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“A lacuna,” he said, his voice trembling. “A biblioparasite that nests in books and grows when it smells blood. Nasty things.” He closed the book in his hands and wiped its cover clean with his handkerchief. It was in a plain library binding like mine, but there were a dozen or so slips of paper sticking out marking pages.
“Geez, do you get a lot of them?”
Justin shook his head. “Almost never. We dust twice a year with repellant and check all new acquisitions for signs of contamination.” He slipped the spellbook in his pocket and looked at me. “Where did you find it?”
“In the book you gave me…under ‘S.’ I had just gotten to Scudder when I saw this…spot.” I shuddered recalling that I had touched it. I wiped my hand against my skirt and noticed that I had yellow specks on my sweater.
Justin nodded. “I suspected as much. Someone planted the lacuna there, blotting out the Scudder lineage and discouraging anyone who tried to go looking for it. One of his descendants, I suspect, who doesn’t want to be connected to Hiram Scudder.”
“That could mean that Hiram Scudder was the witch responsible for the curse.”
“Maybe,” Justin said, removing his notebook from his pocket, “but I found out something interesting about Abigail Fisk’s descendants. One of them teaches at Fairwick.”
“Well, that’s not unusual. Lots of witches teach at Fairwick.”
“Yes, but no one knows this one’s a witch. He’s there under false pretenses.” He handed me his notebook. UnderAbigail FiskJustin had written a name I knew. It was Frank Delmarco.
