Elijah had put off telling Monica about the magic. How could he expect her to believe him when he couldn’t demonstrate any spells over the phone? But he planned to show her when she came to visit, which she’d finally arranged to do the following weekend. Or almost arranged.

“Yes, Mrs. Baumann, I’m living with my employer,” he’d explained to Monica’s mom, who had asked Monica to hand her the phone. “Mr. Merrick’s house has several guest bedrooms; I’ve been staying in one of them, and he said that Monica could use one of the others.” He didn’t mention Casey’s occasional trips to Raleigh. He had only made one such trip since Elijah had moved in.

“I just worry about you,” Mrs. Baumann said. “I know you’re good kids,” (we’re twenty-two and twenty-one, he thought irritably), “but you need to take precautions to avoid temptation, and not just assume you’re strong enough resist it…”

Elijah was blushing, and felt glad Casey wasn’t in the kitchen to see it. He was just fine waiting until some nebulous time roughly a year from now, when they’d both graduated with their respective degrees and could find a convenient time for both families to attend their wedding, to figure out what sex with Monica would entail. He supposed it would be good, everyone said it was, but whenever he tried to think about it, his mind shied away from it. And he made vague noises of agreement with Monica when she occasionally expressed frustration that it was so hard to wait. He was, unfortunately, all too ready to take credit for resisting a temptation he did not feel.

Mrs. Baumann continued, “…I know, you know this already, and if your employer will be there, there’s really nothing to worry about. What kind of man is he?”

Elijah struggled to describe Casey. “He’s really friendly and approachable as employers go,” he said. “We talk about about the books I’m cataloguing, but also about all kinds of other stuff.”

“How old is he?”

“About my age,” Elijah said. “He’d just graduated from Duke not long before I met him. Computer science. That’s what he’s working on most of the time when he’s not reading or hanging out with me – creating some kind of software. He tried to explain what it’s for, but it’s something technical about getting different kinds of programs to work together more smoothly? I didn’t understand the details.”

“Well, have fun. I’ll hand the phone back to Monica.”

Elijah sighed in relief.

“Hey,” Monica said, “hang on a minute,” and more like half a minute later, she said, “Okay, I’m in my bedroom again. Wow, that was kind of embarrassing.”

“Yeah,” Elijah agreed fervently. “I’m looking forward to seeing you.” I want to show you something cool, he almost added, but resisted the inclination. She’d want hints and he wasn’t sure what else he could say without sounding unbelievable. “We can go hiking, go into Boone for a nice meal, or we could cook something together… Let me know if there’s any groceries you want me to pick up before you come.”

“Hmmm, I’ll think about it and call you later in the week,” she said. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.”

---

As the day of her arrival approached, he grew excited about seeing her again, but also nervous about how she would react to the news that her fiance was a magician. And about how she’d react when Sarah asked her what skin treatment she and Elijah had been using… he’d have to explain the complexion spell to her, and his hastily made-up story, before they went to church. By now he’d practiced the complexion spell on every part of his body that was covered by clothes, and regretted having cast it on his face first thing… although he did dislike his reflection in the mirror less than he used to. Not having to shave every morning was a plus, too, and not only because it meant he spent less time in front of the mirror.

By this point, he had catalogued all of the books in his office and most of the books in his bedroom, and gathered a fair amount of the fiction from the mostly-nonfiction rooms to his bedroom. His bedroom was all fiction now, authors A through E neatly arranged on shelves and miscellaneous books in the process of cataloguing or reshelving stacked on the floor; he was planning to finish shelving F authors in his bedroom, then put G through roughly O or P in the master bedroom and the rest of the alphabet in the bedroom Monica would be using. Then it would be time to organize the nonfiction in the rest of the house by Dewey Decimal number; he hadn’t worked out which subjects would be in which rooms, planning to discuss it with Casey once he had a better idea of how many books in each top-level Dewey category there were.

Friday afternoon, Elijah was replacing the sheets in the guest bedroom Monica would be using with fresh ones when the phone rang. A few moments later, Casey called out from his office, “It’s your girlfriend.”

“Okay,” Elijah called back, and went to the kitchen to answer the other extension of the landline.

“I’m getting off work a little early,” she told him. “I should be there in a little over two hours, allowing time to stop for gas.”

“Good,” he said. “You should be here well before sunset. If anything goes wrong and delays you, though, stop at a hotel, maybe in Boone. You don’t want to be driving the last few miles on mountain roads in the dark.”

“I’ve been going to Mars Hill for three years, I think I know what mountain roads are like.”

“I know, I’m just being cautious… See you in a couple of hours.”

---

When Elijah poked his head into Casey’s office to let him know when Monica would be arriving, Casey nodded. “I’ll start cooking supper in a little over an hour. Feel free to remind me if I forget.”

