Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
With a racing heart, I caught up to Tammy and took the lead, dashing to the library. I bumped shoulders with people on their way to work. Crossing one-way streets and sneaking between parked cars, Tammy and I lost Torin. When I glanced over my shoulder, he was nowhere to be seen.
But I wasn't foolish enough to think that we had shaken him off completely.
Breathless, we slowed down to a walk as we neared the library. I scanned the sidewalk, but I couldn’t see the Alpha anywhere. We climbed the stairs of the old building, one of my favorite libraries to visit growing up.
The tall ceiling with sweeping windows kept the building light and cool inside. The structure was built differently from modern buildings. Gray stones engulfed the large, arching windows. The lobby was open and vast, and every piece of furniture to the stair rails looked worn out and fading.
“Now what?” Tammy asked.
We stood in the middle of the space on the first floor. I whirled around in a circle to find a quiet, hidden spot.
Suddenly, Tammy gasped, making me jolt. I followed her gaze and saw Torin. He strolled toward us, grinning like a predator who’d cornered its prey. My heart dropped to my stomach.
But out of the corner of my eye, something weird caught my attention. The small butterfly creature fluttered around the ceiling in the opposite direction of Torin, as if it knew not to lead me to him.
“Tammy, follow me. The butterfly will tell us where to go.”
“What butterfly?” she asked.
“Right—”
It was gone. Did it not want to reveal itself to anyone else but me?
I dashed in the direction I’d seen it, and Tammy followed. I didn’t turn around. There was no doubt Torin was hot on our tails.
Once we left the lobby, we entered the children’s section. Large paintings of fairy-tale book covers hung on the walls. Several kids with their parents walked among the colorful bookshelves.
In front of us stood a podium, and behind it a wall with gray panels that looked like concrete slabs in a bridge. The butterfly appeared at the last panel and flew there in a circle.
“Tammy,”—I turned to face her—“this way.”
But when I turned back and walked to the gray part of the wall, the creature wasn’t there anymore.
“There must be a hidden door or something, if it led me here,” I muttered.
I touched the wall, waiting and listening for a click. The clang came from behind the panel, and the panel wall opened toward us.
Tammy’s eyes grew big and bright.
“Quickly, he’s behind us,” she said, urging me to walk into the dim, narrow corridor.
The panel clicked back into place, taking away more light. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and walked slowly under a wooden arch. It seemed like we’d faded into a different building.
The narrow hallway opened into a shabby room with a high ceiling. Water stains darkened the walls. The paint peeled off in yellow flakes. They reminded me of shed snake scales.
This was a hidden, small apartment that screamed abandonment.
“Do you think the apartment is haunted?” Tammy asked behind me.
“No. But it’s lonely.”
Whoever lived here tried to make the apartment livable and vibrant with green, yellow, and blue paint on the walls. But a professional hadn’t done the paint job. It stood out on the walls like big stains, as if someone had run out of paint and started using whatever else they had.
We walked through another dark corridor, the only light coming from an exposed light bulb above.
When we entered what looked like a bedroom, my stomach knotted. A bare mattress lay on the ground. Broken plates and other trash were scattered around.
But what made me breathless were the tally marks on the walls. Many tally marks, as if too many people shared this hidden apartment to fit inside.
“Maybe they counted days to some event,” I said.
Tammy took a deep breath. “Seeing this makes me appreciate my life more.”
I nodded but wasn’t sure if she saw me in the darkness. The apartment had no windows or other openings to the world. Even if people took refuge here, this place looked like a prison.
There was a black door to the side, and I walked toward it.
“Don’t open it, Bree. What if a clown jumps out of it?” she said. “My hands are shaking.”
“It wouldn’t lead me to a clown.”
Curiosity burned in me. I had to know what was behind the door. I placed my hand on the rusty bronze doorknob and waited. I wasn’t sure what for, but then I felt it.
The pulse of another magic book. The energy it emitted matched what I usually felt with the other two witch books I’d found.
I twisted the metal knob and opened the door. At first, dust flew into our faces, and we coughed and waved our hands. Once we could open our eyes again, we looked inside the room. It was some sort of a pantry or a food storage room. A tiny space filled with many ledges.
In front of me, an old-looking book sat on one of the shelves.
“There it is,” I said and smiled. “Another one, Tammy.”
“I can’t believe you keep finding those books.”
