Read Work Experience (Schooled in Magic Book 4) for Free Online

levels that suggested that no one had entered the house for a very long time.
    “This is the library,” Lady Barb said, as she opened a door. Inside, the walls were lined with books, old books. It was tiny compared to a library on Earth, but Emily knew that she was staring at thousands of gold coins worth of books. Before she’d introduced the printing press, books had been written and bound manually. The various Scribes Guilds had made fortunes copying rare and important books for their clients. “Do you like it?”
    Emily nodded. She’d always loved libraries.
    “You can read anything, apart from the books on the top shelf,” Lady Barb said. She gave Emily a warning look. “Some of them are too advanced for you, as of yet, while some of them are specific to my family. Reading them would be very dangerous for your health, Emily. Don’t try to open them.”
    Emily felt a flicker of resentment. She’d always hated being told that something was too advanced – or too adult – for her to read. The librarians back on Earth had sometimes questioned her when she’d taken adult books out of the library, demanding to know if her mother knew she was reading them. But her mother had been too drunk to care.
    She shook her head. These books weren’t adult fiction, but books of magic, keyed to a specific family line. Lady Barb was right. Reading them could be very bad for her health.
    “I won’t,” she promised. She hesitated, then asked the question that had come to mind. “Could your brother’s wife read them?”
    Lady Barb shook her head. “Only someone who shared the family’s bloodline could open the books safely,” she said. “A wife wouldn’t count, no matter how close she was to her husband.”
    Emily shivered, remembering the offers of marriage. They’d been made to Imaiqah, too...and, before she’d been ennobled herself, Imaiqah might well have been tempted. A place in a magical family, adding her wild magic to the family’s bloodline...it was a better match than she could have hoped for as a merchant’s daughter. But she would never truly be one of the family. She would never be able to read their books.
    Lady Barb placed a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “I know how you feel,” she said, quietly. “But you have to understand the dangers. Don’t touch the books.”
    “I won’t,” Emily repeated.
    Lady Barb strode over to the bookshelves and pulled a book off the shelf, followed by three more. “These are for you to study, when you’re not brewing potions,” she said. “Be warned; I shall expect you to be perfect with the potions. The people we will be visiting will have no other sources, but us. A mistake could have lethal consequences.”
    Emily gritted her teeth. Alchemy – which included potions – was not her best subject, despite a handful of private lessons with Professor Thande. She knew she could brew most of the First Year potions in controlled conditions, but she’d come alarmingly close to flunking the exam completely. If Lady Barb hadn’t forced her to take advantage of being a Second Year to use one of the private rooms to practice, she suspected she wouldn’t be able to make the potions she wanted now.
    Lady Barb smiled at her expression. “I think you’ll do fine,” she said, placing the books on the table. “Consider this your reward.”
    Emily glanced down at the covers. One of them was a guide to the Cairngorm Mountains, where they would be travelling, but the others...all three of them were on enchantment. She recognized one of the titles and winced, remembering the book she’d borrowed from Yodel that Master Tor had confiscated. But why did Lady Barb have a copy?
    “You can read these books,” Lady Barb said, “but no experimenting without my agreement and supervision. I expect you to study them carefully, write out whatever you have in mind and then discuss it with me thoroughly before we actually try any experiments. Do you understand me?”
    “Yes,” Emily