by Anne Riley
Only the Bestia stays behind. She lies in a mud puddle, fingers of crimson leaking into the murky water beneath her.
Clutching the banister, I fumble down the steps and reach the ground floor just as the guys burst into the house. All three of them are cut and bruised. Albert presses one hand to a gash on the bridge of his nose while twisting the deadbolts into place with the other.
“What happened?” Casey demands.
“Al knocked her out, exactly as he should’ve,” Isaac replies, examining the deep scratches on his forearm. He licks his lips. “Then this white-haired bloke came out of nowhere and shot her.”
Silence.
“Dead?” Casey asks.
Dan nods, a sharp movement. “For sure.”
More silence. The anger on their faces doesn’t make sense.
“The woman who tried to break in and attack all of us—she’s dead?” I ask, just to make sure I understand the situation.
They nod.
“It’s worse now than if she were still alive,” Casey says, but whatever explanation she might have given dies as her brother’s threatening gaze lands on her.
“What’s worse?” I say.
More silence.
I shift my weight and cross my arms. “No one’s going to tell me?”
Albert’s gaze flickers to mine. “The woman out there—the Bestia—she knew your name, Rosie. She said it while we were moving the fight onto the heath. They’re hunting you and I’m sure it has something to do with your grandfather. If they realize you’re aware of them, they’ll track you even more viciously. They might—”
“Wait for me under a willow tree in the middle of a storm?” I say flatly. “Or maybe even follow me to a pub and try to gun me down?”
He presses his lips together. Isaac gives me a steely gaze as blood drips freely from his forearm to his fingertips. Casey’s mouth keeps opening and closing, like she’s trying to say something that will ease the tension but she can’t figure out which words to use. Dan’s gaze is locked on Casey, and for once, his eyes carry no hint of amusement.
Finally, Casey says, “They’re hunting you? Rosie, you didn’t tell me that. If I knew they’d marked you specifically, I never would have told you anything.”
Albert rounds on her. “You told her? What did you say?”
“She told me what you wouldn’t,” I say, pinning him with my eyes. “She told me what they really are.”
Albert looks at me. The muscles in his jaw tighten. “Is that all she told you?” His gaze flickers to Casey, who gives him a shaky nod.
“Yes,” I say. “But there’s more, I know there is. And if you won’t tell me, then I’ll just find out another way.” I peer through the peephole in the door. “Is it safe to go home?”
Albert shakes his head. “You can’t walk alone. I’ll drive—”
“No, you won’t.” My vision has practically gone red. “You think you get to decide all these things for me. What I’m allowed to know, where I’m allowed to be while you fight, how I’m allowed to get home. I’m involved in this, whether you like it or not, and it’s time for you to start treating me as one of you.”
On some level, I feel the foolishness of what I’m doing, but that awareness is no match for my rage. I wrench open the door and fly down the steps, racing as fast as my legs will carry me all the way to Nana’s blue door. Maybe Albert’s trying to protect me, but I’m in too deep for that. There’s a connection here, some common thread running from Papa, to Albert and his friends, to me, and then to the Mortiferi.
Albert’s voice echoes in my head. She knew your name, Rosie. They’re hunting you.
Terror shoots through my gut, but I shove it back down. I don’t care if information makes me vulnerable. I can’t live in ignorance just for the sake of personal safety when so much else seems to be at stake.
I’m going to find out just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
TWENTY-ONE
AFTER LUNCH THE NEXT DAY, I BEGIN OPERATION Figure-It-Out-Myself.
The Internet might be useless when it comes to information on Servatores and Mortiferi, but that doesn’t mean information about them doesn’t exist. If the Servatores really are centuries old, there must be a record of them somewhere. And if there are records, they would probably date from well before the time of technology, which means they would be written on actual paper. So instead of spending my day experimenting with different search term combinations, I’m using something most people have forgotten all about—the library. There’s a small one in Blackheath, but it’s so tiny, I doubt it has a large archive collection.
My best bet is Greenwich.
North Greenwich Library sits near the Naval College, facing the Thames. It looms three stories tall, and its walls are gray stone with white trim and rugged wooden doors. A hint of mold edges the window frames, and the metal bike rack out front is rusted and bent. To the left of the building sits a red telephone booth, the kind that is somehow quintessentially British, yet never actually used for making calls. A group of French schoolchildren are currently seeing how many of them can fit inside.
I push through the front doors into a cool lobby with white marble floors. Straight ahead is the main room, with carved wooden archways separating fiction from nonfiction. To my right is a long glass countertop with a massive clock hanging on the wall behind it. Two men, grim-faced and gray-haired, sort through a stack of thick reference books behind the counter. They spare me a glance when I pass, but don’t offer any help.
That’s fine with me; I’d rather not be noticed.
I amble toward the center of the lobby, where a metal stand shows a map of the building. I’m on the main floor with fiction and nonfiction books. On the floor above me are the children and teen sections, and above that, reference. That’s the most likely place for what I need, but there’s a small note at the bottom of the map. I bend to read it.
* Special Collections located in basement.
