The Gospel of Sheba by Lyndsay Faye Page B

magic—and at once.”
    â€œIn that case, I shall,” I answered hesitantly, this request being without precedent. “Mr. …?”
    â€œGrange, sir, Mr. Theodore Grange. Thank heaven,” he exhaled. “I feared lest you hadn’t the time. I have it from the head Librarian himself that you are positively encyclopedic in your studies, sir!”
    â€œDo you,” I sighed.
    â€œIndeed so! You are my last and best hope—the Brotherhood of Solomon may not exist in a year, sir, without your expert support. We are tearing apart as a society! Ripping at the very seams, and even as its newest member, my heart breaks at the prospect.”
    â€œThen we cannot allow such a thing to happen,” I said dubiously, leading him through tall byways of polished wood shelves and worn leather binding to the appropriate stacks.
    Whilst eager folk demanding I tell them definitively whether faeries or dragons or succubi exist are often fanciful simpletons (leaving aside little Grace, who ought to be asking such things), I found myself feeling strangely sympathetic towards Mr. Grange. The man seems fragile as antique paper, and I lent him a friendly ear as we went, our boots singing softly against the wrought iron stairs. Specifically, Mr. Grange is interested in grimoires and their efficacy. I felt nearly as delicate in telling him their efficacy was negligible as I would discrediting Father Christmas to Grace, so determined not to press the issue. We’ve several occult texts within the collection which ought to suit him admirably well.
    â€œWith your expert help, I can now prove or disprove the validity of The Gospel of Sheba once and for all!” he proclaimed, shaking my hand.
    â€œI should like nothing better,” I assured him, as in the dark as previous and increasingly amused by the fact.
    Mr. Theodore Grange lingers in my memory still, brandy in hand and feet stretched towards the hearth as Grace flips through my astronomical charts. I admit my preoccupation strange, for I cannot know whether I shall exchange words with him again at all; I lent him our most reliable books upon the dubious topic of dark magic, and I may not be present when he returns them to the collection. My curiosity over the man is likely to go unslaked. In any case, I must assist Grace in constructing a mobile of the solar system at her request and then pen a reply to Lettie. Mr. Grange’s intentions are by no means the business of a sublibrarian after his duty has been executed.
    Unsettling, the way a man’s mind can wander from subject to subject. I sit here adoring every aspect of Grace which makes her unmistakably Lettie’s this evening—pale skin pearlescent in the firelight, the nearly stubborn pout of her lip, the green-tinged blue of her eye—while simultaneously experiencing a joy akin to relief that she owns copious soft brown curls like mine, that her hands are steady and deft as mine are, and that her chin is square and without cleft.
    What an altogether unworthy observation, though I suppose a predictably paternal one. Who the devil else should Grace look like? I shall make every effort never to repeat such a brutish study and consider the subject well closed.
    Letter sent from Mrs. Colette Lomax to Mr. A. Davenport Lomax, September 8th, 1902.
    My only darling,
    Have just attempted to rectify a ghastly nightmare in which my production company saw fit to house me in a dwelling which could rock the scientific community were mould studies a lucrative exploit. (Are they, love? Hasten to me and capitalize upon a fresh source of riches!) In lieu of longer explanation, I shall state that the colour of the bedclothes were not typical and leave the remainder to your fertile imagination.
    How is Grace faring? The picture she sent of the star system you were studying through your telescope was such a comfort to me. Shortly before I come down with fatal pneumonia—as seems inevitable when I