Page 59 of Grimoires & Glamoury

I took my time wandering over the first and second floors, and while I did so I cast my magick out trying to sense for anything that was different or out of place. I knew that Charles was using his magick for the same thing, albeit his spells didn’t work the same as mine.

By the time I made it to the third floor—where the children’s section was, I had started to wonder if I’d been wrong about my theory.

I could hear Charles down on the ground floor speaking to the librarian at the desk, and I wandered along the rows of children’s books, scanning with my inner eye and ‘looking’ for something that might feel or appear to not fit energetically. I went up and down the stacks on the third floor three times, trailing my fingers across the spines of the books and hoping for a ‘hit.’

Despite feeling an overall tension in the atmosphere, there was nothing specific that I could pinpoint. I checked my phone, saw that the library was about to close, and wondered if Charles would have to resort to spelling the librarians into allowing us to remain until we finished searching.

Frustrated by a lack of results, I plopped down into a child-sized chair at the end of one row of books, slid my glasses on top of my head, and dropped my head into my hands. “Maybe I need to think more like Shelby,” I muttered. Shelby had been clever and a history major. She’d taught classes at UMAB…and her spirit had insisted that I could find the missing grimoire.

I scrubbed my hand across my forehead and tried to think about this differently. Perhaps I was looking too hard…a missing the forest for the trees sort of thing. With a sigh, I slipped my glasses back on, and my eyes leisurely traveled over the authors’ names on the spines of the books on the bottom row. I spotted several classic children’s books, many of which had fallen over, and more which were out of alphabetical order of the author’s last names. Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was shelved after Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Maybe it was the book seller in me, but I simply had to fix it. I slid from the chair and went to my knees in order to more easily reach the lowest wooden shelf. Reaching in, I began to straighten the books, and as I placed them upright my fingertips collided with something rough and cold.

Jerking my hands back, I hunkered down even lower, pushed the books to one side and took a look. There, I found several old horseshoes between the back of the shelf and the books themselves.

Look for the row with the horseshoes, I remembered. Then my eyes fell on the old, oversized copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

“It can’t be,” I whispered. Had Shelby hidden the grimoire from Sawyer in a book written about a literary character with the same name?

As soon as I pulled the classic book from the shelf, I could feel that the binding was loose. Yet I did not rush to open it, as I had no idea if that might alert other Supes—such as the Light Fae—that someone had found the grimoire.

To be on the safe side, I gently placed the book in my lap and then grabbed four horseshoes from the back of the shelf and arranged them around myself in a circle as I sat on the floor

“I create this circle of iron with this charm,” I chanted spontaneously, “to hide my actions and protect me from all harm.”

My magick snapped into place, and taking a deep, steadying breath, I carefully opened the book.

The interior pages were illuminated. And by that, I mean they literally glowed with a golden light. A scent washed over me of apple blossoms and spring rain, and I knew immediately the old grimoire had originally belonged to the Light Fae.

Gently I closed the cover of the book and shrugged my backpack from my shoulders. Reaching inside, I pulled out a large square of soft supple leather, and a small bag of magickal supplies that I’d prepared before I’d left Birmingham. The leather was embossed with bind runes, Celtic Ogham script, and other protective sigils. I used that to wrap up the grimoire.

The enchanted leather immediately muffled the energy of the grimoire...but I wanted to do more than muffle it. I wanted it bound. To accomplish that, I took from the magickal supply bag a long length of red, silken thread, that already had blue glass beads strung on the ends. Quickly, I crisscrossed the red thread over the book and secured the embossed leather wrapping. Going back to the little bag, I lifted out small sticks of rowan wood and worked those into the knots as well.

I tied a total of nine knots. As I did I softly chanted an old Scottish charm my Granny had taught me. “Rowan wood, blue beads, and strings of red. Now will bind all harm, evil, and dread.”

Once it was secured, I placed the wrapped grimoire in my backpack. I also slipped in two horseshoes, one in front and one behind the bound grimoire. The remaining horseshoes I tucked back on the shelf. Cinching up my backpack, I gathered the empty supply bag that had contained the sticks and beaded thread and stuffed it in the outer pocket of the pack. Then I stood, slipping the straps over my shoulders. The pack was significantly heavier than it should have been. The horseshoes were part of it, but the rest was from the sheer weight of the magick that the pack contained.

I headed directly toward the steps and was on my way down the stairs when Charles appeared at the base of the steps flanked by a couple of wide-eyed librarians.

“Ready to go?” he asked me cheerfully.

I gave him a big smile. “Yes, I am.”

He stuck out his elbow for me, and once I hit the last step, I looped my arm through his.

“Thank you, ladies,” he said smoothly to the librarians who stood staring after him.

“Come back any time,” one of the librarians called after us.

We said nothing else as we returned to the privacy of our truck. Even then, Charles wisely waited to speak and was driving away from the library before he glanced over to me. “You found it.”

I nodded. “Found, bound, and secured.” I patted the pack in my lap.

Charles reached over and took my hand. “Whatever you did, it’s working well. Very well. Because I can’t even sense the grimoire...and I always could before if I was in close proximity.” He paused before adding, “Can I ask what sort of magick you used?”

“It was just a little something my Scottish Granny taught me.”

He grinned at that and gave my hand a squeeze. “How do you feel about leaving for Birmingham right away?”