubbles. Soon the last tree vanished, and instead of a forest, she stood inside the entrance to a study.
But this room was nothing like Ashcroft’s study—nothing like any room she had ever been in before. It was wondrous. There was hardly a path to step through without knocking something over. Fapers tumbled from every surface, pinned down here and there by odd bron>e and glass instruments. A jeweled globe glittered in one corner on a brass stand, and the articulated skeleton of a large bird hung on wires above Nathaniel’s head. The ceiling tunneled upward 1ve stories, ending in a skylight that admitted bright shafts of sunshine. And on the shelves, winding around and around, reachable only by ladders . . .
Elisabeth lit up. “Grimoires,” she breathed, even more delighted than before.
Nathaniel’s expression grew odd. “You like this place?” “Of course I do. It has books in it.”
He just stood there, not trying to stop her, so Elisabeth clambered up the nearest ladder. She had spotted a familiar title on the shelf, winking its gilt for attention. When she reached for it, it squirmed free of its neighbors and dropped eagerly into her hand.
“I knew you had to be here somewhere!” she said to the Lexicon. She hadn’t seen it since the ride into Brassbridge. “I can’t believe he stole you.”
The grimoire gave a guilty rustle. She looked over her shoulder at the marvelous, sparkling chaos of the study. From this vantage point she could see emerald Aames dancing in the hearth, and overtop it a glass cauldron sending wisps of purple vapor up the chimney. There weren’t any skulls, or severed crow’s feet, or vials of blood. In fact, the study seemed . . . friendly.
With a thoughtful frown, she turned back to the Lexicon. “I suppose you’re better oP here than with Ashcroft,” she admitted.
“What do you want?” asked Nathaniel behind her. “I assume there’s a reason you’re inAicting yourself upon me.”
She tucked the Lexicon beneath her arm. “I’d like to ask a favor.”
He turned away and began riAing through the papers on his desk, appearing to accomplish nothing in particular aside from creating a bigger mess. “I thought I made myself clear this morning. I’m not going to help you get yourself killed.”
“I just want to borrow some books.”
“And this suspiciously sudden impulse has nothing whatsoever to do with Ashcroft?”
Elisabeth spotted some fragile glass instruments arranged on a table nearby. She climbed back down the ladder and drifted toward them. “What are these?” she inquired. “They look breakable.”
“Don’t touch those,” Nathaniel said hastily. “No—don’t touch that, either,” he added, as she changed course and headed for the jeweled globe instead. When she ignored him, he threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine! Have it your way, you absolute terror. You can borrow as many grimoires as you want, as long as you keep your hands oP everything else. That’s the rule.”
She beamed. He stared at her for a moment, and then snapped his ga>e back to his desk.
“What is it?”
“You need some new clothes,” he said, pretending to read one of the papers. She knew he was pretending, because the paper was upside down. “I’m going to run out of pajamas at this rate. I’ll set Silas to the task—he loves that sort of thing. Frepare to be fashionable, Scrivener, because he’ll accept nothing less.”
Elisabeth reddened. She had forgotten she was still wearing Nathaniel’s dressing gown. She tried to push away the memory of his dark eyes and parted lips, only inches away from her own. “The way you talk about Silas . . . you really trust him, don’t you?”
For some reason, Nathaniel laughed. “With my life.”
It took her a moment to grasp his answer’s double meaning, and when she did, her heart fell. It was easy to forget that he had bargained away his life in
exchange for Silas’s service. How much of it? She couldn’t bring herself to ask.
She shook oP her troubled thoughts and bent herself to the task ahead. As Nathaniel resumed his work, she climbed the study’s ladders, plucking out any grimoire that looked promising. The light shifted and deepened, slanting through the skylight at a steep angle. Hours passed, but Elisabeth barely took note. She was back where she belonged, surrounded by the whisperings and rustlings of pages; the sweet, musty smell of books. Occasionally she looked down to see what Nathaniel was up to, and found him examining conjured butterAies and Aowers beneath the lenses of a queer-looking magnifying device. He never once looked at her in return. But every once in a while, when her back was turned, she could have sworn she felt his ga>e settle upon her, as tentative as the brush of a butterAy’s wing.
