The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 5 by Bella Forrest (best biographies to read TXT) 📗

“I can’t believe you—” His words were cut off by the sound of the door opening.

“Just go, Alex. Hurry up and get this thing, so we can all get out of here!” she urged, silencing any further attempt of his to tell her she’d done something stupid.

“Come on, Alex. The sooner we go, the sooner we can come back for Ellabell,” Aamir said, grabbing Alex by the arm.

Lintz helped Aamir, though there was reluctance on both their faces as they dragged Alex through the door. Somehow, even with the two of them holding him, he managed to wrestle free, turning back and running for the doorway, only to have it slam in his face just as he reached it. The last thing he saw was Ellabell’s face, her blue eyes wide as she disappeared from sight.

“Why did you do that?” he shouted, turning on the other two.

“Alex, you have a task here, and that is where your priority lies. Ellabell will be fine, but only if we can succeed in this task. If we don’t, who knows what might happen to her?” Lintz reasoned.

Alex shook his head in disbelief. “So we have to go on without her.”

Aamir rested a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “This is not easy for any of us.”

Alex knew they were right, and yet her face haunted him as they pressed on down a long, narrow corridor. Part of him felt angry with her for doing something so reckless, and he found he couldn’t stop thinking about what she had begun to say in the mask room. It made him wonder if that was why she’d done it, to prove a point, to get him to see something he didn’t understand. All he knew was that he couldn’t get the image of her, trapped all alone, waiting back there, out of his head. It was hard to keep his mind focused. His thoughts were brought back from the brink of distraction by the sight that beheld him as they stepped through the plain-looking door at the far end of the corridor and entered the room beyond.

It made Alex’s stomach plummet.

They were standing in the biggest library he had ever seen, bigger than the one at Stillwater, bigger than the one at Spellshadow, bigger than he had thought a library could be.

This has got to be some kind of joke, he thought bitterly. There were more books in this library than they could ever scope out in a lifetime, much less a few hours. The shelves seemed to stretch into infinity, each one several stories high.

“Should we just start looking?” Aamir suggested.

Alex shrugged. “What else can we do?” he muttered. “Just remember, we’re looking for the Book of Jupiter.”

Splitting up, the trio wandered into the stacks. It was hopeless, and Alex knew it, but he tried to stick with the plan, riffling through the rows upon rows of dusty tomes. There were some books of interest, which he’d have liked to look over if he’d had more time, but none of them were the Book of Jupiter. Despite the subject sections within the library, giving it a vague organizational set-up, he knew it would take forever to find the book—if they were even looking in the right place. There didn’t seem to be a section for ‘Spellbreaker’ or even ‘Spells’.

Thinking there must be a method to the madness, Alex tried to narrow down the search, looking for books on planets, and Spellbreakers, and anything else he thought might be related to the book, but it all came up empty. Aamir had headed toward the very back of the library, and was making his way back up to where Alex was, a defeated look upon his face.

“Anything?” Alex asked.

Aamir shook his head. “Nothing, unless you’re a big fan of… let’s say, Renaissance art?”

Alex smiled, catching Aamir’s meaning, but it quickly faded in the face of the task at hand. In a library so big, it seemed impossible. Just then, he passed a large green book with the words A Gentleman’s Honor embossed on the spine. It gave him an idea, or part of one, at any rate.

“We need to look for Orpheus’s book,” Alex said excitedly.

Aamir nodded. “Of course, the book containing the twelve virtues!”

“You found something?” Lintz called, from a squat stack he was investigating.

“We need to find Orpheus’s book,” Alex repeated.

“Goodness, of course!” Lintz bellowed, following the others into the stacks.

Alex clambered up one of the ladders that leant against the vast stacks, and found it up on one of the top rows, under the section marked “Philosophy.” It wasn’t nearly as impressive as he’d expected it to be, taking up only a slim space on the shelf, the cover a dull, dusty brown. He reached out to pull it from the shelf, only to find it stuck. He tugged harder, determined to free it, but it simply wouldn’t budge.

“Alex, you might want to come and see this!” Aamir yelled from way below.

“I’ve found the book, but it’s stuck on something!” he called back.

“Forget about the book—I think you’ve done what you were intended to do,” Aamir shouted up.

Puzzled, Alex clambered back down the stacks and headed for the front of the library, where Aamir was gazing up at something that hadn’t been there before. A big clockwork diorama of the solar system had emerged from a false wall beside the huge marble fireplace. The planets, forged from smoothed precious stones, rotated slowly around the central sun. Lintz was gazing at it too, though his eyes had grown so large Alex feared they might fall out.

“What is it?” Alex asked.

“My dear boy, this is our solar system,” Lintz gaped, his eyes following the tick of the clockwork.

Alex smiled. “No, I know that, but what does it have to do with what we’re looking for?”

“Darned if I know,” Lintz murmured. He began tinkering with the mechanisms, smoothing his hands over the shiny components like they