by Elle Adams
I walked through the stacks, scanning the shelves on either side. The magical cookbooks were on the right, so I headed that way. Checking the master list again, I counted rows. One, two—
The floor collapsed. A startled yell escaped as I flailed, my hands grasping for the nearest edge and finding none. The air rushed past, darkness closed in, and then my body landed on a soft surface. A mattress.
“How thoughtful.” I lay on my back, my heart hammering. A single light illuminated the room, showing me a trapdoor above my head. It was far too high for me to reach.
I jumped off the mattress, looking around. The only other object in the room was a coffin. More worrying, it had no lid… and a person was inside it.
Ignoring the alarm bells wailing in my head, I trod towards the coffin. A man lay on his back, his eyes closed. I clapped my hands to my mouth. Was he dead? The man had dark hair and pale skin. His mouth was slightly open… and his teeth were pointed.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. Estelle had told me vampires didn’t have heartbeats and slept like the literal dead. I didn’t know if all the stories were true—the vampires who’d chased me had been wandering around during daylight hours, after all—but sleeping in coffins sounded like the sort of thing vampires did. If so…
Cold sweat gathered on my forehead. If he woke up, the first thing he’d see would be me. Then what would he do? I looked for another way out, but there were no doors or windows. Just the trapdoor.
I walked back to the mattress and stood on tip-toe, but my hands hardly brushed the ceiling If I called for help, I might wake the sleeping man in the coffin. By now, I was positive he must be alive. My aunts wouldn’t keep a dead vampire in the basement, would they? Granted, I couldn’t think of a good reason for them to keep a living vampire in here, either.
Even if he didn’t wake up, I might be stuck here for hours waiting for someone to rescue me. Think, Rory. I didn’t have a wand yet, but I was a biblio-witch—or I would be, anyway. That had to count for something, right?
I dug in my pocket and found the notebook and pen from my study lesson. In the shop, I’d put out the fire using Abe’s record book and a cheap pen. It was worth a shot.
I pressed the tip of the pen to the page and focused on the words I wrote. Fly. Make me fly.
Nothing happened. I concentrated harder, searching for that wild urge that had possessed me when the vampires had cornered me—the need to write on the page.
Warmth flared within me, my skin tingled all over—and my body left the ground, yanked up through the trapdoor. Whoa. Stop!
My body kept floating, propelled down the row of shelves until I sailed around the corner and crashed into Cass.
“What are you doing?” we both asked, more or less at the same time.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Why is there a vampire in the basement? What is going on?”
“Oh,” she said, then swore. “This is why we don’t invite newcomers here, so we don’t have to explain Grandma’s nonsense.”
“What, it’s her fault there’s a vampire sleeping down there? He is still alive, right?”
She scowled. “Yes, he is. He came here before Grandma died, fell asleep, and never woke up. Vampires can hibernate for years.”
I climbed to my feet, relieved that they stayed on the ground this time. “Who is he?”
“Grandma took that secret to her grave.” She flicked her gaze to the trapdoor. “Just like all the others.”
Whoa. She was serious. Not only was there an actual live vampire sleeping in the library’s basement, nobody knew who he was. Two dead bodies in as many days—even if one of those bodies was undead—was far more than I’d bargained for.
Cass pulled out her Biblio-Witch Inventory and stabbed at a word, causing the trapdoor to slam shut. “Do not tell anyone outside of our family. Got it?”
“Sure.” Despite her warning tone, this was the most open Cass had ever been with me. Maybe, with each secret the library revealed to me, we’d be able to trust one another in the end.
Or maybe I was more likely to become buddies with the vampire in the basement.
I’d forgotten we were having a visitor, but when the library closed for the night, Aunt Adelaide called all of us to the front desk. She wore a new-looking cloak in vibrant shades of blue, her hair shone brighter than before, and she snapped her fingers, turning the library into night mode. Lights bloomed in the lanterns, mingling with the effect of the stained-glass windows.
