“Nothing,” Stella said with a hesitant smile. Crimson words resembling caterpillars crawled out of her notebook as though creeping, not wanting to be seen:Inferior. Misleading. Abscond.
A testament to her last relationship? Stella refocused on the mother and glanced at the returned book.Peter Panwas printed in gold letters across the glossy paperback. She thought of the young boy she’d imagined leaping toward her in the antiquities archives. She fluttered the pages with her fingers and out slipped a few winged words.Come away with me. Never grow up. Always believe.Stella slapped her hand on the book, and the words rushed off the desk. She looked up at the mother.
“Is Arnie around? I wanted to thank him,” she said.
Stella nodded and pointed toward the stairs. “He’s up there somewhere. I’ll get this returned for you.”
The mother smiled and nodded. “I’ll see if I can catch him after story time.”
Stella stared down at J. M. Barrie’s novel. So many words today. They hadn’t been this active in years. Something odd was definitely happening.
She stackedPeter Panon top of Washington Irving’s stories while her fingertips burned. She heard Arnie’s designer shoes approaching her from behind, and she whirled around.
Arnie lumbered across the way with an armful of books and a stack of folders. He raised his eyebrows at her in question.
“Someone returned a book with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in it, and thenPeter Panwas just turned in,” Stella said.
Arnie dropped the books on the desk. “And I had scrambled eggs for breakfast with two biscuits.”
Stella frowned. “I’m serious, Arnie.”
“So am I. I shouldn’t have had two, but I couldn’t stop myself this morning.” He patted his rotund belly and shrugged. “But I’man old man. Shouldn’t I enjoy the simple things in life, like buttermilk biscuits?”
“Arnie,” Stella said and sighed. “Those are characters from the vision—thedreamI had.”
Arnie placed the stack of folders next to the books as the front door opened again. “Stella, you work all day, nearly every day, in books. You’ll dream about them now and again.”
“No, I’m talking about last night when I was downstairs in the archives, and I... Well, I guess I fell, but I thought I saw Peter Pan and a super-skinny man. He was reciting psalms, and he had green eyes. And there was a blond woman. Beautiful, like a fairy-tale queen or something.”
Arnie stepped toward the front of the desk. “Sounds like a womanI’dlike to dream about. Do you think she can cook?” He sidestepped Stella. “Good morning, Mrs. Little. How can I help you?”
“Good morning, Arnie,” Mrs. Little said. “I almost hate to return this one.”
Stella turned to face the tall, middle-aged patron just as she heaved a heavy book onto the high counter. Stella tilted her head and read the spine.Greek Mythology.
Mrs. Little propped her arms on the desk and leaned toward Arnie. Her glossy maroon lipstick shone in the fluorescent lighting. A smile stretched across her rosy face and dimpled her cherub cheeks. “Can you imagine being so beautiful that people would go to war over you? Just to have your love?”
Arnie chuckled. “Not in the least. Did you enjoy your reading?”
“Very much. I need another suggestion. Something mysterious, I think.”
Arnie walked out of the desk area and led Mrs. Little toward the staircase where adult fiction lived on the second floor. As theywalked up the steps, Stella heard her ask, “Do you really think Helen of Troy was that beautiful?”
“Stunning,” Arnie said. “Breathtakingly stunning.”
Stella stared at the returned mythology book, and very slowly, she reached out and touched it. The hardcover heated beneath her fingertips. A woman’s laugh, followed by the echo of Greek words, drifted through the library. Stella thought of a woman whose voice was as smooth as honey, whose face she could not look upon directly.Helen of Troy.
Stella glanced toward the vault door leading to the antiquities archives. “What in the world is going on?”
Chapter 5
Later that afternoon Arnie shooed Stella out of the library, forcing her to take off early. “The cozy-mystery group rescheduled,” he said. “One of the members inherited a fortune and has mysteriously disappeared, leaving no note and not responding to texts or phone calls. When they went to her house to check on her, they found evidence of a break-in and two untouched glasses of wine on the dining room table. The group let me know that the game is afoot.”
Stella snorted a laugh. “You just made that up.”
“I did, but not about them rescheduling.” He motioned around the library. “There are two people on the computers, someone reading yesterday’s newspaper, and one kid researching how to build a floating maglev train. I’d bet you lunch tomorrow that the evening stretch will be duller than last night’s dishwater.”
“It’s not as though I have anything else to do.” Other than what she’d been doing all day: allowing the conversation with Ariel yesterday, the mysterious words, the returned books combined with the archives incident, and Arnie’s college brochure surprise to run on aloop in her mind. Stella hesitated. She hadn’t broached the archives subject again yet. Maybe now was the best time. “About last night in the archives, can we talk about what I saw—”
