Page 51 of Fallen Angel

When they reached the library, Hannah wasn’t surprised to find it empty. The sun was setting, and it was still only the first week of classes. The air smelled stale as Hannah led Callan up the spiral staircases to the third floor. Lamps provided dim light between the stacks. Hannah hesitated at the doorway of the Occult and Mysticism room. Goosebumps rose along her forearms. It felt like a lifetime ago that the grimoire whispered her name. Now, she stood there with only days left to live. She was no longer chasing some new, fresh start; she was trying to keep the life she already had. She thrust open the door, consequences be damned, and crossed the threshold.

It seemed smaller to her now, perhaps because her world view was so much larger than before. And just where she left it, the soft-bound, handwritten manuscript sat on the old table.

Callan and Hannah looked down at the piece of Raven that had lived on. Callan pointed to the sigils marked on the cover. “Raven would always sketch this.”

“What does it mean?”

“’Tis a balance between light and darkness. She enjoyed drawing the sigil for light a little lower than the sigil for darkness.”

“Having it outweigh the darkness,” Hannah said. She gently picked up Raven’s book and felt the softness of its pages on her fingertips. As she looked down at the work of her past life, she saw the sigil for light glow white, and the sigil for darkness float upon shadows. Hannah had seen this before, but she’d chalked it up to a symptom of her PTSD. Now, however, she knew that she wasn’t imagining it. “Did you see that?” Hannah asked, unable to pull her eyes away from the animated sigils on the page.

“It recognizes your magic,” he said.

The manuscript pages flipped on their own. They settled open on a spell with the heading,To Discover What You Seek. Below the heading read a small passage before the spell:If your intentions are pure and in the name of light, then this magic may help you.

“This is exactly what we need. It reads like an instruction manual,” Hannah said.

“She wanted to become a High Priestess when she grew older—someone who teaches magic therightway,” Callan said, imitating how Raven may have said it. “It does not surprise me that she was writing this to aid others.”

Hannah and Callan shared a smile.

She handed the book to him. “I’ll let you do the honors, since my magic is useless.”

He held it open in his palms. “Your magic is not useless,” he said. “You simply do not yet know how to access it.”

With only a week to live, Hannah doubted she’d ever know what it truly felt like to connect with the magic inside herself.

“Here it goes,” Callan said. He took a deep breath and read the words Raven crafted over three hundred years ago.

“Whether ’tis by heart or by mind, the desire that I need to find;

Show me the way to what I need, ignore me or assist my plead.

I shall speak it now, for what I desire,”

Callan broke from the chant.

“Mara Eden—and discover whence I follow the fire.”

Callan’s eyes lit up as if he were watching something mystical transpire before his eyes. “Do you see that?” he asked.

“I don’t see anything.” Hannah searched the room for anything out of the ordinary, but nothing seemed different.

“’Tis a path of fire,” he said. “Only the spell caster must be able to see it. We have to follow it before the spell wears off.” He placed the spell book on the table and moved to the door.

“You don’t know where it leads?” Hannah asked. “We have no idea how far away Mara may be. We could be walking all night.” Her jaw tightened, and her entire posture stiffened in an attempt to control her vexation. She didn’t have time to waste.

“Raven’s book opened on this spell for a reason. Come, ’tis moving fast.” Callan left the room.

Hannah followed, leaving Raven’s manuscript behind.

She chased Callan down the spiraled staircases to the main floor. His eyes remained glued to the hardwood as he tracked the invisible trail of flames. He turned the corner and traveled down the corridor between two tall bookshelves. Fading streams of light highlighted the dust disrupted by their movement. When they got to the end of the aisle, Callan paused.

“What? What happened?” Hannah asked.

“It went through the floor,” he said, tapping his foot back and forth over the hardwood.

“Maybe there is a staircase to the basement?”

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