A moment later, the doorbell rang. “Punctual as ever,” she muttered. “One thing he got right.”
Asking my aunts about the vampire would have to wait. Cass had implied they hadn’t told the public about that one, though Estelle had also said that Aunt Adelaide’s ex-husband had lived here in the library when they’d been together.
The doors opened, and Elliot entered the library. He wore a suit, which I hadn’t expected, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in an office in London. His face was severe, his hair well-combed, and his suit looked like it’d been ironed while he was still wearing it. He stood in stark contrast to my cloak-wearing aunts and cousins.
“Hey, Dad,” said Estelle.
“Hello, honey.” His gaze went to me. “Ah, this is the newcomer.”
“Hi. I’m Aurora—most people call me Rory.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said, then turned to Aunt Adelaide. “Yes, I see the resemblance. She looks like Roger.”
I shifted awkwardly, unsure what to say. He’d known my dad, too. I suspected it’d take me a while to adjust to the knowledge that he’d had an entire world he’d kept secret from me.
“I think she looks more like Adelaide,” Aunt Candace said. “Maybe it’s the nose.”
Aunt Adelaide cleared her throat. “The table’s set. Won’t you come in?”
This is going to be awkward.
When we were seated in the dining room, Cass came in late, grunted at everyone and started eating without further conversation. I dug into my food, but I didn’t have much of an appetite after the scare I’d had with the vampire.
Elliot turned to me. “So how are you finding the library?”
“It’s…” Impossible to summarise in a single word. “Different.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “When I met Adelaide, it used to find it amusing to turn the corridors around so I’d be walking in circles for hours.”
“Yeah, it’s tried some of that with me,” I said. Over my dead body would I bring up the ball pit incident. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”
Cass made a disparaging noise, and silence fell for a few moments.
“Go on, ask about the murder,” said Aunt Candace. “I’m collapsing under the weight of the unicorn in the room.”
“Candace,” said Aunt Adelaide. “That’s not appropriate dinner conversation.”
“I assumed it was, since you cancelled your date for it.”
Aunt Adelaide scowled at her. “You’re in an unusually chatty mood. Finished a book, did you?”
“Yes, I did,” Aunt Candace said. “Don’t ask me about it.”
“You brought it up yourself, three times,” said Cass, reaching for the salt. “Let’s all ask Aunt Candace about her book. Better than Mum’s love life.”
Aunt Adelaide’s face flushed, while Aunt Candace gave her a glare. At her side, I glimpsed her note-taking pen scribbling away out of sight.
Aunt Adelaide saw it, too, and gave her sister a blistering look. “If you write us into a book, I’ll hex your pages blank.”
Oh, boy. An argument was about to kick off and it wasn’t even between her and her ex-husband.
Estelle stood. “I have to go and study. So does Rory.”
I took her lead and got to my feet, too. We escaped into the living room, as the sound of glass breaking came from the room.
Estelle winced. “I’ll have to intervene. You can get up to your room okay, right? Give me a shout if not.”
I
opened my mouth to respond, but she hurried back to the dining room as another crash came from behind the half-open door. Walking to the stairs, I found them gone. Great.
All right, I’d hide in the main library instead. I made for the Reading Corner, and a small pair of beady yellow eyes looked up at me from the shelf on my right.
“Caw,” said Jet.
“There you are,” I said to the crow. “What’s wrong?”
He tapped the book next to him with his beak. I crouched to peer at the title and found none. The leather-bound book was Dad’s journal. What was it doing all the way down here?
“Did Sylvester move this?” The owl might not be my biggest fan, but messing with my personal possessions seemed a bit much even for him.
The crow fluffed his feathers, looking agitated. I tucked the journal under my arm. I hadn’t thought to see if my room had a lock, and I’d left in a hurry that morning, but I’d assumed the journal was in my rucksack where I’d left it. Who’d moved it? Only my family even knew it existed.
