Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(65)
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Even though it had been one of my favorite Thistle Grove haunts as a child, I hadn’t been to Tomes & Omens in years.
The Harlow occult bookstore—though it billed itself to tourists and collectors more as an indie bookseller, specializing in rare and antiquarian finds—sat on Yarrow, the town’s picturesque main drag, right across from the Wicked Sweet Fudge Shoppe, which wreathed the entire snow-strewn street with the melting fragrance of sugar and chocolate and caramel popcorn. As Gareth opened the door for us, the little brass bell above the jamb sang out our entrance; I could feel the tiny spurt of a spell it triggered. An alert charm, likely keyed to whichever Harlow was in charge of the storefront today, notifying them of a new visitor.
“Smells like incense crossed with one hundred years of grime in here,” Gareth groused at me, muffling a sneeze into the elbow of his peacoat. He’d agreed to accompany me with extreme prejudice, more out of sibling solidarity than anything else, but we were still feeling prickly with each other from the night before. “You’d think they’d bother to dust, like, once a decade or so.”
“Stunningly, some of us actually have to work for a living,” a low, tart voice responded from somewhere within the warren of shelves that wound through the dim space like a hedge maze of books. “Without the luxury of a no-doubt pert and buxom cleaning staff at our perpetual beck and call.”
Then Delilah Harlow herself emerged from somewhere between the shelves—even though I hadn’t noticed so much as an opening there before—with a precarious pile of books stacked haphazardly in her arms. Emmy’s oldest first cousin and James Harlow’s understudy, the Harlow witch who would one day inherit his title of master recordkeeper.
Her dark brown gaze shifted flatly between the two of us, from beneath full, lowered brows. As accustomed as I was to difficult people, Delilah still always struck me as the proud owner of one of the surliest dispositions I’d ever encountered—incongruously matched with a sweet, open face like a fawn’s. Heart shaped, with huge, uptilted dark brown eyes fringed by thick lashes, a tiny ski-slope nose dusted with a faint smatter of freckles, a rosebud mouth now pursed with displeasure at our unannounced appearance in her domain. Light brown hair spilled over her traditional dove-gray-and-white Harlow family robes—whatever she wore beneath them, I’d never seen Delilah less than fully decked out in witch attire—its loose waves glittering with suspended crystals and tiny talismans.
The fact was, Delilah Harlow was remarkably beautiful, like the saltiest of Disney princesses. She would have been hugely appealing to me under different circumstances, had she not been one of the few people outside of my own family I found legitimately intimidating.
“We’re sorry to bother you, Ms. Harlow,” I interjected hastily, hoping a little well-timed groveling might smooth our road. “But we have . . . an inquiry that we were hoping you might be able to shed some light on, concerning a magical artifact. We were wondering if you might examine it for us. Give us your professional opinion, as a Harlow recordkeeper and magical historian.”
She paused, shifting a little to accommodate the weight of her wobbly book pile, dark eyes lighting with a grudging flare of interest.
“What kind of artifact?” she said through an impressive scowl, not bothering to offer up the use of her first name instead.
As with everyone else in town, there was little love lost between most Harlows and Blackmoores, especially considering what had happened between Gareth and Emmy Harlow. Though to be fair, James Harlow had only ever been kind to me, back when I used to come creeping in here as a book-hungry shadow of a kid to spend hours roaming his shelves, ravenous for words.
And at least I knew for a fact that my brother hadn’t slept with this Harlow, or royally fucked her over in any way, shape, or form. To the best of my knowledge—which was extensive, given how relatively small Thistle Grove’s witchy dating pool was—Delilah dated only women, and certainly not ones affiliated with my family.
“A coin,” I said, producing it from my pocket. It glimmered warmly on my palm, reflecting a shimmering waver from no obvious source, given how dark it was in the store. Only the faintest of winter light filtered through the dust-furred storefront windows, the wall sconces glowing like dim afterthoughts.
Delilah stared at the coin almost hungrily, eyes narrowing, as if she could sense the magic emanating from it even from where she stood.
“Interesting,” she muttered, turning on her heel and disappearing back into the shelves. “Follow me.”
I darted in after her, followed by a visibly long-suffering Gareth, grumbling under his breath. “Would you quit your bitching,” I hissed at him through my teeth once she was out of earshot. “If we’re polite, she might actually help us!”
“Or sell us poisoned ink or some shit,” he groused back. “She was looking at us like she’d rather we both drop dead than keep screwing with her day.”
“It’s not about us, it’s about the coin. And that, she’s clearly into.”
I followed Delilah’s swirl of robes through tunnels of books, the towering shelves nearly grazing the double-height ceiling overhead, magic swarming against my skin. The buckling bookshelves were layered with complex strata of protection spells: anti-theft, anti-fire, anti-defacement, anti–generally malicious or nefarious activity. It was quite an impressive accumulated casting, no doubt the handiwork of generations of Harlows who took both book husbandry and their role as Thistle Grove’s magical recordkeepers very, very seriously. Surely no single Harlow could have managed this on their own, relatively weak as they were compared to the other families, even with the magical boost Emmy’s Victory of the Wreath had given them.