Chương 19: Chapter 18 - ARC Hall

Breakfast was rough. Olivia and Ellis weren't talking, and their eyes never strayed anywhere near the other, yet they still managed to pretend, along with everyone else, that nothing had happened. It was the politeness of knives. I got the feeling that everything would be all right as long as I didn't do something silly—like breathe too deep or move when I didn't have to. When Ellis left for work, Rall excused himself from the table so he could say goodbye to her at the door.

Olivia and I were left alone with Nylah.

"What did you do this time, Olivia?" Nylah demanded.

"Why would I tell you?" Olivia asked. Nylah stood up abruptly. On her way to the door, she paused by Olivia's chair and said in a low, angry whisper, "Can't you leave mother alone for once in your goddamn life? Do you have to be such a pain?"

"Don't worry, I'll be gone soon. Then you can have your perfect life back." Olivia looked up at her sister.

"Isn't that what you want?" Nylah's top lip twitched, as if she was tempted to sneer. An emotion moved behind her face. It reminded me of a heavy velvet curtain rolling in loose waves. There was a sense of dark blue and depth. She left. I pressed the back of my hand up to my eyes, one after the other, trying to rub away the feeling of seeing things that I shouldn't be able to see.

"I need more coffee," I whispered to myself. When I opened my eyes, Olivia had the urn in her hand. She poured a hot layer of coffee into my tepid cup and nudged the sugar bowl closer. Olivia glanced up when I didn't move and saw the look of wonder and surprise that I'm sure lit up my face like a blaring neon sign. Her lips twisted up on one side, her nose wrinkled up, and her brow furrowed.

I'd seen that look once or twice before; if you took a scowl and added a heavy dash of someone grumbling "yeah, yeah," that would almost cover it. Dare I say, it made her look kind of cute? Certainly not out loud.

"Thank you, Olivia," I said. She shook her head, quick, as if my thanks were nothing but an annoying bug that landed on her hair. I reached out and started adding some sugar to my coffee.

"You're rubbing your eyes again," Olivia said.

"Did you see something?"

"I don't know." I took a sip, then gazed at the pale reflection of the inside rim of my white mug shining off the dark coffee.

"I've been…feeling things…lately. It's like seeing them, but I…can't." That line was lame, even by my low conversational standards, and almost as clear as a bottle of ink. In an effort to redeem myself, I said, "I thought I saw something in Nylah's face a moment ago. Some kind of emotion." I added in a mumble, "It makes my head hurt." I took another sip.

"I wouldn't have chosen you," Olivia said. That was the sort of loving endorsement I'd come to expect from her, but I raised my eyes, hoping I might be able to figure out what had brought it on this time. She stared at her half-finished toast. When she shrugged, it barely moved her shoulders.

"I wouldn't have chosen anyone. But Kirby means a lot to me." She took a deep breath and looked right in my eyes.

"So this is my family. Now you know." There was a sharp clink as I put my coffee cup down in its saucer.

"Olivia, I don't care what your family is like." But I did care. A lot. Anyone could've heard it pouring into my protest until it spilled over the top of the words, turning them into a big fat lie. I wasn't trying to be dishonest, but I didn't know how to explain it—why her family mattered, and why it didn't. Olivia watched my face for a second, then stood up and turned.

"I have to go check on a few things."

"We're going out again, aren't we?"

"Of course." Her voice was brimming with contempt for the fact I felt the need to ask. She disappeared out the door.

"Attagirl," I whispered to my coffee. Rall stopped by when he saw I was alone in the dining room. He informed me that his walking buddies hadn't heard anything, but they promised they'd ask around.

"What about you?" he said, "Did you learn anything?"

"Officer Ansel doesn't like paperwork," I said.

"Ah." He smiled.

"Few people do, you know." An hour later, I was back in my winter coat, walking beside Jacky and Olivia. As always, Olivia was thrilled to have me.

"I told you they won't let you in," she said.

"But they'll let in Jacky?" I said.

"That doesn't seem fair."

"Mr. Noctis is my mentor and a torrman. You're just overly inquisitive!" I pointed at her with both index fingers.

"That's why you brought me!" She rolled her eyes.

"If you keep doing that," I said, "one day they're going to roll around so far you'll be able to see your own brain."

"Maybe then I'll know what I was thinking when I invited you," she said.

