by Sarra Cannon
Essex shifted in his seat. He didn't answer. He simply looked down at the book and picked at the tattered edges of the binding.
"He stole it," Mary Anne blurted out.
"I am planning to return it," he said quickly. "I only needed to see if my own father's name was included in one of the books."
"And was it?" I asked, trembling.
When he looked up, the pain in his eyes was heartbreaking. "No," he said. "My father's name was not there, but many others from my village and the villages near mine. It must have been a different hunter who took my father."
"I'm sorry," I said, not sure what else to say. "What happened to the hunter? The one they captured?"
"I do not know," he said. "They did not say more about her. Only that they found these books in her cave. I was too afraid to question the soldiers about what happened. I did not want them to know I had been listening."
"Where did you get the book?" I asked, wondering what other books might also be stored there. "Is there some kind of storage room where they keep them all?"
Essex nodded. "Yes," he said. "In the council's meeting hall. It is a large room here where all of our books are stored."
"Sounds like a library," I said. "Can we not just walk in and ask to see some of these books?"
His eyes grew wide and he shook his head fast. "No. Going inside the council's chamber is strictly forbidden unless you are a scholar or a translator or a member of the Underground's council," he said.
"I don't understand," I said. "How did you get the book in the first place if it's so hard to get inside?"
"It was an accident," he said. "Or perhaps it was fate. One of the soldiers telling the story that day dropped it in the marketplace very near to my tent. I picked it up quickly, before he knew it was gone. When I discovered what was inside, I knew I must study it before I could let them know that I had it."
I thought for a minute, letting Essex's story sink in. "You said they also had spell books?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Did they say anything about what was in those books? Anything at all?"
Mary Anne sat up straighter. "I think I just got what you're thinking," she said to me. "If the hunters here live for hundreds of years, who's to say some of those spell books wouldn't be extremely old?"
"Or extremely rare?" I added, excitement pulsing through my veins. "What if one of the books they found had some kind of clue about how to break the spell that ties me to Aerden?"
"Aerden?" Essex said, confused. "You are tied to the twin of Denaer?"
"Yes," Mary Anne said. "Only we call him Jackson, not Denaer. Harper is the future Prima of the demon gate town where his brother Aerden is being held captive. Her family has been tied to Aerden's power for a hundred years."
"All I want is to be able to break the spell that holds us together," I said. "I spent some time in our world looking for any kind of clue as to how to do it, but the only things we found would mean that either me or Aerden had to die."
"I wish I could be of more service," Essex said. "I have not known about the way things work in your world, so I have not known of any way to break this spell you are talking about. However, I do know that the Underground's council holds hundreds of tomes that once belonged to the Order of Shadows. Some of them date back to when the Order first crossed into our world over two hundred years ago. Maybe one of these books could contain the information you are seeking?"
My breath caught in my chest. Could this really be happening? Had I really just stumbled onto the one secret here that might save all of us?
One thing was certain.
I had to get into that library no matter what it took.
It's Complicated
I sat in the hallway until the sounds of the marketplace died down and the Underground went to sleep. It was hard to keep my eyes open, but I needed to see Jackson. Since I had no way of contacting him directly, my only option was to sit outside his room and wait.
I was glad we were the only ones living on this hall or else people would have started getting suspicious. So far, I'd been out here for at least four or five hours. What was he up to all the time that he almost never came back to his room?
With a twinge of jealousy, I realized Lea was never in her room either. Did that mean they were together a lot? Had his feelings for me changed so much that he would honestly prefer being around her than me?
Luckily, I didn't have to wait much longer before he came walking down the corridor. If I'd had to be out there much longer alone with my thoughts, who knew what I might have come up with to worry about? Of course, it didn't help that when he finally did appear, he wasn't alone.
"Hi," I said as he and Lea approached.
"What are you doing out here?" Lea asked. "It's practically the middle of the night. Did you get locked out?"
"No," I said, not letting her snarky attitude frazzle me. I turned to meet Jackson's eyes, ignoring Lea all together. "I need to talk to you, and since I never see you, I figured this was the best chance I had of getting you alone."
Jackson looked to Lea as if asking for permission. My cheeks grew hot, and I fidgeted while I waited for him to respond.
Lea rolled her eyes. "It's fine with me," she said. "Just don't do it out here where someone might see you. Bring it inside, okay?"
I looked around, wondering who exactly she thought was going to see us down an empty corridor in the middle of the night. I didn't protest, though. I just wanted to talk to him. I didn't care where.
I turned toward his room, expecting him to invite me inside, but he moved in front of the door and shook his head.
"Let's go into your suite," he said.
The three of us walked into the bright light of the suite. Lea said goodnight and slipped into her bedroom. Mary Anne had gone to bed hours ago.
After weeks of being apart, Jackson and I were finally alone again.
My mouth grew dry and butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Every inch of space between us burned with tension.
"What is it?" he asked. "Did you need something?"
