Fangs & Fiction: A Library Witch Mystery Book 6 (Paperback)

“Okay, library,” I said, facing the balconies overlooking the ground floor. “Activate normal mode.”

I wrote the word move in the notebook in my hand, focusing on the shelves in front of me. Yet no matter how hard I focused, the library remained the same—five storeys of towering shelves tiered like the layers on a wedding cake, complete with floating lanterns, temperamental staircases, and books that did whatever they pleased.

Most of the time, the library felt like the home I’d always yearned for. For as long as I could remember, I’d sought comfort in the old-book smell of leather tomes and the fresh scent of printed pages, and I’d settled into life in my family’s magical library as though I’d never been anywhere else. Yet it seemed I had a long way to go before the library was open to obeying my commands like it did for my other family members.

“What in the world are you doing?” My cousin Cass walked into view, accompanied by her sister, Estelle.

“Laney is supposed to be coming here tomorrow,” I explained. “I thought I’d get the library prepared for her.”

“You invited your non-magical friend to visit the library?” Cass arched a brow. “You might as well have invited a sheep to have dinner with a pack of wolves.”

“Nobody’s getting eaten,” I said firmly. “Besides, the library does have a ‘normal’ mode. Aunt Adelaide told me.”

“We haven’t used it in years.” Cass tugged her long, curly red hair into a ponytail, which contrasted her sister’s flowing curls. She was taller and leaner than her sister and wore glasses, but the three of us looked alike enough that Laney would know we were related the instant she set eyes on my cousins. “Estelle, you can’t seriously be thinking of going along with this ridiculous idea.”

“Look, Rory’s friend wants to visit her,” said Estelle. “Rory has done so much for us since she moved in, and the least we can do is give her that.”

In truth, I was having second thoughts on the matter myself. While I’d longed to invite my best friend Laney to visit my new family from the first day I’d moved to the library, the magical laws forbade normals like her from entering the paranormal world. And that wasn’t even getting into the fact that most ordinary people would run screaming if they wandered into certain sections of the library, where magical beasts lurked in the stacks and the books often got into fights with one another. She knew I’d recently gone to live with some newly discovered relatives in their library, but not the magic part of it.

“It’s her funeral if we all get arrested.” Cass’s pessimism was hardly new. She was not a fan of meeting new people, unless they came with feathers or fangs.

“We won’t,” Estelle said. “We had a normal living here in the library for years without anyone kicking up a fuss. None of the local officials from the witch council ever check up on Ivory Beach.”

“Exactly,” I said, remembering poor Tad, a normal who’d once made his home in the Reading Corner after his first glimpse of the magical world had driven him out of his mind. As my family’s library was the centre of the town rather than a ruling coven under the thumb of the local witch council, the laws were a little laxer in the town of Ivory Beach than they were in other paranormal communities. That didn’t mean inviting Laney to visit couldn’t go wrong in a hundred possible ways, though. While my best friend was resilient and open-minded, she’d never seen anything more magical than a Harry Potter movie or Disneyland. 

My own introduction to the magical world had come with a fair few bumps. My dad, who I’d always thought of as ordinary, had left the magical world behind to marry my mother and kept his secret until his death three years prior. As a result, I hadn’t even known I had any surviving family until they’d showed up a few months ago to help me deal with a group of vampires at the bookshop where I—and my dad, before he’d died—had worked. 

My induction to the paranormal world had been so abrupt that I’d had to leave Laney behind, and I wanted to give her an insight into my new life, even an incomplete one. The library, however, was excessive even by paranormal standards, containing an entire corridor which had turned invisible, a Dimensional Studies Section which moved around as it pleased, and a vampire sleeping in the basement who’d been there since before I was born.

As if to highlight my misgivings, a muffled crash came from upstairs, and a handful of tawny feathers drifted down over the balcony along with a sprinkle of glitter. With a groan, I went in search of the trouble and found myself in the middle of yet another standoff between a pixie and an owl. Supervised, as usual, by a crow. 

