“What precaution do we take first?” the Director asked, jolting Elisabeth from her thoughts. The test had begun.
“Salt,” she answered, reaching for the canister at her hip. “Like iron, salt weakens demonic energies.” Her hand trembled slightly as she shook out the crystals, forming a lopsided circle. Shame flushed her cheeks at the sight of its uneven edges. What if she wasn’t ready, after all?
The barest hint of warmth softened the Director’s severe face. “Do you know why I chose to keep you, Elisabeth?”
Elisabeth froze, the breath trapped in her chest. The Director had never addressed her by her given name—only her last name, Scrivener, or sometimes just “apprentice,” depending on how much trouble she was in, which was often a fantastic amount. “No, Director,” she said.
“Hmm. It was storming, I recall. The grimoires were restless that night. They were making so much noise that I barely heard the knock on the front doors.” Elisabeth could easily picture the scene. Rain lashing against the windows, the tomes howling and sobbing and rattling beneath their restraints. “When I found you on the steps, and picked you up and brought you inside, I was certain you would cry. Instead, you looked around and began to laugh. You were not afraid. At that moment I knew I couldn’t send you away to an orphanage. You belonged in the library, as much as any book.”
Elisabeth had been told the story before, but only by her tutor, never the Director herself. Two words echoed through her mind with the vitality of a heartbeat: you belonged. They were words that she had waited sixteen years to hear, and desperately hoped were true.
In breathless silence, she watched the Director reach for her keys and select the largest one, ancient enough to have rusted almost beyond recognition. It was clear that for the Director, the time for sentiment had passed. Elisabeth contented herself with repeating the unspoken vow she had held close for nearly as long as she could remember. One day, she would become a warden, too. She would make the Director proud.
Salt cascaded onto the table as the coffer’s lid creaked open. A stench of rotting leather rolled across the vault, so potent that she almost gagged.
A grimoire lay inside. It was a thick volume with disheveled, yellowing pages sandwiched between slabs of greasy black leather. It would have looked fairly ordinary, if not for the bulbous protrusions that bulged from the cover. They resembled giant warts, or bubbles on the surface of a pool of tar. Each was the size of a large marble, and there were dozens altogether, deforming nearly every inch of the leather’s surface.
The Director pulled on a heavy pair of iron-lined gloves. Elisabeth hastened to follow her example. She bit the inside of her cheek as the Director lifted the book from the coffer and placed it within the circle of salt.
The instant the Director set it down, the protrusions split open. They weren’t warts—they were eyes. Eyes of every color, bloodstained and rolling, the pupils dilating and contracting to pinpricks as the grimoire convulsed in the Director’s hands. Gritting her teeth, she forced it open. Automatically, Elisabeth reached into the circle and clamped down the other side, feeling the leather twitch and heave through her gloves. Furious. Alive.
Those eyes were not sorcerous conjurations. They were real, plucked from human skulls long ago, sacrificed to create a volume powerful enough to contain the spells etched across its pages. According to history, most sacrifices had not been willing.
“The Book of Eyes,” the Director said, perfectly calm. “It contains spells that allow sorcerers to reach into the minds of others, read their thoughts, and even control their actions. Fortunately, only a handful of sorcerers in the entire kingdom have ever been granted permission to read it.”
“Why would they want to?” Elisabeth burst out, before she could stop herself. The answer was obvious. Sorcerers were evil by nature, corrupted by the demonic magic they wielded. If it weren’t for the Reforms, which had made it illegal for sorcerers to bind books with human parts, grimoires like the Book of Eyes wouldn’t be so exceptionally rare. No doubt sorcerers had attempted to replicate it over the years, but the spells couldn’t be written down using ordinary materials. The sorcery’s power would instantly reduce the ink and parchment to ashes.
To her surprise, the Director took her question seriously, though she was no longer looking at Elisabeth. Instead she focused on