The Secret Library: Space Witches, #2

By Leena Maria

Back in the land of the living, Nina and her friends (both dead and alive) arrive at the University Plate orbiting the frozen Earth. Their mission is to search for the Book of Spells that witches lost at the asteroid impact. Also they are to start their studies in witchcraft. Will they find the Secret Library hidden somewhere in the University Plate? Why do the dark witches show such interest in Nina? What does a living mummy have to do with any of it? Witches, an angel and a demon, a ghost and a mummy, dead and living people mingle in this humorous witch novel. If you like stories of witchcraft, space, and adventure, get this book!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leena Maria
• Release date: Apr 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9789527250112

Book preview

1

Freshers

I could get used to this kind of death, Matthew announced, lying as far back as possible on the comfy seat of the limousine shuttle. It’s much more my kind of thing than hanging around at the Halfway House.

Matthew, could you try to keep your head on your shoulders for once? Mia complained, just as Matthew leaned back a bit too far.

Her warning came too late. Matthew's neck snapped and his head lolled at an impossible angle towards the shuttle floor. Mia rolled her eyes and lifted her hands in a gesture that said clearly how hopeless he was, before turning to look out of the shuttle window.

I’ll get it! George was on his feet instantly. 

For a while, Matthew was hidden from view behind the demon and his swarm of flies, and then a plop and a crack announced that his head was back in a straight line with his neck.

Much obliged, Matthew said, sitting up straight. I tend to forget, you know.

How could you forget that your neck is broken? I mean - how long have you been dead already? Mia shook her head without turning her gaze from the view outside.

My dead friends had been to the University Plate and having visited it once, they could have traveled there the easy way, straight from the afterlife by revolving door. The thing was, they enjoyed moving about in the land of the living by traditional means. They liked seeing the scenery change and watching what alive people were up to. Matthew was right. It was a bit boring in the Halfway House, after all, waiting for your intended death date to be able to move on.

Not long enough, it seems, George answered Mia’s question, then pointed enthusiastically at the floor, but look!

Two of his insects were lying there dead. Not that it made a big difference to the number of creepy-crawlies infesting his hair, beard and clothing.

Well done, George… Elaine said absentmindedly.

The demon smiled, pleased at himself for having done a good deed that took him two steps further away from the gates of hell. He bent down, picked the insects off the floor and popped them into his mouth. Then he bent over towards Elaine.

What's that you’re looking at? he said, still chewing.

Munchkin… Elaine wiped a tear away. I wish we could have brought him with us…

Well, as long as Melwas is stuck inside Munchkin, there is no way Sara will let the dog out of her house, I said.

Elaine took one more look at the picture of her little dog, sighed and closed her phone.

I know… she sniffed, but still…

Melwas was the Grand Witch who had tried to escape from inside the Book of Witches (the spell book belonging to the dark witches), in which he’d been imprisoned since the Middle Ages. That was when the good witches had cast a spell that closed the spell book for good, so it couldn’t cause any more trouble.

As it turned out, Melwas had been touching the book when the closing spell took effect. The spell created a kind of vacuum which had sucked him right into it. Everyone had thought Melwas dead, but instead he had been trapped inside the book ever since.

I guess being stuck inside a spell book for centuries gives you plenty of time for thinking and scheming. Somehow, Melwas had found a way from within the book to connect with a mind on the outside. No doubt he’d spent a lot of time weaving spells to try to achieve his goal. When he finally had his breakthrough, the mind he reached belonged to May, the little autistic daughter of another witch.

Through May, Melwas had managed to steal an Original Spell. These were incredibly strong, but only worked if they were read out loud while also holding the paper that the spell was written on. May had delivered the message in which Melwas demanded that the spell be brought to him, so he could use it. Once free, he could have killed the little girl.

The flaw in the Grand Witch’s plans was that he had not realized May couldn’t speak. She was delivering his message through writing. Even though she couldn’t read or write, Melwas had been using writing to deliver his message. May had seen the text in her mind's eye and simply copied the shapes without understanding a word. And the fact that May did not speak was a serious glitch in the Grand Witch's plans. Voice, after all, is essential in casting an Original Spell.

