Chapter 5
Autumn
The sun’s going down. My stomach has given up on sending me “hunger” messages, and now the emptiness is nothing but a dull throb. What time did the librarian say this place closes? Six?
Dammit, I don’t want to leave. I’m most of the way through Classic Discipline in BDSM, and if I could just have another hour with it, I’d be finished.
But then…what about the thousands of other books in this room? The millions of other books in this library? I didn’t even fully explore the first floor—there’s so much here. My heart sinks. A day isn’t enough.
I return Classic Discipline in BDSM to its shelf, my footsteps slow.
Then I trudge down two sets of stairs. This isn’t right.
Leaving doesn’t feel right. I hesitate in the Supernatural Phenomena room, my gaze lingering on the display cases and the large cabinets beneath them.
I wonder if further treasures are housed within.
Housed. House. Shit, fuck. Where am I going to sleep tonight? I spent the whole day here, doing absolutely nothing productive, and now I don’t have anywhere to sleep. And no money, either.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath. Crying will do me absolutely no good at all. I have to think.
I’m going to have to sleep outdoors. In a park on a bench somewhere, probably. Possibly a homeless shelter, assuming I can find one and assuming it has a free bed. There are no other options.
Unless I hide somewhere.
Unless I hide here.
I shouldn’t. And yet, this is the first place in San Esteban that I’ve been able to relax. The first place I’ve felt safe. The Corbin’s metaphorical arms have embraced me. Of course I don’t want to leave its shelter.
So, how do I hide? The curly-haired librarian noted my arrival.
She’ll need to see me leave, or she might come looking for me.
If she can’t find me, authorities could be called, a search made, and depending on the results, my presence here could be made public.
That would be the worst possible outcome.
I’ll need to pretend to leave, and then return without her noticing.
“Heading out?” she asks as I approach the reception desk. “Did you find everything you needed?”
“Yes, and it was amazing,” I say, gushing not to flatter her, but because I really mean it. “It was truly lovely. This is a beautiful library. Thank you so much.”
Smile bright, she says, “Of course. I hope you can come back sometime.”
“Yeah, me too.” My eyes fill with tears again, but I blink them back and hope she doesn’t notice. She’s so polished and put together, and she gets to work in this amazing building with all of these amazing books. The last thing I want is her pity. “Hey, um…was it hard to get a job here?”
Her expression softens. “As the head librarian, yes—I went to school for many years. But we’ve hired beginners, too. We aren’t hiring at the moment, but if you want to fill out an application, I can get one for you.”
“No, no, that’s okay. I might come back later, though. Thanks.”
“Anytime,” she says, then she peers at me closely, her dark blue eyes concerned. “Are you—are you okay?”
“Yep, yeah, I’m fine.”
“I don’t want to make assumptions, but this city isn’t safe at night, especially not in certain districts, like the Bellefleur. If there’s anything I can do to help…”
“I appreciate it, but I’m good.” I give her a little wave and march to the main doors.
Just inside the doors is a cleaning cart, waiting for use once the building closes, I assume, or maybe it has been moving around with the janitor all day and this is where they park it at the end of their shift.
That cleaning cart is my best hope.
I walk outside and keep going until I’m just out of sight. Then I peer through the glass doors to the reception desk beyond. I remove my flip-flops while I watch, because I’m going to need to be quiet.
The librarian is on the phone while she gathers her purse and jacket from the back of her chair. Great, she’s distracted, getting ready to leave. She drops something and bends down below the top of the desk to retrieve it.
Perfect.
I race back through the doors, silent as possible. The marble floor is cold beneath my bare feet. I duck behind the cleaning cart, but right as I lower myself out of sight, I see the librarian see me.
Fuck. Fuck. I thought I was being so sneaky.
The librarian’s mouth opens in surprise, but she quickly closes it. I don’t see any more of her reaction because I duck my head once more and lean against the giant trash bin. This is utterly mortifying. Not only do I not have anywhere to sleep, but I just tried to break into a private library.
Head pressed against smelly plastic, I close my eyes, completely dismayed, and wait for the librarian to sound an alert.
But nothing happens. She doesn’t say a word.
In fact, I hear her high-heeled footsteps approach the front doors. I crawl around the side of the cleaning cart, keeping myself out of her view, but I peer around the side of it. She opens the front door, steps outside.
She locks the doors.
She left. She’s locked me in.
I stare as she checks that the doors are really locked, and her gaze flicks toward me once more and clashes with mine.
I suck in a breath. This is it. She really saw me, no denying it, and it’s over.
But the corners of her mouth tick up in the tiniest of smiles. She gives me a single nod. She’s letting me stay.
My breath comes out in a whoosh, my heart resumes beating.
Looks like I’m spending the night in the library.
Autumn
When I wake, it takes me a long moment to realize where I am. It’s dark, but it feels like daytime. Everything is cramped, and for a brief, panicky moment I think I might be in a coffin.
Then I remember.
The Corbin.
I’m in one of the cabinets beneath the display cases in a room dedicated to surfing. I carefully ease open the sliding wooden door and peer out.
Morning sunshine streaks through high windows, illuminating a large redwood surfboard mounted to one of the walls. No one is in sight. All is quiet.
What’s the best move, here? Wait until the library opens, I’m assuming, then sneak to a remote room and pretend like I came in as soon as the doors were unlocked. Someone might notice…but at least the friendly librarian is on my side. I wonder why she did that—she probably risked her job for me.
And she probably saved my life.
Once I get my bearings, once I feel safe, I’ll find some way to repay her.
In the meantime, I have to find the restroom and clean myself up, change clothes. Then I can park myself right back in that BDSM room and read the day away.