Hours M-F, 8:00—4:00.
“Aha,” I mutter. “Jackpot.”
The old men behind the glass counter frown at me.
With an apologetic wave, I move to the staircase on my left and try to keep calm as I hurry down it. Whatever the Mortiferi are, and whatever my grandfather had to do with them, I don’t need Albert to spoon-feed me information whenever and however he feels like it.
At the bottom of the stairs, I reach a rusted metal door with a keypad set into the wall next to it. Even though I have a feeling it won’t work, I grab the handle and give it a tug. Locked.
“Huh,” I say, stepping back to examine the keypad. There’s an intercom below it. I press a small white button and wait.
A low, uninterested voice comes over the speaker. “Yes?”
“Uh, hi. I’m here to…” Uh-oh. I didn’t expect to have to explain myself so quickly. “I’m here to do some research.”
Something clicks softly above me. It’s a white security camera in the corner above the door.
“Bet you are,” says the voice, which carries an oddly familiar tone. “Hang on.”
The intercom clicks off and I wait, arms crossed, without knowing who or what I’m waiting for. After about a minute, the door swings open and—
“Isaac?” I feel my nose scrunch up. “I thought you worked at the Blackheath Library.”
He regards me with a tired expression. “Nope.”
Long pause.
“Great,” I say. “Well, I…”
One of his eyebrows twitches. The rest of his face remains stoically uninterested.
“You know why I’m here,” I whisper, leaning close to him. “Will you help me?”
His stare makes me feel like I’m covered in ice. I’m sure he’ll refuse me after I ran out on Albert last night, but then he backs into the hallway behind the door and gives me the tiniest flick of his head. Assuming he means for me to follow him, I dart through the door and stretch my strides to match his.
This section of the building looks more
like a medieval dungeon than a library, with low wooden rafters and cool stone walls. The floor is hardwood, scarred by decades of dropped books, pointy heels, and—knowing the English—the occasional fumbled cup of tea. Although given how fragile most of the things in this collection probably are, tea may not be allowed down here at all.
At the end of the hallway lies another set of doors. They’re metal, with small windows set into their centers. Instead of a keypad, Isaac holds his ID card up to a scanner, which beeps and releases a mechanism inside the doors. He pushes one of them open and holds it for me as I walk through.
“The special collections room,” he whispers.
The space is vast and cluttered, with wide-planked floors and walls made of the same stone as the hallway. Since we’re underground, the walls are uninterrupted by windows—something that would probably bother me if I wasn’t so distracted by the dozens of aisles filled with file cabinets, plastic-wrapped volumes, and what look like treasure chests. The air carries the tangy scent of old paper and ink. I close my eyes and I can almost feel the secrets swirling around me. Long, wooden tables extend down the center of the room, with three chairs on each side and green glass lamps in their centers.
“Where should I start?” I wave at the vast expanse of materials on each aisle. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”
“Start wherever you like. Just make sure your hands are clean, and be careful when you turn the pages.” He gives me the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen from him. Then he turns around and heads for a desk at the back of the room.
“Wait a second! Aren’t you going to help me—you know? Find what I need?”
He looks over his shoulder. “I let you in. That’s all I’m willing to do.”
I plop down at one of the tables. I suppose I can’t expect him to be loyal to me over Albert, but I was hoping he’d steer me in the right direction.
“Isaac,” I say, and he turns around again. “Let’s keep this between us, okay?”
His gaze shifts to something over my shoulder. “Might be a bit difficult to do that, mate.”
I swivel around. Albert is standing behind me, expressionless. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and uncharacteristically nice jeans. A nametag on the pocket of his shirt reads ALBERT S. It’s the gold-colored plastic kind that pins on, the same kind I have to wear during shifts at The Chicken Cottage. For a brief moment I picture Albert working at my restaurant, his arms laden with trays of deep-fried wings and thighs, offering more sweet tea to greasy-lipped customers. My mind rejects the image instantly.
“You both work here?” I say to Isaac. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Isaac shrugs. “You didn’t ask.” He turns his back to us and saunters to the desk.
I face Albert with narrowed eyes. He gives me a wry look. “I told you I worked at the library,” he says.
“I assumed you meant the one in Blackheath.” I hold my hands up. “Trust me, I didn’t come here looking for you. Why this one, anyway? There must be two or three libraries closer to your house.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Hmm.” I lift my chin. “Well, I have some research to do. My primary sources—” I give him a significant look “—aren’t much help, so I’m taking matters into my own hands.”
He frowns as I stand up. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
I let out an indignant laugh. “Did you expect me to just give up? How could I be involved in all this without knowing every possible detail? You say it’s dangerous for me to know about the Mortiferi—”
He winces and looks around. “Not so loud.”
“—yet you’ve admitted they’re hunting me. My grandfather died saying their name in my mind. If you won’t tell me anything else, then yeah, I’ll figure it out on my own.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Maybe he’s going to throw me out.
I wait.
He chews his bottom lip.
Finally he says, “Come with me,” and walks toward the back of the room. There’s no door over here, so I’m pretty sure he’s not throwing me out. Which means he’s… helping me?
