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“Whatever. Do you want to hang him back up on the wall, or what?”
I rolled my eyes and propped the painting back on its hook. “What are you doing up here? I thought you were in the kitchen with Tate and Myra.”
“I was, but I got the feeling you might need a shoulder to lean on,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “Your aura’s gone dark.”
I glared at her. “You know that’s really annoying.”
“It’s not my fault your emotions are outta whack. What happened? You were doing fine at the hospital. Does this place really bother you that much?”
I walked down the hall in her direction. There were about twenty other paintings along the route, and the weight of their eyes pressed on my shoulders as I passed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
She shrugged and followed me back down the stairs. “Then explain it to me.”
“I’d rather not get into it,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “We’ve got more important things to deal with.”
“Like what?”
“When Viktor died, he left a virtual treasure trove in the library. There’s gotta be something in there about this overpowered shapeshifter of ours.”
“Yeah, from what you’ve told me she’s super weird.”
“And super weird was Viktor’s specialty.”
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned down a thin hallway with yellow walls. Tate’s voice echoed from the kitchen, but it faded with every portrait we passed. It was as if the faces of my long dead relatives absorbed the sound as we crossed into the quietest part of the house. The hall opened into a large square, and the lights overhead warmed, acknowledging our presence.
The floor practically vibrated with the echoes of my family’s magic. Decades of Devereaux witches had used the south wing for their work. It was Viktor’s domain when he was alive, and he ruled it with an iron fist. His office sat to the left, our training room to the right, and the library’s intricately carved blue double doors loomed straight ahead. Each room hid memories more horrifying than the last.
“Where do we start?” Shado asked.
Blinking at her a few times, it took a second for me to realize I’d stopped walking. “What?”
“Which room do you want to start with?” she said, carefully enunciating each word.
“Oh, the library,” I said. “That’s where I left most of the boxes.”
She crossed the square reaching for one of the blue doors’ silver knobs. “Alrighty then!”
“No, Shado wa—”
Her hand touched the metal and ignited Viktor’s old warding spell. A burst of pure force threw her backwards into the air, and I tried to catch her with a shield, but her weight slammed into my outstretched hands, and we tumbled to the ground in a heap.
“Ouch,” she groaned.
“I tried to warn you,” I said, carefully shifting her weight off my chest. “Viktor was a paranoid bastard. He warded every room in the south wing, partly to teach me lockpicking spells, and partly to keep me out of his business.”
“He locked you out of the library?”
“He locked everyone out. The library was his version of the annex. He kept a lot of dangerous things in there.”
“Dangerous?” She arched an eyebrow. “Is it safe for us to go in there?”
“Is it safe in the annex?” I shrugged. “Just don’t touch the enchanted objects without checking with me first.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Open Sesame.”I traced the sigils carved along the centerline of the doors with my forefinger. Magic thrummed inside the lock and they swung open with a small gust of wind.
Shado leapt over the threshold, bracing for another ward. “Seriously? Open Sesame?”
