4

Place was lovely, private and quiet and cosy, the kind of place I daydreamed about. The rain outside had picked up, pattering off the windows. If this was Raine’s personal space then — but how? You couldn’t just commandeer a whole departmental room for your little club.

I ran my gaze along the bookcases and lifted my fingers to the spines of the books. The titles raised red flags: The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, The Golden Bough, The Lesser Key of Solomon, along with dozens of titles in Latin or Greek, none of which I could read, and at least a few in Arabic and Hebrew. At one end I spotted cluster of modern books about witchcraft and paganism, by authors with awful pen names like ‘Star Raven’ and ‘Silver Wolf’.

I sighed, but did my best to withhold judgement. I already felt guilty and stupid for getting angry at Raine earlier when she wasn’t even here.

The tome on the desk was different. Real. Leather cover, cracked and brittle. Pages yellowed by age, covered in tiny handwritten script, notes in the margin in a different hand, in a different language.

I’d never seen such an old book before. It delighted me. A century old? A century and a half? It wasn’t crumbling, so it couldn’t have been truly ancient. I was tempted to feel the texture of the pages between my fingertips, even if the content was probably utter nonsense. I peered closer to see if I could make out any of the words.

“Alright, that’s far enough.”

I jumped out of my skin.

Hand to my heart, heart in my throat, I stared at the source of the voice.

A woman had been sitting very still in one of the armchairs all along, half-hidden by the blankets which she’d eased aside.

“I-I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there. I-I must have- I didn’t see, when I opened the door, I-I’m sorry.”

She’d seen everything - the way I’d nosed around the room, my eye-roll at the shelves, my blatant interest in the book on the table.

She didn’t look impressed.

For a moment I thought she must be the professor left unnamed on the door plaque, but then realised she was my age. Her stern expression made her seem older than she was. She could have glared a hole through sheet metal.

She was short, maybe my height, but better filled out, with an amazing mass of golden-blonde hair twisted up into a loose bun behind her head. She wore an over-sized fisherman’s jumper and a pair of plaid pajama bottoms. In one hand she held a mobile phone, a golfball-size chunk of white quartz in the other. A book lay abandoned in her lap. Bizarre in retrospect, but I felt terrible for interrupting her reading.

She was almost exactly the sort of girl I’d dreamed about meeting at university, tucked away with her books, wearing pajamas, soft, fluffy, almost cuddly — if it wasn’t for the sheer hostility on her face.

“So, can I help you, or not?” she asked, words like bullets. Her frown deepened.

I realised, too late, that she was a little bit afraid.

Afraid of me? The mouse-like jittery girl she’d spooked merely by speaking, who hadn’t seen her sitting there in plain sight? She could probably tell I was crazy, tell from a mile away. That must have been why. People always think the mentally ill are dangerous.