Seanan McGuire - 08 That Ain't Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban, Paranormal, Fiction, Fantasy, Humorous
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2019-03-05T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

It took about ten minutes to get the diaries into our respective backpacks. Lifting mine was difficult, to say the least; between the injury in my shoulder and the ongoing weakness of my body as a whole, I felt like I was trying to attend a weight training course after a six-hour derby bout. Not good.

Worth it. Whatever was in these books was enough to scare the crossroads, which meant we needed to decode them while behind the closest thing we had to a locked door. Once the crossroads knew what James’ mother knew, they would not only be able to defend themselves, they’d be a lot more likely to demand I kill him on the spot. They were already pushing that agenda hard enough to be concerning if I wanted to undersell the situation in a way James probably wouldn’t appreciate. “Hey, the eldritch nightmare you’re devoting your life to wiping out sort of wants me to get on with slitting your throat, but sure, we have time to argue about where your mother’s diaries belong” is concerning, right?

“Be careful with those,” said James, as he squeezed through the opening into the main attic. It made the most sense to get the wardrobe back into position and then meet each other in the hall, where I could show him how to access the office. I had the feeling he was going to be spending a lot of time in there.

Good. He deserved a safe place in his own house, somewhere his father would never think to look for him. Somewhere to decide what happened next.

“I’ll treat them like they’re those weird egg babies we had to take care of in social studies,” I said, and flapped my hands in a “go on, then, shoo” gesture. “Get moving. I want to get back to the house.”

James, who still hadn’t twigged to the fact that it was the lack of wards that was distressing me, gave me a curious look. He didn’t know about Bethany attacking me in the stairwell, and why should he? It wasn’t like I could say her name without the risk of summoning her. Stupid ghosts.

I flapped my hands again. James began wrestling the wardrobe into place.

There wasn’t much I could do from my side of things. I stayed where I was, watching to be sure he got it close enough to the wall to restore the seal and prevent anyone else from stumbling on the hidden room. It took a while, and when the wardrobe was once again snugly positioned, I closed the door and started for the stairs.

The absolute blackness of the stairwell was as unsettling on my repeat visit as it had been on my first one. At least this time no unwanted ghosts appeared to haul me off to meetings with the crossroads. I took the steps as fast as I dared in the dark, one hand clutching the rail and the other stretched in front of me, waiting for the moment when my fingers would brush against the door.

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