Blood Pledged (Arcane Arts Academy #3) - Elena Lawson Page 0,69

kids here could say whatever they wanted about me. They could speculate about my familiars and it was all just ignorant, unfounded theories. But if one of them actually grew a sturdy enough set of balls to accuse one of them to their faces—well, I’d be lobbing those sturdy balls clean off.

They didn’t deserve that.

“Yes?” The librarian asked after I’d been standing at her desk for nearly three minutes, afraid to interrupt her enraptured reading of what looked to be a book that was definitely not from this library. The cover had a bare-chested man in a cowboy hat on the cover, his blue denim jeans as low as they could be on his hips without falling off. They nearly defied the laws of gravity.

“Uh, I was hoping you could help me find some information.”

She set her book down, utterly bored with our conversation already. Her horn-rimmed glasses were precariously perched on her thin nose like they always were, and she looked down on me with the tempered annoyance she reserved only for the students at the academy.

“That is what I’m here for,” she said, waiting impatiently for me to get the question out..

I took a long, deep breath and said what I came here to say. For Bianca. “If a witch was having problems with their… memory. Specifically, if he or she were losing chunks of time—”

I’d piqued her interest. This wasn’t the standard, I’ve lost my sigils textbook, can you please point me in the direction of where the extras are kept, request. No, this was something the old coot could sink her teeth into.

“Well,” I continued, “I was hoping you may know of some texts that reference that sort of thing happening.”

She stood from her chair and came around the desk, a new crease in her brow. “This is hypothetical?” she inquired as she passed by me and entered into the stacks.

“Yes,” I lied.

She huffed. “Well, then hypothetically, could you explain this loss of memory a bit more to help me narrow it down? As it stands, what you’ve described so vaguely as losing time could be a whole host of issues, both magical in nature, and entirely humane.”

Right.

I bit the inside of my cheek, following behind her as she began to pull tomes from the shelf, moving on to the next area of the library to pull more books from their homes.

“Well, in this hypothetical case, the person experiencing these blackouts is fully conscious during the periods of the blackout. Sh—they are sort of zombie-like. Um, and they can’t remember being places that they were, or even things they said. And then whatever it is just kind of wears off and they’re right back to their regular selves with no recollection of anything that happened.”

The librarian bent her head down to consider me from where she was climbing a ladder to reach a tome that was higher up. But upon hearing what I had to say her hand froze and she abandoned the book, stepping back down.

“This isn’t hypothetical, is it, Miss Hawkins?” she asked, placing her thin boney fingers on her hips, but bless her as she lowered her voice to make sure no one else would hear us.

I clenched my teeth and looked away, making it clear that I wouldn’t tell her one way or the other. Letting her think if it were the truth, that it was me who was experiencing these symptoms.

The librarian went to where she’d set the other books she’d begun to gather down atop a table and picked two from the pile. “I won’t press the issue,” she said quietly as she placed the two thick volumes into my hands. “But if you are experiencing what you described, you should seek medical attention here at the school. If it’s not something mortal in nature, like stress related, then there are only two things it could be.”

She glanced from the books and back up to me. I looked down at the volumes in my arms. One was called, A History of Vocari Compulsion, and the other was titled, The Dangers of Memory Magic.

“Memory Magic?” I asked, shivering at what either of the books was suggesting.

The librarian finished scooping up the other tomes I wouldn’t be needing to place them back where they belonged. “Yes. What you described could be a side effect of tampering with memory. So you are aware, it’s illegal for anyone to use such magic without Council approval, and even then in only the rarest of circumstances.