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al cliché," I mutter.
"But at least that helps us get in there," he points out.
"Equally, it doesn't keep it very secure from people like us," I respond.
"No, but at this point, I'm not complaining about that. After you." He gestures towards the new hole in the wall.
"How do I know it's not booby trapped?" I eye it up warily. If one cliché is true, then there's a chance that more of them are too, and I don't want to lose a foot looking for a book. Especially when I still don't know exactly what we're looking for and why.
"It wasn't last time I came," Thomas assures me. "Why don't we go in together?"
I nod. I don't want him to think I'm too scared, but at the same time, I am a little bit, and I don't want to go in there alone.
The two of us step forward and through the arch, which turns out to be more like a tunnel than a doorway.
"Are we just going to leave it open for anyone to come across?" I ask, glancing over my shoulder. That seems like a quick way for a secret library to become not so secret after all.
Thomas shakes his head. "There's another suit of armour on the other side that will close it until we're ready."
Right. Great. Sealed inside a secret room no one knows about. That sounds like the perfect way to spend an afternoon.
"Does anyone know we're here?" The temptation to get my phone out and text Daphne is strong. Or Caspian. Just so someone knows where I am.
"I guess not? You told your friends you were coming to meet me though, right?"
I nod. Though Daphne will assume I meant the normal library and not this one, especially because that's what I thought I was telling her myself.
"Are we looking for anything specific?" I'm certain the answer is yes, or we wouldn't be here in the first place, but apparently, Thomas needs a bit of prodding to actually answer some times.
"This." He pulls his phone out and shows me a picture of a green leather-bound book. Symbols decorate the spine in what I suspect is real gold.
"Got it. Any idea which of these shelves it'll be on?" I gesture towards the six huge bookcases that look like they've been carved straight out of an oak tree. Each. They're beautiful, stately, and more than a little bit intimidating.
"No idea at all. It might not even be here. But this is the best place to start looking for it."
"Right," I mutter.
"Sorry?"
"I'll take the bookcase on the right and meet you in the middle?" I suggest, not wanting to admit my original comment came from sarcasm.
"Got you," he announces, going off to his side of the room and starting to browse.
I sigh, and start looking at the books on the right. When Thomas text me to say he thought he'd found some kind of answer to my problem, I didn't expect to end up in a library searching for a book.
I run my fingers across the spines, enjoying the feel of old leather beneath my skin. There's something so satisfying about old books, and I can't even put my finger on what it is. The whole room smells of them, filling me with a sense of calm and peace that I haven't had in the past couple of weeks.
A lot of the titles are in languages I don't know, some of them are probably even forgotten ones that hardly anyone speaks anymore and we need magic to translate. Even then, it's only possible to translate something magically if you know how to speak the language in the first place. I think it comes down to the way magic works. We have to be able to imagine what we want in order to create it.
There's a few that are in English though, and the titles kind of weird me out. There are several books that appear to be about necromancy. I don't even know if that's a thing these days. Of course, there are rumours that necromancers are completely different from us witches and warlocks, but I've never met anyone who claims to be one, so I don't know for sure.
"I've found it," Thomas calls, excitement filling every word.
Despite myself, I smile. I'm glad he found what he's after. I'll be even happier if it has some kind of answer for me in it.
I head over to where he's sitting, noticing that he's already made one of the tables his own with a mass of books open to various pages.
"How often do you come here?" I ask, taking a seat opposite him and looking at some of the titles. At least three of them are in Gaelic, which must mean he knows how to speak it, or is just very efficient at using a dictionary. I think the former is far more likely given he's studying his doctorate here. You have to be well rounded in several subjects to even be offered a place.
