I Shall Wear Midnight

reading makes people restless. Pardon me, but why are you sniffing? I hope another mouse hasn’t died in here.’
    There is something very wrong about this place, thought Tiffany. Something … strained … straining. Maybe it’s all the knowledge in the books, just bursting to get out. She had heard talk of the library at Unseen University – of the soulful books all pressed together in space and time so that at night, it was said, they spoke to one another and a kind of lightning flashed from book to book. Too many books in one place, who knew what they could do? Miss Tick had told her one day: ‘Knowledge is power, power is energy, energy is matter, matter is mass, and mass changes time and space.’ But Letitia looked so happy among the shelves and desks that Tiffany hadn’t got the heart to object.
    The girl beckoned her over. ‘And this is where I do my little bits of magic,’ she said, as if she was telling Tiffany this was where she played with her dollies.
    Tiffany was sweating now; all the little hairs on her skin were trembling, a signal to herself that she should turn and run, but Letitia was chattering away, quite oblivious to the fact that Tiffany was trying not to throw up.
    His stink was terrible. It rose in the cheery library like a long-dead whale rising again to the surface, full of gas and corruption.
    Tiffany looked around desperately for something to take her mind off that image. Mrs Proust and Derek had certainly benefited from Letitia Keepsake. She had bought the whole range, warts and all.
    ‘But I only use warts at the moment. I think they have the right feel , without going overboard, don’t you?’ she was saying.
    ‘I’ve never bothered with them,’ said Tiffany weakly.
    Letitia sniffed. ‘Oh dear, I am so sorry about the smell; it’s the mice, I think. They eat the glue out of the books, although I’d say that they must have found a particularly unpleasant book.’
    The library was really beginning to upset Tiffany. It was like, well, waking up and finding a family of tigers had wandered in during the night and were fast asleep on the end of the bed: everything was peaceful at the moment, but at any minute now, somebody was going to lose an arm. There was the Boffo stuff, which was sort of witchcraft-for-show. It impressed people, and maybe helped a novice get into the mood, but surely Mrs Proust wasn’t sending out stuff that actually worked , was she?
    There was a clank of a bucket handle behind her as Letitia came round a bookcase, holding the bucket in both hands. Sand tipped out of it as she dropped it on the floor and she scrabbled in it for a moment. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, pulling out something that looked like a carrot which had been chewed by a mouse that wasn’t really very hungry.
    ‘Is that supposed to be me?’ said Tiffany.
    ‘I’m afraid I’m not very good at woodcarving,’ said Letitia, ‘but the book says it’s what you’re thinking that counts?’ It was a nervous statement with a wiry little question clinging to the end of it, waiting to burst into tears.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Tiffany. ‘The book has got that wrong. It’s not as nice as that. It’s what you do that counts. If you want to put a hex on someone, you need something that has belonged to them – hair, a tooth maybe? And you shouldn’t mess about with it, because it’s not nice and it’s very easy to get wrong.’ She looked closely at the very badly carved witch. ‘And I see you’ve written the word “witch” on it in pencil. Er … you know I said it’s easy to get it wrong? Well, there are times when “getting it wrong” just doesn’t cover messing up somebody else’s life.’
    Her lower lip trembling, Letitia nodded.
    The pressure on Tiffany’s head was getting worse and the horrible stench was now so powerful that it felt like a physical thing. She tried to concentrate on the little pile of books on the library table. They were sad little volumes, of the sort that Nanny Ogg, who could be uncharacteristically scathing when she felt like it, called ‘Tiddly Twinkle-Poo’ for girls who played at being witches for fun.
    But at least Letitia had been thorough; there were a couple of notebooks on the lectern which dominated the table. Tiffany turned to say something to the girl, but somehow her head did not want to stay turned. Her Second Sight was dragging it back. And her hand rose slowly, almost automatically, and moved aside the little pile of silly