Kylie followed Miss Hardwick down the narrow aisle, until the librarian paused. There it was, among the rarest of the rare. A slim book bound in black leather that had been tied together with knotted silk thread. The text had been shoved between two of John Hathorne’s journals, which consisted of little more than financial details. His books were so mundane they had masked the power and magic of The Book of the Raven. The text had been waiting, quite impatiently, to be selected for more than three hundred years. The prose on the thin pages of vellum had been carefully crafted in alternating red and black inks.
“It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Miss Hardwick said. “The best ones never do. I suggest you use gloves.”
“Thank you, I can take it from here,” Kylie assured the librarian as she accepted a pair of white cotton gloves.
“Good. It’s nearly five and I have to wash up and get over to the inn.” Miss Hardwick patted Kylie’s shoulder before she went to collect her teacup to rinse.
The cover of the book did indeed burn Kylie’s fingertips and she slipped on the gloves before sinking down on the floor. She sat back on her heels as she turned to the first page. There was an envelope tucked inside, another note in Jet’s familiar sloping script.
Dear One,
Do not use The Book of the Raven unless you are prepared to lose everything. This book will lead you to the end of the curse. Start in the city where it was written.
Kylie examined the frontispiece on which the author had drawn a sketch of a raven in black ink. 1615, London. When Faith Owens found the text at a market in Manhattan in the seventeenth century, she had written her name in the lower left-hand corner. The Book of the Raven by Amelia Bassano was a private journal, written for her own purposes, but she had others in mind as well, those she wished to help. Women who had no access to what they needed most in the world often turned to the left, and it was occurring once again here in the Owens Library as Kylie joined those who had walked the Crooked Path before her. It often began with women who were given away to men they didn’t love, who were too poor to make their own decisions, who lived lives they would have never chosen, who couldn’t be published but who wrote anyway, women who had been cursed, women who needed to save someone, no matter the cost. This was the dark side and to reach it a woman must take a chance, close her eyes, make the leap, do whatever must be done.
On the back of the envelope was Jet’s last thought, hastily scrawled, in a shakier hand than usual, for she’d been in a great hurry on the seventh day.
Everything worthwhile is dangerous.
Kylie slipped the book into the pocket of her raincoat. She could feel it there, as though it had a beating heart, a story written in blood. Miss Hardwick was rinsing out a teacup in the tiny kitchen when Kylie passed by. She made sure to keep her voice calm as she said her good-byes to the elderly librarian. “Thanks, Miss Hardwick,” she called. She was already making a to-do list: go to her dorm room, pack a bag, grab her passport, get to Logan Airport. “I appreciate your help,” she told the librarian. “I’m off.”
“Good night,” Miss Hardwick called back as she set the teacup to dry on the counter. “And good luck. Jet said the person who came for the book would need it.”
* * *
By the time Sally returned with her coat and her keys, Miss Hardwick was headed out the door. The light in the rare books room had been flicked off, the glass cabinets locked.
“Wait a second.” Sally glanced around. She felt a chill along her spine. “Where’s Kylie?”
The crystal beads of the chandelier above them in the entranceway swayed as a breeze came through the open door.
“Oh, she’s gone off with the book,” Miss Hardwick responded as they left together.
“Gone off?” Sally asked. “With what book?”
Miss Hardwick was in a hurry to get to the Black Rabbit Inn; five o’clock was looming, and she did like her nightly whiskey. All the same, she paused on the pavement. She’d known Sally ever since she was a child, and had always pretended not to notice when Sally checked out more books than the rules allowed. Sally had been a melancholy girl, but a sweet one, and a major reader. Little Women, The Secret Garden, all of the Edward Eager books, with Half Magic and Magic by the Lake withdrawn several times, and then, during the summer when she turned twelve, as much Jane Austen as she could get her hands on, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice and Emma. She had always watched over her sister, who had been a wild little thing, not a huge reader, but one who had been drawn to books that seemed beyond her years, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for instance, and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.