Page 115 of The Shadow Key

There comes a soft footfall above. Linette freezes, preparing to take flight lest it should be Cadoc or Enaid or, heaven forbid, Julian himself, but then Henry and Miss Carew turn the corner of the stairwell. Like her, both are fully dressed. Henry holds a green box – his surgical tools, Linette remembers – in one hand.

‘Are you ready?’ he asks, and Linette nods, though she is not. Together, their party of three descend the stairs to the vestibule, steal as quietly as they can across the flagstones, into the corridor leading to Julian’s study.

‘I shall wait here,’ Miss Carew says. ‘Keep watch.’

‘Are you sure?’ Henry asks, and visibly she swallows.

‘I’d be no use to you even if I did go in with you. I’d be watching the door the whole time anyway and could not concentrate. Please,’ she says, stronger now. ‘I would much rather do this.’

‘All right, if you’re sure. Linette?’

She nods, closes her hand over the study’s doorknob, and sighs with relief as the brass ball turns smoothly in her hand.

The study is dark – the light of the moon does not reach here – and smells of beeswax, the sickly hint of Julian’s London cologne. Outside, the trees bend in the wind, moaning on their trunks. The shadows of leaves skitter across the wallpaper, like hundreds of hands reaching for them as Henry and Linette cross the room to the bookshelves.

‘Here,’ Henry whispers, ‘take this.’ He passes her the instrument box, unclips its clasp, opens the lid, selects a long thin tool from its velvet casing. ‘I hope it isn’t hard to pick.’

On Julian’s desk sits a candle. Linette reaches into her pocket, removes a tinderbox. She strikes the spark, lowers it to the candle’s taper, and light blooms briefly before the flame dims and settles. Linette holds it out so Henry can see, and as he commits himself to the task she stares at the tomes behind their glass casings.

Again, the books send a shudder down her spine. In the darkness of the room they look even more distasteful. She reads their titles with a deep sense of foreboding:

Compendium Rarissimum Totius, Clavis Inferni, Histoire des Diables de Loudun, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, Epistolae Theosophicae …

The lock clicks. Henry removes the instrument, places the green case on the desk. Then, very carefully, he removes the tome from its stand. The edge knocks against the piece of stone, and it wobbles slightly before falling still, its gold flecks flashing in the candlelight.

‘Christ,’ he bites out, laying it down upon Julian’s desk, ‘it’s heavy,’ and for a long moment Linette and Henry simply stare at the book, transfixed. Before, it was merely a dusty antique to gaze upon from behind glass, but now it is within her grasp she is fearful of it. Hesitantly she puts her hand out to touch the symbol on its cover – hard, rough, reminiscent of leather but not, with odd raised edges that remind her of rope – and Linette brings her hand back as if burnt.

It feels like no book she has ever touched before.

Henry opens it. The spine creaks.

The first page is blank. Henry turns it, and there comes then a crinkling sound not unlike that of old parchment. Like the first, the next two pages are also blank but on the fourth are a set of ornatewords, written in Julian’s tight cursive. Together Henry and Linette lean to read them, and Linette sucks in her breath.

Property of The Order of Berith

And underneath that:

Clavis Umbrarum

Magus Goetia

‘Berith,’ Henry breathes.

Berith.

That word. The word her mother has said so many times over the years, a word which Linette has taken no heed of until she heard Lord Pennant say it that day at the mine.

‘Clavis umbrarum,’ she murmurs after a moment. ‘What do you suppose that means?’

Henry shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, what of magus goetia? Is it Latin?’

‘I think so, yes, but as I told you before, my Latin is rusty.’

Henry turns the pages. Many of them are filled with tightly packed writing but some are crammed with bizarre images. Circles containing strange symbols similar to the one on the book’s cover; lines made up of triangles and angular shapes, some projecting tiny crosses, some odd little swirls and dots. On one page there is drawn the diagram of a hand, its fingertips adorned by similar shapes, its palm a blazing sun. The wrist shows an eye set within a star, staring unnervingly up at her.

Linette glances back again at the occult books, their crumbling spines tightly packed on their shelves, then back down again, a suspicion starting to take shape at the back of her mind. She thinks of the stories Enaid used to tell her as a child, tales of the old traditions. But, Linette thinks, biting her lip, this cannot be what she thinks this book is. Surely such things do not exist? As if in answer the wind sighs against the windowpane, and she must suppress a shudder.

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