Dime Store Magic

Chapter 32

OKAY, I DIDN'T SCREAM. MORE OF A YELP, REALLY. MAYBE A SHRIEK.

What was in the bag? The long-lost Hand of Glory. Just what I wanted to see.

At my cry, Cortez came flying down the hall. Once we assured him that no one was mortally wounded, I explained how Savannah came to be in possession of the hand.

"… and then I forgot about it," I finished.

"So did I," she said. "Until now when I was putting away my homework and saw my bag."

"You put that thing in your schoolbag?" I said.

"Wrapped up, of course. The cops would never look in there. Now we can use it to sneak out of the house. We just light the fingers on fire and carry it outside. It'll make us invisible. Well, maybe not invisible, but it'll stop people from seeing us."

Cortez shook his head. "I'm afraid that's a myth, Savannah. The Hand of Glory only prevents sleeping people from waking and it does that very poorly."

"You've tried it?" she asked.

"Several times, until I learned a spell that worked better." He lifted the hand from the bag. "And smelled better. This Hand is very crudely done. Quite fresh, too. That weakens its power. Whoever made this didn't even follow the proper methods of anointing and preserving. I'd be surprised if it worked at all. I'd say its purpose is more fright than sleight."

"Dime-store magic?" Savannah said.

"Definitely. See here? Where the bone comes through? Now, if this was done correctly-"

I shivered. "Am I the only one totally grossed out by that thing?"

They both looked at me blankly.

"Apparently so," I muttered. "Can I skip this lesson? I'll start walking to Margaret's and you two can catch up."

"Paige is right," Cortez said, returning the hand to the bag. "We haven't time for this. I would suggest, though, that we take the hand along, so we can dispose of it away from the house."

I nodded and we headed for the back door. Cortez grabbed his leather jacket, then wrapped the bag as small as it would go and shoved it into the pocket. I couldn't suppress a shudder. Yes, I know I'd resolved to better accept the darker side of Savannah's nature, but I couldn't imagine ever toting around body parts as if they were tools like chalices and grimoires.

When we stepped outside, the evening was already growing cool and Savannah, dressed in a midriff-baring T-shirt, decided to run back in for a sweater.

Once she was gone, I pointed at the bag. "You really use stuff like that?"

"I use whatever works."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to sound…"

"A lot of magical objects aren't things I would otherwise choose to handle. It's like magic. You can refuse to learn the stronger, more distasteful spells, or you can acknowledge that they may, under some circumstances, be necessary."

"I know that. With the spells, I mean. But I'm…" I hesitated, then pushed on. "I'm having trouble with it. Getting my head around the idea that I might have to…"

"Do bad to do good?"

I managed a small smile. "Good way of putting it. I've been thinking about that a lot. Killing someone to protect Savannah. I know it might come to that, but I've never… And what if I had to do more than disable an enemy? What if protecting her meant hurting an innocent bystander? I'm really…" I took a deep breath. "I really have trouble with it."

"So do I."

I looked up at him, but before I could say anything, Savannah burst through the door.

"All set?" I asked.

She nodded and off we went.

I spent the ten-minute walk to Margaret's thinking about the grimoires. What bothered me most of all was the realization that if only Savannah had felt comfortable talking to me about her mother, we could have cleared this up months ago. Now that I'd finally been ready to listen, it might be too late.

I was still working through Savannah's story. She said that the Coven-sanctioned spells were primary spells, which you had to master before you could progress to secondary spells. Only once you knew the secondary spells could you hope to successfully cast a tertiary spell, like the ones in my secret grimoires. I'd never heard of such a thing before.

Although Coven spells are divided into four levels, hypothetically, a witch could start at fourth level. It would be excruciatingly difficult, but not impossible. It's like programming languages. They start you out with something easy, like C. You learn that, then move on to the higher languages like C++. That's not to say you can't jump straight into a higher-level language. People do it all the time. But, if you've mastered something like C, the learning curve on other languages decreases significantly. You understand concepts like data structures and functions, which can be ported into any language.

What Savannah said implied something altogether different. If I understood her correctly, every Coven witch spell was a primary spell, the bottom building block for witch magic. Yet that didn't explain why I'd mastered four spells from the "tertiary" grimoires. Savannah said Eve hadn't been able to make any work. Now, I'd love to believe that I'd mastered them due to my superior spell-casting abilities, but even I'm not that smug.

Eve had stolen the grimoires from Margaret. I'd… well, I'd pretty much done the same thing. The Coven maintains a library. The books are kept in a fortified closet in Margaret Levine's house. With advance notice, witches may visit the collection. Some books may not leave the house. Others may be borrowed. To borrow one, you have to fill out a card and return the book within a week. I think the only reason the Elders haven't instituted late fines is because I'm the only one who ever borrows anything.

Coven witches aren't even permitted to step into the closet and peruse the collection. Margaret keeps a list posted inside the door, from which they must choose their books.

Three years ago, as I was pestering Margaret for a better reference book on herbs, someone knocked at the front door and she took off to answer it, leaving the library. It was like leaving a kid with an open closet full of candy. The moment she was gone, I was in that closet. I knew exactly what I wanted. The prohibited spellbooks. So why was I returning to Margaret's house now? Because I wanted answers. More than that, I had a hope, a slim hope, that Savannah was both right and wrong. That she was right about the existence of a grimoire that would unlock the spells I now possessed, and that she was wrong in thinking the Coven had destroyed it.

