Page 30 of Every Shade of Shadow

Gran never overtly taught me how to practice magic, because bad, but she used it plenty when she thought I wasn’t looking. Washing up? Spell. Hangnail? Spell. So I paid attention and picked up what I could, filled in the rest from her books and the web. The innocuous stuff is there right out in the open, but you have to know what to do with it. Gran blabbed on plenty about all that. You could barely get her to shut up half the time about the finer elements of casting. ‘An art,’ she used to call it. But start up on Shadowcraft and those lips would stop flapping fast.

"Well?" The blonde arches a brow. "You in?"

The brunette hesitates, then nods. "Sure. Nothing better to do ’round this tomb."

A surge of longing nearly overwhelms me. I want in.

To my surprise, they seal this pact with a kiss, tongues dancing between parted lips. My sex clenches at the sight, which is weird, because something like this would have never turned me on before, but here at Lumina I’m finding myself caught in all kinds of strange thoughts, my once resolute sexuality oddly untethered here.

When they break apart, chests heaving, the brunette murmurs, "Okay. Let’s Nike.”

“Do it?”

“Yeah.”

Nike? Fuck me I’m way out of the loop on this kind of lingo.

The blonde looks uncertain now, eyeing her with caution. “You’re sure?”

“Just do it already,” the brunette nods.

I grip the wall in front of me. A short whisper from the blonde and they disappear into the darkness, just evaporate on the spot. I'm left alone with my hunger.

Ravenous, insatiable, screaming to be fed.

Rules be damned, I need to go deeper here.

And if I were to get caught, I consider, if Darkwood were to punish me, personally, perhaps that might not be so bad. Maybe it wouldn’t be punishment at all.

I wait until the dead of night when the halls are silent and empty. Slipping from my room, I move through the darkness toward the library—using Lily’s rather ineloquent directions. The hallways are lit only by small running lights. If I squint, I could be on a redeye flying anywhere in the world.

Every step increases the hammering of my heart, part fear of getting caught, part thrill of the forbidden. I haven’t done this kind of shit since high school. There’s a joy in it, in seeking out what you shouldn’t.

I arrive at the library. The heavy oak doors loom before me, an iron lock in the middle, either pane etched with symbols of protection and warning.

So much for Lily’s supposed ‘just waltz on in.’ Maybe that’s true during the daytime, but now, in the witching hour when you think people would be kind of, uh, witching, nothing.

I take a deep breath and place my hands on the wood, whispering a lockpicking spell—a little-known classic Gran taught me for ‘personal safety.’

Joy of joys, I exhale hard as the lock pings. I push, the doors creaking open.

Inside, moonlight filters through towering bookshelves, luminous shafts of white.

Actual windows. Nice.

The scent of aged paper and knowledge lingers in the air, but tonight I seek information of a different sort.

I make my way to the restricted section and find it cordoned off with a spell barrier, Lily’s intel again coming up short. After studying the shimmering ward for a moment, I recognize some of the magic used and undo the barrier with a counter-spell. Practice is proving easier than I thought—natural talent and all. I allow myself a little smile.

Okay, so Lily was kind of right. It shouldn’t be this simple, yet here I am, a venerable John Dillinger.

As far as creepy goes, though, it’s full marks. There are grimoires bound in what could well be human skin, ancient tomes written in long-dead languages, scrolls that I imagine would unfurl with a puff of dust. My heart’s racing away from me as I skim the titles, looking for anything related to ‘The Craft,’ as my loose-tongued friend called it.

A book catches my eye.

Shadow Arts: A Treatise on the Forbidden.

Hands trembling, I pull it from the shelf and pry it open. My jaw drops as page after page crackles with power, filled with spells and sigils and descriptions of rituals unlike anything I've seen before. I’ve pored over Gran’s grimoire, studied every syllable and symbol, but this is something completely different. I read her whole collection of books on everything from divination to draconomancy multiple times, but nothing like this.

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