“Okay,” Elijah said, and went back to sprucing up Monica’s bedroom, then nervously practiced the silencing and spell-canceling spells until it was nearly time for Monica to arrive. In the last twenty minutes, he was too nervous and excited to concentrate on magic. With poor to nonexistent cell reception in a lot of places around here, Monica couldn’t call when she was getting close, like she normally would, so it came as a sudden shock when he heard her car pulling up in the gravel driveway, despite his having been expecting her. He went to the front door and opened it to go out and help her with her luggage, and Casey, who’d about finished with supper, called out, “Let me know if y’all need help carrying stuff.”

“Hey, sweetie,” he said as she got out of the car. “Want me to get your stuff?”

“I just brought one suitcase and a hanging bag of clothes for church,” she said. The duffel bag and purse she was pulling out of the passenger seat went unsaid, presumably because they were obvious. “If you can get the suitcase, I’ll get the hanging bag.” She didn’t seem to notice his altered complexion at first, but once they’d brought her luggage to the guest bedroom she’d be using, and she turned to kiss him now that their hands weren’t full, she exclaimed, “Oh, wow, you look great. What have you been using for your skin?”

“I’ll show you after supper,” he said.

They kissed for a long moment, and then went to the dining room, where Casey was setting the table. Elijah had offered to help, but Casey had insisted he focus on his fiancee for now. “Besides, you’ll be cooking on Saturday.”

They ate a good supper of stir-fried rice, the conversation drifting from Monica and Casey asking each other about their background, to everyone’s jobs and school life, to Elijah and Monica’s plans for the weekend, to recent events in the news. Every few minutes, Elijah and Casey would exchange a glance, silently speculating about how Monica would react to Elijah’s demonstration of magic after supper.

When supper was over, Monica insisted on clearing the table, and Elijah joined her in loading the dishwasher. He idly wondered if at some point he’d get a spell for washing and putting away dishes. What branch of magic would it come under?

“I’ve got something to show you,” Elijah said.

“Ooooh, what is it?” she asked eagerly. “A rare book you’ve found in Casey’s collection?”

“Yes, actually, but more than that… I’ll just have to show you, it’s hard to explain.” Hard to explain in a believable way.

Once they finished loading the dishwasher, Elijah led the way to his office, where the spellbook was resting on the desk. He handed her the book.

“What language is this?” she asked.

“That I don’t know,” he said. “I scanned the title page of one of the other books in that language and posted it on a couple of polyglot message boards, and no one could identify it. No one on the professional linguists’ message board, either. But this particular one is different from the other fourteen books in that language Casey’s uncle owned.”

“What? How?”

“I can read the introduction and the first three chapters. A minute or so after I picked up the book for the first time, it changed – the introduction and first chapter went from that language you’re seeing to English, and once I worked my way through the first chapter, the second became readable.”

Monica’s brow furrowed. “I don’t get it. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke.” Elijah took a deep breath and cast the levitation spell on a pocket-sized notebook on the desk. It lifted off and drifted toward Monica, hovering in front of her for a few moments, before spinning and zooming off around the room. Monica gasped in surprise.

“A magic book?” she asked. She didn’t look excited; she looked horrified.

“Yeah,” he said. “Casey knows about it. I told him as soon as I got one of the spells working consistently. Each chapter has a few pages of theory and then three spells in different branches of magic.”

“Why would you mess with something like that?”

Elijah was shaken. It had been several eventful weeks since he’d worked past his qualms with magic to keep practicing the spells, and even though some of the spells were a little embarrassing, others were really useful; he’d almost forgotten his initial fears. He found he had no ready answer for her.

“I didn’t think this kind of spellbook was real, but if it is, it’s got to be some demonic trick. You know that, right?”

“There’s different kinds of magic,” Elijah said. “Only one of them involves dealing with demons – I haven’t touched that. The book hasn’t even talked about that except to mention it exists.”

“How do you know? Because the book says so? You should know better than to believe everything you read, especially something like this. What kinds of magic have you been using?” She glanced nervously at the notebook, which was hovering listlessly, having stopped zooming around after her outburst.

“Um,” Elijah said, gathering his scattered thoughts. “Information magic. Finding a vaguely remembered passage in a book, finding lost objects. Later on I should be able to cast a version of that first one on a whole library… Energy magic, that’s the levitation spell and also a light spell and a sound muffling spell. And, uh, body magic.” He was too flustered to remember the meta magic spell for the moment.

“Body magic…? That’s what you did to your face.” She looked revolted, and all of Elijah’s guilt about removing his body hair or smoothening his skin came back. “What else have you done to yourself?”

“Um, I grew my nails and cut them a few times, and I grew my hair a little bit just before I went to the barber shop. I kind of had to practice that spell multiple times, like all the others, or the next chapter wouldn’t –”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she said. “I thought you had more sense than this.”

“It’s magic,” he said, not sure on some level why that wasn’t a sufficient explanation. “It’s too amazing not to want to find out more about… And the information magic could help me so much in my work as a librarian.”

“It must be affecting your mind,” she said. “Weakening your will. The Elijah I know wouldn’t do this. You have to break its influence on you, Elijah. Pray with me, please?”