Spark the pixie, his eight-inch-tall frame dressed in a miniature suit, flitted around on gossamer wings, avoiding the sharp talons of the huge tawny owl who served as my family’s familiar. Sylvester flew in gleeful circles, swatting at his target, while my own familiar, Jet, watched from the side lines. The little crow usually went against taking sides most of the time, instead flying around shrieking and adding to the general clamour. 

“They’re fighting!” he told me in his squeaky voice.

“I know.” I reached out to catch the pixie and then withdrew my hand sharply before it ended up caught in one of the owl’s sharp talons. “Sylvester, cut it out.”

He ignored me, diving at the pixie with a screech that raised the hairs on my arms. Jet hid himself in the folds of my silver-lined black cloak, while the pixie shot into the air like a glittering bullet to avoid the owl’s claws.

“Sylvester!” I said, louder. “What’s going on?”

“He dropped glitter in my feathers!” said Sylvester indignantly.

“Not on purpose.” I caught sight of the pixie zipping around above, shedding glitter as he did so. The stuff got everywhere, but I doubted the pixie had been the aggressor. “Right, Spark?”

The pixie made an unintelligible noise, flitting down to perch on Estelle’s shoulder as she caught me up.

Sylvester hovered above us like a feathery demon. “He did it on purpose. Ask him.”

“Calm down.” Estelle raised her hands placatingly and turned to the pixie perching on her shoulder. Spark chattered in her ear, and Estelle narrowed her eyes at the owl. “Sylvester, he says you put a dead mouse in his nest. Really?”

“It’s a lie!” Sylvester said in outraged tones. “The little toadstool has it in for me.”

“You’ve done nothing but pick fights with him ever since he moved in,” Estelle said. “Cass, back me up here.”

Her sister gave a shrug. “Sylvester’s right to be annoyed. He does leave glitter everywhere.”

“And the dead mouse?” I arched a brow at the owl.

“There was no mouse!” Sylvester said.

“There’s a simple way to verify that.” Estelle raised her wand and marched across the lobby towards the stairs. The pixie, after being chased off by several of the books, had opted to make his nest in an alcove up on the first floor. “I take it I won’t find any mice up there?”

Sylvester cleared his throat. “I may have found a small rodent sniffing around the stacks and put it in the general vicinity of where that glitter-shedding cretin makes his nest.”

“Really.” Estelle turned on her heel, folding her arms in disapproval. “You’re better than that, Sylvester.”

“She’s right.” Even if he was jealous of the pixie for monopolising our attention lately, you’d think the living embodiment of the library’s entire store of knowledge would have better things to do than get into ridiculous fights.

“You’re all ganging up on me.” The owl took flight with a piercing shriek that caused several books to leap off the shelves in fright. Estelle made an exasperated noise and went to restore them to their former places, the pixie still clinging to her cloak. As Jet took flight in pursuit of the owl, I moved in to help her.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Estelle said. The pixie was supposed to be her charge, but while he’d got the hang of being her assistant quickly enough, Sylvester had made it his full-time mission to drive the pixie off. Admittedly, the pixie still turned invisible occasionally and dropped glitter all over everything, but the main issue was on Sylvester’s end. And since he wasn’t a normal owl in any way, it was hard for us to reason with him.

I waved my wand at the books that had fallen to the floor, and they flew back to their rightful positions. Estelle gave me a grateful look, while Cass scoffed from behind us. “Now there’s glitter on the books, too. Are you sure you want to invite your friend here now, Rory?”

Not in the slightest. Laney and I had been trying to make plans for weeks, but something always came up. Between lessons on biblio-witch magic, spellwork, potion-making, wrangling my familiar and magical theory, my days were full enough without adding the complication of juggling my old life with my new one.

“Is that a no?” said Cass. “Why not just ask that Reaper of yours to come with you to meet her somewhere else?”

For once, Cass wasn’t trying to needle me on purpose. Xavier wanted to come with me to meet Laney, but there were difficulties. Namely, with his boss. “I would, but the Grim Reaper doesn’t like him going outside of his designated area.”

“He doesn’t get to leave the town at all?” Estelle asked.

“Not unless the Grim Reaper takes him to one of those mysterious Reaper meetings.” I sighed. “I’m sure he sneaks off sometimes. It’s just whether he can get away with going on a day trip with me without his boss flipping out and thinking he’s ditched his post.”

