Neon Blue E Frost (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📖

looks like the entrance of one of the big downtown hotels. Or a bank. A power lobby – designed to impress. Not at all what I expected from a museum dedicated to witchcraft.

“Timmi,” I choke. “This is very . . .”

“Ostentatious.” She laughs. “Our first curator was a Quincy. They built on a grand scale.”

“It’s . . . wow.”

“Oh, my dear, this isn’t even the good part. Come, let me show you my favorite bits.”

She leads me through the galleries. In no order I can discern. In one gallery she breezes past magnificent sarcophagi glittering with gold, whose onyx eyes follow us as we pass, to a tiny case full of dull blue rings. Each ring is inscribed with a tiny scarab. When she leans in to press her ear to the case, I follow suit. Even through the thick glass, I can hear their high chittering.

“Have you ever tried one on?” I ask, peering at the rings.

“Yes. It made for an interesting evening. I learned a great deal about beetles.”

I look at her and lift an eyebrow.

She shrugs. “I’d curated them for years. It seemed only fair.”

She leads me on, through galleries filled with tall display cases whose covers shimmer, but definitely aren’t glass. Galleries where feathered robes and carved wooden animal heads give way to silk ritual robes and painted leather Green Man masks. I stop in front of one case, which holds a trio of the most gorgeous kimonos I’ve ever seen: black silk with astrological symbols delicately embroidered in silver and gold. I think of Tokai, my favorite shop in Porter Square, and their kimonos, and wonder if they could get me a cotton version, and whether my credit card will stretch that far.

Timmi gives me a gentle touch on the elbow, which I take to mean that the kimonos don’t enrapture her the way they do me. I follow her into a gallery filled with hard metal shapes that contrast sharply with the soft fabrics we’ve left behind. The effect clears my saturated senses and I wonder if it’s by design.

The galleries she’s led me through have been large rooms, thirty by fifty. Despite the hundreds of objects on display, none of them felt crowded. But this gallery is massive. Endless. Over a hundred feet long at a guess. There’s a sense of spaciousness here, a wild outdoorsiness, even though we’ve gone down two staircases and I’m pretty sure we’re underground. Timmi leads me past twenty feet of the most beautiful astrolabes I’ve ever seen. Baroquely decorated. Inset with gemstones. Silver and brass glittering under soft witchlight. Beyond a cluster of telescopes, two displays are set apart, facing each other. One contains a stand topped with a plain gold band. The sense of airiness, of wild, cold places, pours off that band like a Nor’easter. Timmi nods at it in passing. “That’s the crown of the King of the North.”

“The King of the North?” I ask.

Timmi nods dismissively and steers me to the other display, leaving me wondering what the hell one of the lost fae crowns is doing in a basement in Cambridge. The case Timmi brings me to is a tall display in which a number of small loopes hang suspended. At first I take them to be monocles. But on closer examination, I see the glass centers are slightly reflective, with tiny symbols carved along their edges.

“What are these?” I ask, tracing my fingers over the glass.

“Shew-stones. They’re used to help induce trances. Those in the middle belonged to John Dee. The British Museum has one. We have three.” She nods at another, larger loope. “This one came to us from a descendant of William Blake, the poet. And this one—“ She taps the glass with a wicked grin. “This one might have belonged to Joseph Smith. But don’t tell our friends in Belmont. I’d prefer if they didn’t come knocking.”

I giggle, but honestly, I think the Museum has more to fear from the Court of Air and Darkness than they do from the Mormons.

“Now.” Timmi glances around at the empty gallery. We’ve barely seen another person as we’ve moved through the labyrinth of galleries and no one in the last ten minutes. “With the breeze blowing off that thing—“ She waves at the fae crown without looking at it. “There shouldn’t be any other odors to interfere. Take a deep breath and tell me what you smell.”

I close my eyes and sniff. She’s right, the Airiness off the Crown blows away the institutional smells of ammonia and recently shampooed carpet. Without those scents to distract me, I catch something warm, gently lemony, waxy . . .

“Beeswax?” I say uncertainly.

“Very good, my dear. That’s our friend Doctor Dee. Do you also get a hint of the seashore? I think that might be Mr. Blake, personally.”

I take another deep breath, seeking brine, but all I get is a stronger, more citrusy wax scent. Finally, I shake my head.

Timmi pats my hand where it rests on her arm. “That was very good for a first try.”

For a moment, I think she’s mocking me, since I didn’t get the seashore smell. But she continues, “One of Doctor Dee’s shew-stones has his initials inscribed into it, but the other two were identified by smell. The scent of Mr. Dee’s magic is well-documented. Wouldn’t it be convenient if all practitioners were so well-catalogued? One of these days I’ll make that a project for the summer interns.”

I smile and follow when she moves toward another gallery. She wasn’t mocking me. Just enthusiastic about her chosen field.

She doesn’t pause in this gallery, but leads me to a polished wood door that slides open with a whoosh of compressed air when she touches it. I sense we’ve moved into a less-public part of the Museum, if any part of this exclusive Museum could be considered public.

This room is smaller, but no less impressive. Natural light from some clever sort of chimney adds a natural cast to the golden witchlight pouring over the parquet floor and half-paneled walls. There