Page 88 of Every Shade of Shadow

"This symbol is said to bind spirits to the caster's will," Lily explains. "If we can lure the rogue shadows into it, we may be able to stop their rampage. In theory, at least."

"And if that doesn't work?" Leo asks. "We'll be defenseless."

Lily looks over to me. “Not with Wonder Woman here on our side. She fucking nailed those things.”

Hardly. I’m not even sure I could drum up the same spell, but I’ll take it.

“I can teach you,” I suggest, my tone casual.

Teach what? my head fires back, incredulous. You don’t even know what you did.

But with time I could figure it out.

“Hell yes you will,” Leo says, finger scanning against a row of books.

Lily bites her lip, flipping through more pages. "There are exorcism spells we can modify for umbral disturbances, prepare as a last resort. But binding them is our best option if we want answers about who created them and why."

That much is obvious, but I keep it to myself for now, including the fact I have shadows of my own. The last thing I need is a witch hunt. Cassandra would be first in line with a pitchfork.

No, what we need now is information, ideas. Best to leave my shadowy particulars out of it.

Three hours later and I swear we’ve been through every book in the damn library.

I’m about to call it when Ava pipes up in the corner. “Hold the phone. I got something.”

We all head over to where’s she stooped down to the bottom shelf, books piled beside her. She starts pulling at the shelf itself, trying to pull it free.

Lily looks at me confused. “Ah, Ava, dear, what the fuck are you doing?”

“One second,” she grunts, a section of the shelf coming free in her hand.”

I look closer. There’s a false floor in the shelf, a small compartment someone’s created below—not too prettily either. Loose pages are stacked there in a bundle, Ava lifting them out and leafing through them.

“Well?” Lily asks, when the suspense becomes too great.

“If that’s a hot or not list, I’m out,” says Leo, which we all ignore.

“These pages, they’re seriously old, the language kind of archaic,” Ava says.

“But let me guess, you can read them?” chimes Lily.

Ava nods, concentrating. “It’s about Victor Mortis.”

“Fucking who?” asks Leo.

Ava looks up to us. “Victor Mortis—the malevolent sorcerer? Almost destroyed all inais back in the Elemental Ages?”

Lily shrugs. “I got nothing. Leo?”

He shrugs back.

Ava shakes her head. “Wow, you two really are uneducated. Mortis was basically Shadowcraft incarnate, an exiled sorcerer who grew their power to almost unheard of heights. They were ultimately defeated by an early version of the Umbral Brotherhood, but according to this,” she places her finger on the page she was reading, “Victor Mortis is less of a who than a what, passed on down through a sole bloodline, or so the story goes.”

“So it’s a fairytale,” Lily says. “Why hide it?”

Ava keeps flipping through the pages, reading while we wait. “Maybe it’s not.”

“What?” Lily asks.

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