“The moon is waxing,” I said, “so that will be on my side, and I wouldn’t be making spells to hurt anyone in particular.…” My words trailed off. The silence was uncomfortable.

Ivy’s relatively mild response was unnerving. “Are you sure, Rachel?” she asked, only the barest hint of warning in her voice.

“I’ll be fine,” I said as I looked away from her. “I’m not doing this out of malice but to save my life. There’s a difference.” I hope. God save my soul if I’m wrong.

Jenks’s wings blurred in fitful spurts as he landed on the ladle. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, clearly agitated. “They burned all the black spell books.”

Nick pulled the coffee carafe out from under the stream of coffee and slipped a mug in its place. “The university library has some,” he said as the hot plate sizzled against what spilled in the bare second it took.

We all turned to Nick, and he shrugged. “They keep them in the ancient book locker.”

A wisp of fear tugged at me. I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought. “And you have a key, right?” I said sarcastically, taken aback when he nodded.

Ivy exhaled in a puff of disbelief. “You have a key,” she scoffed. “You were a rat an hour ago, and you have a key to the university’s library.”

He suddenly looked far more dangerous as he casually stood in my kitchen with Ivy’s black robe hanging loose on his tall, lean body. “I did my work-study there,” he said.

“You went to the university?” I asked, pouring myself a cup after Nick.

He took a sip of coffee, his eyes closed in what looked like bliss. “Full scholarship,” he said. “I majored in data acquisition, organization, and distribution.”

“You’re a librarian,” I said in relief. That’s how he knew about the black spell books.

“Used to be. I can get you in and out, no problem. The lady in charge of us work-study peons hid keys to locked rooms near the doors so we wouldn’t keep bothering her.” He took another sip, and his eyes glazed as the caffeine hit him.

Only now did Ivy look worried, her brown eyes pinched. “Rachel, can I talk to you?”

“No,” I said softly. I didn’t want to go into that hallway again. It was dark. I was on edge. That my heart was pounding because I was afraid of black magic and not her would mean nothing to her instincts. And going to the library with Nick was a hindsight less dangerous than making a black spell—for which she didn’t seem to have any care. “What do you want?”

She eyed Nick, then me. “I was only going to suggest you take Nick up to the belfry. We’ve got some clothes up there that might fit him.”

I pushed myself from the counter, my untasted coffee tight in my grip. Liar, I thought. “Give me a minute to get dressed, Nick, and I’ll take you up. You don’t mind wearing a minister’s hand-me-downs, do you?”