A soft sigh escapes. “Your father has actually chosen to return.”
“Return? As in, reincarnate?”
Mom nods.
“But… where is he?Whois he? Why hasn’t he tried to get in touch, or… Does he not remember me?”
She rises from the table and clears away the teacups, setting them in the sink. “I can’t answer those questions for you, Stevie. I wish I could, but some mysteries are just too vast to comprehend, even for me.”
I bite back a disappointed grumble. “And here I thought my fortune-telling mom knew everything,” I tease.
“Almosteverything.” At this, her smile brightens once again. “Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”
We head back out through the red door and into the endless corridor system. But this time, we reach our destination quickly. It’s another red door, which Mom opens without preamble, stepping aside to let me in first.
“A library?” I suck in a sharp breath at the sight that reveals itself before me.
Yes, it’s a library, but it’s so much more than that.
It’s open in the center, not unlike our Academy library. But here, there are so many levels, I can’t even see all the way to the very top. Shelves upon shelves stretch up toward the sky, with gleaming golden staircases spiraling up to each one. All around us, witches and mages scurry about, pulling down books and artifacts and ancient scrolls that look like they must hold the secrets of the entire world.
And every few seconds, the entire library seems to expand, rearranging itself.
“This is the sacred Hall of Mist and Spirit,” Mom says. “An ever-growing, ever-changing library and living monument to magick and all who study, honor, and protect it.”
“But… but this place ismassive. I can’t believe there’s so much stuff written about Tarot.”
“Oh, this isn’t just for Tarot magick. The Hall of Mist and Spirit holds the records of every magickal system known to witch- and mage-kind, across the boundaries of all time.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. It’s so beautiful, so incredible, my eyes fill with tears, just like they did the first time I saw the library at the Academy.
“Kirin would love this place,” I whisper.
“Perhaps you’ll show him one day.”
I grin at the thought of seeing his Genius Boy eyes light up. “I’m not sure I’d ever get him to leave. But… how did you even find this place? Is this, like, some kind of Arcana nirvana?”
“I discovered it in a dream,” she explains, her voice breathy and full of wonder. “And I was never the same again. I taught myself how to lucid dream just so I could return. On one visit, I discovered the book.”
“Journey Through the Void of Mist and Spirit,” I say without hesitation, and Mom nods. “I had a feeling that book wasn’t from our world.”
“It was and it wasn’t,” she says. “Think of it as a repository of sacred knowledge. This library is a living, breathing entity. There are no librarians to keep its shelves, no authors to write its books. The knowledge here… it justarrives. The magick itself decides what is kept and what is not, what is revealed and to whom, when it must fade into the recesses of memory or legend.”
“So the library itself… the magick… it decided to let you take the book out of your dream and into our realm.”
“After many, many visits with it here in the library, yes. It finally allowed itself to accompany me back to our realm.”
“But what about the other book?” I ask. “The one Kelly Maddox gave me.”
Mom runs a hand over my hair. “Thatone was always meant for you.”
She leads me to a shelf on the first floor and plucks out a book. The moment she hands it over, I know it’s the exact same book as the one Kelly gave me.
“But… how?” I ask.
“Everything that exists here will always exist here. But because I brought it out, it also exists in the material realm. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a bit like the realms themselves.”
“Like soap bubbles,” I say. “Overlapping.”