The crow flew to land on my shoulder. If nothing else, I was glad of the company. The library held far more secrets than I’d expected, and today had been as filled with surprises as the previous one. Yet despite the hair-raising start I’d had, I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere but here.
9
The next morning, the library thought it was funny to turn the corridor outside my room into a staircase. Every time I reached the top, another set of stairs waited for me. Just what I needed after a night of bad dreams of falling into the vampire’s basement. Except in my dream, I’d fallen into a room containing the vampires from Dad’s shop, and the coffin, which was empty, had my name on it.
So much for a relaxing start to the weekend.
Estelle rescued me on the fifth corridor.
“Rory! This way. Cut that out,” she said sternly, addressing the library in general. She stood in front of a door which I recognised as my own room’s.
“You mean I never left the corridor?” I sighed. “First my dad’s journal goes missing and now this. Where is Jet?”
“Haven’t a clue,” said Estelle. “You sound like you need a whole pot of coffee in you. Also, what do you mean, your dad’s journal went missing?”
“Someone took it,” I said. “I found it on the shelf downstairs and I’ve never taken it out of my room.”
“Maybe the library moved it,” she said. “Trying to shelve it. It can pick up on the presence of other books in here. We usually have to give warning before bringing in books from outside. You brought some, didn’t you?”
“Yes…” I stopped. “Oh, is that why it keeps pranking me whenever I try to leave my room?”
“Possibly,” she said. “Maybe it needs time to learn to trust you.”
We headed downstairs to the kitchen.
“It’s a bit difficult for me to return that trust when I keep falling into basements containing sleeping vampires,” I said.
“Vampires?” She pushed open the kitchen door and walked in. “Oh, you found Albert.”
“That’s his name? Cass didn’t say.” I found two mugs filled with coffee that someone had left out on the side, along with two plates of toast. “What’s this, a peace offering after last night?”
“I’d guess so.” She picked up a mug and plate. “I’ve never seen Mum and Aunt Candace go at it like that for a while. Cass didn’t help. Did you say you talked to her?”
“I ran into her on the way out of the basement.” I picked up the other mug, taking a sniff. Extra strong coffee. Aunt Adelaide must have been taking notes on me. “She said Grandma knew he was there.”
“Oh, yeah.” Estelle led the way into the living room and sat down. “We call him Albert, but we don’t know his actual name. Mum said she never met him before.”
“She never…” I trailed off. “You have a vampire in your basement and you don’t know who he is or how he got there?”
“Well, no,” she admitted, taking a bite of toast. “I know, it’s odd. Beyond odd, but that pretty much sums up Grandma. She did create the library, after all.”
“No kidding.” I bit into my own piece of toast. “I’m still kind of lost on how you managed to go for years without knowing there was a vampire sleeping underneath your feet.”
“Oh, we found him when I was a toddler,” she said. “I fell through the trapdoor by accident.”
I choked on my toast. “What, you mean he was there before you were born?”
“Grandma would never admit it, but it must have been.”
“And it’s normal for vampires to take decades-long naps?” I swallowed my mouthful. “Wish the ones hunting for Dad’s journal would do the same.” Last night’s dream was a little too recent to make jokes about vampires.
“They won’t find you here,” she said. “This is the safest place you could possibly be. From vampires, anyway.”
“Except the one in the basement.”
“Relax. If he was going to wake up, he would have done so when Cass was arguing with Samson the other day.”
I sipped my coffee. “Is Samson permanently banned?”
“No, we rarely issue full bans. The library’s used for too many functions and other events. I know for a fact Samson wanted to perform at the next poetry night… I think Duncan would have wanted it to go ahead. How did you end up finding the basement, anyway?”
“I was looking for a book for Zee,” I explained. “Cooking up a Storm. I never did find it.”
“Oh, I’ll handle that,” she said. “How did you get out of the vampire’s room?”
