A Witchy Inheritance

Chapter 9

My head was swimming. The idea that witches existed and men who could turn into cats existed was absurd. If I had heard this 20 minutes ago I would've laughed it off and asked what book this man was talking about. But that was before I saw him change with my own eyes. Sure, it could have been some d**g induced nonsense, but we had been outside on my front porch when he changed, it wasn't like he could easily pump out some sort of d**g onto my front patio, was it? I didn't really research how to in deuce hallucinations so for all I know maybe that was possible, technology was expanding by leaps and bounds every day.

Not letting myself go down that rabbit hole I focused my attention back on the man in front of me.

"If I'm a witch like my aunt apparently thought, then why hadn't we talked about it when she was alive? Why hadn't we practiced? Why hadn't my dad talked about it?"

Cicero's face fell  and his eye brows knit together in sympathy as he slowly moved so that he could slide down the wall and sit crosslegged with his back propped up against the doorframe. "I don't know if I could tell you for sure her logic. But I do know that she has been training her daughters in witchcraft, on and off, for years and neither of them had been terribly good at anything. Jenny shows some skill when it comes to potions and Francis just, well, she's good at researching things." The pause he gave told me he had been searching for the nicest way to put that last part.

I loved both of my cousins, we communicate semi-regularly. Why wouldn't they have mentioned this to me?

"Family trait gifts, such as the sight, tend to only travel from person-to-person when the individual who possesses them dies. Which is why you wouldn't show it. You wouldn't of received that gift until your aunt passed on. She had been quite surprised when she did that spell about six months ago and found out that you would be the one with the sight. She told me that as a child you showed no particular skill when it came to magic. She mentioned trying little things here and there to test your potential and it had been zeros across the board so she just figured you took after your father, that was until she did that spell to see after a dream she had. She was so surprised that she didn't believe it. She kept going in and out of trances as if double checking her work.

"She didn't know how to approach you, how to make you understand at your age how big your world would change when she died. She also broke the news to your cousins that it would most likely be you who would inherit the gift. They were ticked. They didn’t fully believe their mother when she said that you would inherit it. There was a huge argument and they didn't speak to her for like a month and when they did, the subject was never brought up again. The one or two times anyone skirted it it was clear to me that your cousins didn't believe you would be the one to inherit the gift. They just figured this was one of the times your aunt was wrong." Cicero looked away from me, his eyes scanning the floor as if searching for something. "As for your dad, I honestly don't know. I don't know what your mother did or did not tell him about being a witch. I'm sorry I'm not more help in that department."

He seemed to trail off as if he wasn't sure where to go from there, not that I knew either. My aunt had been a bit of a kook but even considering all the weird stuff she said she believed over the years this whole witch thing was a lot.

"Is that why she left me that stack of books? It hardly counts as a library since I know she had a lot more tomes on her shelves at her house." I felt my eyes widen at that thought. "Should I be expecting more boxes of books?”

 There was not much more room for new books in my reading nook. The thought of having books stacked in boxes not getting read simply because I didn’t have room for them made my little librarian heart ache.

The look on Cicero's face worried me, he actually cringed at my questions.

"But that makes sense though," I continued on as if I hadn't seen his expression. "If she leaves that stuff to me than I at least have something to study since I'm now apparently a witch. I don't know if there's any kind of formal training for that but I'm fairly certain I missed the age window for it."

Letting out a huge sigh Cicero pushed himself off the ground and strode, somewhat hesitantly, over to the boxes and pulled out the first three books in the stack.

"It's not that simple," his words were quiet as if he wasn't sure he wanted to say them.

He didn't clarify as he took the three books over to the little book nook I had made in the corner of what most people would use as a dining room. Since I rarely had people over, or enough people over to warrant anything other than my little circular kitchen table I figured the dining room was of better use to me as a mini library.

I watched as he went over to one of the half-empty shelves, there were only two, the rest were stuffed with double rows of books. As I watched he shifted the three books to a different order in his hands before sliding them on to a shelf. Then he took one giant step away. It felt a little dramatic to me until there was an audible pop and then sounds as if there was something shifting in the walls, I didn’t see anything but I heard something as if you were opening the door to a house that hadn't been opened in decades. Then right before our eyes the small corner section of walls between two bookcases, since I didn't have any bookcases that fit the weird angle of the wall became a thin door. I watched in shock horror as a door that looked like any other internal door, darkened and changed, filigree formed from the bottom up across the door and once it reached the top the entire design glowed for a second then when out and simply looked like an overly decorated wooden door that led into the small backyard my townhouse had that stretched along the back of my half of the building.

"What the heck," my voice was trembling as I spoke, staring open mouth at the door that couldn't possibly go anywhere and had just appeared out of nowhere.

Cicero sheepishly looked back at me with a thin lipped smile on his face, the smile was grim and only by the simplest definition considered a smile. "That is the door to your family’s library. That is the real reason why you inherited me. I mean coming into your power and having it be explained to you and taken care of for you, yeah that you need familiar for, but this is why the Council will probably extend my assignment to you longer than six months."

I knew he had been speaking but it didn't exactly make sense to me. A magical door created by putting three books in a bookshelf was why I needed a witch’s familiar? That didn't make sense, not that any of this made sense.

"You’re telling me that that door means that I need a familiar?" Thoughts started to form in my mind and I didn't like where they were going. Three books, heck, even half a dozen books didn’t warrant a family library but a magic door that led who knows where. It didn't make sense, logically the door was going to go outside but for whatever reason something inside me said that was not where the other side would end up.

Cicero sighed again before taking a step away from both me and the door and motioning with his hands, "that door leads to your family library. The library has been in your mother's family for at least six generations and is passed down from witch to witch when the last caretaker dies or chooses to retire. You just happen to be the next one which is very fitting since you are in fact a librarian in your everyday life."

"So that door doesn’t go outside?" I knew the answer but I had to ask anyway.

Cicero cringed again, "no it doesn't. It's going to lead to a magic basement under your house that is in fact much larger than your house. Don't think too hard about that. It's only going to hurt your brain. It's a spell that creates a room that is really there but also doesn't have dimensions that are rooted in the real world, there is a book down there that is basically a manual of the library and you can read all about it but it's a boring dry book and isn't all going to make sense. I didn't really want to show you the library on this first day because you're already shocked and overwhelmed."

"And what exactly does being the family librarian entail?" I was afraid to ask really, with how weird all of this was getting and maybe it meant that I had to dance surrounded by flames n***d under the moonlight in order to collect a book.

As Cicero opened his mouth to respond my doorbell rang.