A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) - Naomi Novik Page 0,51

was two steps away, didn’t take my eyes off it for a second as I got closer, and then I grabbed the edge of the shelf with one hand, jumped, and snagged it off. I could practically feel the whole bookcase lurch under me with resentment as I came down. I wasn’t stupid enough to try and look inside, which would have made it subject to collection. I kept looking straight ahead down the aisle and got it stuffed into my bookbag without even breaking stride. But I could tell just from my fingers sliding over the cover that it was really properly good. It wasn’t just the spine that was gilt, there was some sort of stamped pattern all over, and a folded-over flap to keep it closed.

The aisle did start to move quicker after that. I indulged in feeling smug for a moment, as if I’d beaten the library; I’d made it hand me something good and now it was going to have to let me go, since it didn’t want me collecting any more prizes. And it didn’t, of course, but I was still being an idiot. You don’t ever get anything in here without paying for it. Ever.

I moved at speed through the more modern languages, until at last I got close enough that in the next flash of Orion’s magic, the library couldn’t keep me from getting a glimpse of the distance between me and the main incantations aisle, and I burst into a quick sprint that got me close enough I could still see the end of the aisle even after the spell-light had faded. It had taken me at least twice as long to get there as Orion. The screams were louder, and other noises too: a high-pitched shrilling, vaguely birdlike, and then a lower snarling became audible as I rounded into the main aisle. After a couple of cautious steps further on, a third sound came, like the wind whistling through dead leaves on an early-winter day.

The first two sounds could possibly have gone together. You get all sorts of ridiculous cross-breeds in the bestial or hybrid category, mals created when some excessively clever alchemist stuck together two incompatible creatures for fun and profit—if by profit you mean eventually getting eaten by your own creations, which seems to happen to almost every maleficer who goes off on that particular tangent. Crossing a wolf with a flock of sparrows might sound stupid, but it’s not even unlikely. But the third sound was completely out. It wasn’t precisely like the manifestation that Mum put down on Bardsey Island during the summer that she dragged me the whole width of Wales on foot along the old pilgrim way, that one had sounded more like bells ringing, but it was close enough to be unmistakable.

If a manifestation had somehow formed inside the school, the library was just the sort of place it would like. But I was surprised it had popped into the reading room. Why not stay in the nice dark stacks where it had probably been feeding off the occasional lost student for ages? And why at the same moment as something else—two something elses, I mentally amended, because the shrilling and the snarling were now clearly coming from different parts of the reading room, too far apart for separate heads on one creature. That made no sense, and even less after I heard Orion shout, “Magnus! Put down a slickshield!” Those are only useful against the oozes, which don’t make any sound at all except squelching. That made four mals in the library, all at once. It would be like a pre-graduation party going in there.

And if Magnus was still in there casting defensive spells instead of running the hell away, that meant that one of the mals was keeping at least the New York corner and therefore also a heap of other kids from getting out. It was the most perfect gift-wrapped opportunity to show off that I could possibly have asked for. The main aisle was even lit the whole way down to the reading room like an airport runway.

I didn’t charge down the aisle and throw myself into the beautifully visible fray. I’d been a little slow on the uptake about the book, but I’m never that slow. The library had wanted to keep me in the Sanskrit aisle, but now it wanted me in the reading room. That meant it wasn’t trying to stop me saving Orion.