Modern Magick, Volume 4 (Paperback)

I could tell you just how much the Elvyng family, in the person of William Elvyng (Crystobel’s father), had paid for Merlin’s Grimoire back in the eighties. I could also tell you how much the spell-book had been valued at, about eight years ago.

Believe me, you don’t want to know.

You’d spit chips. Like I did.

‘How do people get so wealthy?’ I complained to Val, as I sat one morning in the library at Home, perusing the Elvyngs’ photos and documents pertaining to the impossible spell-book.

‘The argent operation can’t hurt,’ she said, without looking up from her laptop. ‘And you’ve seen the prices at the Emporium.’

Right. If you happen to be the only family in the country with a secret supply of the most important magickal substance known to man, and therefore sole rights to stock a shop with souped-up magickal artefacts, you would be rolling in it.

History had rather favoured the Elvyngs.

I sighed.

Val looked up, and directed at me the Quizzical Brow. ‘Suffering some envy?’

‘Aren’t you?’

Val shrugged. ‘What would you even do with that kind of wealth, if you had it?’

‘Well, I…’ I had to pause, and think about it. I could live in my own personal castle, with a swarm of servants to wait upon me hand and foot. I could have a private plane, and go anywhere I liked. I could eat every day at the finest, Michelin-starred restaurants in the country.

None of which sounded much like me.

‘I’d become the Society’s secret benefactor,’ I decided. ‘Oodles of funding, every year, and nobody would know where it came from.’

‘Like Ancestria Magicka.’

I grimaced. ‘Right.’

‘It’s too bad you’ve just told me, then, isn’t it? Cover blown.’

I sniffed. ‘You would never give away my secrets.’

‘Not without handsome compensation, anyway.’ Val missed the wounded look I sent her, having returned her attention to her laptop. Presumably she was still deep in the magickal dark web, scouring the online world for any mention of lucrative book heists, or the sale of improbably expensive grimoires.

I went back to Crystobel’s documents. I’d already lingered a long time over her photos of the grimoire itself, torn between wonder and horror. The book was old, and by that I mean old. Hand-stitched bindings, scrubby leather covers, crumbling pages — the works.

So far, so convincing.

I may have been a little disappointed at how ugly it was. I was definitely disappointed by its poor condition. Didn’t people know to take care of priceless artefacts?

My mind drifted back to the book-box that had stolen Jay’s heart, back when we’d (unwisely) paid a visit to the Elvyng Emporium. The box was enchanted; slowly, gradually, anything placed in it would be restored to a better condition, some of the deleterious effects of time reversed. I had no doubt the Elvyngs would have kept Merlin’s Grimoire in just such a box, which suggested it had reached them in a still worse state.

Merlin would’ve been crushed.

If there ever was a Merlin.

On this point, I remained profoundly sceptical. Merlin was a myth. Besides, while his purported grimoire was scarily old, it still wasn’t old enough. As near as anyone can determine, a hypothetical real Merlin would have lived something like fifteen hundred years ago, and possibly rather more; surely no book, however magickal, could have survived in legible condition for so long?

But all this might be immaterial. Crystobel had said, I am less concerned with the precise identity of the book’s author than I am with the contents. Whoever had written it, the grimoire contained charms and enchantments the likes of which most of us would kill for. That’s why the Elvyngs wanted it back — at almost any price.

‘Surely,’ I said aloud, struck by a sudden thought, ‘they’d have copies of every page.’

Val looked up, frowning. ‘What?’

‘Of the grimoire. The Elvyngs, I mean. Why do they need it back so badly? They wouldn’t be so careless as to keep only one source of such important magicks. They would have records. Photos. Transcriptions.’

‘No doubt, but now they also have competition. Potentially, someone else could be using all that secret magick.’ She blinked sightlessly at me. ‘That’s a good point, Ves.’

‘What point did I make?’

‘Whoever stole the book. Did they just want to own it because it’s valuable, or did they want to use it?’

‘Both?’ I ventured.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Anyone suddenly coming out with copies of magicks only the Elvyng family have been able to produce would attract a certain attention, no?’

‘If it were known. The thieves could be out there, working marvels in secret.’

‘So they could. The question remains: was it the book itself that was wanted, or was it something in the book that was important? A charm or something, that the Elvyngs wouldn’t share?’

‘Good questions all, Val, but I don’t see how they can be answered until we find the thieves.’

She sighed, and her mind came back from wherever it had gone. ‘Probably not. Still, it’s something else to search for. Accounts of unusual feats performed by unlikely parties.’

The laptop once again swallowed her attention whole.

I stared, a little hopelessly, at my pile of papers. I’d covered the desk in them. I had not only Crystobel’s documents, but sheaves of print-outs I’d squirreled up from all over the internet. Every mention I could find of the Elvyng family’s doings for the past several years (lots of attending-of-events and sightings-at-magickal-libraries, plus the various accomplishments of the individual family members, and the doings of their prestigious academy). Val had been hoping for reports of bad blood between them and someone else — another family, or organisation. Something.

No luck. They were perfect. Everyone loved them.

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