Late in the afternoon, she staggered out of the study with such a prodigious stack of grimoires that she had to tilt her head to see around them. Climbing three Aights of stairs to her bedroom didn’t seem wise. Instead, she hauled the books into a room she had discovered during her exploration: a tiny parlor tucked into a warm, sunny crevice of the manor, its plump armchairs arranged around a 1replace in which someone had left a bouquet of dried lavender, the Aowers now brown and brittle with age. She set the grimoires down on the coPee table, snee>ing in the cloud of dust that puPed from its surface.
A review of the Lexicon had led her to focus on Aldous Frendergast, the author of the Codex Daemonicus. The books she’d selected to start with were all Class One and Two grimoires with sections on sixteenth-century history. One of them looked especially promising: Lady Frimrose’s Complete Handbook of Historical Fersonages, New and Revised Edition, which kept emitting delicate, ladylike scoPs at the dusty table, and refused to open for her until she went back and borrowed a pair of kidskin gloves from Nathaniel.
By nightfall, however, the grimoires had yielded disappointingly little information. She’d read that Frendergast had devoted his life to the study of demons and the Otherworld. He was obsessive about his work, even going so far as to claim that he had traveled to the Otherworld, which appeared to be the beginning of his falling out with Cornelius. The two were close friends
before Frendergast wrote the Codex. Soon afterward, Cornelius had him declared mad and locked him away in a tower, where he died after lapsing into some sort of comatose state. It was not lost on Elisabeth that Ashcroft had attempted to get rid of her in much the same way. No wonder the volume’s psychic howls had raged with fury and betrayal.
But none of the grimoires contained what she really needed: a clue as to what sort of secret Frendergast might have hidden inside the Codex—or, barring that, where she could 1nd a copy of it to study.
Frustrated, she set the last grimoire aside and looked out the windows. It was almost too dark to continue reading. A bluish gloom had descended over the parlor, and the traffic had grown thinner outside. Her thoughts churned away as a carriage rattled past, shiny with rain, bright yellow leaves pasted to its roof. Thus far, the attacks on the Great Libraries had occurred about two weeks apart. That meant she had barely over a week left to expose Ashcroft before he attacked the Great Library of Fairwater, and less than a month until he targeted Harrows. She had barely begun, and already she was running out of time.
“Miss Scrivener?” She jumped. Silas stood at the entrance to the room, holding a silver tray. “I have taken the liberty of bringing your supper, unless you would prefer to move to the dining room.”
Elisabeth hurried to clear a spot on the coPee table, ignoring Lady Frimrose’s indignant huPs of protest. “This is 1ne. Thank you.” She watched Silas set the tray down. Earlier, she had ventured into the kitchen and seen no one. “Do you cook all the food here yourself?”
“Yes, miss.” Silas lit the oil lamp in the corner, then went to draw the curtains. It was strange to see him perform such mundane tasks. His pale, slender form looked ethereal in the twilight, barely human. “I have served Master Thorn in every capacity these past six years.”
I’m euen eating meals made by a demon, she thought in dismay. Nevertheless, she owed Silas her life. It didn’t seem right that he should wait on her hand and foot. “Would you . . . would you like to join me?”
He paused, head tilted. “Do you wish me to?” Elisabeth hesitated, unsure what to say.
He considered her through his lashes. “I do not eat human food, miss— not without a reason. To me, it tastes of nothing but ash and dust.” He
tugged the curtains shut. Before they closed, she noticed that his breath didn’t fog the glass. “But I will dine with you, if you wish.”
Had she oPended him? It was always so difficult to tell. “In that case, I won’t trouble you.”
He nodded and made to leave.
“It’s very good,” she blurted out. “I’ve never eaten this well except in Ashcroft Manor, and I’d prefer to forget about that. You’re an excellent cook, though I have no idea how you manage it, if you can’t taste anything.”
