I pulled out a chair and sat down. The book was huge. I opened it to the first page—it was blank.
“What the hell?”
Somewhere in the vast recesses of the room, someone shushed me. I looked up. Really?
I turned back to the book. Black lettering began to appear on the page changing from some language I didn’t recognize to English. Amazing.
HELLO, LARK NOBLE. PERMISSION GRANTED.
What? Did this book actually decide who was allowed to read it?
This was the most awesome library ever.
I started reading. The book began with the story of how the Melinoe came to be. Apparently, Persephone became pregnant by Hades after she ate the pomegranate seeds that sentenced her to spend half the year in the underworld. Coincidentally—not really—the half of the year she spent in the underworld began pretty much at All Hallows’ Eve and ended a few days into May.
According to the text, the child was born of both worlds and spent equal time in both with her mother. She became a goddess of the dead and the dying, a protector of the living and champion of ghosts who punished restless spirits and helped the lost. She was terrifying and compassionate, rational and mad.
Hades, who hated losing both his wife and daughter for half the year to his mother-in-law Demeter, split Melinoe into two aspects—one living and one dead, so that he could have her with him the whole year. Demeter, who had warred with Hades for years over his abduction of her daughter, was placated by having the living version of her granddaughter with her year-round, and thus Melinoe continued on—two halves of one whole—until she grew weary of the separation. On the night that marked her mother’s return to the underworld, Melinoe found a mortal woman who desperately wanted a child of her own. Melinoe told the woman she could give her twins, but that in return, she would have to lose one to the underworld, and that these children would be special and favored by Hades and Demeter, and that this favor would bring great responsibility with it. The woman agreed, and the first of the twins, called Melinoe for their creator, was born nine months later. One of them was stillborn.
As far as stories went, it wasn’t bad. I’d read worse. The myth, or legend, only took up maybe ten to fifteen pages in the book. The rest was a history of the Melinoe twins, with biographies of each set. I skimmed through most of them on my way to the chapter about Emily and Alys. I didn’t have time to read them. In fact, I didn’t know how much time I had at all. An hour in the Shadow Lands could be an entire night in my world, or ten minutes. It was never consistent, so I had to be as quick as possible. It would really suck to leave here and discover that Halloween was over, and all my friends were dead because I’d been reading the history of my family tree.
Okay, so Emily and Alys Murray. I read quickly but carefully. Their grandmother had been one of the twins and taught them what they were supposed to know. That part made me sad, because it made me think of Nan and the twin she’d lost.
I flipped through a chronicle of all the ghosts and living people they’d dealt with until I found mention of the last name McCrae. I read how Noah’s sister had died and become a tormented spirit. There was mention of his sister being mentally unstable, with the insinuation that this had been brought on by an “unnatural” relationship with her brother. As a medium, Noah had been able to keep in contact with his sister after her death, and it was wondered if he’d somehow helped to corrupt her in the afterlife. She became a violent ghost, and Emily had to destroy her. This sent Noah over the edge, and led to his being committed to Haven Crest. He then dedicated all of his time to finding out everything he could about ghosts, the afterlife and the Melinoe, which, thankfully, wasn’t much. Shortly after that he committed suicide and began haunting Haven Crest. He did so peacefully, so as not to attract Emily’s attention. It was only when he felt strong enough that he acted against her. And that wasn’t until Emily herself had died.
This was the part that confused me. How had he managed to trap Emily? She’d been powerful in life, and I had to assume that when we Melinoe died we were still pretty strong. What had he done to capture her and lock her away as he had? Did it have something to do with Alys?