I didn’t care what you called them. I couldn’t wait to see what the books in the Caster Library would tell us, or one book in particular. Because we were short on two things: answers and time.
When we piled out of the truck, I couldn’t believe where we were. Marian’s truck was parked at the curb, not ten feet from the Gatlin Historical Society, or, as my mom and Marian liked to say, the Gatlin Hysterical Society. The Historical Society was also the DAR headquarters. Marian had pulled her truck forward enough to avoid the puddle of light spilling down to the pavement from the lamppost.
Boo Radley was sitting on the sidewalk, as if he had known.
“Here? The Lunae whatever is at the DAR headquarters?”
“Domus Lunae Libri. The House of The Book of Moons. Lunae Libri, for short. And no, just the Gatlin entrance.” I burst out laughing. “You have your mother’s appreciation for irony.” We walked up to the deserted building. We couldn’t have picked a better night.
“But it’s not a joke. The Historical Society is the oldest building in the County, next to Ravenwood itself. Nothing else survived the Great Burning,” Marian added.
“But the DAR and the Casters? How could they have anything in common?” Lena was dumbfounded.
“I expect you’ll find they have quite a bit more in common than you think.” Marian hurried toward the old stone building, drawing out her familiar key ring. “I, for example, am a member of both societies.” I looked at Marian in disbelief. “I’m neutral. I thought I made myself perfectly clear. I’m not like you. You’re like Lila, you get too involved….” I could finish that sentence for myself. And look what happened to her.
Marian froze, but the words hung in the air. There was nothing she could say or do to take them back. I felt numb, but I didn’t say anything. Lena reached for my hand, and I could feel her pulling me out of myself.
Ethan. Are you okay?
Marian looked at her watch again. “It’s five to nine. Technically, I shouldn’t let you in yet. But I need to be downstairs by nine, in case we have any other visitors this evening. Follow me.”
We made our way into the dark yard behind the building. She fumbled through her keys until she drew out what I had always thought was a keychain, because it didn’t look like a key at all. It was an iron ring, with one hinged side. With an expert hand, Marian twisted the hinge until it snapped back upon itself, turning the circle into a crescent. A Caster moon.
She pushed the key into what appeared to be an iron grating, in the foundation at the back of the building. She twisted the key, and the grating slid open. Behind the grating was a dark stone staircase leading down into even more darkness, the basement beneath the basement of the DAR. As she snapped the key one more rotation to the left, a row of torches lit themselves along the sides of the wall. Now the stairwell was fully illuminated with flickering light, and I could even see a glimpse of the words domus lunae libri etched into the stone archway of the entrance below. Marian snapped the key once more, and the stairs disappeared, replaced by the iron grating once again.
“That’s it? We aren’t going to go in?” Lena sounded annoyed.
Marian stuck her hand through the grating. It was an illusion. “I can’t Cast, as you know, but something had to be done. Strays kept wandering in at night. Macon had Larkin rig it for me, and he stops by to keep it intact, every now and then.”
Marian looked at us, suddenly somber. “All right, then. If you’re sure this is what you want to do, I can’t stop you. Nor can I guide you in any way, once you’re downstairs. I can’t prevent you from taking a book, or take one back from you before the Lunae Libri opens itself again.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you understand, Ethan? This isn’t a game. There are powerful books down there—Binding books, Caster scrolls, Dark and Light talismans, objects of power. Things no Mortal has ever seen, except me, and my predecessors. Many of the books are charmed, others are jinxed. You have to be careful. Touch nothing. Let Lena handle the books for you.”
Lena’s hair was waving. She was already feeling the magic of this place. I nodded, wary. What I was feeling was less magical, my stomach churning like I was the one who drank too much peppermint schnapps. I wondered how often Mrs. Lincoln and her cronies had paced back and forth on the floor above us, oblivious to what was below them.
“No matter what you find, remember we have to be out before sunrise. Nine to six. Those are the library hours, and the entrance can only be made to open during that time. The sun will rise precisely at six; it always does, on a Library Day. If you aren’t up the stairs by sunrise, you will be trapped until the next Library Day, and I have no way of knowing how well a Mortal could survive that experience. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”
Lena nodded, taking my hand. “Can we go in now? I can’t wait.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this. Your Uncle Macon and Amma would kill me if they knew.” Marian checked her watch. “After you.”
“Marian? Have you—did my mother ever see this?” I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t think about anything else.
Marian looked
at me, her eyes strangely sparkling. “Your mother was the person who gave me the job.”
And with that, she disappeared in front of us through the illusionary grating, and down into the Lunae Libri below. Boo Radley barked, but it was too late to turn back now.
The steps were cold and mossy, the air dank. Wet things, scurrying things, burrowing things—it wasn’t hard to imagine them making themselves comfortable down here.
I tried not to think about Marian’s last words. I couldn’t imagine my mother coming down these stairs. I couldn’t imagine her knowing anything about this world I’d just stumbled onto, more like, this world that had stumbled onto me. But she had, and I couldn’t stop wondering how. Had she stumbled onto it too, or had someone invited her in? Somehow, it made it all seem more real, that my mother and I shared this secret, even if she wasn’t here to share it with me.
But I was the one here now, walking down the stone steps, carved and flat like the floor of an old church. Along either side of the stairs I could see rough stone boulders, the foundations of an ancient room that had existed on the site of the DAR building, long before the structure itself had been built. I looked down the stairs, but all I could see were rough outlines, shapes in the dark. It didn’t look like a library. It looked like what it probably was, what it had always been. A crypt.
At the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows of the crypt, countless tiny domes curved overhead where the columns jutted up into the vaulted ceiling, forty or fifty in all. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that each column was different, and some of them were tilted, like crooked old oaks. Their shadows made the circular chamber seem like some kind of quiet, dark forest. It was a terrifying room to be in. There was no way of knowing how far back it went, since every direction dissolved into darkness.
Marian inserted her key into the first column, marked with a moon. The torches along the walls lit themselves, illuminating the room with flickering light.