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“It’ll grow back.” She’d snipped one thin strand she could hardly tell was missing, and anyway, it was less the loss of the hair and more the idea of any bit of her being an offering that unsettled her.
The grimoire groaned, and Fia flipped the scissors in her hand, pointy side out like a knife, ready to stab the book if it made any ill-intentioned move toward them. But the book only lay in wait for the accepted sacrifice, gasping as those fireplace-singed threads of hair disintegrated, as the flesh flopped apart at the corner, its reddish edges creped with age.
And then Fia’s hair wove itself into the already-made holes, stitching tight, the strands darker and silkier than the previous ones had been, a cruel contrast to the pale skin that shaped the book’s cover. Gradually, the loose pieces cinched together, and once repaired, The Book of Ribs sighed.
And, with a click of the lock, opened.
The pages fanned, quick and tempting—a flash of dark ink and rust-red bloodstains and a spattering of graveyard dirt, the sound of scratch, scratch, scratching as if fingernails wanted to claw their way out of the spine, the echo of weeping from stolen tears. Followed by silence.
Carefully, Fia and Penbrook sank to the floor before the grimoire, side by side now, the scissors discarded at their knees—but in easy reach. The pages stilled as Fia bent her neck, looking closer.
A long spell lined the yellowed parchment, the writing so small and cramped it was nearly impossible to read. Probably because the ink was so precious. Made from Arturo’s rib bone, burned to ash, he must have used it sparingly.
“Can you make this out?” Fia’s voice was a thin thread beneath the crackling fire and blustering wind.
Penbrook looked at her askance. “Perhaps if someone hadn’t abducted my glasses…”
“Oh!” Fia had almost forgotten about them, and she’d definitely forgotten to return them. “They’re here.”
She fumbled in the drawer of the side table where she’d absently stowed them, then put them on despite Penbrook’s expectant hand. He made no objection, though, peering over her shoulder as she turned back to the book.
“Let’s see.” The writing still wasn’t entirely legible, but the letters appeared more sharply now. (She really loved these glasses.) “It seems to be a spell for prosperity”—which didn’t sound as terrible as she’d expected, or terrible at all really, until she read on—“gained from another’s lost wealth.”
“Not quite what we’re looking for,” Penbrook said.
“No.” With distaste, Fia turned the pages to inspect the next several spells. They proved no better, and no more helpful than the first. “A spell for good luck, gained from another’s misfortune. A spell for an ever-charmed voice, gained from another’s enduring silence. A spell for longevity…”
She pushed up the glasses. Despite the darkness of those that had come before, Fia’s interest spiked as she explored the complicated spell, wondering if it might offer some way around Penbrook and Andromeda’s deadly curse. At this point, she felt desperate.
Penbrook looked not only tired but… ruffled.
Yes, he’d been windswept like her—and she knew she looked a mess, skirts wrinkled, a sleeve torn, hair snarled—but his ruffling went somehow deeper. She saw it in his eyes, the way they shifted uncertainly, and in his hands, the slight tremor. The curse demanded he sleep, wanted to pull him under and hold him there. He could only fight against his fate so long before succumbing.
“Longevity,” Penbrook mused.
And then, reading on, Fia deflated. “Gained from another’s demise.”
“I might have expected,” Penbrook said dryly, leaning back against the base of the couch, unable to hide his exhaustion. “Well, I wouldn’t wish death on anyone. Or any of these terrible misfortunes. I don’t think you’re going to find what I need in there.”
“What? But there are hundreds more spells to go through.”
“Ah, what a waste of your hair,” he said mournfully.
Frowning, she looked over her shoulder at him. “Never mind that. I know these first few spells haven’t been promising, but I’m not giving up now. Why are you so ready to accept defeat when we’ve barely just begun?”
He went quiet, contemplative, like he might bare his soul to her if only he could properly gather his thoughts. And she would have listened—to his dashed hopes, his lingering fears, anything he wanted to share with her about his past. Or his present. This time he had now, here with her. How much could they hold in this single moment between them?
“Penbrook?”
“I’m weary,” he said, and that was all, a hoarseness to the word that only softened her to him. And frightened her.
“Rest then,” she ordered. “I’ll go through the grimoire.”
Fia turned back to the book, setting her shoulders against the other horrors she might find in the old, fleshy pages. It was a curious thing, too, that as much as she detested the darkness of the magic, she could appreciate the skilled (if not disturbed) mind of the spellwright who’d written the spells. The whole book hummed with power.
“Watch that you don’t reach for too much,” her mother had told her once, unprompted by anything that Fia could remember. Just another lesson tossed out on a whim. “Magic has a way of warping your better sensibilities.”
“What do you mean?” Fia had asked at the time, though now that she thought of it, she realized her mother hadn’t listened to her own advice. Reaching for the most brilliant fragments of the universe itself and trying to contain them—and the lightning had turned on her.