Melwas had threatened to kill May unless someone else volunteered to let him possess their body instead. Finally, he forced May’s mother Faye to read aloud the spell he’d made May write down.

Faye had started to recite the spell, at the end of which someone had to touch little May so Melwas could perform a mind-jump into his new victim and use their vocal cords to recite spells, a bit like using battery leads. We’d just been arguing who would volunteer as the spell ended. And at that very moment Munchkin had decided to jump onto May’s lap. 

As a result, the Grand Witch now resided in a dog. A very small dog, with traces of pink colour still on his fur. Elaine had been Miss Lottery, after all, and her favourite colour was pink. And so her dog had been taken on weekly visits to a canine beauty parlor. When he emerged, he looked like someone had dipped him in pink paint, or spun him out of candy floss. Now, thankfully, the colour was fading, and Munchkin was beginning to look like a normal dog again.

There seemed to be quite a lot of dispute going on between Melwas and Munchkin about who was boss of the little body, and Melwas didn’t always win. Munchkin was one stubborn little mutt and if he wanted to eat dog food that smelled disgusting, he ate it and the Grand Witch couldn’t do a thing about it.

He did try, of course, but as he was stuck with the limited vocabulary of a dog, all he could manage were some strange yelps and howls, mixed with growling noises. He was probably trying to recite a spell or two, but with no great effect. Often Munchkin just got bored by his efforts to speak and walked out of the room, leaving a trail of grumbling sounds behind him, which we assumed were Melwas complaining.

So, that’s how it was, Munchkin remained under the observant eye of Miro’s Aunt Sara in her Egyptian-looking palace. Faye, May’s mother, had put a protective spell on Munchkin to stop the dog from hurting himself. This was a precaution in case Melwas tried to escape his canine prison by killing the dog.

Munchkin liked Sara, and Melwas did not, but as the dog seemed to be the more stubborn of the two, Melwas had to accept spending a lot of time on Sara’s lap. There, the little dog sat, tail wagging, his facial expression changing constantly from blissful to sour and back again. And Sara would do her best to keep Munchkin safe and sound and healthy.

Do you think Anthony will miss us? Mia turned her head now so the red patch on the side of her head showed. It marked the place where the bullet had come out when she had been shot dead in a drive-by shooting for something her brother had done on one of the slummier Plates. Mia had simply been unlucky. She just happened to be standing by the window.

Nah… he knows where to find us if need be. And he has plenty of other prematurely dead people to look after, Matthew said.

He was right - the old angel who ran the Halfway House in the afterlife was always kept busy because of humankind's tendency to kill each other.

Yes… and we know plenty of dead people who spend long periods of time in the world of the living, Mia added. It can be fun. She gave a wicked half smile that made me wonder what tricks the dead got up to in our world, mostly accidentally of course.

Miro had been reading a book throughout our discussion - he loved to read - and now he had a quick glance at his old-fashioned wristwatch. This was the envy of many, as it was the real thing, made by ancient Swiss watchmakers before the catastrophe and still keeping great time.

We'll be arriving soon, he said, glancing at the space scenery through the window.

I looked out too.

The University Plate floated below us, its clear dome revealing the thousands of buildings, parks and roads. Behind it, hanging in space, you could see other Plates - or bubbles as they were also called - where everyone lived these days. Some were close enough for us to see their round shape divided in half by the habitable Plate on one side and the life-supporting machinery on the other. The farther off Plates were just bright dots in the blackness of space. This was how humankind had managed to escape from Earth before the asteroid hit.

We shall be arriving at the University Plate shortly, a pleasant female voice announced. Please sit down and fasten your seat belts.

Elaine, Miro and I did just that. Our dead companions didn’t bother as nothing could harm them physically anymore.

As the shuttle turned towards the main shuttle station, the huge round form of the frozen Earth came into view. 

