Chapter 3 Helena
“Oh, for the love of all paperbacks,” I cursed between my teeth, climbing down from one of the step stools that could be found within the stacks.
Because even though the computer system listed the book I was looking for as “IN,” it wasn’t here.
I didn’t see it mixed in with its immediate company, either.
Probably—horribly—some overly helpful patron had misfiled it somewhere.
Or else it had to be on one of the nearby carts, waiting to be shelved.
I hadn’t checked the return date in the database.
What if it came in yesterday? Or even this morning?
With renewed hope, I strolled out of the three hundreds and scanned the aisles until I found Hunter, one of our pages.
When it came to library jobs, pages existed on the bottom rung, their central responsibilities being to collect returned books from all bins, organize them on the carts, shelve them, and perform other, random as-needed tasks.
Hardly glamorous work, but for the antisocial sort, the position had the built-in perk of being solo and, for the most part, non-people-y.
And so, perfect for someone like Hunter.
Soon to be eighteen, he’d just started his senior year at Delmont High.
At six foot two, he could reach a lot of the higher shelves without a step stool, and he towered over most of the other employees—including five-foot-four me.
Always dressed in some mixture of black, black, and black, he did a fair job of warding off patrons, too.
Today, he had on a baggy black My Chemical Romance T-shirt layered over a black-and-white-striped long-sleeved shirt and black jeans. Boots, piercings, rings, and floppy dyed black hair that obscured one eye completed his moody Tim Burton–enthusiast look.
Per usual, while shelving, he had his AirPods in, nodding along to the buzzing screaming of some band.
“Hunter?” I called. He didn’t respond.
I sidled up to the near-overflowing cart that stood between us, and flicking my gaze between him and its contents, I bent forward and tried to find my prize. Always, the pages organized the carts by Dewey decimal to streamline their process.
This helped me to streamline mine since a quick scan of the cart’s bottom shelf came up no dice.
“Holy shit fritters,” said Hunter, and I glanced up to find him pressing a palm to his chest. “ ’Scuse my language, Miss Hart,” he said as he pulled out his AirPods, “but you scared the sloth snot outta me.”
I twitched a smile, the first I’d managed since the party. Since the… incident.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m… looking for a book. System says it’s in, but it wasn’t on the shelf. Thought it might be on your cart.”
“What book?” he scoffed. “How to Scare Friends and Terrify People? Cheese and crackers, I’ll never have the hiccups again, so I can thank your jack-in-the-box ass for that.”
Despite his monochrome wardrobe, Hunter had a colorful way with words.
And though I was a librarian and therefore a superior, I had nothing to do with the adult department, so he didn’t often check himself around me.
Which I was fine with. I preferred authenticity.
And Hunter’s was a particularly special brand.
“Wait,” I said, straightening. “Back up. Did you just admit we’re friends?”
“Uh,” said Hunter, who went back to scanning spines and filing titles, “that’s a no-offense negative. When I’m in this crusty, dusty, fusty palace of brain drain, I’m a lone wolf. Stick my steel-toed boot out for nobody.”
I folded my arms. “You and Emily seem to get along fine.”
Emily was the new part-time clerk for the Hideout, the recently renovated teen area located in the basement. I had to cover that desk for Emily during her lunch. Which, lately, she’d been taking in the break room—with Hunter.
Hunter shifted toward me, and squinting at me, he draped an arm over his cart.
“Are you supposed to be in the adult section of the library?” he challenged. “Last I checked, your corner of the Literary Hunger Games was the kiddie area.”
“Are you supposed to be shelving with AirPods in?” I countered. “Last I checked, Rick frowned upon that.”
Rick, an adult reference librarian, was Hunter’s overzealous and somewhat controlling supervisor—one of them.
“Fine,” he said, “we’re friends. Which means you can’t snitch. Now, what book are you looking for so I can help you find it and get on with my miserable, underpaid, bottom-feeder life as a lowly library serf?”
I bit my bottom lip. “You know, a clerk position did just open in the children’s department. I’d totally put in a good word for you. I’d be on the interview panel, too.”
“There are so many words that I’m allergic to in what you just said.”
“Pay is better,” I offered. “Closer to the Hideout?”
“Book, Hart.” He gestured to the stacks around us. “You were looking for a book.”
