Finally the penny dropped. It’s a spell book! he realized excitedly. It wasn’t much like the ones in Harry Potter. It looked awfully dry and rather turgid, and he was quite clear on the distinction between the land of make-believe and the territory of is. But … he turned back to the flyleaf and translated: MDCCCLXIII, that meant 1863, the year of Augustus Starkey. “This is really old!” His eyes widened. Below the book he saw a small stack of similar volumes, their covers increasingly fragile and dried-out the further down the pile he looked, nestled beside a black velvet cloth wrapped around a number of tools. Geometer’s tools: a protractor and compass sized to hold chalk but made from a dull metal, tarnished black with age. A wooden box of chalks and paper-wrapped crayons. A pair of knives with double-edged blades and stained leather-wrapped handles. Dark blue ridged bottles with corks stoppered with wire and wax. A small wooden letter-writing box, with dried-up inkwells and wooden-handled pens with dipping nibs. And, wrapped in a deep blue velvet cloth with gilt-trimmed tassels, he happened upon something oddly close to spherical—unwrapped, it proved to be a yellow-brown human skull covered with a filigree of intricate graffiti that resembled the notation in the book. “Wow.”
Is this some kind of joke? ran through his head, followed rapidly by No, this isn’t funny at all, and It’d be too much work. Mum was too busy and pragmatic, and Dad was too, well, Dad, to concoct an enigma like this chest for his amusement. As for Evie, maybe, but the skull would totally gross her the ick out. It hinted at black magic, the stench of low-budget Hammer Horror movies on late night TV.
But it had belonged to Grandpa.
Imp carefully repacked everything except the topmost book, or journal, or whatever it was. This he carried downstairs to his bedroom, where he leafed through it for another hour before shelving it between a copy of Peter and Wendy (he was reading it for his GCSE practice assignment), and his sister’s The Fellowship of the Ring (which he had tried to read because of the movie).
Jeremy forgot about the book for a couple days, but that Saturday Evie popped her head around his door and asked, “Have you seen my copy of Fellowship?”
“Uh, dunno…”
Sharp eyes caught his lie: “So what’s this, then?” She stepped inside and her hand went to his bookshelf. “How could you forget?” He was still trying to think of an excuse when her fingers slipped sideways and embraced the knobbly black spine. “And what—” She pulled it out. “Hey, where did you get this?”
“I found it in a trunk in the attic. I was just playing,” he said defensively.
“Never said you weren’t.” She opened the book to the flyleaf. “Oh wow, weird, what was it doing there? Hey, does Mum know about this?”
“Wait!” he said frantically. “It was in Grandpa’s box!” Mum was spending altogether too much time on church things these days. Magic books would not be safe in her hands.
“Oh.” Evie sounded thoughtful. “So Dad must’ve…” She trailed off, seemingly having reached a decision. “I’m going to show him.”
“No! It’s mine!”
“It’s Dad’s,” she told him firmly. “You shouldn’t take what’s not yours, Jerm, it’s not right.” She marched downstairs with Jeremy hot on her heels, grabbing for the book, which she held out of reach overhead—Evie was tall for a girl, and Imp hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet—“Daaad?” she hollered.
And so Jerm’s light-fingered bibliophiliac ways were brought to book, or at least to the attention of his father, who after a brief moment of alarm seemed minded to be forgiving—as long as Imp learned his lesson. “I was keeping the box until you were both older,” said his father. “It’s not safe to meddle with that stuff unless you know what you’re doing. And you,” he glanced at Evie, “thank you for showing me this, but it’s not safe to handle. Apparently it likes you, but books like this are usually powered or protected by a ward—a kind of curse—and anyone who’s not family will be very unhappy if they accidentally touch it.” (This, Imp later learned, was a dark and terrible understatement. Cursed magical texts were nothing to fuck around with.)
“What does it do?” Imp demanded.
“What does…?” Dad was briefly nonplussed: “It’s magic, son.”
“What, you mean like Harry Potter? Or like doing card tricks and pulling rabbits out of hats?”
Dad sighed, so lugubriously that Imp expected an eye roll: “No, stuff like this.”
Nothing happened for a moment. “Like what?” Evie demanded.
“This,” Dad repeated.
Then Evie, who was as level-headed and non-screamy as they came, screamed. And a moment later Imp joined her.
Wendy was skeptical at first, but once Imp explained his reasoning they set to work.
“According to the map we have to go out through a scullery door and cross twelve kilometers of Victorian London to where the manuscript is supposed to be, which is in this building. It’s the private library of some kind of gentlemen’s club, although why it’s in Whitechapel is … I’m guessing it’s where they keep their porn stash? There’s a ley line here that replaces about nine and a half kilometers of surface streets with two kilometers of, uh—fairyland, it says—it runs from a graveyard to an old plague pit, so it’s going to be pretty grody, but it’s better than a three-hour hike. Hmm. If we find some old money we may be able to squeeze into a couple of hansom
