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Owned. I told her my soul feels owned by her. Nothing has ever rang truer, and I’m surprisingly at peace with the idea.
We get ready by dancing around each other like experienced partners who’ve been rehearsing the steps for years. The urge to keep us locked in this room, away from the world in this little bubble of ours, tugs at my chest, but I have to remind myself what’s at stake. There will be time for us to be back in our own world, once the curse is broken. I won’t contemplate any other possibility.
By the time we make it out to the alleyway, Mei is already there waiting, staggering back and forth. Her head snaps to us like a rubber band and she rushes our way. “I was starting to think you guys left me behind.”
Esmeralda’s cheeks tinge a beautiful red color. “I might’ve fallen asleep,” she admits sheepishly. When her fingers brush on the mark at her neck, Mei’s gaze trains to that same spot. Her eyes bulge in that exaggerated way of hers, then they narrow when she whips to me.
“Sure,” she says with a mumble. “Sleeping.”
I run a hand through my hair with a sigh. In no way am I embarrassed of the marks I left on my little witch, but by the way her scent turns smokey, she may not exactly feel the same. “Shall we get back to business?”
Esme sets her canvas tote to the ground and kneels next to it, pulling out the grimoire and the spoolie of red thread she got.
“Un hilo invisible nos guída con pasión, hasta el objeto sue creíamos perdido, en unassuming búsqueda llena de emoción,” she chants out loud as she begins to unravel the thread and spin it around the book once, twice, thrice.
“La búsqueda es un juego del pasado, donde el recuerdo nos lleva sin cesar, hasta el objeto que creíamos olvidado,” she finishes, cutting off the thread with her teeth, and tying the other end to her wrist.
The alleyway is steeped in complete silence as we all wait with our breaths drawn. Finally, the thread glows golden, wrapping tighter around both the book and Esme’s wrist. She winces as it digs into her skin, but keeps still. The golden thread keeps tightening until it’s swallowed by both the leather cover of the grimoire and the little witch’s wrist, then it disappears.
“Is that…” Mei ventures to say, but I shush her.
A few seconds tick by before another glowing line shoots from Esme’s wrist, one that leads deep into the streets of Barcelona. She whips her gaze to me with a smile as brilliant as the sun. “I did it!”
I bend to kiss the crown of her head. “I never doubted you.”
She grasps my outstretched hand and gets back to her feet, dusting off her knees. Following the guiding light of the spell, we rush through the streets of the Gothic Quarters, past brightly-painted rolling shutters, the spears of the Sagrada Familia peaking through the tops of buildings like a guiding star. We cut through Passeig de Lluis Companys, beneath the ornate reddish brickwork of the Arc de Triomf. Under the moonlight, it’s as if the angels atop the columns twist to watch us from fifty feet above.
The glowing light takes us down a wide tree-lined promenade, past a Japanese comic book store and a tobacco shop, pointing straight into a tall copper door. It’s a five-story building carved in limestone, with tall wood-shuttered windows dotted by iron-wrought balconettes.
“Viena?” Esme questions, her breath short, reading the LED sign atop one of the main floor windows. “My family grimoire is inside a burger joint?”
I shake my head and point to the stained glass sign dangling from the balconies above the ground floor. “Not the restaurant. The library.”
“Oh.” Esme takes a few steps forward, placing her glowing hand on the copper door. She tries pushing it open. When it unsurprisingly doesn’t budge, she turns to me with her hands on her hips. “Any suggestions on how to get this open? I guess I could try crafting a spell.”
“And I’m sure you’d come up with one good enough to get the job done, but I have a quicker way.” Letting my glamour drop from my hand, I use my long claw to pick the rusted lock.
It does take a bit of fidgeting — the lock isn’t the only one to be a bit rusty — but eventually, the mechanism clicks, and the door gives in.
I hold it open for Mei, who to be fair could’ve just walked straight through the wall, and Esme, who eyes me with suspicion. “It’s almost as if you’ve done this before.”
Her tone is light and bantering, but the reminder sours my mood regardless. I’ve done this more times than I can count, pawn in a game I didn’t know I was playing.
My little witch places a gentle hand on my arm, shaking me from my trip to the past. “Where did you just go? I only meant it as a joke, you know.”
“I do know,” I reassure her, covering her hand with mine and squeezing. “You’re right though, I have done this before. Many times, in another life.”
Esme chews on her lip as if biting back the questions, but finally seems to decide better of it, and simply nods. I hold the door open for her and follow behind.
The lobby of the library opens onto a wide and imposing marble staircase, flanked by ionic columns and carved cherry wood paneling. Atop the stairs stands a copy of Lady Liberty cast in pitch black metal. The air is musty.
Esme takes the whole thing in with her nose turned to the sky. “Woah. This place…”
“Has been a bulwark of Freemasons for centuries,” I add, running my hand over the Lodge’s symbol carved in the stone wall. “Which means the library has always served more ritualistic purposes than simply housing old tomes. Artifacts, relics, and anything remotely occult would’ve been prized and cared for in a place like this.” I pause, letting my gaze follow the glowing light of the spell into the depths of the library. “Including ancient grimoires. I didn’t think after all these years, the Masons would still be interested in that stuff.”
Esme stops in her tracks. “So all the conspiracy theories about Masonry, are they real?”
I scoff. “If you mean the ones where humans think the Masons secretly control the world, no. They were just a group of pompous men obsessed with trying to unlock the key to magic and the Beyond. They never much got far with it.”