I smirked and dropped my gaze again to the cart. I had a hunch Hunter secretly liked his job. He’d been here for two years now. So long as he got to have his AirPods, he didn’t seem too miserable, at least some of the time.
“It’s a book on… a myth,” I muttered as I scanned his collection of nonfiction again, just in case I’d missed the volume.
“Myth,” he repeated. “You know, they came up with a few of those.”
I shook my head, embarrassed to say it out loud even though I shouldn’t have been. Because Hunter wouldn’t know why I was asking for the title.
“It’s called Grim Tidings: The History and Origins of… of the Grim Reaper.”
“Fire,” said Hunter, with appreciation. “And low-key unsettling.” His eyes darted like he thought there might be someone watching us, or hidden cameras aimed our way. “This for storytime research? I might come to that one. But just for the parents’ faces.”
My cheeks burned all the hotter, because I hadn’t thought of an excuse for why I wanted the book, and I could hardly tell Hunter it was because I’d had a… Well, I wasn’t sure what to call it. Technically, “near-death experience” applied, but not in the way one might assume.
“It’s… for a friend of mine,” I lied. “I told him I’d pull it and… and put it on hold for him.”
“He sounds cool,” said Hunter, who, without warning, abandoned his cart and stalked out of the aisle.
I blinked and, jarring myself into a scuttle, hurried after him. “Hunter?”
“You might just be in luck, Hart,” he called over one shoulder as he made a beeline to one of the tables that flanked the large windows overlooking the street and the trees that lined it, their limbs sleeved in rioting autumn foliage.
Halting at the table, empty of patrons, he aimed a hand at the book someone had left there—the very book I’d been seeking.
“Abra-ala-cadabra,” said Hunter. “One Grim Reaper reader with a side of déjà vu.”
“Omigosh!” I seized the title, a slim, small, and gray hardback volume with a black silhouette of the Grim Reaper on the cover, the title embossed in silver on the spine. “This is crazy. How’d you know this was here?”
“Yeeeeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as he glanced over his shoulder again. “There was a dude. He must have left it. Super-weird guy. He came up to me with the Dewey number asking for help, and I pulled it for him. Like, not even thirty minutes ago.”
Oh. That’s why Hunter had said it was “unsettling” that I was asking for the title, and why he’d mentioned déjà vu. Not because of the subject matter, but because I’d been the second person to request the title.
I blinked rapidly, trying to absorb this—and not put extra meaning to it.
Hard to do after what happened to me. After what failed to happen to me.
Maybe, if I was lucky, this book would provide some kind of insight as to what had occurred or, at the very least, point me to a source that could provide insight.
“Hunter,” I said, pulling the book close, “thanks.”
He waved me off. “I did it for the plot. Also, if he’s researching the Grim Reaper, your friend is metal. And I’m metal. Metalheads gotta stick together.”
Peeling away, he reinserted his AirPods. Riffing on air guitar, he then vanished between the stacks.
Frowning, I glanced left and right, scanning the reading areas for any sign of the “weird guy” who had requested the book.
I didn’t see anyone who I thought classified as weird.
Just a lady with thick glasses trudging into the eight hundreds, her arms already loaded down with books, and a backpack-wearing college kid headed for the checkout counter, a stack of titles tucked under one arm.
Curious, I made my way down the aisles, checking each as I passed them.
But… there wasn’t anybody.
I paused to examine the book next, noting something I hadn’t before. Someone had bookmarked a set of pages in the middle with a bit of what looked to be… parchment?
After taking my reading glasses off the top of my head and sliding them into place, I opened the book to that page to find an etching of a figure in swathing black, scythe gripped in one skeletal hand, an oversized hourglass clutched in the other.
Someone, or something, peered out from the shadows nested within a black hood.
As had been the case at the party, though… there was no telling what.
Who?
He had been a who to have done what he had, right? Meaning, there was someone in that hood. A person. Or a… being. A collector of souls who could, himself, even be a soul?
I wanted to believe that was the case.
Especially since the alternative was that I had imagined him, or that I was going batty.
My fingers went to the torn bit of parchment that marked the pages, and pulling the thick and aged paper free, I turned it over.
I gasped to find a message there, which had me dropping the book—and stifling a scream with one hand.
“Yes, Helena,” the blue-ink note read in beautiful, scripted handwriting, “he’s real.”