The Fire in the Glass by Jacquelyn Benson

Author:Jacquelyn Benson [Benson, Jacquelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781734559910
Publisher: Vaughan Woods Publishing
Published: 2020-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

LILY KNEW ONE PLACE where she would certainly be able to learn more about scrying and the Wine of Jurema, the two methods of provoking a vision that Robert Ash had mentioned during their talk.

The enormous library at The Refuge.

She would not go.

She knew what Ash wanted of her. Though he had not pushed the issue, Lily had no doubt that his goal was to lure her to join Strangford and Sam and who-knew-what others under his tutelage, where she would be guided along a years-long path of discipline and study that would eventually see her reaching some mystical state of perfect acceptance of who and what she was.

That wasn’t going to happen.

Lily would never be at peace with what she could do. How could she? What sort of person could make peace with a power that showed them the worst the future had in store without granting them the ability to change it?

Perhaps it did have another purpose, as Ash had suggested. But if whatever higher power was pulling the strings didn’t stoop to share the plan with Lily, she felt under no obligation to play along.

No, she wouldn’t be going back to The Refuge, not if it could possibly be avoided. She was certain there was somewhere else in London she could come by the knowledge she needed.

After Ash had deserted her on Tottenham Court Road, she headed directly to Guildhall Library, a space she was certain had been designed to intimidate the less-than-scholarly. The massive collection was housed in a building modeled after a cathedral, complete with soaring, buttressed ceiling and naves lined with shelves instead of saints.

The catalog had no entry for the Wine of Jurema, nor did it offer a lead on scrying. She had better luck when she pressed a flustered librarian directly.

“If we had anything on that, it would be filed under folklore,” he said. “But we don’t. Perhaps if you made an application to one of the learned societies . . . presuming, of course, that your project is of sufficient scholarly value,” he added, with a skeptical look at her fashionable walking dress.

Lily was quite certain no learned society would find her current project sufficiently scholarly. Thankfully, she knew of a folklore archive that did not require a letter of introduction for her to access.

She need only knock on the door.

A crisp, clear evening had fallen over the city as Lily climbed the steps of her building on March Place. The bite in the air tasted far more of winter than spring.

The chill cutting through the fabric of her gown lent a greater urgency to her task.

She quickly climbed to the first landing and rapped at the door.

“Who’s there?”

Estelle’s tone was uncharacteristically sharp.

“It’s me,” Lily called in reply.

The door flew open. Estelle was wrapped in her dressing gown. Her ubiquitous turban was missing, revealing a cap of thin brown hair cut as short as a boy’s, streaked with gray. She had applied a bit of cosmetics to one of her eyes but not the other.

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