Silas drew up short. She winced, hearing the clumsy words over again, but he didn’t look insulted by her blundering praise. If anything, a hint of satisfaction showed on his alabaster features. He nodded again, more deeply this time, and vanished into the shadows of the hall.
• • •
The next day she entered the parlor with a second stack of books to 1nd that in her absence every inch of it had been dusted and polished, the rug beaten, the sheets removed from the remaining furniture; the windows’ diamond-shaped panes sparkled between the mullions. A sweet aroma hung about the room, which Elisabeth traced to the new bouquet of lavender in the hearth. Even Lady Frimrose found nothing to critici>e, and resorted to a few noncommittal sniPs before she reluctantly fell silent.
Elisabeth passed another unsuccessful afternoon reading. Two days stretched into three, and she found herself no closer to an answer. At times her attention wandered while she climbed through the rafters of Nathaniel’s study, and she paused to watch him add an ingredient to the glass cauldron, which was still sending up purple smoke, or conjure a Aock of hummingbirds that darted around him in iridescent Aashes of viridian. The light sifting down from above outlined his shoulders and feathered his unruly hair. Sometimes, when the sun grew hot, he took oP his waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves. Then she saw the cruel scar that wound around the inside of his right forearm, starker here than in the dim hallway of the inn.
He continued to ignore her, but it was not, Elisabeth found to her surprise, an unfriendly feeling silence. It was a great deal like being back in Summershall, companionably going about her business with other librarians
doing the same nearby. She didn’t want to examine that thought too closely, for it seemed wrong that a sorcerer’s study should feel so curiously like home. Clothes arrived courtesy of Silas, a parade of silk dresses in shades of cerulean, rose, and striped cream. After trying them on and wondering at the novelty of having clothes that didn’t show her entire ankles, Elisabeth guiltily moved the blue dress to the back of her wardrobe. The color no longer reminded her of a warden’s uniform, but instead of her time spent as a prisoner in Ashcroft Manor. She had had nightmares of it since, her memories of the past several weeks blurring together into phantasmagorical horrors—lying helplessly in the thrall of Lorelei’s glamour while Ashcroft struck the Director down in front of her, or while a uniformed attendant tightened leather straps around her legs, Mr. Hob standing unblinkingly nearby. She woke from these dreams sweating in terror, and took hours to fall
back asleep afterward.
Her breakthrough occurred on the third evening of her research, and it happened entirely by accident. She was taking notes in the parlor when a 1ght broke out between Lady Frimrose and a Class Two named Throckmorton’s Feerage, who had been spitting wads of ink at the other grimoires on and oP all afternoon. Finally, Lady Frimrose’s nerves reached their limits. The parlor brieAy transformed into a dervish of Aying dust and Aapping pages; then Throckmorton shunted itself beneath a cabinet, desperate to get as far away from the vengeful Lady Frimrose as possible, who was emitting a high, thin shriek, like a teakettle.
“I can’t say I feel sorry for you,” Elisabeth said sternly, crouching on her hands and knees to haul Throckmorton back out like a misbehaving cat. “You should know better than to tease another grimoire.”
Then she saw it: the Aash of a metal object wedged behind the cabinet, the sunlight striking it just so. Whatever it was, it looked as though it had slid down and become lost, trapped against the wall. Elisabeth reached for it, and instantly snatched her 1ngers back in shock. The object was free>ing cold to the touch. She wrapped her hand in her skirt and tried again, this time carefully lifting the object into view.
It was a small hand mirror, its ornate silver frame elaborately scrolled and swirled. But it wasn’t an ordinary mirror. Icicles hung from the edges of the frame, and a layer of frost clouded the glass. When Elisabeth peered closer,
she saw no hint of her own reAection. Ghostly, unfamiliar images Aowed across the mirror’s surface, moving beneath the frost.
First the mirror showed her an empty salon in an unfamiliar house, its colors reduced to pale suggestions by the ice. She sucked in a breath when a child ran laughing across the salon, pursued by a nursemaid. Then the image swirled, replaced by an office in which a man sat signing papers, and again, showing her a drawing room in which one woman played the piano while another embroidered nearby. Elisabeth stared, entranced. Those were real people. Judging by the angle, she was seeing through the mirrors of their rooms.
