Chapter 43 – Symptoms of Strangeness

Florence stared at the strange book.

“Consider it a first installment,” Alice said. She held the book out, her arm trembling with the effort.

Florence took it. The cover was cool to the touch, smooth, and faintly tacky in a way that made the skin on the back of her neck prickle. It was heavier than it looked.

“What is it?” Florence asked, turning it over in her hands.

Alice let her arm drop back to the blanket, the effort spent. Her eyes were heavy, the mana sickness pulling her back under, but she held Florence’s gaze.

“A grimoire,” Alice said.

Florence looked at the cover. Looked at Alice.

“I don’t know what that is,” Florence said.

“I know you don’t.” Alice shifted against the wall, settling deeper into the pillow. Her eyes were half-closed but her voice had found a thread of its usual authority, the tone of someone who had grown up surrounded by books like this and considered the knowledge ambient. “A grimoire is a text written by a practitioner. Not a textbook—those are theory. Descriptions of technique, diagrams, principles. Useful, but passive. A grimoire is different. The author poured their own mana into the ink when they wrote it. Their experience, their instincts, their understanding of the craft. When you read it, the knowledge doesn’t just sit in your head like words on a page. It settles into you. It becomes part of how you think, how you cast. Like muscle memory, except someone else built the muscle and handed it to you.”

She paused, gathering breath. The explanation was costing her.

“That one is a sanguimancy text. Beginner to intermediate. It focuses on the medical and kinetic applications of blood magic—circulation, healing, pressure manipulation. The things a doctor would need.”

Florence was turning the book over in her hands. The gold lettering caught the grey light from the window and threw it back, and the velvet of the cover had a depth to it that seemed to pull the eye inward. She ran her thumb across the spine. The craftsmanship was extraordinary—the binding alone looked like it belonged in a museum, or a palace, or somewhere considerably more important than an attic room on Baker Street.

“This looks expensive,” Florence said.

“Florence.”

“The binding is velvet. Actual velvet. And this is real gold leaf.”

“Florence, did you hear a single word I—”

“Magical book. Your mana goes in when you read it. Medical applications.” Florence tilted the book, watching the gold shimmer. “How much was it?”

Alice closed her mouth.

“Alice.”

“It’s not relevant.”

“You just gave me a gift and won’t tell me what it cost. That’s suspicious.”

“It’s polite. One doesn’t discuss the price of a gift. It’s common etiquette.”

Florence lowered the book into her lap and looked at Alice with the patient, level expression of a girl who had spent her formative years extracting confessions from a younger brother who ate the last of the jam.

“Did you steal it?”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?“

“Did you find it somewhere? An abandoned mansion, a—”

“Who do you take me for?” The outrage cut through the fever like a blade through gauze. Alice sat up straighter, her jaw tight. “Of course I bought it. With money. My money. Through a legitimate—” She caught herself. “Through a transaction.”

“Then how much was it?”

Silence.

Florence waited.

Alice looked at the ceiling. She looked at the curtain. She looked at a point on the far wall that held no particular interest but had the advantage of not being Florence’s face.

“Alice.”

“Fourteen thousand,” Alice said.

The words came out flat, thrown away, the verbal equivalent of tossing something over your shoulder and walking briskly in the other direction.

Florence didn’t move.

“Fourteen thousand,” she repeated.

“Crowns,” Alice added, because the silence was worse than the number.

Florence went rigid.

It started in her hands. Her fingers locked around the book, white-knuckled, the tendons standing out like bridge cables. The rigidity climbed her arms, seized her shoulders, and settled into her jaw, which opened and closed twice without producing sound. Her eyes, which had been warm and steady all morning, went very wide and very still.

“That’s—” Florence started.

She stopped. Tried again.

“Fourteen—”

Stopped.

“Thousand—”

“Florence.”

“That’s a house, Alice.” The words finally broke free in a rush, pitched high and climbing. “That’s a house. You could buy a house for that. You could buy ten houses and furnish them and have enough left over to—fourteen thousand crowns? For a book? I could run the bakery in Briar’s Crossing for—my parents’ whole—Thomas makes—”

“Florence.” Alice’s voice was firm, cutting through the spiral. “Listen to me. I don’t know exactly how much my life is worth. It might not be much by some estimates. But I am fairly confident it’s worth more than fourteen thousand crowns.”

Florence stared at her. Her mouth was still open. No sound was coming out. She looked down at the book in her hands, then back at Alice, then down at the book again, as though she expected the number to rearrange itself into something less catastrophic if she looked away long enough.

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“You—” Florence managed. “Fourteen—”

“You’re looping.”

“I need a moment.”

“Take your moment. But hold the book carefully. It’s not getting any cheaper.”

Florence pressed the Velvet Scripture against her chest with both arms, as if the air itself might damage it. She breathed. In. Out. The colour was returning to her face in slow, uneven stages, the shock receding enough for basic cognitive function to resume.

Alice watched her with the expression of someone who had expected this reaction and was content to wait it out. When Florence’s breathing had settled and her grip on the book had relaxed from desperate to merely protective, Alice spoke again.

“Now. The next part is important, so I need you to actually listen and not let your mind wander onto property values.”

Florence nodded, mute.

“Grimoires carry risk.” Alice’s voice had dropped, the arch and the banter gone, replaced by something careful and serious. “I told you the author’s mana is in the ink. That’s the mechanism. It’s also the danger. When you read a grimoire, you’re not just absorbing knowledge. You’re absorbing a piece of someone else. Their instincts, their perspective, their relationship with the craft. For most disciplines that’s harmless—read a pyromancy text, you might run warm for a few days or develop a craving for salt. Mild. Temporary.”

She paused, and the pause had weight.