"Oh-ho! Good one." The edge of her lips almost twitched. Almost. I tucked my hands deep in my coat pockets. Why hadn't I been smart enough to pack my mittens? Or my hat?

"Don't worry," I said.

"I'll look around outside and see if I can spot anything from there. I won't get in trouble for that, will I?"

"I wouldn't put it past you."

"How come they won't let me into this hall anyway?" Jacky said, "This library is of particular importance to the coven. They're careful who they allow inside. You would need either a special invitation or a card from the Torr that identifies you."

"Do I have one of those?" I had to ask. It'd only been two or three weeks ago that Darius had come up and handed me a fancy, heavy-duty faux-leather pocket folder that contained a driver's license, a passport, and a bunch of other official looking documents. I'd pointed to the passport and driver's license.

"Are these real?"

"They aren't forgeries, if that's what you're asking," Darius said. I flipped through the documents, then looked up at the count.

"I don't see a birth certificate."

"You won't find your death certificate in there either. As far as the government is concerned, that Emerra Cole is six feet underground."

"So I'm a different Emerra Cole that happens to have the exact same birthday and fingerprints as the dead Emerra Cole?"

"Birthday, yes. Fingerprints, no."

"You changed my fingerprints?"

"No, we changed the dead Emerra's fingerprints. It's always easier to kill off the old you than try to change the new you."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Sorry. No questions asked and no questions answered." He tapped the folder.

"Be sure to put these somewhere safe." I'd taken out the driver's license, dropped the folder on the desk in my bedroom, and hadn't looked at it since—which was why I wasn't sure if I was a card-carrying member of the Torr or not.

"No," Jacky said, "you don't."

"Am I going to get one of those?" I asked. Big Jacky hesitated for a long time. It's hard to explain how bones can look uneasy—you'll have to take my word for it.

"That… remains to be seen." Olivia said, "We're here." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. I looked up. Most of the other buildings in Craftborough were special because they were old; this one was special because it was the final answer on how much modern architecture was allowed to encroach on the witches' territory. They used the wood and bricks that matched the rest of the town, but they'd been stacked up around a state-of-the-art, three-story design.

The ceilings were taller, the windows were wider, and the sheets of glass were joined with thin black seams. The halls that led from the main building to the satellite rooms around the back and sides were lined with windows that mimicked the grid windows of the 1700s, but any pretense of shutters were gone. There was a generous courtyard made up of large, smooth stone slabs laid down so the seams created a pattern of angles and curves. The seams were inlaid with lines of silver metal.

Around the edges of the courtyard were the sagging remnants of their manicured plants, nestled in a layer of snow, waiting for spring to come so they could burst back into life. In front of it all, there was a stone sign. The inlaid metal lines spelled out the name of the building. ARC Hall—pronounced "arc," like the curve of a circle, short for Archives, Reference, and Cultural Hall. Whenever Jacky called it a library, Olivia twitched with the restrained need to correct him.

It was, apparently, more than a library.

"That," I said, "is a whole lot bigger than I thought it would be." Jacky said, "Craftborough is home to the oldest organized coven in North America. They have a lot of archives. And culture." I said to Olivia, "Why are you so sure that this building has something to do with what happened last night?"

"My mother mentioned a wardsman," she said.

"They're a special group of witches that maintain the wards the coven uses to protect community property, and the rest of coven property is nothing but a bunch of old buildings that we don't bother protecting." I spoke slowly, giving my brain all the time it needed to churn through a few deductions.

"So what you're saying is that, this morning, we broke into the wrong building?"

"It wasn't the wrong building. Mother had been there!" I raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. Fine!" Olivia threw up her hands.

"I made a mistake. Are you happy now?"

"Olivia Oliversen, does this mean that you're human?" I tried to sound as shocked and appalled as anyone would be at such a monumental discovery. Like many other important discoveries, it was ignored by the public at large.

"You look around the outside of the building and stay out of trouble," she said.

"Mr. Noctis and I will go inside and see if we can learn anything."

"Gotcha." I gave her a thumbs up. I split off from them early, lest my trouble-making aura infect them. As I wandered across the courtyard, I tucked my hands in my coat pockets and raised my face to the meager sunlight. The real reason I'd come (in spite of Olivia's discouragement) was to get away from the Oliversen house. I didn't really think I had much chance of finding anything. Mrs. Oliversen had declared it a false alarm—meaning they'd found nothing inside.