We arrived at Margaret's place, a two-story house on Beech. I opted for the rear door, both as a courtesy and so she couldn't freak out about me showing up on her front doorstep for all of East Falls to see. Being the village pariah does make social calls most trying.

I persuaded Savannah to wait outside with Cortez. Savannah understood her great-aunt well enough to know that Margaret would speak more freely to me alone.

I rang the doorbell. A minute later, Margaret peeped through the curtain. It took another minute for her to decide to answer it. Even then, she only opened the inside door, keeping one hand on the knob of the screen door.

"You shouldn't be here," she whispered.

"I know."

I wrenched the screen door open and stepped inside. Rude, I know, but I didn't have time for courtesy.

"Where's Savannah?" she asked.

"She's safe. I need to talk to you about some grimoires."

She peered over my shoulder, scanning the yard, as if I'd brought an entourage of reporters with me. When she didn't see anyone, she closed the door and ushered me farther into the living room, which was filled with boxes of books.

"Please ignore the mess," she said. "I've been organizing the donations for the library book sale. A nerve-wracking task. Absolutely horrible."

I thought of offering to switch places, let her handle the Black Masses and walking dead for a while, but clamped my mouth shut and settled for a quasi-sympathetic nod.

Margaret was the volunteer head librarian at the East Falls library (open two evenings per week plus Saturday afternoons). She'd taken the position after retiring as librarian at the East Falls High School. If this gives the impression that Margaret Levine was a timid little old lady with a steel-gray bun and wire-rimmed glasses, let me correct that. Margaret was five foot ten and had, in her youth, been pursued by every modeling firm in Boston. At sixty-eight she was still beautiful, with the kind of long-limbed, graceful beauty that her gangly great-niece showed every sign of inheriting. Margaret's one physical flaw was a blind insistence on dying her hair jet black, a color that must have been gorgeous on her at thirty, but looked almost clownish now.

The one librarian stereotype Margaret did fulfill was that she was timid. Not the studious timidity of the intellectual, but the vacuous timidity of the, well, the… intellectually challenged. I've always thought Margaret decided to become a librarian not because she loved books, but because it gave her a chance to look intelligent while hiding from the real world.

"Victoria is very angry with you, Paige," Margaret said as she cleared books from a chair. "You shouldn't upset her so. Her health isn't good."

"Look, I need to talk to you about a couple of grimoires I borrowed from the library." I tugged the knapsack from my shoulder, opened it and removed the books. "These."

She frowned at them. Then her eyes went wide. "Where did you get those?"

"From the library upstairs."

"You aren't supposed to have those, Paige."

"Why? I heard they don't work."

"They don't. And we shouldn't have them, but your mother insisted we keep them around. I forgot all about them. Here, give them to me and I'll see what Victoria wants done with them."

I shoved the books back into my knapsack.

"You can't take those," she said. "They're library property."

"Then fine me. I'm in enough trouble with Victoria already. Keeping these books isn't going to matter."

"If she finds out-"

"We won't tell her. Now, what do you know about these grimoires?"

"They don't work."

"Where did they come from?"

She frowned. "From the library, of course."

Okay. This wasn't getting me anywhere. One look at Margaret's face and I knew she wasn't holding anything back. She wouldn't know how. So I explained what Eve had told Savannah about the books_;

"Oh, that's nonsense," Margaret said, fluttering her long fingers. "Absolute nonsense. That girl wasn't right, you know. Eve, I mean. Not right at all. Always looking for trouble, trying to learn new spells, accusing us of holding her back. Just like…"

She stopped.

"Like me," I said.

"I didn't mean it like that, dear. I've always liked you. A bit impetuous, but certainly nothing like that niece of mine-"

"It's okay," I said. And, to my surprise, it was. I knew I wasn't "just like Eve," and didn't want to be, but the comparison didn't rankle as it once would have. I continued, "You said these spells don't work, right? So how come I can cast four of them?"

"That's not possible, Paige. Don't be telling stories-"

"Shall I demonstrate?" I grabbed the first grimoire from my bag, opened it to a marked page and thrust it at her. "Here. Follow along. It's a fireball spell."

Margaret clamped the book shut. "Don't you dare-"

"Why? You said the spells don't work. I say they do. And I think you know why."

"Be sensible, Paige. If they worked, why would we keep them?"

And that, I believe, was the smartest thing Margaret Levine ever said. No one was covering up anything. The Coven really didn't think these spells worked; otherwise, they wouldn't have kept them. What a horrible thing to admit, that the very group designed to support and aid witches would have destroyed their strongest source of magic.

"I want to see the grimoires," I said. "All of them."

"We aren't trying to hide anything from you, Paige. You have to stop accusing us-"

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I just want to see the library."

"I don't think-"

"Listen to me. Please just listen. Why do you think I'm here? Some sudden whim to learn new spells? I'm here because I need to know that I've done everything I can to protect Savannah. To protect your niece. That's all I want. Let me see the library and, I swear, when this is over, you can tell Victoria what I've done. Tell her I stole the grimoires. I don't care. Just let me see what's up there."

Margaret threw up her hands and headed for the stairs. "Fine. If you don't believe me, come up and see. But you're wasting your time."