Chapter 3
The car ride to China’s was silent but not awkward. Jay was too busy thinking to say much and she sensed that Skulduggery was doing the same. Lord Vile was back. That couldn’t be good. Jay seemed unable to force her brain to think farther than that. What might happen was not really something she wanted to think about and even if she had wanted to, she wouldn’t have known where to begin. She was terrified. She did her best not to show fear, because if people thought you weren’t afraid of them, they were more likely to be afraid of you and not try to kill you. Also, panicking was never a good thing. Today, though, she had panicked.
Normally, there was no defense against pure magic because it controlled magic itself. Necromancy was different and to fight, she actually had to use her magic the way others did. Pure magic was special because you could do anything magic related. She could make a person incapable of using magic if she wanted. Or she could have if she'd learned how to. She could sometimes displace magic so that whatever the other person intended to do, something else would happen. She could also sense whatever they were planning on doing before it happened. None of the above worked with Necromancy. It was her opposite. To fight necromancy, she would have to solidify her magic and make it tangible, like Necromancers did with their shadows. There was, of course, a problem. In magic, nothing was ever simple, and the cost for being able to do so much amazingness, was that she got tired quickly. A five minute battle would have her sleeping for two days straight.
Skulduggery pulled the car up in front of an apartment building. They walked up the steps to the top floor and walked into the most beautiful library Jay had ever seen. There were books going from the roof to the floor. Some were new, some were old, some had gold bindings and some were written in languages that Jay didn’t know. She stared open mouthed at the books but her attention was suddenly drawn to the face of a woman leaning over a book at a table in the library. She was the most beautiful person Jay had ever seen. Her black hair fell lightly across her face almost concealing her pale blue eyes. Her skin was pale and she seemed to be made of china. After deciding that China Sorrows was indeed as beautiful as the stories said, Jay turned back to the books.
“Hello, China,” Skulduggery said and the woman looked up. She smiled and Jay was compelled to look at her again.
“I’m Jay Paragon."
“Ah, hello. What do you want?”
“Have you heard anything?” Skulduggery asked.
“No, nothing at all. Not even the tiniest little rumor, at least not about what you are looking for. It seems Lord Vile knows how to hide. Granted, he has been doing that for the last few hundred years so he must have had a little practice but it does bother me that I don't know where he is. I didn't know where Tesseract was and you remember what happened there.”
Jay felt Skulduggery frown behind her. Maybe since he had no facial expressions you felt his mood as supposed to saw it on his face.
“Then we’ll be doing more research.”
“Still trying to save that girl?” China asked and Jay turned back to the conversation.
“Who?” Jay asked.
“A friend of ours was taken over by a Remnant last Christmas. We are trying to find a way to bring her back.”
Jay shook her head in confusion. “I thought there was a four day limit.”
Skulduggery bowed his head but didn't respond.
“She must have been a good friend then. Maybe we’ll find something.”
Jay started to skim through the stacks. She doubted that she would find anything but it was worth a try. Anyway, the books were so beautiful that it didn’t matter to her as long as she could read them. She slipped a book of the shelf. It was called The Secrets of Myeloen. Jay had heard of this book. It was supposedly nonsense but she found that some of Myeloen’s theories were actually very good and the only thing he failed in was proving them. It also interested her that he was a pure magician like her. She took it off the self and started to read. It was more a diary than anything else and Jay slowly became aware that a lot of what Myeloen said could be possible. Not for anyone though. It would only be possible for someone like her. Someone who dealt with pure magic. As soon as she realized this, Jay started to read even faster, using all of her mind to pull the information in. Then she got to the medical section. She had always wanted to learn medical magic but wanted to be able to defend herself first. When Myeloen started to talk about herbs and magical energy flowing in the blood, Jay decided to get a paper and pencil to write things down.
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