Mary Quirk and the Language of Curses by Anna St. Vincent

Author:Anna St. Vincent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Three Swallows Press

TWELVE

I don’t yet know all the steps between seven-year-old Dillon Woods disappearing from Nomen’s apartment and his being found eating a book in the Sorbonne Hall, but one thing I’m pretty sure of—it wasn’t an accident. Not when there’s magic involved.

Not when there’s a book about curses in there.

There’s no author listed, so I put my finger next to the title. “Mr. Jackson, do we have a copy of this book in the library? In English, maybe?”

He peers at the title for a second. “I... don’t know. I’ve never seen that one before. Let me go double-check.”

Mr. Jackson doesn’t know? That’s odd.

When he leaves the oval room, Dillon wanders back over. “Where is he going?”

I lift my eyes to meet Dillon’s. “Looking for a book for me. Are you okay?”

“Stop asking me that,” he hisses. “What book?”

I let out a sigh because he’s going to get pissier than he already is. I point to the title. “The Language of Curses.”

I was wrong. Dillon goes quiet instead, then softly says, “Shit.”

Wrong kind of curse, but about the right mood.

After waiting almost an hour, Mr. Jackson returns looking annoyed. It turns out that neither of the Umbrum Hall libraries has a copy of The Language of Curses. Mr. Jackson isn’t too surprised, since he’s never heard of the book. Like Ms. Moreno, he knows his library backward and forward. If it was in this shard, he’d know.

And I can’t check the internet for other copies until I can get back out to the Farmhouse again. Even then, I have a feeling if I did search for that title on the internet, I would have to wade through thousands of pages of junk before finding anything. Without an author’s name, it’s just words.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this book not having an author listed, and that it isn’t familiar to the library staff. Like a Han-Solo-in-the-trash-compactor level of bad feeling. I mean, if it’s a magic book, they should know about it, right? It’s been sitting in that shard for ages. Well, for over a century, at least. This list is at least that old.

Why has no one asked about a book called The Language of Curses? Just because they have too many other things to do?

I hold in a groan. That’s probably exactly what it is. I saw the size of the volume that listed all the books in the Sorbonne Hall. That’s a lot of books to worry over, and likely why the project has focused on only a dozen or so specific books. The librarians are busy people. No one would bother with it until something unusual happened involving it.

But Jackson asks us to wait there while he calls in the Big Guns. At least that’s what he tells us. So I make notes about the exact location of the questionable book while Dillon and I wait. Fourth shelf down, the third book from the left. I have to know that because the spine won’t conveniently say The Language of Curses on it.

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