While Monica was praying aloud, Elijah asked for wisdom to figure out what to do, to figure out whether Monica was right that the book was lying about the branches of magic and how most of them had nothing to do with demons. He was still aware of the notebook, hovering off to the left above the desk. He gently lowered it toward the desk to put it down (though he’d still have a mind-hold on it until the spell wore of or he cast the interruption spell, which would probably annoy Monica more than letting it quietly wear off). He had his eyes mostly closed, open just a slit to see where the notebook was, and was startled when Monica put a hand on his and clasped it. He lost conscious control of the notebook and it whooshed through the air loud enough to be audible, bumping into one of the bookshelves and making and even louder whap.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“You’re still using magic on that notebook?” she asked. They’d both opened their eyes, and she was looking angry and hurt, having taken her hand off his.

“I can either wait for the spell to wear off or cast another spell to interrupt it. Which would you prefer?”

Monica threw up her hands. “I don’t know! I’m out of my depth here, and you’re lying to yourself if you think you aren’t… I guess it would be safer to let it wear off. That’s probably better than working another spell.” She took a deep breath. “Are you going to take this seriously?”

“Yes,” he said. “I was just startled, that’s all. Do you want to pray some more and then I’ll pray?”

They clasped hands this time before they closed their eyes. Monica prayed some more aloud, and Elijah prayed silently with her, then prayed aloud when she fell silent and squeezed his hand. He still didn’t feel any clearer in his mind about whether using the non-demon-related branches of magic was wrong, but hoped it would come in time.

When they finished, Monica said, “Would you do something for me? Promise me you won’t use magic again, or touch the book except to get rid of it.”

Elijah didn’t want to, but he was afraid that he was about to lose his best friend. He didn’t have so many friends he could afford to lose one, especially not his fiancee.

“I’ll give it back to Casey,” Elijah said. “I’ll talk to him about it in a little bit.”

“I’d feel better if you burned it,” Monica said. “Didn’t you say Casey gave it to you?”

Elijah’s librarian soul recoiled from the idea of burning a book, no matter how much he disagreed with its contents – and he honestly didn’t feel any conviction that the book was wrong about information magic and so on having nothing to do with demons. Monica had told him once before about how, when she was a lot younger, her church (more conservative than the one he’d grown up in) had held a burning of New Age and occult books; he’d been horrified then, and he was horrified now.

“He gave it to me on condition that I help him learn magic, or help him with my magic,” Elijah said evasively. He didn’t want to point blank refuse to destroy the book, Monica was already in a foul temper and he didn’t want to provoke her right now, although they’d have to have a talk about book burning at some point. “I can’t break that promise by destroying it.”

“All right,” she said grudgingly. “Promise me you’ll give it back to him, and not use any more magic?”

Elijah tensed up, but was too afraid of losing Monica to say no. “Okay,” he said. “I promise.”

“Go do it now,” she urged. “We can do something fun afterward. Watch a movie or something.”

Elijah took the book and went across the hall to Casey’s office, which was closed, somewhat unusually. He knocked.

“Come in,” Casey called out. Elijah opened the door and entered; Casey was taking off a pair of headphones.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Is everything okay? I, uh, couldn’t help hearing raised voices, and I closed the door and put on some music so I wouldn’t hear anything.”

“Monica and I talked about magic, and… she has some concerns about how safe magic is. I’m not sure they’re valid, but I’m not a hundred percent sure they’re not, and… I don’t want to get in a worse fight with Monica over it.” He handed the book to Casey, who took it a moment later.

“What’s up?” Casey asked, glancing down at the book.

“Monica… she asked me to give up magic. Since you gave me the book on condition I help you learn magic, or help you with my magic, I can’t keep it. Maybe if I go long enough without touching the book, it’ll be ready to re-imprint on you?” he added hopefully.

“Do you think using magic is wrong?” Casey asked.

“I… I’m not sure. I don’t think so, but Monica might have a point – we don’t really know anything about the writers or editors who put the book together. I have a gut feeling what the book says makes sense, but I can’t prove it.”

“All right,” Casey said. “I’ll put it over here until you change your mind.” He rolled his office chair toward the closest bookshelf.

“Actually… would you mind putting it somewhere I can’t easily get at it? I don’t want to risk my relationship with Monica over it, but I’m not sure I can resist the temptation if it’s right there on a shelf I’ll be cataloguing at some point.”

Casey sighed. “Okay. I’ll put it in the safe. You don’t know where that is, and if you happen to find it while you’re cataloguing, you don’t know the combination. That safe enough?”

“Yeah, thanks. Monica and I are probably going to watch a movie next.”

“Have fun.”

Elijah told Monica what Casey had said, and she smiled. They watched the recent Penguins documentary on the big monitor in his office, and then chatted about the movie for a while afterward, but there was still some tension between them. Monica said she was going to bed around ten, and Elijah went to his own bed not long after their goodnight kiss.