That made it hard to imagine there'd be anything of interest on the outside. But I had to do my best. Well… my best ish. I didn't whip out a deerstalker cap and magnifying glass or anything. I used the silver lines in the paving stones as the world's least exciting balance beams, and every now and then, I'd gaze at the pewter-colored sky broken up by the dark branches of the bare trees. Whenever I caught someone watching me, I waved.

If you're a bald girl, people tend to look at you when they think you're not paying attention. I didn't mind. Sometimes people—usually children—would wave back. I passed the long side of the main building and two-and-a-half satellite buildings before I reached what I considered to be the back of the complex. At the edge of the employee parking lot, there was a short brick wall that served only one purpose: to hide all of the ugly, embarrassing metal boxes the complex needed to function.

It was the curse of every designer. You went out of your way to make an aesthetically pleasing building, then along comes all those pesky practical concerns. The easiest solution was to shove the important stuff behind the beautiful stuff and plant bushes. Who'd see it back there, anyway? The overly inquisitive. That's who. Whoever had designed ARC Hall must have missed the memo about using bushes.

The ground was still covered with stone slabs, though they didn't extend out as far as the ones out front, and they weren't kept spotless. When I made it around the satellite buildings, I discovered that the main building butted up against a tall hill. The builders had dug out the section that didn't fit in with their plans and bricked up the new cliff face to keep it from spilling over.

As I looked down the length of the building, I could see the hill and the supporting brick wall tapering off a few feet back from the front corner of the Hall. Even in this man-made architectural mini-canyon, there were paving stones. There was also plenty of room for me to walk between the wall of the building and the wall supporting the hill, so I could successfully complete my mission of walking around the outside of the Hall. What a great hiding place, I thought as I stepped between the two walls.

Do the librarians ever come back here to get away from work? I doubted it. Librarians struck me as a dedicated and conscientious group of people. But if I understood Olivia right, then the people who worked there weren't merely librarians. And how do you store culture in a building? Halfway through the canyon, my wandering thoughts focused on an object sitting in the shadow of the building. It was some kind of squat cylinder with a large tag. I looked around. The walkway was dark and empty.

The only litter I could see was a scrap of paper that had escaped from someone's lunch, and a disposable cup that had been carried into a corner by the wind. I peered back at the cylinder. Whatever it was, it looked too heavy to have blown there. Maybe someone does hide back here. When I moved closer, I realized the cylinder was a tin can. The tag was the lid, pulled back to expose whatever the contents had been. Ewww.

I went to pick it up and throw it away, but when I was within two steps of it, I ran into the ward. I hadn't been expecting it, and there was no warning it was there. I was walking along, nothing in front of me, and then that nothing became a wall. Bright blue light filled my vision. I stumbled back.

"What the…" Once I was steady on my feet, I reached out slowly. As my hand approached the invisible barrier, it glowed a deep indigo, becoming brighter and bluer as my fingers got closer. I rested three of my fingers on the wall of nothing. Under them, an electric cerulean blue spread out, fading into something dark and almost purple the further away it was from the point of contact. I laughed. Touching the ward didn't hurt. It felt like a really solid piece of air.

I watched the blues and purples slide around as I ran my hand over the surface. As I swept my arm around in a giant circle, I noticed something on the ground at my feet. A line of snow had melted to reveal a metal inlay. I squatted down and slid my hand closer to the stone below me. Sure enough, the ward was attached to the silver line. Huh. I'd used the other silver lines as balance beams. They hadn't been wards. I heard a voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like Big Jacky: They weren't active wards.

Jacky-in-my-head made a good point. The witches would probably take down the wards in the front of the building when it was open, but no one was supposed to be back here, so they could leave them up the whole time. But how was I supposed to get that stupid can? And how had it gotten there in the first place? I looked around again. Near the base of the hillside wall was a broken branch. It was mostly bare, with one fork sticking off the end, giving it a convenient Y shape. It looked long enough to be useful.

I picked it up and poked the ward with it. There was no reaction—no glow, no pretty blue and purple lights. I used the forked branch to hook the can, then dragged it out of the ward toward me. Tuna. I laid the stick aside and picked up the can. The flecks of fish that were still in it were soggy from the snow that had melted inside, but they were old enough I couldn't smell them. I examined the layer of snow around the edge of the building, close to where the tuna had been resting.

