“The population of regular mortals—like you and me”—Lydia gestured between herself and Harper—“expanded more rapidly than that of these other beings. I’m guessing it’s for the same reason that ants multiply at much faster rates than blue whales. We were small and expendable, bottom of the food chain. We died all the time.
“Many of these other beings were immortal—or at least appeared that way to humans,” Lydia went on. “In fact, your average human began naming these more powerful beings, and oftentimes those names included terms like ‘gods’ or ‘goddesses.’”
Lydia waved her hands. “Anyway, humans had a way of annoying these so-called deities. So the gods and goddesses would do things like trick them or curse them. But in order to make a curse real and take effect, the terms of the curse have to be written down.”
“The terms of a curse?” Gemma asked.
“Yeah, kinda like when you lease a car or click the box ‘yes’ to agree to the terms of service on iTunes,” Lydia explained. “In order for it to be valid, there has to be a contract.”
“So you’re saying that somewhere, the specifics of the siren curse are written?” Gemma asked.
“Right, it would have everything spelled out,” Lydia said. “Like what a siren can and can’t do, how to kill a siren, and how to break the curse. You know what? I’ll show you one.”
Lydia slid in between Gemma and Harper and went farther down the aisle. In lieu of a ladder, Lydia apparently preferred to climb up the bookcase, using the shelves as rungs.
“Do you need help?” Harper offered, since she was at least half a foot taller than Lydia.
“Don’t worry,” Lydia replied cheerfully. “I got it.”
Lydia grabbed something from the top shelf, then dropped to the floor. She held up a thin, battered book. The cover had completely fallen off, and it was held together by a rubber band wrapped around it.
“This is the one for Dracul, and it lays out the vampire curse,” Lydia said as she took off the rubber band and opened it.
Harper leaned over to get a look. The pages were falling out, and the lettering had faded so much it was all but illegible. It was written in a cursive that Harper didn’t understand but there were a few pictures alongside it, showing a stake through the heart.
“I can’t read it,” Gemma said.
“Of course you can’t. It’s in Romanian,” Lydia said. “But vampires aren’t your problem, are they?”
“No,” Gemma said, sounding somewhat dejected.
“Good. Then you don’t need to read it,” Lydia said and flipped through the book.
“Who wrote this?” Harper asked and pointed to the faded pages.
“This exact one here, I don’t know.” Lydia shook her head. “But the original curse was crafted by Horace, I think, because this Vlad dude really pissed him off, apparently.”
“So this tells you how to break the curse?” Harper asked.
“Well, no.” Lydia closed the book and turned around to face Harper, Gemma, and Marcy. “There is no way to break the vampire’s curse, except by killing them.”
“Wait, wait. But you said in order for the curse to work, it has to be written down somewhere?” Harper asked.
Lydia nodded. “Right.”
“Then why don’t vampires just destroy this book?” Harper asked. “There would be no more curse.”
“Okay, first of all, every vampire over about a hundred years old would turn to dust if the curse was suddenly lifted,” Lydia explained. “The curse extended their natural life, and without the curse, they should all be dead many years over.
“And second, if you destroy this book, it won’t matter, because there’s at least a dozen more books out there just like it,” she finished.
Harper considered this, then asked, “What if you destroyed all the books?”
“You can’t,” Lydia said. “You could probably destroy most of them, but the original one, the one that Horace wrote the curse on, he would put it on something indestructible, because he wouldn’t want his curse to go away that easily.”
“Something indestructible?” Gemma asked. “Like what? A stone tablet?”
“No. Stone can still be shattered, crushed up into powder,” Lydia said. “It would be anything that he’s given indestructible properties.”
“So … magic paper?” Harper asked.
Lydia shot her a look. “If you want to oversimplify, then yes, magic paper.”
“Why isn’t that written on magic paper?” Gemma pointed to the vampire book Lydia was holding.
“It doesn’t need to be, because the original is kept somewhere safe,” Lydia said. “When you look at more common curses, like vampires and zombies, or like really common, more basic spells, like turning someone into a toad—”
“Okay, yeah, we’ll say everyone knows that,” Harper muttered.
“It’s in about a thousand grimoires,” Lydia said. “Somewhere there is a master grimoire, and all the spells and curses are written down on ‘magic paper.’ But the more specific the curse, the fewer copies there are.”
“So when talking about something like a siren, how many copies do you think there are?” Harper asked.