Page 46 of The Mirror of Beasts

There are few things more vexing in life than questions without obvious answers, and stories without ends. When confronted with such a mystery as this, there was only one place I wanted to go.

The guild library was hushed with night, lit by the cozy glow of the fireplace and lamps scattered across the worktables and bookshelves. With the time change, it was just past midnight—my favorite time of day to visit.

It wasn’t unheard of for the other Hollowers in the guild to stay into the small hours of the morning conducting their own research, drinking to the good old days, or showing off their latest finds, but after what we had seen of the Wild Hunt, the emptiness of the old town house was telling, and ominous.

“Oh, wow,” Neve breathed as she stepped out of the atrium and into the main collection. The dark wood around us had been recently polished and now had a princely gleam.

I felt proud myself, and strangely happy to show them another piece of my life, regardless of the circumstances.

Olwen studied the stained-glass windows along the back walls, fascinated, but Caitriona only had eyes for the central display case.

“That’s Goswhit,” Emrys said, hovering behind her. “The helmet that King Arthur inherited from his father, Uther Pendragon.”

Scarred and dented as the helmet was by an untold number of blows, it was hard not to feel disappointed by how shockingly ordinary the relic looked. Whatever magic had once been attached to it had been removed or faded in time.

“Found by Eos Dye,” she read from the placard. “Any relation?”

“Grandfather,” Emrys said. “Got clobbered by a skull-crushing curse while retrieving it, ironically enough.”

“Shame you weren’t with him,” I muttered.

Every rational part of me had screamed to ditch Emrys back at the Bonecutter’s pub, but I couldn’t bring myself to fight another losing battle. He’d know where we were headed, and he’d follow. If nothing else, at least I’d be able to keep an eye on him.

There was no doubt in my mind that he had another purpose in all this, and I was going to find out what it was and block it if it was the last thing I did in this world.

“Are these all Immortalities?” Neve asked from behind a nearby shelf. “Your guild has been hoarding all this knowledge for how long, exactly? Do the Sistren know?”

“Those are actually Hollower journals, but if you’ll allow me, I’ll give you the grand tour of the place, including where to find the Immortalities,” Emrys said. His courteous flourish set my teeth on edge.

Olwen and Caitriona went with them, disappearing past the shelves of folklore and fairy-tale compendiums, around the fireplace and plush leather chairs, and vanished into the stacks of the next room.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them they wouldn’t find anything about the Mirror of Beasts in those Immortalities. I’d read all of them, even the delicate ones on the verge of crumbling to dust, and the name didn’t appear anywhere.

To my surprise, the Bonecutter had seemed just as perplexed by the mirror as the rest of us. Or maybe she knew we couldn’t afford to pay for her help. The vessel hadn’t contained another memory about the Mirror of Beasts—because of course not. Not having a safe place to keep it, and using the opportunity to cross off one of the many favors I owed her, we let the Bonecutter keep Viviane’s vessel in her workshop to explore the High Priestess’s memories, with the promise that we’d have access to it as needed.

The library cats hissed ominously as I passed, their eyes glowing from the darkened shelves. Two of them, Titan and Duchess, leapt down from the stacks of seventeenth-century maps, their tails flipping back and forth with unspoken threat. Griflet burrowed as deeply as he could into the pocket of my jacket, trembling.

“Oh, lay off, you demons,” I told them. “I bottle-fed you when you were barely bigger than my thumb.”

They jumped onto a nearby table and sat, their tails lashing, as I followed the sound of a vacuum cleaner in an adjacent room.

I slowed as I passed the wall of wooden lockers. Someone, correctly assuming the worst, had put up the customary black crepe mourning panels on Septimus Yarrow’s and his men’s. I ripped them down and stuffed them into the nearest trash bin.

Librarian was vacuuming happy little circles into the carpets, blissfully unaware that the majority of the guild appeared to have joined an undead host.

Seeing me coming, Librarian switched the device off and began to wind its long power cord around the handle. It occurred to me that we could probably afford to get the automaton a better, nicer one without the nuisance of a cord, but he’d never take it. Librarian liked to preserve traditions, not reinvent them.

I warmed at the sight of him, my throat thickening. It was silly, but I hadn’t realized how badly I’d wanted to see him until this moment, and what a relief it would be after what we’d been through. His forever-unchanging bronze body, his placid expression that felt understanding at times, and absolutely murderous when you broke a rule. The consistency of him in a world determined to turn itself upside down and inside out made my eyes sting.

“Good evening, young Lark!” he chirped.

It was still a shock to hear his voice rendered in English by the One Vision after years of conversing with him in ancient Greek—though I was still sore about being the only one in the damn guild who’d had to learn it the hard way.

“Good evening, Librarian,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve brought a few visitors with me to do some research?”

“Of course, young Lark,” Librarian said. “You will have the library to yourselves.”

Endymion’s wraithlike appearance flashed in my mind.

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