His business-like tone hurt me. "Why are you acting like this?" I asked, apparently missing the filter that should have been working between my brain and my mouth.
"Like what?" he asked, shifting his weight and avoiding my eyes.
"Cold," I said. "Like there's nothing between us."
He looked up, a split second of regret in his eyes that was immediately replaced by annoyance. "You do realize that you're the one who was acting cold to me first, right?"
My face grew tense. "What did you expect? You broke my heart," I said.
He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. "Is this what you waited up to tell me?"
I drew in a long breath and tried to calm my rocketing pulse. "No," I said. "I wanted to talk to you about the possibility of joining in with you guys on whatever it is you're working on down here."
He snapped his head up, surprised. "Joining in?"
"Yeah," I said, pacing. "You're obviously meeting with Andros and the council a lot, and I have to assume you're talking about plans to fight against the Order, right?"
"Something like that," he mumbled.
"Okay, so I want in."
He shook his head and walked over to the couch, leaning against the back side of it. "It's not that easy, Harper. The council accepted you as a resident. That doesn't mean they want you in on all their secret plans."
"Am I not a part of this?" I asked. "Have I not proven my commitment to destroying the Order? Or is it just that you don't think anything I do is going to make a difference?"
Jackson sighed. "It's not about what I think."
"Yes it is," I said. "I've seen the way Andros hangs on every word of yours. He trusts you. He listens to you."
He shook his head and paced the area in front of me. "It's complicated, Harper," he said. "I wish I could help, but things take time down here. I need more than a couple of weeks to convince them to change the entire way they
think about human witches."
Bullshit.
I didn't believe him. There was some other reason he was shutting me out. I could feel it. And I could tell he was struggling with it to. But why? Did it have something to do with Lea? He was always looking to her for permission these days, as if he answered to her.
"Fine," I said. "But what about training? Can you get me into any of the Resistance training classes?"
Jackson's eyes grew wide as if I'd just asked him to fly me to Mt. Fuji. "Why would you want to do that? And how do you even know about the training classes?"
"Do you think I want to be weak and powerless for the rest of my life?" I asked. "If I'm stuck down here, I want to at least make the most of it. I'm bored to death down here. I feel like a prisoner."
He lifted a hand in the air as if he were going to say one thing, then he put it down and turned his back on me, changing his mind. After a few moments, he finally turned back to me and said no. "I can't even ask for permission for such a thing right now," he said. "The training is for their soldiers, Harper. They don't even let all the demons down here into the training. They're certainly not going to let a human in."
I walked to the door and opened it for him, so frustrated I wanted to scream. "I don't know what's gotten into you," I said. "But you're not yourself. The Jackson I knew back home would have fought for me. I don't know what it is that's changing you here or why you can't just tell me what's really going on, but I miss you. I miss the real you."
Jackson stood there, just staring at me. I could tell I'd stuck a chord with something I'd said, but he still didn't tell me what was going on in his mind.
"Everything I've done," he said, walking toward the door. He paused right in front of me, his face so close to mine it made my heart ache. His green eyes were filled with secrets and sorrows. "I've done to protect you."
I watched as he made his way back to his room, not once looking back.
Right Place at The Right Time
The marketplace hummed with life. The late afternoon crowds filled the makeshift streets. Barely anyone noticed me anymore. I had become a permanent fixture in the Grand Hall over the past couple of weeks. I don't know if that meant they had begun to trust me, exactly, but at least they no longer seemed to fear me.
Today and every day since Essex first told me about the library, I'd spent at least a few hours here watching the soldiers and the council members come and go. I wanted to know how often the soldiers seemed to go on missions. And I wanted to see where it was the council members kept disappearing to. Since the council's library was such a restricted place, I knew I couldn't just walk up and ask where it was.
In some ways, I had become exactly what they'd all feared I was all along. A spy.
The difference was that the last thing I wanted to do was spy for the Order. No, I gathered information for myself only.
If Jackson and Lea had insisted I be included in all the meetings and treated as an equal, I never would have gotten myself into this situation of spying and sneaking around to get my own information. But since they had decided to shut me out and treat me more as a visitor than an actual participant in this war against the Order, what choice did I have?
So I watched.
I made notes in my journal.
Since I didn't have a clock or a sun to keep time for me, I kept time based on the rhythms of the people. In the mornings when I heard the door of our suite slam closed, I knew Lea had left for her daily meetings or whatever it was she and Jackson did all day out of sight from the rest of us. In my mind, I labeled this as the beginning of the morning. I spent this time working on my magic. When the smells of food on the grill stretched all the way down to the suite from the marketplace, I figured it was about noon. Lunchtime.
Then, when the voices grew louder and the market buzzed with conversation and excitement of another finished workday, I knew it was quitting time. Somewhere around five or so in the afternoon. This was when the soldiers and the council quit their work and emerged from their secret caves like tiny ants from their hill.
