Witch's Bell Book One

did he fit into all of this?
    Ah, lord. She was tired. She was stressed, enfeebled, fatigued, and yet sparking with nervous energy.
    She needed to get out of here – here being her current life – and have a bath and whole chocolate cake. But that didn't look like a realistic prospect right now. In fact, her current prospects only seemed to include losing everything she had left and... and what exactly?
    What was meant to happen to her now?
    She blinked back the emotion as she just kept walking. Without really realizing it, she was heading for Harry's. It was a beaten track for her, and possibly the only place in this city that was safe for her at the moment. Though, if the Grimshore's magic could make it through the police station, would Harry really be much of a match for them?
    But she had to go, she told herself, because Harry's was potentially the only place that still had evidence on the Grimshores. Whoever had stolen the files from the police station had likely done a very thorough job. But breaking into a magical bookstore to pilfer a couple of history books was a whole other level of crime. Harry wouldn't like that, and Harry could make the walls fall in on you. He could pull the floorboards out from underneath your feet. He could make the light fittings shatter all over you. He could wrap you up in the blind cords and dong you over the head with a comprehensive encyclopedia the size of a boulder.
    They could mess with Ebony, but could they really mess with Harry?
    It really depended on what their magic was, and how they were using it. Casting spells over people and changing their memories, was one thing – a terrible thing, for sure – but still only a certain kind of magic. You couldn't do spells like that on a store like Harry. Harry didn't keep his memories in his head, or have them attached to objects like so many people did – with treasured rings, photos, or journals bringing up memories like keys in locks. No, Harry's memories weren't so much anywhere, as everywhere.
    Harry's memories were in the light bulbs through the store. They were the way the wind whistled past the windows on a stormy day. They were the way the keys grated in the lock. They were the way silence wended itself around the bookcases and boxes like a snake around its eggs.
    Harry was intangible, and his memories were intangible. Still, if you found some way of burning down the store, Harry, and his memories, would be gone too. But short of actually taking an ax to his foundations, you couldn't cast a forgetting-spell on a store. You couldn't make Harry forget himself for even a second.
    You could try by stealing every single book he had on a certain topic, but Harry would simply replace them. Harry, when he'd died, had become his store, and his collection. In summoner terms, the two were now equated. And, just like a plant, you couldn't break off a leaf, or steal a book, without returning later to find another one growing in its place.
    Harry's, she repeated to herself with determination, was the only place for her now. Perhaps it had been the only place for her ever. Perhaps her foray into consultancy work for the police department had always been a mistake. It didn't matter though; the only thing that mattered was going through that red door and walking in to that old store. Surrounded by something so familiar, she assured herself, she wouldn't be able to forget anything more. No doubt could assail her, no memory leave her, when she was in the presence of Harry.
    And, if it really came to the fact that Ebony's life was being rewritten before her eyes, she'd rather it happen surrounded by the comfort of stories, than the confusion of the city. Though it sounded odd, being surrounded by other people's stories at a time when your own was flapping in the wind, felt like it would be reassuring. Because those stories, for the most of it, ended well. No matter what the danger, the stakes, or the pace – they all seemed to resolve themselves. You pick up a dire-looking novel about a heroine facing terrible odds and, odds are, she'd overcome them in the end. That was the rule of stories, wasn't it?
    Ebony sighed, rubbing at her eyes, but still pushing on. How much she just wanted to stop, sit down, and not move again. How much she just wanted to pack it in and give up. But even though there didn't seem to be an easy option available to her – a well-placed helicopter with the word "escape" emblazoned across it – Ebony knew she