“The guy needs to chill,” said Cass. “Why not slip him a sleeping potion?”

Estelle choked. “Cass, he’s the Grim Reaper. Unless you want to hasten your path to an early grave, I wouldn’t slip him anything.”

“I meant without being seen, of course,” said Cass.

“The Grim Reaper can sense you even if you’re invisible, according to Xavier,” I said. “No potion or spell has any effect on him, besides.”

“Pity,” said Cass. “So he did tell you some of his secrets, then. Has he told you about his family yet?”

I gave her a warning look. “Cass, I’m entertaining Laney as a guest, not the Reaper. Besides, that line of questioning is closed.”

Maybe it was for the best that we met up outside the library after all, since I didn’t want Laney to be subject to an interrogation the way poor Xavier had the one time he’d come for dinner with my family. Admittedly, Laney worked as an assistant in the local supermarket, which provided fewer openings for my family to ask her nosy questions which might lead to the Grim Reaper showing up on our doorstep. Didn’t mean I wouldn’t stand up for her if necessary.

Laughter trickled from behind a nearby bookshelf, and Aunt Candace came into view with her notebook and pen at the ready. If I had to guess, she’d been watching the fight between the pixie and the owl. Her wild curly hair was barely restrained, her cloak covered in coffee stains, and her eyes alight with mischief.

“What?” I said to her. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” she said. “You’re really expecting the library to behave itself? Please bring the normal here. I’m writing another paranormal-normal romance and I need ideas.”

“Nice try.” I narrowed my eyes at her quivering pen and notebook. “You’re not allowed to put my friends into books if they don’t know you’re a writer.”

“That’s the best way to do it,” she said. “No potential for lawsuits whatsoever.”

Honestly. Leaving my aunt cackling to herself, I scanned the upper balconies for any signs of Aunt Adelaide and instead spotted someone else entirely gliding through the stacks.

Evangeline, the leader of the vampires in town, walked out from behind a row of bookshelves, clothed in an elegant black dress that matched the waterfall of silky hair that framed her narrow, chalk-pale face. The vampire descended the stairs with speed no human could match, somehow avoiding all the trick stairs in the process. Though maybe even the trick stairs were frightened of her. It wouldn’t surprise me. I hadn’t even seen her come in. More importantly, had she heard our conversation about inviting Laney to come to town? I hope not.

Even if she hadn’t, vampires could read minds, and I was too startled to shield when she gave me a wide smile. “It’s an honour to see you, Aurora.”

“What are you doing in here?” The way she’d sneaked in while none of us was looking set alarm bells ringing in my mind, and I fixed my attention on a wooden bannister to avoid any wayward thoughts slipping out.

“Why, nothing at all.” Her gaze panned around the shelves. “I heard you had a pixie on your staff now.”

“We do. He’s our new assistant.” I glanced at Estelle behind me, seeing the pixie had hidden himself behind her hair. “Is there something I can help you with? Are you looking for a particular book?”

“No, I don’t think I am.” She crossed the lobby to the door with elegant steps, her dress flowing around her ankles. “You have glitter in your hair, by the way.”

“I know.” I’d learnt to shield my mind from her via focusing on one particular thing to the exclusion of everything else, but stray thoughts could still slip out if I wasn’t careful, and it took a great effort for me to suppress the impulse to check my dad’s journal was still in my bag. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d shown an interest in getting her hands on it, and I couldn’t think of any other reason for her to come to the library if not to take out a book. Evangeline wasn’t the type to pay social calls, and the vampires’ leader wasn’t my biggest fan for multiple reasons, the most recent of which was the fact that she thought the fact that I was dating Xavier meant I’d picked the Grim Reaper’s side over hers. 

I couldn’t say I knew the details of the vampires’ odd rivalry with the Reapers. Unlike the vampires and the werewolves, they didn’t tend to get into public fights, they just avoided one another. I half expected her to turn back and offer an explanation, even a cryptic one, but she reached the doors and vanished through them without looking back.

“That was weird,” I commented. At least the pixie hadn’t dropped glitter in her hair, as he’d done to the rest of us. 

