Page 66 of Alchemy of Souls

“Maybe I just know how screwed up everything is,” I say, but she doesn’t get a chance to respond before I open the passenger door to my red Porsche.

She raises an eyebrow like a question. I raise one back and she gets in.

Which is when I remember what my uncle said—and screw him. Thankfully, Eloise doesn’t ask me about him again on the drive over. At first, she’s distracted by the garage and the way the wood spirals, and then she’s taken with the town itself.

I bring my car to a stop in front of our spired wooden gate, saying the spell to open it. We drive up to our tree-house Victorian mansion, complete with intricate towers, all perched in the air a good ten feet above the ground.

She swallows. “Thisis your home?”

“The Chancellor mostly stays in his wing in the University and my mom pops in and out, but otherwise, no one is here but thecaretakers,” I say, because I haven’t thought of it as a home since Liam.

I park and get out to open Eloise’s door. But she beats me to it.

Outside the house is a Guardian—Jack. He nods to me and eyes Eloise, opening the front door for us.

We take the stairs to the first floor where they open into a circular foyer.

“This is…,” Eloise says, staring at the grand staircase and the tall arched doors leading in every direction. “Incredible.” The curiosity rolling off her makes me hate this place a little less.

“Wait until you see the library,” I say, opening a heavy door to our left.

On cue she gasps.

There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and windows, both of which are arched to make it look like a cathedral of books. There is an enormous fireplace, a reading nook, and a ceiling with a skylight shaped like a giant rose.

“If I had this in my house I’d never leave.” She runs her fingertips over the edge of a reading table and her movements are graceful. I find it hard not to watch.

But when she catches me staring, I swallow and look at the books.

“All the books in this library have something to do with the door and the Key,” I say, and her eyes widen.

“And you didn’t think to mention this sooner?” she says, surprised.

I shrug. “Like I said, I don’t think there’s much about the Key in books that can help us. Except for this section,” I say, indicating the shelf in front of me.

“Poetry?” she says like a question.

“One nineteenth-century poet to be exact,” I reply. “I didn’t use to think it had anything to do with the Key. I figured my uncle collected it because he liked the guy’s writing.”

“What changed?” she asks, the sun from the large window catching the freckles across her nose.

“A comment in one of the books you gave me. The ones I said were a stupid idea to read,” I say, and she grins. “It said the only true thing the scholar ever read about the Key was in poetry.”

“Huh, okay, and you think this is the poet he was referring to?” she asks.

“Why collect books about the Archive Room only to have a singular poetry section that’s unrelated?” I say.

The library door opens and Nora, a middle-aged Laborer, comes in carrying a tray of tea and cookies.

“Heard you come in and thought you might need an after-school snack,” Nora says as she bustles over to the reading table.

I flash her a smile. “Thanks, and if you could let Chef know we’ll be here for dinner that’d be great.”

“Will do,” Nora says and leaves the library, closing the door behind her.

I can scent Eloise’s wonder. “You get tea and homemade cookies brought to youon a tray?” she says. “My gran would be giddy over this. She’d curse you out while simultaneously sampling the goods.”

I’m suddenly aware that I know very little about her, and almost nothing about what her life was like before we came here. “What’s your house like?”