Will
This is the second night in a row that a sweet, flowery scent distracts me from my work. I pause in my aggressive online bidding for a rare book on the history of surfing at Waimea Bay and look around my office.
That woman from…three nights ago? Is it her perfume lingering on my furniture? Standing up, I inhale deeply. I don’t think it’s her.
I’m horny. Hungry. It’s been a few nights since we fed from the woman, and the blood we have delivered from the butcher will never appeal. I want human blood, and a warm female body writhing beneath me while I take it.
Fuck. I wish I could identify the scent and where it’s coming from.
“Xander!” I shout.
He appears in my office doorway a moment later, wearing a frown. “I’ve told you not to shout across the house to get my attention.”
“But it works every time,” I say.
His glower sparks joy. He’s so bloody angry all the time, how can I not want to take the piss?
“What do you want?” he asks.
“We’re going hunting.”
Four hours later, we’ve found a willing woman at Low Vice. Tonight, we don’t take her home—I’ve brought a small vial of oubliette with us, and if we linger over the aftercare, the woman’s bite marks will heal quickly and she’ll have no recollection or reminder of being punctured by our fangs.
But our cocks? I’ll let her keep that memory. Or I would, but Xander doesn’t fuck her.
He pulls blood from her neck while I’m thrusting into her from behind. But he doesn’t fuck her. I give him a puzzled look.
What the fuck is wrong with you? I ask him without words.
He simply closes his eyes, blotting me out of his dining experience. Wanker.
I pump my hips, appreciating the snug hold of the lady’s cunt even while I wonder what’s the matter with Xander. Something has changed for him. He’s never been fully open with me about his thoughts. I get it; thoughts are private.
But something is bothering him.
He brought up Elisabeth the other day, shocking me. Her death certainly changed things for us. Many vampire pairs don’t survive the death of their amant. We survived, even if we sometimes wish we didn’t.
Autumn
I’ve spent three nights here in The Corbin, going on four. I find food left out in an employee break room after the doors have closed for the evening, with a sign reading Help yourself written out on an index card. I find shampoo left near the bathroom sinks, as well as toothpaste and a toothbrush.
The receptionist’s name is Izzie. I’ve approached her a few times since that first day I came here.
I want to say thank you, but I’m not really sure how.
She’s often working with someone else. Plus, whenever she’s alone and I come up to her desk, she’s super professional.
What am I supposed to say? Hey, thanks for letting me squat in your library… Yeah, no.
I thought I might do some cleaning while the library is closed, as a way of saying thank you. My plan nearly dies before it begins, because the place is spotless already. A janitor moves throughout the building when the library is open, and the place is nearly spotless by the end of the day.
But I’ve also had a lot of time to explore.
Last night, I found a basement stuffed full of boxes and boxes of books and papers.
There are thousands of binders. At a wide table tucked between all those boxes, it looks as if someone left off in the midst of cataloging a new shipment of books.
As far as I can tell, whoever it was hasn’t worked on it in some time, certainly not since I arrived.
So I get to work, scanning the pages of the open binder.
It takes me a little while, but I figure out the codes they’re using by matching the entries to books stacked off to one side.
It doesn’t look like the Dewey Decimal System—at least, nothing like I would expect.
Instead, there are short abbreviations and indicators of subject, author, length of the book, and a rating on how well the book would fit into one of the curated rooms upstairs.
I can definitely work with that.
For a couple of hours, I lose myself in sorting and cataloging, printing out neat entries on new forms and adding them to the binder. I place a sticky note on the page where I’ve started, so that if I’ve screwed up somehow, the person in charge will be able to figure out where things went amiss.
I set another book aside and stretch. My back is pleasantly sore from the work.
I’m feeling rejuvenated. I now have a purpose, something to lose myself in.
If I were hiding in one of the display cabinets right now, my mind would be whirling over and over on Dale, on Marcus’s death, on anything I might have done differently to stop the violence.
On anything I might have done differently that could have saved my mom, ten years ago.
But here, I’m happily busy and productive and distracted.
Until a faint wail echoes through the basement.
I gasp. On instinct, I reach up for the table lamp next to me and switch it off. The room plunges into darkness…almost. There’s a faint line of light coming from the back wall. That’s really weird.
I shouldn’t. I should not go over there. Every horror movie ever would tell me to stay away from creepy, mysterious basement lights.
But like the first heroine to die in all of those movies, I go to the eerie amber light.
It’s coming through a crack, one that appears in a corner where a set of old shelves meet the concrete wall. Wait a minute. There shouldn’t be a crack here, there shouldn’t be light. I look down and see scrape marks over the concrete floor, as if something gets dragged over this spot.
As if the bookcase itself is moved sometimes.
A secret door?
Please let it be a secret door. My girlhood dream was to visit the Altera Public Library and discover untold worlds beyond the mundane shelves.
Breathe held, I tug on the shelf. It moves easily. I pull it open just enough to get a glimpse of the room beyond.
Sweat glistens over a man’s back, which is laden with rippling muscles.
A taut ass flexes rhythmically as he fucks a woman bent at the waist in front of him.
A second man, half-naked, stands at the woman’s head, his jeans slung low enough to free his cock, which the woman enthusiastically sucks and licks.
He suddenly pulls her off of his dick, lifts her to stand even while the other man continues to fuck her. He tugs her hair to the side and exposes her neck.
He opens his mouth. He has…fangs? He has fucking fangs. And he lowers his mouth to her throat. Bites down. She wails in what sounds like pleasure, but surely it must be pain?
As he drinks, his eyes pop open and his gaze locks on mine.