CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I'm at school again, playing home-schooled Maya despite the fact that Keon's deadline is looming over me, only two days out. Exams are next week and the entire cohort is in a frenzy of last minute note-exchanging and studying. Conversations take one of two paths: either a vocalisation of despair and anxiety, or a recap of the course content. At recess I'm caught in the middle of an open quizzing session, in which one of Roma's friends questions us about our knowledge of ancient history. I keep my mouth shut and sink into the background. History is the last thing on my mind.

More pressing is my weak knowledge of curse breaking. It's not like I can just call up Keon and ask for advice. And the council is out of the question. I need an information source that doesn't require a human mediator, and I know for a fact I won't be getting anything useful out of google.

Next to me, Roma pulls up her history textbook. Her friend – a long-haired brunette by the name of Vanessa – cries, "Don't be a cheat, Roma!"

Roma smirks but doesn't close the book. "I'm fact-checking," she says.

"You doubt me?"

"Absolutely."

I'm looking down at her open book when it occurs to me. Books! Of course.

"I'll be back," I tell Roma, before departing the group. Once I'm around the corner, I pull out my phone. Harrison answers on the third ring.

"Melissa," he says. It's not much of a warm greeting, but then we didn't exactly part on good terms. The last time I saw him, he was wounded by a shard of metal thrown by his sister.

"How are you doing?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Right, of course. Listen, I need to ask something of you." There's silence on the other end of the line. I add, "Nothing big. Just a favour."

He's quiet for the longest time, and I start to wonder if he's put down the phone and walked off, leaving me to wait for an answer that will never come. I can't say I don't deserve it after the mess I dragged him into.

At last, he says, "Go on."

"You can drive, right?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Perfect. I need a lift."

-:-:-:-:-

At the end of the school day, I shoot Katherine a text informing her that I've decided to stay back to study. If I cared at all about my education, it would be the truth – especially since I have my first exam Monday next week. But with everything else going on, there's no room in my mind for math formulas and historic dates.

Harrison turns up half an hour later driving an old Honda Civic. I hop into the passenger seat and close the door behind me.

From the outside you wouldn't be able to guess what he's been through. Everything about him is impressively normal, despite the new knowledge that's no doubt rattling his world. In one afternoon I threw into question everything he thought he knew. In a second his sister was taken away from him all over again. The only thing that betrays even a hint of all this are his eyes – and they just look tired.

He sighs. "So where to?"

I direct him through the suburbs, past my previous school and into old territory. Being in this part of town is like time-travelling, with Harrison's Honda as the time machine. Everything looks the same as I remember it and I shift in my seat, unnerved.

But if I found my old suburb unnerving, then Rand's now-deserted home is downright chilling. I direct Harrison to pull up in front of it and he puts the car into park.

"This it?"

I can only nod.

"Care to enlighten me as to why we're here?'

"Research," I reply, and get out of the car.

The sky is a grey-white slab and as we walk up the narrow path to Rand's front door, I notice how quiet the street is. A light breeze tosses around my hair, brushes through the trees and over the sidewalk. My breath leaves my mouth in little white clouds of condensation. It's afternoon and barely ten degrees Celsius, making it the coldest day this season – if you don't include the artificial winter I created during the autumn.

Harrison knocks. When there's no response, he reaches for the doorknob. "It's locked," he says, as if that's surprising.

"We should have a look around. There might be a spare key hidden somewhere." I bend down to lift up the doormat, but there's no key beneath it. Harrison feels over the top of the door and comes up empty.

"The garden?" he suggests.

I nod. Harrison searches to the left while I go right. There's a thin strip of mulch and dead plants along the front of the house. It's not much of a garden, but a good a place as any to hide a key. After taking a quick look around the base of each plant, I notice a small pot nestled in the corner between the wall and the front steps. Bending down, I lift the pot off it's base. A small, dirty key rests in the centre.

"Found it!"

We reconvene back at the front door and I slide the key into the lock, which opens only after a bit of a jiggle. The door swings open on a dusty hallway, the dim light offered by the sky not enough to brighten the dark interior. The last time I was here, we'd just received news that Sarah was dying. Caden, Rand and I had rushed out the door. I hadn't looked back.

I step inside. If it's even possible, it seems colder in here, the air so still it may as well be dead. I'm struck by the overwhelming sense that this house isn't as empty as it seems, as though the echoes of previous inhabitants and guests still haunt it, memories playing out in all the rooms, repeating themselves over and over and over – until the end of time.

"Who lives here again?"

I step further down the hallway and run a finger across the wall. It comes back covered in a thin layer of dust. "No one lives here."

Harrison closes the door behind him. "Well," he says, "this place doesn't weird me out at all."

I send him a look. "Come on."

