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Despite the woman’s nosiness—and breathtaking beauty—I like Sabelle. She’s friendly, smart, funny, and seems genuinely nice. Easy to talk to. I haven’t made friends since I moved to London, so I’m enjoying hanging out with her. “That would be great.”
“I like you, too. I think we’ll be great friends.” Sabelle grins before she crosses the room to retrieve a stack of books on an enormous table. “Curses… You want to know about Marrok’s?”
“If we get this diary open, how do we end it?”
“Valid question.” Sabelle plops the books on the sofa between us. “Let’s read.”
We skim books for a good hour. I’m about to sigh in frustration until I find a passage that makes my eyes pop. “Here! Here’s an account of someone who saw Morgana use the diary. She wrote in it. Which fits. It’s a diary, after all. Marrok said she did the same with his curse. This passage suggests she could also uncurse someone with a stroke of her pen.”
“She’s not here.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “But Marrok thinks I can do it.”
“Since you’re a Le Fay, perhaps.”
I read a bit more. “This speculates that she set curses with conditions, so they could be broken once her terms were met.”
“Curses often are. They’re retributive in nature, but the caster wants the recipient to learn a lesson.”
“Marrok’s curse has an out-clause, but he doesn’t understand it. Neither do I.”
“Hmm,” Sabelle hums as she skims another tome. Suddenly, she sits up straight, looking animated. “A man Morgana once cursed with the diary tried to steal it. He swore it dissolved in his hands and materialized back in Morgana’s.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some objects can’t be stolen.”
“This can. Marrok paid one of Morgana’s serving maids to steal it for him.”
“Really? Since Morgana was known for liking men as bed partners and disliking them in all other ways, maybe she merely blocked men from using the book.”
“One of my professors called it an object of feminine reverence. Maybe that’s what she meant.”
“It’s possible.”
Not that the theory does us much good. “Until we unlock the book, we can’t know if it only responds to women.”
Sabelle nods. “But if Mathias reached the same conclusion, that explains why he plans to capture you with the book. You’re female and Morgana’s descendant, which would likely make the book more potent.”
That scares the hell out of me. After the attack at Marrok’s, I have no doubt Mathias will go to great lengths to capture me. “Maybe any witch would do.”
“From what we’ve read, no other woman has ever tested it. You’re the most likely to succeed. Mathias is too smart not to realize that.”
That’s bad. Worse is wondering if the psycho could coerce my father into winning my trust for his nefarious purposes. Or if he’s already coaxed Richard back to the dark side. “If Mathias can make humans into Anarki, can he mind-control a wizard, too?”
“Not for long. Not without taking their soul.”
“And anyone without a soul would look like those undead things, all rotting and stuff?”
She nods. “But you’re straying into territory so dark that most of magickind’s knowledge is limited.”
So that’s a maybe, just like Richard being coerced in nonmagical ways.
“Either is possible.”
Maybe I should be annoyed that I forgot to sing and the witch keeps reading my thoughts, but it’s getting us to good questions—and maybe even the right answers—faster. I need to find something that can tell me exactly what kind of man my father is.
“Richard Gray?” Sabelle stands and strolls to the giant section of the library she introduced as history.
