Note: This story was originally only supposed to be a one-shot, but I got so much positive feed back on the first chapter that I decided to continue it. I hope you enjoy it! I do intend to continue with a few more chapters, but as of now I do not know exactly where I'm going with this story.
It was a small building nestled closely between two much larger, newer ones that had shouldered their way into the too-small space that was the alley. The shop was of a dull gray-brown stone that attested to its age, and the only thing to set it apart from any other building in Geneva, other than this distinctive shabbiness, was an old wooden sign that hung out away from the solid oak door. The sign carried no inscription: only a rough carving of an open book gave indication of the shop's content.
Across the narrow alley from this remarkably unremarkable building sat a man, old and tired, his beard tattered and his hands filthy, plucking discordantly at the rusted strings of an ancient guitar. If one were to stop and listen, however, the discordance would begin to resolve itself into a complex, addicting pattern. Once it had wormed itself into an ear, this pattern refused to let go, drawing the listener in and in, leaving him begging for more when the tune finally ended. But no one paid this homeless genius any mind, and no one ever begged him for anything. He paused his composition and looked up as a thin figure made its way into the dark byway and toward the shop.
The bell above the entryway clattered noisily as the door to the shop opened to admit a lanky young man. It shut with a solid thud behind him, bringing the music of the city streets to a sudden halt. He breathed in deeply, savoring the smell of the old books all around him. Motes of dust were visible floating through the dim rays of sunlight that streamed through dirty old windows, tinting the very air of the place to be a subdued brown. The only other person in the shop appeared to be a deeply wrinkled little old man with a long white beard falling tangled over his chest sitting behind a gnarled wooden desk, squinting through a pair of bifocals at a weathered volume.
The young man coughed and spoke: "Excusez-moi, monsieur, mais je cherche-"
Before he could finish, the old man held up a withered finger and interrupted in a feeble but somewhat annoyed voice, "I speak English, boy."
The young man was simultaneously taken aback and relieved at this rude interjection.
"Yes, uh... was my accent really all that bad?" The proprietor shot him a withering glance and returned to squinting at the dark tome on his desk. Stumbling over himself, the young man started again: "I mean, sorry; I'm looking for a rare type of book, and I was informed that this... um... shop might have a copy."
"Ah yes," the old man said, looking up from his book, a thin smile spreading across his face that made the wrinkles ripple and reform like waves in a puddle. "You are the one who is coming about Le Grimoire. No, nobody told me," he cackled thinly, tapping the side of his nose. "I know these things. Here. Follow," he ended, creaking slowly out of the contoured red-leather chair in which he had reposed.
He shuffled back behind a tattered old curtain that smelled vaguely of mold into a storage room filled from floor to ceiling with decaying cardboard boxes full of old books. Almost effortlessly, the old man slid one of the stacks off to one side and away from the wall, revealing a safe. He reached up and carefully entered the code into a backlit keypad on the safe door, which then popped open with a gentle hiss of escaping air. With the gust came a cloud of dust that sent the old man into a fit of hacking coughs for a good while. The young man was beginning to be unsure of what to do, fearing this elderly gentleman was going to die right there when he finally fell silent once more.
He reached into the safe and carefully slid out an ancient tome. It looked to be easily two hundred years old or older. "Here it is," the old man announced, holding the book out with one hand on top and one on bottom to stabilize the large volume. "Le Grimoire des Magiques Noires."
The young man looked at him incredulously. "No offense, but there is no way that's authentic. If it were, why would you have it, of all people, in a tumble down dump like this on some forgotten alley of Geneva?"
This greatly amused little man, and he made a clacking sound in the back of his throat that seemed to be laughter. He grinned an enormous grin, causing his wrinkles to stretch and stretch across his face, farther than the young man would have thought possible. "You want to know why I have it?" He gently put the book down and raised his right hand and put his fingers together as if to snap them. "I have it... because I wrote it.
The fingers clicked and instantly the lights went out, bathing the room in darkness. This was not the darkness of simply flipping a switch, though: this blackness was oppressive and cold, as if every flame and light-bulb in the very universe had been simultaneously extinguished. The shock of it caused the young man to gasp and nearly threw him to his knees. He felt as if he couldn't breathe, the darkness was so heavy on his mind. When he knew that he could not possibly take a moment more of this torturous false night, he felt a tap on his forehead and suddenly found himself back in the light, as if it had never been.
The old man's left-hand index finger was still pressed against the boy's forehead as he leaned in close and whispered, "Do you believe in magic?" He smiled in that terrible way again as he said it. "I certainly hope you do, because you are to be my apprentice, for I am old now. I have always been old, yes, but now I draw near to the end of my life. You know who I am, I think, although I see that you are not yet aware that you do." He paused and sadly shook his head, as if thinking of days gone by. "I am the shadow behind every legend and myth of wizards and warlocks: I am Merlin, I am Nicolas Flamel, I am the one who taught Harry Houdini. But more than any of those names, who I am is Lonely." The old man leaned in uncomfortably close to the young man's face, so close that every breath ruffled his hair and tickled his ears. Despite the minuscule distance, the whispered question was only barely audible: "So, I ask you again: Do you believe... in magic?"