Chapter 2
Two
I shrugged off Nolan’s jacket that he insisted I wear home and stepped into the shop.
He hadn’t loved the idea of me coming back here, instead of heading home with him as an escort, but I knew myself.
Coming in to get the book would lead to finishing tidying up the display just so I didn’t have to do it in the morning.
I hated mornings, hence, the coffee station even though my favorite coffee shop was just down the street. Besides, I’d admonished him, Kitchi Falls was anything but dangerous, even at eleven p.m. and there were plenty of nights I walked the four blocks to my apartment all by myself.
Nolan couldn’t be more protective if he tried.
My phone buzzed. Turning on the lamp beside the reading chair at the front corner of the store, my new favorite place to read when the shop was closed, I sat and pressed a button.
“You are literally the only person left in the world that answers texts with phone calls.”
“Funny, I had no idea you felt that way,” she teased.
Charlee and I hadn’t been super close in school but we’d gotten to be good friends more recently.
“I have a date for you. For the wedding.”
Ugh. And I thought my mom was bad.
“That’s your news?”
“Uh huh.”
“I don’t need a date for the wedding. I’d just assume—”
“I know, I know. Go alone. I wasn’t out looking for him but the absolute perfect man just popped into my head. I’ve been thinking about it and debating on whether I should say anything. But Lucas and I are here chatting, and sometimes I think you just need to take a risk. Go for it, you know?”
“Actually, I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
A bright light was followed by the hugest crack of thunder I’d ever heard. Everything happened at once. My lamp flickered and went out. The street lights went out. Something fell in the stacks and it felt as if the entire shop rattled.
“What was that?”
“I think … maybe lightning hit close by? The lights went out.”
“Oh geez. You okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “But something fell in the stack. I’m gonna go check it out. Let me call you back.”
“Better idea. How about I bring lunch to the shop tomorrow? I have to stop by Lucas’ anyway, and I know you’ve been craving chicken cheesesteak.”
I almost told her Nolan and I already split one tonight, but were two chicken cheesesteaks—Cesar style, of course—the worst thing in the world?
“Sounds good. Talk to you later.”
“Byee.”
Putting the light on my phone, I made my way toward the back, where the sound had come from.
Thankfully, most things seemed to be intact.
I swept my phone’s light across the shop.
Nothing looked out of place, except one fallen book in the back room.
Leaning down, I picked up a dusty text from my personal collection.
Like the other books around it, this one was a splurge. One I paid too much for as a baby collector of rare and special editions. Since there was no light to be had out in the shop, I sat down on the floor and propped up my phone to see, putting the book on my lap.
It was my first trip to Scotland for a semester abroad in college.
My roommate and I found ourselves in an old bookshop, like something out of a movie.
Gravitating to this book, its beautiful illustrations, the only thing I could understand since it was written in old English, I nearly passed out when the shop owner told me the price.
My hand shook as I counted out the bills … my grocery money for the month.
At least, I thought it was something special since I couldn’t actually read it.
But when I opened the dusty cover to a page a third of the way through the book, the strangest thing happened.
Before, where the ink had always been faint and unreadable, the words shimmered …
bleeding into new shapes I could suddenly understand.
“Te blod tat byndeth shal neuer sleepe,
For loue maketh lyf and curs maketh kepe.
Whan hert is broken, shal tyme unbynde,
And te heeler’s synne shal bide behynde.”
A healer’s curse. A love that turned to blood.
This is the story that started it all.
I blinked.
And kept reading.
Blane Derrickson, chief of Clan Karyn, blamed the Earl of Rockford.
He demanded bloodwite which the earl refused to pay, denying his clan was involved in the raid.
That summer was the bloodiest for all along the border, English and Scottish alike.
I cursed them both. We’d buried another of our kinsmen that morning, the aspen coffin reminding me of the day I said farewell to Alec forever.
Little did I know the power of my grief would turn the words into something more.
I asked the healer for the precise words she used, when she cursed both families. She said, ‘For the blood that was spilled by all, I curse both families to feel my own pain, the kind that lasts forever.’
Isobel continued. ‘Less than a sennight later, it began. They came to me, one by one. First Blane and then Lawrence. By day’s end Alec’s parents and siblings had all sought my help.
One I was not able to give. Though my mother had been quite skilled, and my grandmother before her, their desire to drink blood—’
What. The heck. Was this?
A curse. Drink blood. So a vampire origin story, or something like that? More importantly, why could I read it?
The words pulsed, as if responding to something in me. My heartbeat? My longing? I didn't know. I wanted to understand what happened to Isobel, but the pages grew warm beneath my fingers.
A pounding on the door startled me from my reverie. Reaching for my phone, just now noticing the light had gone off, I scrambled trying to find it as the pounding got louder.
Screw the phone.
I stumbled my way to the door, obviously not knowing my own back room as well as I thought. Since when was there a bookcase … there?
Stopping to re-orient myself, I wasn’t at all prepared for the pounding to stop or be followed by the door to come flying off its hinges, directly toward me. Thankfully, I could avoid it, and was about to ask Nolan if he’d lost his mind when the doorframe filled with a very non-Nolan man.
Jet-black hair. Cheekbones for days. Shoulders like a line-backer, he was simply the most gorgeous specimen of man I’d ever laid eyes on in real life. I immediately wanted to go to him, the pull as dangerous as it was magnetic. The very opposite of safe.
And … that wasn’t my shop behind him. I ran toward him to get a better look, but he proved as immovable as a wall.
“Hold on. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
Nothing to be afraid of?
“We’re not in my bookstore.”
I couldn’t breathe. Or think. Spinning around, the back room now partially illuminated, panic firmly set in.
“This isn’t my shop. My bookcases … my phone. Where is it?”
My phone was gone. The book was gone.
This wasn't possible. People didn't just fall through books? That wasn't a thing. That was fiction. Bad fiction. The kind even I wouldn't read.
My breath came faster. Too fast.
"Breathe," I told myself. "You're having a panic attack in your own shop. That's all. You fell asleep. The storm, the thunder—"
But the voices were still there. Getting closer.
Holy shit. What was happening?
“I hardly think that was necessary.”
An unfamiliar voice to be terrified of. Fantastic.
“She said someone was back there.”
“Jesus, Riven. What did you not get about us trying to assimilate?”
“Apologies, my lord.”
I peeked around the bookcase.
“Kenton, you asshole. Remind me why I agreed you coming to Stone Haven was a good idea again.”
Stone Haven? Where had I heard that before?
“It’s a woman. And she’s scared. I thought you said people were used to our kind here?”
Our kind.
Stone Haven.
That was the name of the town in the book I’d just started. It was a contemporary romance and the author’s note mentioned Jim Thorpe in Pennsylvania as the inspiration town. But I wasn’t in Pennsylvania. I was in New York. In Kitchi Falls.
No, you’re not. This isn’t your bookstore.
How was that possible? Stone Haven is fiction. A book. Everything started spinning. I took a step forward, but my legs wouldn’t work. There were voices still, but they were muffled. Far away.
And then everything went black.