30

This display of recklessness and high emotion coming from Cobb had me more than a little worried. Was this going to be another maneuver on his part to get me to hand off the service? He turned and walked off a short distance and stood, as if he was contemplating something. There was such a tension in the air, it almost smothered me with smell like burning paper. He straightened and the smell spiked. Then it cut off like it never existed. “My apology Ms Fatelli, for being so abrupt. Continue your service, you may take the books you choose back to your world.” He turned on me and I could smell a desperate anger, like burning pine, and a hint of lemon...desire?
“You only get to keep them for one day, then they must be back in the library.” He quirked a smile. “You can, always take them out the next day, but they will be back in the library by sundown on your world.” He turned on me and I smelled something dry and dusty like chalk. He'd walled himself up emotionally. That saddened me for some reason, and then I got angry with myself and shook the mood off. “Deal, we'll try it for a few days, but I may need a book longer than that.”
“Only for the day, Ms Fatelli. And only in your possession. That is the deal.” He walked off and was gone before I could gt a word in to argue. I wondered if a skill like that could be learned. I snarled irritably and put the glasses on, and went into the library. The glasses worked all right. EVERYTHING in the library had magick on it. But there was a little difference in some magicks and I could pick faint shades of difference. I mean it looked all pale yellow, but some of the yellow graded more towards ivory, and the shelves glowed with a richer almost saffron yellow.
I took a shelf of twelve books and laid them on the floor, much like Larry did to show me how the glasses worked. The books all glowed, but one near the left of the line seemed to glow oddly compared to the others. I chose that one and two others that seemed a different glow than the background. Whether it meant anything I'd figure out when I got them to Fawn. I think that 'only in your possession' meant that I couldn't leave them out of sight, which was fine by me. I wanted to see how they, meaning Fawn's hired wizards, would study these books. It was the perfect excuse to tag along.
I left Underhill and drove back to Halifax, and met Fawn at the police station. I was way earlier than anyone expected so I had to wait for about three hours with the books before they could set up a room the way the wizards wanted it. I walked into one of the interrogation rooms, and there was iron mesh along all the walls, and each wizard had a machete's like mine, plated with silver. There were two large tables pushed together and a piece of black paper covered the tables. Ont the paper was drawn like I did, a salt circle, and then a chalk one with the protective sigils in between the two.
One book was placed in the center of this circle and the other two were, at my insistence, placed in a second small circle in one corner away from the main circle. The wizards then began a low, slow chant. From the few words I caught, and Fawn later confirmed, they were trying to slow the magic down and unravel it whole from the book so it could be understood. As they got further into the spell, I put the glasses that Larry made back on to better see what was happening.
The spell, or magick was slowly coalescing slightly above the book, which had started to suddenly get a worn, tired look as if years of time had finally started to wear it away. As the spell extraction progressed, the book aged before my eyes, and everyone else's. There was like an echo of what the book was, and what it was becoming as the magic was pulled away from it. Fawn called a stop before the magic was completely pulled from the book, and it snapped back into place like a rubber-band, and the book looked clean and well-cared for once more.
The wizards looke at the two books, and I did with my wizard sight. The top book of the two seemed to have a slightly whiter glow to it than the other, and the wizards chose that one next to try and tease apart. The circles were checked before the the book was placed, and once the three wizards were satisfied, they began the chanting again. My magick sight I left up as it was a lot more sensitive than the glasses, and I watched as the whitish magick was slowly teased out from the book.
In Japan, I read that for their culture, white is the color of death, and looking at the whitish glow of magick in front of me, I got a very frightened chill that made me agree with that idea. If ever a spell looked lethal, it was this one. The white color pulsed as if it was pulling things in and bleaching everything it touched into a dry brittle color that would powder away into nothing.
The wizards also saw this and their cadence slowed, and each word was pronounced with more clarity and care from an already careful trio of wizards. This was one spell I instinctively never wanted to see activated. After about fourty minutes of careful teasing of the spell, it was finally free of the book and the wizards aggressively unraveled it. I understood, as everyone in the room did, that the spell would have aged the opener of the book to powder. Score one for the good guys.
The last book was like the first one, a spell to keep the book intact and clean. So of the three I believed the one with the spell on it was the one we wanted to look at as soon as possible. I thanked the wizards and gave Fawn a sisterly hug, and went back over to the entrance to Underhill and back to Cobb's library. I placed the book on the desk and began to study the pages inside. After finsihing the book I could add two more pieces of information to our list about dragons.
9. Dragons have inherent shape-shifting ability, being able to mimic anything from a large dog to another dragon. They could never go bigger than they are, but they could go obviously quite a bit smaller. Plus, while shifted, they were as vulnerable as the creature the creature they mimicked was to damage of any kind. Which meant to me that dragons didn't shift unless there was a real reason to do so. That reason was so that they could cast external spells. Dragons were magickal in their own body so magick could not be cast from them. A dragon had to change shape to make a casting like the one Anolyn did. Something really to keep in mind.