I turned the corner into the openness off the great library, and as I started up the stairs to the second floor, stopped and put my foot back down on the ground. The secret door to the Scroll Room was open, candlelight and laughter lilting up the stone stairs from within.
“Hello?” I called down the hole, coming to stop on the cusp, with my arms folded.
“Down here, sweetheart,” David said.
“Can I . . . is it okay if I come down?”
“Of course.”
My head led the way toward David and the other voice, my fingertips trailing the bricks behind me. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping? You have a long trip tomorrow.”
“Vampires don’t require as much sleep as your kind.” David placed his arm around my waist, pulling me close to his body, keeping his eyes on the notes in front of him.
“I found it!” Jason popped out from the door to our right and stopped dead when he saw me. “Ara?”
“Jason.” I nodded politely.
“Hi. Um…what brings you down here?” He walked over and laid a scroll out in front of David, but his whole body was kind of stiff, tiny particles of tension clinging to every inch of his skin’s surface.
“Woke up alone, went to get something to read, heard laughing, thought I’d investigate.”
He smiled at me, eyeing David carefully after to see if he noticed. “Did David fill you in?”
“On what?”
“Look.” David pointed to a page of indecipherable scribble, made less visible in the flickering candlelight. “We found out more about Morgana.”
“Really?” I turned the corner of the page, leaning over it as if I could actually read that language. “And . . . what does it say?”
“It’s a birth record. See?” His finger moved along the page, marking the words. “Morgana LeFay. Born on the Sabbath day to Lilith of Loslilian and Lord Callon LeFay.”
“LeFay? But . . . I thought Christian, Lilith’s first husband, was the father of Morgana.”
“Evidently, we were misinformed.” He stood back from leaning over the table. “Ara? Do you know who Lord LeFay was?”
“No.”
“He was a very powerful witch,” his voice pitched in an interested tone on the last word.
“What’s wrong with him being a witch?”
“Nothing, but it explains why Morgana never survived.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “That still doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Witches are mortals,” Jason explained, handing me a piece of paper. I unrolled it and the face of a stern-looking man stared back up at me in lines of grey and black, his long hair framing his face, falling around a frilly collar. “According to Natural Law, those with the Power of the Earth cannot be immortal. Any who’ve attempted spells or rituals to prolong life have met consistently with severe and often hellish consequences.”
“Right,” David cut in. “So, what would happen to a child conceived of a mortal witch and an immortal vampire?”
My eyebrows slid across my forehead, nearly meeting in the middle. “So you think Morgana died before her body made the change?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” David said, and Jason and I both looked up at him quickly. “What?” He shrugged.
“Distasteful, David,” I said, laying the picture of Lord LeFay down.
David, having realised he just made a pun about his own, now inevitable demise, laughed softly to himself and started rolling scrolls.
I let myself digest this information, thinking about so many random other bits all at once, that when two of them crashed together, a conclusion sparked. “What if she’s not dead?”
“What do you mean?” David said, tying a ribbon around an old, yellowing scroll.
“I mean, what if she lived? What if she couldn’t be immortal but maybe aged at a slower rate than a human?”
Jason and David exchanged glances.
“How old would she be if she were actually alive today?” I finished.
David scratched his nose, bending down a little to lean his elbow on the chair back. “Why, Ara? What’s your point?”
I held my smile for a minute. “What if she’s Drake’s witch—the one you know as Safia?”
“What do you know of Safia?” Jason practically gasped.
“I…” I looked up at David, not sure if I was allowed to say anything. “Arthur told me.”
David turned at the shoulder to look at Jason.
“Ara, did Arthur say if he’d ever actually seen Safia?” Jase asked in tone soft enough for a child.
I shook my head. “All he said was that she’s very old and very powerful, and that he wanted to get his hands on her.”
“So she’s real?” Jason looked at David.
“So it would seem,” David said, playing it like he and Arthur had never discussed such things.
“What’s the big deal if she is real?” I asked.
“I’ve only heard rumours of the Great Witch Safia Demente. But, none were good,” Jason said. “Some say she conjured curses and plagues, killed babies—that she corrupted and influenced the church back in the days before Christ, and there have been rumours that she can change form and become something else.”
“Like a snake?” I asked, remembering my Walk of Faith.
“Any creature.”
“But . . . she’s Drake’s prisoner, right?”
“Or friend.”
“And…is that bad news for us?”
“It’s bad news for any vampire—even Drake—if he gets on the wrong side of her,” Jason said.
“Her mere existence is bad for the entire human race, Ara,” David added. “She’s unnaturally old—been around longer than us.” He motioned between himself and Jason.
“And, rumour has it, as hideous as a millennium-old steak sandwich,” Jase said.
“Which is a perfect example of what happens to witches when they meddle in the natural order of things,” David said.
“In what way?”
“Well, aside from being so old her skin is as thin as paper, her soul is also demented from the inside out, like rotting fruit, Ara,” Jase said.
“Witchcraft eats the body and the soul when used for dark purposes,” David finished. “But she is much too old to have once been the child Morgana.”
“Oh. Well, there goes that theory.” I moved my shoulders in a noncommittal gesture. “So . . . if her soul is so rotten and dark, what would happen if she sanctioned herself a youthful, immortal body to occupy?”