Chapter 139: In Eden 2
MARGAUX
"That would be me," the apparition said, looking rather pleased with himself. His eyes shifted to Laurent, considering him with something between amusement and approval. "I like this boy."
"If you can see him and speak with him," Laurent said, his voice carrying the careful tone of someone who had decided to simply accept the strangeness rather than fight it, "perhaps you could ask him about witches directly. Alpha Amine would have lived through a period when witches still held something closer to an acceptable standing in society. They were not judged so harshly back then."
"It must have truly been a different time," I murmured, mostly to myself. Because if they were anything like how that particular bone had shown themselves to me, it truly must have been a different time.
I turned my attention back to the apparition.
"Valcourt is currently dealing with a witch situation," I said. "And most of us are working entirely in the dark about how witches actually function. Do you have anything that might help?"
He hummed thoughtfully, drifting slightly to one side the way smoke drifted when disturbed by a passing breeze.
"They are a deceitful species," he said. "Though I do not entirely blame them for it. There is a cost, you understand, to binding yourself to a creature of Gehenna. It changes a person fundamentally." He paused, considering something further. "If it will help my descendants, I am willing to assist you."
It seemed simple, but the look he gave me implied there was a hook to his assistance.
"What would you want in exchange?" I asked carefully.
"Can I not just do a good deed?" He chuckled.
"Perhaps you could, but the look in your eyes does tell a different story."
"Well... if I am going to be honest... the thing is that... I have been here a rather long time now."
"What did he say?" Laurent asked when he noticed how bothered I looked. So I told him.
When I glanced back at Laurent, the same thought seemed to be written on his face.
Well, I couldn’t be sure. Because for me, the one lingering thought was that a library seemed an unusual place for a man to have died, let alone to remain tethered to for what sounded like generations.
"You died here?" I asked, turning back to him.
He nodded, entirely unbothered by the question. "Poisoned. By my own dear friend, as it happens."
I turned back to Laurent immediately. "How did he die?"
"He was ruthlessly poisoned by someone he called a friend. It was a brutal and horrible death."
"So you have unfinished business," I said, the explanation settling into something I understood. Ghosts lingered for reasons. Theodore had lingered for his.
"Something like that, I suppose." He considered the idea for a moment, then shook his head slowly. "No. Actually, I do not believe that is it at all. I simply do not wish to remain here any longer." His gaze drifted somewhere distant, somewhere that was not quite this room. "I can see how far the world has advanced since my time when I look through the windows and the rare moments like these when people decide the knowledge of old are still useful in the present age. I would like to taste a piece of it before I go." His eyes returned to me, sharper now, more focused. "Might I stay by your side for a while?"
I wondered why that was what he wanted. If that was what he wanted, he could have it. He could just leave. But what did I know? It would make sense if...
I couldn’t rely on my assumptions. I needed to ask.
"Why would that be the favor you want in return? You might be dead, but I am sure you can roam around. You are not the first ghost I have seen, and that ghost was able to walk about."
"He must not have been location-bound." The Valcourt ancestors retorted. "Perhaps he was bound to a person."
I swallowed. It made sense. Theodore was indeed bound to Laurent.
"What is the difference?" I asked.
Amine clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing slowly, his footsteps making no sound against the wooden floor.
"It is quite significant."
He paused beside one of the tall windows, and when he did that, he started to look like a translucent figure illuminated by the afternoon light.
"Spirits bound to people are considerably stronger than spirits bound to locations. The living are beings of energy. Every soul radiates spiritual power, whether its owner realizes it or not. A spirit attached to such a person has a constant source from which to sustain itself."
"So they’re feeding on people?" I asked.
His lips curved faintly.
"That is a rather unpleasant way of putting it. They do not consume the soul itself. They merely exist within its presence, drawing upon the excess spiritual energy that naturally emanates from it. Assuming the spirit is not malicious, the host suffers no ill effects."
That explained Theodore. He wasn’t tied to a house, but instead to Laurent.
But he had also been tethered to Alpha Dorian and Céline. Was that because of how powerful he was, despite the fact that he had somehow ascended to a better place when I helped him out with Laurent? It was complicated. But I could not ask that here. Not with Laurent close.
"So the library is the only place you can exist in."
"Yes."
"So what’s the downside?"
He rested a translucent hand against the wall.
"I cannot stray far before the bond begins pulling me back. The farther I travel, the weaker I become. Maintaining this form grows increasingly difficult until I am forced to return."
I frowned.
"But couldn’t a place make a spirit stronger, too?"
"It could."
His expression turned thoughtful.
