24 Loop 1 Part 4

The faculty stairwell door opened. A figure crossed the main reading room with a kind of deliberate, measured stride that wouldn’t belong to a student or a professor. He was tall, straight-backed, and had a grey suit and a grey expression.

Theodore Vex. Walking with the confidence of a man who still had a head and planned to keep it.

I honestly thought he hadn’t shown up to explore the library until after midnight, but here he was. The first time around, my uncle and I had been at dinner. It was safer to snoop the restricted levels when Corwen was otherwise occupied.

I watched him through [Wideview] as he crossed the reading room without acknowledging anyone. Grimm was at the front desk, hands clasped behind his back, watching Vex with the same flat, unconvinced stare he gave everything. Vex didn’t stop. He walked past the desk, past the shelves, toward the back of the stacks where the iron door marked the boundary to the restricted levels.

He had his own key. This one was smaller, newer-looking, and had a ministerial seal on the end. Last time, Grimm had the only other copy, and Vex had died before anyone found out he’d made one. Creed’s office was thorough. He unlocked the iron door, stepped through.

I moved immediately. There was no way I was going to let Vex explore there unanswered. It also helped that the gold thread led down the stairs.

The second the door was about to click shut, I cast my spell. “[Stop].”

[Stop — Enchantment]

Cost: Varies with size and momentum of object. Freezes a targeted object. 8 mana

Duration: until dispelled.

The enchantment caught the door before it clicked. I saw Grimm narrow his eyes, but he didn’t question it. At least, he didn’t get up.

I didn’t have a lot of time. I was sure that Grimm would investigate the unlatched door, so I needed to distract him. His [Teleport] spell made him omnipresent in the building, and the iron door was in his line of sight from a dozen positions. I needed him elsewhere, and I needed him occupied.

I scanned for the easiest target. Three students in the east nooks, and then one by himself in the west. I didn’t even know who it was, but he’d be an easy, far-away distraction. I pointed my wand at a shelf behind him and at the student’s chair, then double cast “[Move].”

The shelf was oak, old, and packed with about forty volumes of thick texts. I stood up and walked toward the reference section. Behind me, the shelf slid forward and the student’s chair scraped backward into it, making it look like the guy had knocked the whole thing over himself.

The oak screamed against stone. The whole thing tipped forward, and went over with the slow inevitability of a tree that had just been chopped. The top shelf hit the neighboring shelf on the way down, which also fell—and then another fell, and then another, like dominoes. Text upon text upon text fell to the floor, and I felt a sharp pang of guilt as Grimm swore. He immediately teleported. I cancelled my enchantment.

And with him distracted, I casually walked toward the iron door. I slipped through sideways and eased the door shut behind me until the latch caught with a soft click. The restricted levels opened below me. The stairs and the air were the same. I’d done this part already.

I could hear Vex’s faint footsteps below me, though he was already too far for [Wideview] to pick up. Steady as ever, unhurried. I pointed my wand at my shoes. “[Silence].” My footsteps disappeared, and I descended.

I passed Level 2. The heavy wooden shelves were packed with redacted texts I’d scoured through yesterday—or tomorrow, however that worked. I smiled in the direction of the book that had finally helped me fix mana exhaustion. But I kept going.

Level 3, with its iron frames and chained volumes and enchanted books. Including the pulsing book under glass I still had no interest in touching. That seemed like it would take too much work to deal with. Some things had a way of telling you not to expend effort on them. I’d gotten the message the first time.

Between Levels 3 and 4, things got strange. The stairwell widened into a grand staircase. Carved steps gave way to polished wood. The walls turned elegant and palace-like, and the architecture stopped pretending to be a library and started being something else. Whatever that “something” was, I didn’t want to know. Which meant I was probably going to find out, knowing my luck.

Four corridors stretched ahead, disappearing to distances that didn’t make architectural sense. The ceiling was vaulted with carved stone, giving way to dark wood beams twice as thick as they needed to be. The pale blue crystals from the stairwell had been replaced by something warmer down here. There was strange lighting in glass sconces, their flames still burning after what had to have been decades of neglect. Old enchantments that outlasted the people who’d cast them. That was the best part, they just kept going because nobody told them to stop.

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Dust clung to the walls in thin ridges. They piled along vertical surfaces in little dunes that defied everything I knew about how gravity was supposed to work. Dust did not form neat little shelves on the side of a door frame. But down here it did. And I added that to the growing list of things about this place that I was choosing to avoid thinking about. Me and my lists. One day I’d have to go through them. But you know what they say about effort.

Vex’s footsteps turned left at the grand hall. I followed from a far enough distance that I was never in danger of being seen, my silenced shoes making no sound on the polished wood.

Doors lined both sides of this first corridor. Some dusty, some spotless from recent use—probably by my uncle. Vex stopped at the first clean door on the left. He tried the handle. Locked. He produced the iron key again, and the lock clicked. He swung the door open and stepped inside.