We were diving down now, then flying under the University Plate. The pilot skillfully docked us at the shuttle station below the living quarters of the Plate, the tube was connected, air pressure stabilized, and we walked through to begin our studies at the University of Ancient Cultures.

At least that was the official story behind our enrolment. Unofficially, we were here to find clues about the whereabouts of the Book of Spells - the good witches' great spell book and the opposite of the Book of Witches, which was the tome of the dark witches. They had theirs but couldn’t open it. We had lost ours in the catastrophe.

The good witches had only retained a few Original Spells from their book. Most had been lost when the asteroid hit the Earth and the witch entrusted with keeping the Book of Spells safe had vanished. The Book of Spells had disappeared too. Ever since then, the good witches had been searching for it, hoping it still existed and that they would find it before the dark witches found a way to open theirs. If they managed to do that, they’d have annihilated every good witch from the face of the Plates. So far, their plans had been scuppered by Melwas being imprisoned in Munchkin’s body.

We had lost the Book of Spells, you ask? Yes. Elaine, Miro and I were all apparently witches; even though I had not the first idea how to be a witch. But that was another thing we were going to study at the University – on a secret curriculum, not the official one.

Some interesting times lay ahead, for sure.

2

Student Accommodation

W elcome, Madame. Madame. Monsieur. Welcome to your accommodation for the duration of your studies.

A real butler opened the door to us after we rang the bell. He could have been a brother to Burt, Sara’s butler. He had the same dry expression and a definite presence as he eyed us with trained politeness.

I detected his eye twitch slightly when he spotted Elaine’s pink jeans and fluffy jacket. I wondered what he would have said if he had seen Elaine before we’d managed to get her to tone down her wardrobe a bit. All those glittery evening dresses and stiletto heels weren’t exactly regular dress for a university student. We’d never be able to eliminate glitter from Elaine’s clothes completely, though. She still loved bling, even if she wasn’t quite the Christmas tree she used to be. We had toned down her bright pinks into lighter tones, so she wasn’t putting neon lights in the shade any more.

We thought we were staying in a dormitory? Elaine looked around in surprise. Where are all the other students, then?

"You are the students, Madame," the butler said with what could only be described as an old-fashioned British stiff upper lip, like in the ancient movies.

I thought we should perhaps be called Mesdemoiselles rather than Mesdames - French not being my forte, so to speak - but I wasn’t going to argue about possible linguistic blunders. Not when I could see what was on offer. Gosh, my little sister Tina would die of envy…

For surely this wasn’t student accommodation, it was the hallway of a first-class luxury hotel we were standing in? Oriental rugs on the floor. One, two, three huge sofas loaded with plump, plush cushions, not to mention plenty of comfortable chairs, the kind you sink into. Dotted around the space decoratively, there were lamps in the shape of young women dressed in long gowns, plus plenty of ornamental plants. Little tables with bowls of real fruit were set out at intervals too. And as the final touch, a sleek kitchen/diner with what looked very much like a real coffee machine. Real coffee!

Art nouveau… Miro commented, looking at the lamps, and they seem to be the real thing. Alphonse Mucha, I’d say?

Indeed – the University decorator knows how to cater for exquisite tastes… If I may show you your bedrooms… the butler indicated the three closed doors – two on the right-hand side of the living room and one on the left.

I get to choose mine first! Elaine had snapped out of her awe. Moving like a streak of pink lightning, she ran to a right-hand door, where there was a door-size screen with a picture of a lady projected on it (Mucha again, his famous painting of summer personified as a woman with red poppies in her hair) and yanked it open.

The butler looked shocked at Elaine’s impulsive behavior – or maybe it was the pink glitter that was snowing down on the carpet behind her. But then he couldn’t have known Elaine didn’t come from a wealthy background or a world where his kind of manners were the norm. She came from a poverty-stricken background on the Waste Disposal Plate. For obvious reasons, she hadn’t wanted to give up her position as Miss Lottery, which had taken her up several levels to the Palace Plate where Sara and Miro lived. Winning meant that she got to spend a whole year among the rich.