"If I had been bound to sacred ground overflowing with spiritual energy, or to a place steeped in countless violent deaths, I might possess enough strength to impose my will upon the living world regardless of the distance."
A shiver crept down my spine.
"Violent deaths?"
"Human suffering leaves echoes. Some places become saturated with them. Those echoes can nourish spirits just as living souls do."
He shook his head.
"Unfortunately, this library is neither a sacred sanctuary, a grave, nor a battlefield. It is simply... a place with books. It has sustained me, but only barely."
"So if you leave..."
"I fade until the bond reasserts itself, and if I force it, I perish."
The answer came so matter-of-factly that I almost felt guilty for asking.
"And now?"
"Now my only option is to receive the permission of someone whose spiritual presence is powerful enough for me to accompany. Their energy would anchor me where this library no longer can."
I stared at him.
"You’re asking to latch onto me?"
"With your consent," he replied. "Yes."
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
"You’re giving me far too much credit. I’m just a werewolf."
He looked at me as though I’d claimed the sky was green.
"No," he said plainly. "You are clearly not."
The smile disappeared from my face.
"What do you mean?"
"You are covered in spiritual energy."
I blinked.
"I don’t know what you’re seeing, but all I see is... me."
"That is because you are looking with mortal eyes."
He stepped closer, studying me with quiet fascination.
"To spirits, I am sure your aura is impossible to miss."
I instinctively glanced down at my hands.
"There is nothing there."
"Not to you."
His voice had taken on the patient tone of a professor correcting a student.
"Your spirit extends beyond your body. It surrounds you like a cloak."
My pulse quickened.
"I’ve never heard anything like that before."
"I imagine not. Most werewolves do not possess this much spiritual energy."
My brows knitted together.
"Then what does that make me?"
For the first time since we’d begun speaking, Amine hesitated.
"I do not know."
That answer unsettled me far more than if he’d confidently named some ancient bloodline.
A cold knot settled in my stomach.
"You’re serious."
"I have no reason to deceive you."
My thoughts raced. It went back to his original request.
"If I do consent and you get what you want, then you would leave," I said. "Right?"
"Most likely, yes." He said it without sentimentality. "The man who killed me was executed for it, properly and thoroughly, many years ago. There is no unfinished business left for me to settle. Nothing except, I suppose, witnessing how far shifter society has progressed since I last had the chance to observe it firsthand."
I hesitated.
There was something deeply unsettling about agreeing to anything with a ghost, regardless of how pleasant he seemed or how reasonable his request sounded, laid out plainly like this. There were stories. Warnings of how supernatural bargains rarely stayed as simple as they first appeared. Theodore’s boon had come with consequences I was still untangling. What would this one cost me, beyond the temporary discomfort of an extra presence trailing behind me through the halls?
But he had been honest with me, as far as I could tell. No tricks hidden in his phrasing. No vague promises designed to obscure a darker catch. And the alternative, refusing him outright and walking away with nothing, left us exactly where we had started. Blind. Grasping at theories about witches with no actual information to work from.
"You have a deal," I said finally, extending my hand toward him out of habit before remembering, half a second too late, that shaking hands with a ghost was not something I had any practical experience doing.
He smiled and reached out anyway, his fingers passing through mine with a sensation like cool air moving across skin rather than actual contact, and something settled into place that I felt rather than saw, a quiet shift in the air around me.
"My own father," he said, already turning and beginning to drift toward the far end of the library, "kept a journal concerning witches. Extensive notes, if I recall correctly. He found the subject endlessly fascinating."
"Lead the way," I said, following him.
Laurent fell into step beside me, his expression still carrying traces of bewilderment at the entire situation, though he had clearly decided pragmatism outweighed confusion for the moment.
We stopped in front of an ancient-looking shelf tucked into the library’s furthest corner, the wood dark with age, the spines of the books lining it cracked and faded beyond easy reading.
The apparition floated upward without effort, drifting toward a single volume sitting at the very top shelf, well beyond any reasonable reach without assistance.
"That one," I said, pointing up at it for Laurent’s benefit. "He says that book will help us."
Laurent did not question it. He moved quickly toward a rolling ladder positioned against the far wall, dragged it over, and positioned it beneath the shelf before climbing with the brisk efficiency of someone used to retrieving things from inconvenient heights. He reached the top, pulled the book free with care, and descended carefully with it tucked against his chest.
The book was thick with dust, the cover worn smooth in places from handling long before either of us had been born. Laurent wiped the surface clean with his sleeve, revealing gold lettering stamped into the leather.
The Encyclopedia of Old Magicks.