“I used magic.” I put down my mug. “I was going to tell you last night, but everyone was a bit distracted.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she said. “You used biblio-witchery again?”
I nodded. “It works with any pen and paper?”
“It works better with our specially designed ones, but in a pinch, your magic will always come through for you,” she said.
When we’d finished breakfast, I went with her to get the book for Zee. This time, the floor didn’t give way, and we retrieved the book without any encounters with vampires, sleeping or otherwise. But handing it over to Zee would have to wait. The instant the library doors opened, an influx of academy students swarmed in, ready to argue over the limited copies of textbooks to write their essays at the last minute. Estelle had to run around breaking up fights all morning, while I fetched copies of every textbook on the university’s reading list.
I stood on a ladder, reaching for a book on one of the higher shelves, when someone cleared his throat behind me.
“Can you pass me that?” Dominic asked, pointing at the fifth shelf.
“Sure.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the way vampires moved. Then again, the Reaper moved just as swiftly and silently. I pulled down the book he’d asked for—Curses and Charms, Volume Five.
“Are you sure you should be checking out books on curses so recently after Duncan’s murder?” I asked.
“Why, has Edwin come back?” he asked. “Last I heard, he was questioning Duncan’s close family.”
“Is one of them likely to have cursed him?” I’d forgotten to ask Aunt Candace if she’d made any more progress on the book after yesterday’s disastrous meal with Elliot.
“I haven’t the faintest clue.” He gave the book’s cover a scan. “Hmm. I suppose it is in bad taste. I’ll ask Mr Bennet instead. He probably knows about the fang-shrinking curse.”
“That’s what you wanted it for? Shrinking your own fangs? Or someone else’s?”
“They do get in the way sometimes.” He handed me the book back, and in a flash, he was gone. Vampires.
I found the textbook I’d been searching for, hopped off the ladder, and made my way through the crowded Reading Corner. Dominic hadn’t picked the best timing to ask for a book on curses, though admittedly, people in the magical world probably looked them up all the time.
I handed the textbook to the s
tudent who’d asked for it, spotting Samson sitting apart from the others. Judging by the small mountain of books beside him, he had no intention of returning any of them.
Speaking of returns… I had no business making assumptions, but it wouldn’t hurt to see if Dominic’s story held up.
I walked to the front desk and picked up the record book. He hadn’t returned anything today… hang on a minute. He’d mentioned Mr Bennet. Might Dominic be the curse-breaker’s client, the one Mr Bennet had refused to tell me about? That didn’t immediately make either of them guilty, but if Mr Bennet had borrowed the book in order to help his client, perhaps Dominic had handled it before Duncan’s death. Had he told the police?
I walked to the front doors and opened them, then halted on the doorstep. I’d never catch up to the vampire on foot. Never mind. He’d be back in the library before long.
A gust of wind crashed into me and a man appeared from thin air just in front of the doorstep.
A vampire—not Dominic. It was the man from the shop, who’d called himself Mortimer Vale. One of the vampires who’d been after Dad’s journal.
He disappeared again, and I felt a hand close over my mouth. He’d moved behind me in a heartbeat, stopping me from getting back into the library. I grabbed for the door handle, but he caught my hand before it could make contact. A scream rose in my throat, cut off by his other hand.
“Quiet, little girl.”
“I’m not—a child,” I said, my voice muffled. Great comeback there, Rory. “Let me go!”
“You’re a child to us,” he purred in my ear. “And you won’t be going back into that library until you listen to what I have to say.”
“I won’t help you.” I bit his hand and gave another muffled yelp of pain. Ow. His skin was like concrete.
He wrenched my arm behind my back, and I whimpered.
“What you’re going to do,” he said, “is fetch that journal. You know what journal I mean. You’re going to bring it to me, and you’re not going to tell anyone. That clear?”
“You’re breaking my arm!” I gasped, drawing in a breath for another scream.