During her lottery year, Elaine had done her very best to try to secure a wealthy boyfriend but without any luck. Probably her background had a lot to do with her low success rate. In the end, I was the stroke of luck that stopped her having to return to poverty. It was certainly a strange sequence of events that had made me ask her to be my secretary after I became the new jackpot lottery winner.

Now Elaine disappeared behind the door, and when she did not reappear, Miro looked at me. 

I think she’s settled on that one, what do you think?

Looks like it, I agreed.

Well, you go next, Miro said, I suppose the door with the picture of a man on it is meant for me anyway, so you take the other one.

I walked past one of the sofas to my door, next to the one Elaine had chosen (mine had the Mucha painting of the lady in a white dress personifying spring). Matthew was lying on the sofa with a blissful look of contentment on his face, hands supporting his neck. George stood by eagerly, no doubt waiting for the next opportunity for Matthew’s neck to snap so he could get rid of some more flies. Or spiders. Or whatever species had six legs or more. I think they were all insects and no rodents, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. And I wasn't about to have a closer look, either.

Since meeting George, I’d often wondered if wrong-doers might think twice about their actions if they knew what awaited them in the afterlife. The bad deeds of evil people took the form of all kinds of biting and crawling insects, which tormented their hosts incessantly. The creepy-crawlies never left the wrong-doers alone. They had the chance to get rid of them if they had died before their allotted time, but only if they did enough good deeds before their actual death date arrived.

Anthony, the angel running the Halfway House where Matthew and Mia came from, had fetched George from a Halfway House full of murderers, criminals and demon-like people waiting for the date when they would have died, had they lived a normal life. Only after that date could they proceed in the afterlife. Anthony had seen something in George and decided to give him a chance. George seemed to appreciate the gesture and eagerly trotted around with us, trying to find good deeds to do. He was quite a sight with his gnats and insects, to say nothing of his horns. The horns were the sign that he had killed someone during his physical existence. The bigger the horns, the more people who’d been killed. The horns were apparently the last to go, after the insects had died as a result of accumulating good deeds.

Thankfully, George was invisible to most people. The only problem was that his flies, spiders and other creepy-crawlies were not, and now the butler’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets as he saw a swarm of flies that had apparently appeared out of nowhere. Now both eyes were definitely twitching, but other than that, his expression did not change.

This is the death, I tell you, Matthew said to me as I passed him. I think I’ll commandeer this sofa. I don’t think the Penguin minds.

He means the butler, Mia filled me in from another sofa, because of the outfit. He’s right though, these sofas are extremely comfortable.

The said butler, in his black and white suit, grey vest and white gloves hurried to open the door for me. I could almost hear him sigh with relief when he managed to beat me to the door. Clearly, he had standards that had to be upheld, whatever we planned to do.

The room I was stepping in to was not a bedroom but a luxury apartment. There was a private living room with a fireplace (it didn’t use real wood, obviously – trees were too valuable to burn). Again, there were plenty of plush rugs, comfy armchairs and sofas, tables, beautiful paintings on the walls… the lot. A study opened off the living room, its walls filled with bookcases with real old-fashioned books. Its windows gave onto one of the small garden squares of the old university and I could see that a rambling rose with bright red flowers framed the window. And then there was the bedroom. A whole family could have occupied the bed, which actually had an old-fashioned medieval-looking canopy over it. I sighed. It was perfect.

Madame… a female voice said quietly.

A maid in formal dress stood next to the door.

This is Stella, She will be Madame’s maid, the butler said.

A maid? For me?

I actually pointed at my chest, not believing what I’d just heard.

And for me! Elaine ran into the room, bumping into the butler. Whoops, sorry!

My apologies for standing in your way, Madame, the butler managed a stiff bow even though some pink, glittery, fluffy… stuff… had attached itself to his neat suit. I half expected his coat to start twitching like the skin of a horse does when a fly lands on it.

Nonsense, it was me who ran into you, I am so sorry, Elaine beamed and brushed pink glitter off the butler’s suit. I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether he was pleased to be tidied up or shocked at being touched. "Nina –