Chapter 5
I looked at Alice with wide eyes.
‘We need to go,’ I hissed.
‘Where has the book gone?’
‘Alice,’ I said, grabbing her wrist. ‘We need to go. Right now.’
‘What’s happening? Did someone take it?’
Someone had definitely taken the book – someone who had gotten close enough to me to hurt me if they wanted to.
‘Come on,’ I said, and almost yanked Alice’s arm out of its socket as I turned to the exit and started walking. Fast. Not running. Running in the library would draw attention and someone would scold us, and I didn’t want anyone to notice me right now.
‘Hey,’ Alice cried, but I couldn’t afford to stop and apologize.
This time I hadn’t even noticed someone follow us into the library, and that was definitely not good. They might have even been close enough to listen in on our conversation, which was even worse.
I kept my head down as we walked out of the library, then jogged down the steps, and only when we were out on the street did I chance looking around.
No one jumped out at me.
I couldn’t decide whether to panic or be seriously pissed off. The idea that people were still following me, for the third day in a row, set my blood boiling. I couldn’t be sure that it was Wilson’s people again because I hadn’t seen them, but it was unlikely to be anyone else.
‘Kendra,’ Alice said, sounding exasperated, and I realized she must have said my name more than once.
‘What?’
‘Did someone take the book?’
I nodded tightly. ‘I think so, yeah.’
‘Shit,’ she said, her expression one of pure alarm.
‘We need to get out of here,’ I said.
She made brief, intense eye contact with me, and I was momentarily startled by their blueness.
Not now, Kendra.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘Let’s go back to my apartment and regroup,’ I said.
‘That works for me.’
Alice looped her arm through mine and led us away from the library, a few blocks up and over to Times Square instead of going into Grand Central.
I usually avoided Times Square at all costs, except now the crush of people and tourists, and people pickpocketing tourists, was actually helpful.
The enormous advertising screens and bright lights were world famous because of countless movies and TV shows, but I was always taken aback by the sensory overload – cabs blaring their horns, people talking and vendors shouting, the smell of the hotdogs from their street stalls drifting through the air and mixing with the white smoke billowing out from the subway.
If anyone had followed us out of the library, I hoped they’d quickly lost us in the crowd, no longer able to track which subway station off Times Square we’d ducked into.
Alice swiped her MetroCard to get through the barrier, and I took the next gate along. She fell into step next to me as I navigated down to the subway tracks and picked the one for the downtown train.
I was still on high alert, my nerves fizzing as I looked at each person on the train car, evaluating their faces to work out whether or not I’d ever seen them before.
Alice was pressed tight into my side because of how busy it was, and I tried not to notice how nice she smelled, or how she kept looking to me for reassurance.
If she was going to get caught up with me then she needed to get real chill with how insane my life was, real fast.
We got off the subway and headed down 8th Street, Alice keeping pace with me as I made quick progress.
‘Have you eaten at all today?’ Alice asked as we stopped outside the shop. ‘I could order food. Pizza?’
I gave her a quick smile. ‘I had pizza last night.’
‘Tacos? I walked past somewhere earlier that smelled amazing and now I’m craving them.’
‘I could eat tacos,’ I agreed.
Alice pulled out her phone, presumably to check Mexican restaurants in the area, as we took the metal stairs on the outside of the building to get up to the apartment.
I’d gotten used to taking the front door of Walker Antiques when my mom was around, since she kept the shop open long past normal hours.
We walked through the apartment door and it slammed closed behind us, enveloping us in darkness, and just as I was reaching for the light switch a tiny, almost imperceptible shift in the air told me something had gone very, very wrong.
Then a fist connected with my jaw.