Aunt Adelaide walked into view. “What did she want?”

“Nothing, apparently,” I said. “Who let her in?”

“I turned my back for five minutes.” She shook her head. “Strange creatures, vampires.”

I opened my shoulder bag to make sure the journal was still there, a faded leather-bound book filled with writing I couldn’t read. Nor could anyone else, including my Aunt Adelaide’s homemade translator spell. I’d never found the original code-breaker document, so I’d been unable to figure out just why every vampire I met seemed determined to get their hands on it.

According to my aunts’ research, the journal was of interest to a particular group of vampires who collected rare artefacts, and while their leader, Mortimer Vale, was currently in jail, two of his companions were at large. Evangeline might not be in league with them, but I’d been warned against showing her the journal all the same. All I knew was that it contained some kind of knowledge considered valuable to the vampires, but translating it seemed as likely as my family and their familiars remaining on their best behaviour for the duration of a visit from my best friend.

On cue, my phone buzzed with a message from Laney: Where is this elusive boyfriend of yours?

He’s around. He has a demanding job. 

Namely, taking the dead into the afterlife. Which was as demanding as you could get. No excuses, no days off, and a boss who happened to be the literal Grim Reaper. It was a miracle we’d made our relationship work at all. But Xavier was possibly the least likely person to cause trouble for her during our visit.

I sent her another message: Also, my family is having a demanding time at the library, so we might have to meet elsewhere. That okay?

Her response came a moment later. Why don’t you come home? 

I hesitated, then replied, Bad memories.

What, of me?

No. Abe. My old employer was nothing compared to the vampires who’d cost me my job, but that didn’t mean I was keen to relive that time in my life, either.

On the other hand, going back to my old home was one way to ensure Laney could meet Xavier without accidentally glimpsing the magical world.

Ah. Understandable. Still, you don’t have to talk to that miserable old git. Come see me.

I’ll check with Xavier.

“Messaging your friend?” Aunt Adelaide guessed. “I heard you trying to get the library to switch into normal mode earlier. Truth be told, I’m not certain it’s possible to hide every trace of magic in here, and then there’s our visitors to consider. We can’t ask everyone in town to refrain from using magic at all.”

True. Even if Laney visited on a Sunday when the library was closed, it’d be just my luck if we ran into a magical duel between two angry witches in the middle of town or a werewolf breaking the ‘no shifting in public’ rule.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I think we’re going to meet up back where I used to live instead. That is, if the Grim Reaper lets Xavier come with me without kicking up a fuss. I’ll ask him now so he can give the boss enough time to prepare.”

I sent him a quick text, and a moment later, there came a knock on the door. The Reaper was nothing if not prompt.

“Hey.” I opened the door to find Xavier standing on the doorstep. His blond curly hair and aquamarine eyes were the antithesis of what one would expect the Grim Reaper to look like, but then again, looking like an angel probably helped him when it came to escorting reluctant souls into the afterworld. “Change of plans. We’re meeting Laney back home in my old town, if you can get permission from you-know-who.”

“She’s not coming here?”

“Nope. Too much madness.” I took his hand. “I can’t get the library to behave itself, and Sylvester is still feuding with that pixie. Will your boss give you permission to leave town for an hour or two, or will we have to sneak out and hope he doesn’t notice?”

He tilted his head. “I’m still free during that time. If I tell him we’re going for a walk in the hills and will still be within sight of the town, he won’t know any better. Granted, if it goes wrong, he’s likely to be furious, but that won’t happen unless I give him reason to suspect my absence.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “As a bonus, you’ll get to see where I grew up.”

“I take it we’re going there via magical means?” he said.

“You bet.” I started typing a reply to Laney. “I haven’t used a spell to travel that far before, but I don’t think I could go back to public transport now.” 

“Good, because I suspect my boss will have words to say to me if I use my Reaper powers to travel to the normal world,” he commented.

“Especially as you aren’t supposed to be leaving town.” My heart gave an uneasy flip. Deceiving the Grim Reaper was not wise. I’d been lucky to keep my head the last time I’d done it. “Better hope nobody dies while we’re gone.”

With luck, I wasn’t tempting fate.