Oh, please let that be it.
Even though I sort of like the idea of digging through all these fragile documents without Albert’s help, things will be much easier with his guidance. A thrill shoots through my veins as I follow him past the tables, through a maze of file cabinets and locked boxes and cluttered shelves, to the last aisle in the back of the room.
The light barely reaches back here, and the air seems even mustier than when I first came in. At the end of the aisle, behind a large black file cabinet labeled Geological Sample Reports, 1954-1958, is an ancient-looking wooden door with an iron lock and handle. The wood is a little warped and splintered; how old is this thing? A thumbpad sits just above the lock—same as the one at Albert’s flat. He shoves the file cabinet to the side. It moves reluctantly, rolling on squeaky wheels.
“Keep close,” he whispers, pressing his thumb to the pad. “It’s dark in places and you can lose your footing.” A mechanism in the door whirs in response to Albert’s thumbprint and he pushes against the iron handle until the door creaks open.
“This door looks a hundred years old,” I whisper. “How did the library wire it for thumbprint entry?”
“The library didn’t.” He turns to me with a grin. “Casey did.”
“Casey?”
“She did the flat, as well. Anything electronic that seems rather amiss, she’s probably responsible for. This library has always been owned by a Servator. That way, we can do whatever we want.”
“But there are only a few Servatores in London. Who’s the owner?”
He smiles sadly. “Until a couple years ago, it was this bloke named Ben Burgess. He was killed in the process of rescuing a young girl from her would-be kidnapper. The girl got away, but the kidnapper, it turned out, had a knife.”
“Oh, man. I’m glad she was safe, but that’s awful about Ben.”
He nods his agreement. “Ben’s will left the library to me; we were quite good mates, he and I, and all Servatores have a will. So until further notice—or until I kick the bucket—I’m the owner.”
“What?” I laugh. “You own this entire library? Doesn’t that take up a lot of your time?”
“Not really. The library is fully staffed, and I’m an excellent delegator. Plus, a busy staff doesn’t have much time to ask questions or notice strange doors behind file cabinets.” He gestures toward the space on the other side of the door. It’s so dark, I can’t see what we’re about to walk into. “Go ahead. I’ll close up behind us.”
His position in the doorway forces me to pass close to him—close enough to smell the scent of rain he always seems to carry. My fingers leap for my necklace, and I rub my thumb over the gold rings as Albert shuts the door behind us.
“Is this the part where you kill me?” I whisper.
His laugh seems to fill the tight space. “Something tells me you’d tear my arm off if I so much as touched you right now, so I guess the killing will have to wait until you don’t see it coming. Watch your step, and try not to panic.”
I hear him crouch down, then stand back up. A light clicks on; he must keep a flashlight in here. As the beam travels from his shoes to the other side of the space, I can see we’re standing at the top of a twisted stone staircase. The light barely reaches the first few steps before the rest are lost in darkness.
“I thought we were already in the basement,” I mutter.
He moves past me to the top of the stairs. “Things aren’t always what they seem. Be careful—these medieval staircases aren’t exactly proportional.”
I balk. “It’s not really medieval, is it?”
“Eleventh century. The library was built on the site of an old prison. These stairs led down to the torture chambers.”
“No way,” I say as we ease down the first few steps. The stone wall is surprisingly cold beneath my fingers. “Torture chambe
rs?”
“Don’t worry; we use it for much nobler purposes now.” He pauses and looks over his shoulder. Even in the dim light, his gaze is sharp and clear. “Last chance to back out, Rosie Clayton. Once you see what I’m about to show you, there’s no going back.”
“Nothing will stop me at this point.”
He regards me for a moment. “Fair enough. Down to the torture chambers we go.”
There’s no rail to hold—just the stone walls that curve down around us like a granite cocoon. The air grows damper with every step and I force my breathing to stay even as the space constricts. Albert’s flashlight bounces in his hand, sending the beam from one side of the staircase to the other, and I try to ignore the stains and cracks it reveals. How many people were dragged down these stairs toward a fate worse than death? How many screams ricocheted off these stones? How many of these stains are blood?
“Hey,” Albert says, stopping. “Are you all right?”
I press a hand to my stomach. Now that I hear how strained my breathing has become, I understand his concern. “I’m okay. Just imagining things.”
He’s a couple of steps below me, which puts our faces at the same height. “Imagining what?” His voice is little more than a whisper, but it echoes around me as if he had shouted.
“People,” I manage, waving around the staircase. “Here.”
The flashlight hangs from his hand, its beam casting a white circle around our feet. For a moment, the only sound is my labored breathing and the pounding of my heart in my ears.
Then he says, “Right,” and wraps his hand around mine.
All the air in my lungs seems to evaporate.
I jerk my hand back and stumble against the stairs, catching myself just before I start to tumble down however many are left.
“What are you doing?” I shout.
He throws a hand into the air. “Trying to comfort you!”
I stare at him.
He glares back.
“Oh,” I say.
His expression is as closed off as a high-security lockdown gate. “Obviously, that was not a good decision.”