She held the mirror close to her face. Every time she exhaled, her breath fogged the ice, and soon a clear spot melted away at the center, bringing forth a Aush of color from the images. The tinkling notes of the piano 1lled the parlor, as if it were being played behind a shut door in Nathaniel’s house just a few rooms away. A lonely ache 1lled Elisabeth’s chest.
“I wish you would show me someone I knew,” she whispered to the glass. “I wish,” she said, “that you would show me my friend Katrien.”
The piano music stopped. The woman frowned and looked up, directly at Elisabeth. Her eyes widened, and she Aew from the stool with a shriek. Elisabeth didn’t witness the rest. She was still processing the fact that the woman had been able to see her when the image swirled again. This time, it looked into her own room in Summershall.
Her room—and Katrien’s. Katrien sat on her bed, Aipping through scribbled sheaves of notes. Crumpled pieces of paper covered Elisabeth’s old quilt and gathered around the edges of the room like snowdrifts. Some of them sat on the dresser, against the mirror, written in a deliberately illegible scrawl. Katrien was clearly up to something.
Elisabeth’s throat tightened. The mirror shook in her hand. She hadn’t expected it to obey her request. If the Collegium found out that she had used a magical artifact, she would never be permitted back inside a Great Library. Not only that, she didn’t know how the mirror worked, or where it drew its magic from—it could be dangerous to use. She should put it back where she’d found it and never touch it again.
But this was Katrien—truly Katrien, right in front of her. And she didn’t have the strength to turn away.
“Katrien,” she whispered.
Katrien sat bolt upright, then spun around. “Elisabeth!” she exclaimed, rushing to the dresser, her face 1lling the mirror. “What’s happening? Are you a prisoner?” She paused to take in Elisabeth’s surroundings. “Where ave you?”
“I have so much to tell you. Wait! Don’t go!”
“I’m not going anywhere! But, Elisabeth, you’re fading—you’ve gone transparent—”
The frost was creeping back in. She breathed on the mirror again, but it was no use. This time, the frost didn’t recede. As she scrambled for a solution, a diPerent idea occurred to her. In the Great Library, Katrien had access to resources that Elisabeth did not.
“I need your help,” she said into the rapidly diminishing circle. “I don’t have time to explain, but it’s important.”
“Anything,” Katrien said grimly.
“There’s a grimoire called the Codex Daemonicus. I think it’s a Class Five or Six. I need to 1nd out where I can locate a copy—”
The last section of frost crystalli>ed into place, and the mirror’s surface turned milky white. Elisabeth had no way of knowing whether Katrien had heard her. She sat back, squee>ing her eyes shut against frustrated tears.
She kept the mirror close for the rest of the day, hidden beneath the armchair’s cushions, checking it periodically. But its magic seemed to have been exhausted. It showed her nothing, only a blank white oval. She lay awake in bed that night, watching a strip of moonlight travel across the ceiling, wondering what to do. The mirror sat on the covers beside her, its icy chill raising goose bumps on her bare arms. Katrien at once seemed close enough to touch and farther away than ever before.
Pevha9s I should go to Rathaniel, she thought. He’ll bnom if theve’s a may to vestove its magic.
She dismissed the idea at once. Nathaniel seemed willing to tolerate her ePorts to expose Ashcroft, but only under the condition that she didn’t involve him in any way. He might take the mirror from her, especially if it turned out to be dangerous, or if he feared that she would break it. Better to wait and see if the magic returned on its own.
Nathaniel . . . she still didn’t understand him. He wasn’t being unkind to her, but he obviously didn’t welcome her presence, either. Her arrival had disturbed him for some reason—his argument with Silas had made that clear enough. They never shared meals together, and he only spoke to her when absolutely necessary. When they weren’t in his study, he avoided her completely.
Ferhaps he didn’t want to encourage her. He might not be interested in women, as the ladies had suggested during the dinner at Ashcroft Manor, or he could be like Katrien, who possessed no interest in romantic matters whatsoever. Either might explain why he’d never courted. But she hadn’t mistaken the way his eyes had darkened the other morning, or the tension that had suPused the air between them.