We delve deeper into the house, emerging into the living room at the end of the hall. I head to the left, looping around to the back of the staircase. There I find the door set into the wall. It hangs ajar, as though someone has been in and out recently. But I can't fathom who.

Harrison peers over my shoulder into the dark tunnel-like stairwell. "Secret underground lair?"

"Stairs to the basement," I reply.

We head on down. The air down here smells dusty and dank and vaguely like paper. The further we go, the darker it gets, until each step has to be carefully felt out. Eventually we reach the base. I push open the second door and we slip out into pitch blackness.

"There's a light switch around here somewhere," I whisper, and run my hand over the wall. I find it quickly and the large room bursts into presence with a blinding flash.

Almost immediately I can sense Harrison's awe. I know I felt similarly the first time I saw the space – polished cement floors, a high ceiling with an ornate chandelier, walls covered in bookshelves, packed tight with books. It's expansive and grand and a miracle of a thing, so much so that it almost feels like magic.

"I can't believe you called this a basement. A place like this deserves a much better word. Like–"

"Underground lair?"

He doesn't smile, but his eyes brighten just the smallest bit. "No. Something better than that. Something like athenæum."

He stares up at the high shelves, still overtaken by wonder. Meanwhile I stare at him. "Which means?"

"In it's simplest form it means 'library'. But originally it was a school in Ancient Rome, founded by the Emperor Hadrian in the second century. It was place of literary and scientific achievement and was often–"

"Okay, that's enough." Now he laughs. "I hear enough about ancient history at school, I don't need it from you, too."

"I can't say I'll oblige. I really can't help it."

I pull a face. "I didn't peg you as a history buff."

"What did you peg me as?"

"Nothing, I guess. But definitely not that."

Harrison ventures further into the room, stopping at the antique wooden table at it's centre. "So what's the subject of our enquiry?"

"Curses."

"Curses," he parrots. "Naturally."

"Specifically how to break one."

"What else."

"Are you going to help me look or are you just going to keep commenting on everything I say?"

"Definitely the latter."

I sigh. "I'll start on this side and you can take the other. I can't imagine it'll take long to find what we're looking for."

"How are the books organised?"

"I don't know."

"Well if whoever owns this place is as much of a bibliophile as they seem, then it should be alphabetically organised – first by subject, second by author. The only issue will be finding the location of each subject, seeing as there are no labels. Even determining what the subject is–"

"How about we just start looking?"

He nods. "Good plan."

-:-:-:-:-

It takes a while before I find the first book on curses, but once I do, it starts a chain reaction. Harrison discovers two on the other wall just a minute later. Then I come across a stack of four. We end up with more books on the central table then we'd ever be able to look through in one afternoon.

We start flipping through each of them. It's not until I get to the second book of a ten book series entitled, An Encyclopaedia of Hexes and Curses, that I find anything on creating and breaking curses.

"Here," I say. Harrison comes around the table to look over my shoulder. "To create a curse, first one must possess an affinity for hex manipulation, a derivative of the one true Power. Hex manipulation allows for the conversion of language into power. Each spoken word therefore exerts an influence on the universe. One must speak their desires either while in contact with an object, or just beforehand. This object will become the anchor for the curse, in which the bulk of the magic will reside.

"A curse without an anchor binds itself to its creator. Such an occurrence is highly warned against, and is one of the many dangers associated with curse-creating. As our bodies are not capable of containing the vast amount of energy involved in a curse, one would quickly tire and die. There has not been a single case in which someone has survived longer than one day as the anchor of a curse.

"Even with an anchor, curses drain the creator. An unbreakable line of connection between the two is eternally preserved. As a result, creators experience many side effects, namely: fatigue, weak immune system, insanity, and death. Such consequences depend on the strength of the curse. A small, weak curse may have negligible effects, while one that is large and strong is likely to drive a creator to insanity within a few years. For this reason, curse-creating is strongly urged against.

"To break a curse, you must follow a process similar to creating one. The anchor used to bind it must be present and a statement of revocation must be spoken. It's important to note that only the curse-creator can break it. Another person with hex manipulation would not be a viable substitute as they have no link to the anchor.

"Breaking a curse is also significantly more dangerous than creating one. When the curse is broken, all the power contained within the anchor and the creator is simultaneously disbanded. For a powerful curse, such an event is likened to a shock wave of energy, capable of harming anyone nearby. To negate this, it is recommended that one drop the anchor into fire at conclusion of the ritual. This way the power is released into the flames and safely transmuted back into the universe through heat, light and smoke.

"There is, of course, a second, much simpler way to break a curse – and that is to kill its creator."

At once I stop reading, slamming the book shut. I'm suddenly all-too-conscious of how silent it is in the library – so silent that my heartbeat is like a clap of thunder in my ears.

"Well," Harrison says.

"Well," I echo softly.