I reached for the book to pick it up. “I only find the books because someone wants me to have them. Probably my witch mother.”
“But why?”
I held the book in my hands and smiled. “I don’t know. But I hope she’s not a dark witch too.”
Tammy furrowed her eyebrows but stayed quiet, watching my hands. I swiped them over the front and back covers.
This book was lighter brown, and the cover underneath my fingertips felt like fabric. It had two thick straps wrapped over the pages.
“Let me guess.” I pulled on the straps. “It won’t open, will it?”
The book wouldn’t open without solving some riddle. I blew a hot breath on the front cover and watched tiny scribbles move around like marching ants.
Tammy gasped next to me. “Wow, that’s real magic.”
Once the lines arranged into words, I read them out loud for Tammy, remembering that Torin and Hayden could not read the words in the other books.
I could since I was a witch.
“The Book of Shadows and Memories,” I said. “And watch this, Tammy.”
I flipped the book over and pointed at the bottom left corner.
“Oh, your birthmark,” she said.
I had told her about the daisy wheel witch symbol on the magic books, and I had shown her one of them from the book safely resting in my backpack.
This newly found book had the same matching symbol.
“Now let’s see if there’s a riddle to open this book. Maybe we’ll end up opening two of them,” I said.
I blew my hot breath over the back cover and waited. Bright dots like little sparks appeared and combined into the tiny lines on the front cover. Once the lines settled into words, I frowned.
“What does it say, Bree?” Tammy elbowed me.
I sighed. “It says find a witch to cast an opening spell. Why wouldn’t it just let me open it? I don’t know of any witches—”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Cordelia. She’s the only one I know. I don’t want to see that witch again, let alone ask her for a favor.” I groaned. “How frustrating. I won’t find out what’s inside the book.”
“But maybe other witches are living among us, Bree. Don’t give up.”
“True.”
Tammy reached to touch the book cover but stopped and looked at me. “Can I touch it, or will it electrify me or something?”
“I’m pretty sure you can touch it.”
Even Cordelia held one of the books in her hands. She couldn’t touch my bracelet, and she’d been zapped by the protection magic on it.
Tammy touched the cover and smiled. “Well, I feel nothing besides the material’s roughness.”
I dropped the book next to the other one into my backpack and strapped it on my back again.
“I don’t want to stay any longer in this apartment, Bree. Do you think we can get out now? Maybe Torin has left by now.”
“Oh, no. He’s around here. He doesn’t give up easily.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
We walked back to the secret panel door.
“We’re going to make a run for the hunters’ HQ. Run as fast as you can. The hunters will stop Torin from entering their building.”
Tammy scoffed. “Your plan would only work if Torin doesn’t catch up before we get to the apartment complex.”
I shivered as I stepped out of the hidden apartment and into the library’s children’s section. It felt as if the temperature in the library was twenty degrees colder. Tammy joined me, and the click echoed behind us.
A small child looked at us with curious eyes, but everyone else was too busy to pay attention to us. We stayed close to the side wall as we made our way out of the library.
At the front staircase, goose bumps rose on my forearms.
“Tammy, now would be a good time to sprint.”
She groaned, and we ran back. As we sprinted, I scanned the streets and the shops for Torin, almost expecting him to jump in front of us, blocking our way.
After a moment, Tammy and I entered the apartment building. But when I glanced over my shoulder, Torin stood at the doorway. He smiled at me and took a few steps inside.
Tammy and I froze. We were so close to the elevator.
What was Torin going to do to me once he caught me? I didn’t want to meet a pissed-off vampire.
Torin abruptly stopped, having crossed half the distance to me and Tammy. He frowned and then let out a heavy sigh. About twenty hunters swarmed Torin in the next moment with their crossbows and daggers.
They circled him, and I was grateful they didn’t immediately attack him.
Knowing Torin, he could shift into his vampire and take on twenty or so human hunters, even if they were trained and held silver weapons.
I blinked. Torin stood still, amber eyes drilling holes into my face.
Wasn’t he going to tear them apart as he usually did to anyone who stood in the way of his mate? Did he somehow feel that I didn’t want more bloodshed on my hands?
The elevator door dinged, and I turned to see Adrian strolling out of it.
“Well, well, look who the princess brought,” the hunter leader said, walking to Tammy’s side.
I scrutinized his every move. He almost glued himself to Tammy as if he protected her, knowing too well the Alpha nearby could lose his cool at any moment.