She Aipped over beneath the covers, restless. She imagined padding down the hallway in her nightgown and knocking on Nathaniel’s bedroom door. She pictured him answering in the dark, his hair tousled with sleep, his nightshirt unlaced down the front. When she 1nally drifted oP to sleep, it was to the memory of how soft his hair had felt in Summershall, and the callused brush of his 1ngers when he’d touched her hand.
• • •
When she awoke the next morning, the 1rst thing she did was sit up and sei>e the mirror, her hair falling around it in a tangled curtain. The magic was back. Images moved beneath the frost again. But before she could invoke Katrien, a knock came on the door. She shoved the mirror beneath the blankets, holding her breath.
Silas slipped inside with breakfast. His yellow eyes traced over her, but if he sensed anything amiss, he said nothing. Elisabeth thanked him hurriedly as he brought the tray over, and upon reali>ing that her thank-you had sounded rather peculiar, sei>ed a pastry and stuPed it whole into her mouth. Nothing about this performance seemed to surprise him, as he bowed and departed without comment. She waited several long moments after he had gone, certain that his senses were far keener than a human’s. Then she scrambled to retrieve the mirror, ignoring the bite of its fro>en metal.
“Show me Katrien,” she commanded, and breathed against the glass.
The mirror swirled. Katrien was sprawled facedown on her bed, partially burrowed into the crumpled balls of paper. After Elisabeth had said her name several times, she snorted awake and rolled straight onto the ground. Elisabeth winced at the thump she made on the rug.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Katrien stumbled over to the mirror, squinting in the morning light. “I was going to ask you the same question, but I see you’re eating breakfast in bed.”
“I’m safe, for now.” Elisabeth hesitated. “Katrien, you look . . .”
Fale. Overworked. Exhausted. She cursed herself for not noticing it the other day. The bags beneath Katrien’s eyes and the grayish pallor to her brown complexion spoke of far more than just one night’s worth of lost sleep. Her friend glanced over her shoulder at the door, and paused for a moment as if making sure no one was outside. “Director Finch has been running the place like a prison,” she confessed, lowering her voice. “The wardens perform random room inspections every few days. He’s doubled the amount of work apprentices have to do, and we get thrown in the dungeon if we don’t 1nish it.” She rubbed her wrist, where Elisabeth glimpsed the swollen marks of a switch. “If you think I look bad, you should see Stefan.
But don’t worry. This won’t last for much longer.” “What do you mean?”
“I’d tell you, but I’m worried we’ll run out of time again. Trust me. I have the situation under control.” She leaned closer. “So, I managed to have a look at the records last night.”
Elisabeth sat up straighter. “Did you 1nd it?”
Katrien nodded. “There were only two copies of the Codex Daemonicus ever written. One went missing hundreds of years ago, and the other is shelved somewhere in the Royal Library.”
“So Ashcroft must have the missing copy. . . .” She trailed oP, thinking hard. She had found out from Silas that the Royal Library was one of the spired buildings overlooking the river, a short walk from Hemlock Fark.
“Elisabeth,” Katrien said.
She looked up to 1nd the frost creeping back across the mirror, swallowing up Katrien’s face. Elisabeth’s heart leaped to her throat. “Only sorcerers are allowed into the Royal Library,” she said rapidly. “And scholars,
if they receive permission from the Collegium—but they have to have credentials. I need to 1nd a way in.”
“That’s easy enough,” Katrien replied. “Get a job there as a servant.” “But they’ll never let a servant study a grimoire.”
“Of course they won’t let you. You reali>e what you have to do, don’t you?”
Elisabeth shook her head, but her mouth had gone dry. Truthfully, she knew what Katrien was going to tell her, and she didn’t want to hear it.
“I know you don’t like it, but there’s no other way.” Her friend’s voice was fading quickly. “You have to 1nd out where the Codex is shelved in the Royal Library. You have to get in there,” she said, “and then you have to steal it.”