Where the snow had been thinnest, it had already melted down to the stone, making it harder to tell, but I thought a few of the melted spots might have once been paw prints.

"That's a strange way to feed a cat." I stood up and continued toward the front of the building. My mind was filled, ear-to-ear, with a wispy sense of puzzlement centered around tuna cans. As I walked, I absent-mindedly trailed my left hand along the ward.

"Hey! Hey!" I looked up. In front of me, at the end of the wall, was a young woman. She wasn't wearing a coat, and in an effort to keep herself warm, her arms were folded tightly across her chest and her fingers were tucked in her armpits. She was around my age, and she had thick, wavy black hair cut in a chin-length bob. She looked angry.

"You!" she cried.

"Stop playing with the ward!" I glanced at the blue shimmer to my left, and let out an embarrassed laugh.

"Sorry." I pulled my hand back to my side.

"What are you doing back here anyway?" she demanded. I picked up my pace in case whatever excuse I thought up wasn't good enough. When I was beside her, I held up the tin can.

"I saw some litter." When I saw her eyes move from the can up to me, I gave her a smile befitting a good Samaritan.

"Why were you playing with the ward?" she asked.

"I've never run into one that kept me out before. It felt kind of weird, you know?" She sighed and turned back toward the front of the building. I followed her out of the walkway.

"You must be a visiting witch," she said.

"Not exactly." When she turned to me, her face full of alarm, I rushed to add, "But I am an initiate! I mean, I know about wards and all that, right?" Her alarm morphed into skepticism, so I blathered on to prove how at-ease and blameless I was.

"The ones I've run into only keep out monsters and things."

"Where the hell are you from?" My head flinched back when I heard the shock in her voice. After blinking once or twice, I said, "Does it matter?" Her cheeks went red, and she shrugged.

"Not really. It seemed weird to me. Malign wards are a lot harder to work with than normal wards. That's the kind of thing you only put up when you're expecting trouble." I do live with death every day. Unless he's on a business trip. Since I couldn't tell her that, I tried to change the subject.

"What's the difference between a malign ward and a normal ward?" We turned the corner at the front of the Hall. The courtyard spread out in front of us. The witch said, "A malign ward is designed to keep out things that might harm the people inside it. A normal ward just keeps out everything." I tapped the can with the index finger of the hand that was holding it.

"But not, like… everything, everything. Right?"

"Well, everything alive."

"But it doesn't keep out cats." She stopped and turned to me.

"How did you know that?" I held up the can again.

"Paw prints."

"Oh." Her shoulders relaxed, and she kept walking. I hurried a step to catch up to her.

"Does the fact you came out here mean that you're the one maintaining this ward? Could you feel me playing with it?"

"It was freaky. Like someone running a feather over my brain." I smiled.

"I really am sorry about that. I didn't mean to go around tickling you." The witch glanced my way, saw my smile, and gave me a half-smile in return. By then we were in front of the main doors. Knowing my welcome only extended so far, I stopped. The witch stopped beside me.

"It's okay," she said.

"It was kind of a welcome break. It's pretty crazy in there today." Oh, hey! If she wanted to extend her unofficial break, I'd be happy to keep her there.

"Why?" I asked.

"We walked in this morning and found an urgent new assignment, coming right from the top," she said.

"What kind of an assignment?" She waved her hand dismissively.

"Inventory stuff."

"I thought you were a wardsman. Do all the wardsman have other jobs in the hall?" She laughed.

"I'm not a wardsman. Not even close."

"But—" A loud, cheerful cry interrupted me: "Miss Cole!" The witch took one look at the three people approaching us and swore under her breath.

"Sorry," she muttered, "I have to go."

"Yeah," I said.

"Hey! Uh... thank you." She nodded to me, then hurried to the door. Ellis Oliversen kept coming, her long, fawn-colored coat waving around her legs with every stride. There was an unknown man beside her wearing a reddish-brown wool coat over a suit. Everything he wore looked slightly rumpled, as if he'd mugged someone else to borrow their clothes.

But that could have been nothing but a judgment by comparison because, walking in front of him, wearing a tailored navy-blue three-piece suit, long heather gray coat, and dapper tie—looking as if he was born to that level of style—was Mr. Owen Ashworth, the sorcerer's torrman, and the most handsome man I'd ever met. He was the one that had called my name. As he walked toward me, he smiled as if he'd unexpectedly run into an old friend. I held back my groan.