It took me a few days to pinpoint the exact location of the training area. At first, it seemed the soldiers just magically appeared out of nowhere. I recognized them by their matching black uniforms and serious looks. I had expected the army to be made up of mostly men, much like the army back home. I was pleasantly surprised to see an equal number of men and women had joined in the training and fighting against the Order.
Around this time in the afternoon, I tried to position myself in different parts of the market, hoping to get a glimpse of the soldiers pouring out of some secret corridor or area. It wasn't until the fourth day that I found myself in exactly the right place at the right time.
I got to the marketplace a little early and walked around toward the very back, as far away from the entry staircase as I could get. I walked along the back wall, which as far as I could tell, was just a solid wall with no caves or entrances of any kind. I was actually trying to get to the other side of the market when part of the wall next to me raised up like a trap door. Startled, I jumped back and wedged myself between the fabric of two nearby tents.
Immediately, my fear was replaced with secret joy. A group of soldiers emerged from the hidden door, talk of the latest training session on their lips. I stayed hidden for the next half hour as hundreds of soldiers gradually poured from the corridor.
When they were all through and the door was closed for the night, I stepped out of the dark alley between the tents and took a mental picture of my location. Just across from a purple and orange tent that sold jewelry with red stones inside. I memorized every detail of the area, then ran my hand along the wall, trying to feel the outline of the door, but there were no grooves or cracks to show it had ever existed. A magic door.
Later, I sat down in my favorite little cafe and drew a map of the marketplace, marking a special X for the secret training ground of the Resistance army.
Follow Your Friends
Finding the library was not as easy.
Unlike the soldiers, the scholars and council members didn't wear matching outfits, which made them much harder to spot. I tried to remember the faces of the demons I'd seen walking with Jackson from time to time, but I soon lost my patience and decided to stop in to see Essex at his work.
"Hey," Mary Anne said with a smile as I walked into the tent. She was sitting on top of the sales counter watching Essex direct a bunch of needles to make matching shirts in a variety of colors. "What have you been up to so far today? I feel like I've hardly seen you at all lately."
"Oh, just walking around," I said casually. I had kept my activities from Mary Anne because I didn't want her mixed up in it if I got caught. I leaned in and whispered so that Essex's mother couldn't hear me, just in case she was close by. "What about Essex's mom? Does she still give you the evil eye?"
Mary Anne giggled. "Not really," she said. "I think she's getting used to me. Look, yesterday she even gave me this leather cuff. I think it was a sort of peace offering in a way."
She held out her wrist and showed me a black leather cuff that clasped tight around her entire wrist. On the top, it was embroidered with the initials M. A. in silver thread that sparkled when she moved her wrist from side to side.
"That's beautiful," I said.
A jolt of regret ran through my heart. If an old woman with obvious prejudices toward humans could accept the fact that her son had made a very close friendship with a human girl, why was Jackson so certain no one here would understand our relationship? It didn't make any sense. Something wasn't adding up between us. There had to be more to his reasons for breaking up than what he told me.
For the most part, I'd done really well at not falling apart about the whole Jackson scenario. I'd thrown myself into other projects and found goals for myself like finding the library or working on my own magic. But with as much time as I spent alone these days, there were definitely a lot of late nights where I laid in bed just thinking about hi
m.
What was he doing down here every day? Were they planning something important? Was he going to go back for Aerden? Why was he keeping so much from me? Did he miss me the same way I missed him?
"Are you alright?" Mary Anne asked.
I came out of my thoughts and smiled. "Sorry, I think I spaced."
"You did more than space," she said. "You went into some kind of sadness coma. What's going on with you lately? I thought you'd be glad to be out of Peachville and away from all that crap the Order put you through."
I sighed. "I am glad," I said. "I just think about Lark and my other friends a lot. I wonder what they're up to. I hate not knowing what's going on in Peachville."
This wasn't exactly a lie. I did think about Peachville a lot, wondering if anyone had spoken up about their plans to sacrifice my life and transfer the line. I knew Mrs. King didn't approve, and I was sure Lark and her mother were dead set against the idea. But did they speak out? Had they been punished? Or did their fear keep them quiet?
Between worrying about them and thinking about Jackson, it was amazing I was still holding on to my sanity at all these days.
Honestly, it was the idea of having a plan of my own that kept me waking up and going through the motions each day.
Mary Anne put her hand on mine. "I know what you mean about Peachville," she said. "I thought I'd be so glad to get out of there that I would never look back, but I can't help thinking about Courtney. I didn't get a chance to explain anything to her about our plan. She probably has no idea what happened to either one of us."
I nodded, ashamed to admit I hadn't been thinking about Courtney in all of this. "To tell you the truth, I bet they just wiped her memories of us, like they did with me when I first got here."
"Well, I kind of hope they did," she said. "That should at least keep her safe from them."
She had a point. My hope was that all of my friends and allies in Peachville would be safe and sound when I finally returned. I couldn't bear it if they'd gotten hurt because of me and the choices I'd made.