Belfry bobbed his tiny head up and down rapidly, the motion so obvious that both Gwen and Jackson seemed to lean in a little closer to watch him do it. “I see,” the sheriff said, although I wasn’t quite sure what it was he was seeing. His sharp amber gaze flicked from Belfry to me and lingered on my face, as if he were reading me like a book.
Gwen nudged him in the ribs with an elbow, and he jerked upright, his expression smoothing out. I received a sympathetic half-smile from Gwen that almost put us back in the friendly welcome zone. My stomach swooped, was that it? Had they just accepted my weirdness and moved on?
“Well, to answer your earlier question,” Jackson said calmly, with the kind of tone that carried authority, “you’ll have to discuss that with Grandma Liz. She is, after all, the one in charge of the library project.” He said it very officially, as if it weren’t a little bit of everyone’s business in a town this small. I was pretty sure I’d already met half the people living here, and I could count them on both hands.
“Okay,” I agreed. “I guess I’ll just do that.” My hand slid to my jeans pocket, touching the shape of my phone beneath. I was so intensely curious about the possibility of even more interesting books that it was tempting to call her right now.
Gwen knew me quite well, given that we’d only met a few days ago. Sharing a bottle of red did that, I supposed. She started laughing and wagged a finger at me. “No, not now! Dinner first, okay? Liz isn’t much for sleep, you can call her any time.”
Oh, yes! Dinner,Belfry wholeheartedly agreed. He fluttered away, zipping up into the air before zooming around the large, cobweb-laden chandelier. I could hear the quite distinct crunch, followed by a moan of satisfaction that probably only I could hear. Yuck.
“Yes,” a voice said, coming from deep within the shadows between two shelves. “Dinner seems prudent, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 14
Luther
Thorne’s warning gnawed at my skull as I rushed through the woods back to town, his words a rasp of foreboding I could not shake. It was as vague and unclear as could be expected when working from texts sometimes centuries old, or older. He wouldn’t have had time yet to look at the third-century manuscript I’d just hand-delivered, but I had a feeling it was going to cover more of the topic he’d just disclosed to me. A Galamut… the name brought forth a deep sense of dread. I had a feeling we were speaking of a danger so deadly we’d locked it away and stopped speaking of it.
The kind of danger souls older than ours had decided needed a guardian pair, like a dragon and a nymph. But twenty years ago, after a terrible storm and a terrible fight up in the hills behind Rosemary’s farm, that pair had lost. The dragon, Chardum, had vanished without a trace, and I’d looked, we’d all looked, for months to no avail. Zachary had just packed his bags, a shell of a nymph, and walked out of town, never to be heard from again.
That was a raw wound nobody in the Hollow wanted to discuss. Not only had we failed to find Chardum’s trapped form in the rubble behind the farm, we’d also failed to realize the pair had been under a curse, one that had ultimately taken Zachary’s life. It was a small miracle he’d found a way to work around the curse and draw his daughter to the town. Her arrival last year had brought so many changes. I was still getting used to them, but I had to admit, some were good. Others… not so much.
Like the Sunworld Corporation arriving and trying to buy up our land. They still had a foothold, still owned half the empty properties on the edge of town. They’d fought for a stretch of land behind Rosy’s farm, and… whatever darkness had been imprisoned there, it was gone now, thanks to them. Perhaps the one active presence of their malice needed a visit to answer some enlightening questions. Kiran, the weretiger, was holed up in one of the small homes on Main Street itself.
Sunworld had been after this imprisoned darkness Chardum was supposed to guard, why? Was it this Galamut thing that Thorne had unearthed information about? And was it the Galamut that was responsible for the darkness that had spread in town, and in our dreams, last winter? Everything had been quiet on that front for weeks now, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was back. The woods, especially near Thorne’s home, had felt wrong, evil.
The protective ward the warlock had burned into my throat had stopped tingling a while ago, but the unease hadn’t. Every instinct I possessed, old, honed, and rarely wrong, was screaming that Jade Whitaker was in danger. My only objective now: get her somewhere safe. My home would be preferable, but any safe place would do.
I slipped into the library as quietly as a draft through a cracked window, the scent of dust and old ink greeting me like an old, familiar rival. The place already looked improved from Jade’s efforts, still derelict in spirit, but no longer in surrender. I’d helped, and that felt good, too. When was the last time I’d tackled a physical chore with this much vigor? I couldn’t recall, but scrubbing away mold and removing the unsalvageable wood and plaster had been oddly satisfying.
Jade wasn’t alone, and, like I’d already known, she also had not packed up and left. She’d been so engrossed in her work, she’d forgotten all sense of time. I heard the voices first, hers, that sweet, dulcet tone, but tinged with something that bordered on panic. It sent my senses into high alert as I wound my way quietly through the stacks, avoiding damaged and creaking floorboards as I went.
Gwen was there too, her tone warm and coaxing, with Jackson’s calm rumble filling in the gaps. I drifted between two tall stacks, listening just long enough to hear Gwen insist that they have dinner first. “Yes, dinner seems prudent, doesn’t it?” I said as I stepped out, my voice cutting cleanly through the quiet.
Three heads snapped toward me: Gwen jumped, startled but quickly recovering, while Jackson didn’t even flinch. Of course he didn’t; the sheriff had likely heard me coming the moment I crossed the street. It was Jade’s reaction I was most interested in, however. She blinked in surprise, freezing in place as her pulse fluttered at the base of her neck—a tempting lure that drew me closer to her side.
She opened her mouth, probably to argue with Gwen, or with me, or simply with the universe, but I didn’t give her the chance. I swept around the end of the shelf and slid an arm firmly around her waist. Her warmth hit me like a struck match, threatening to ignite the instincts I worked hard to keep dormant inside my mind. I tucked her under my arm like she belonged there, because she did, even if she didn’t know it yet. She immediately dug in her heels. “Luther, what are you doing?”
“Inviting you to dinner,” I said, already steering her toward the exit. She smelled divine beneath the dust and old books, warm,alive, sweetly feminine. She was still refusing to walk, her shoes scuffing on the floor, but her weight was so slight, it was easy to carry her along anyway.
Her brows slammed together, forming a sharp ridge over her pretty brown eyes. “Just me? Or them too?” she asked, her hand flinging out to point at Jackson and Gwen, who were avidly staring at our interaction from nearby. I ignored their curious eyes and the big questions I could see dancing through their heads. It was very tempting to remind Jackson again not to meddle, but he was keeping his distance, so perhaps he’d learned his lesson earlier.
“Just you,” I told Jade succinctly. The last thing I needed was that pair ogling every word, every interaction, while I tried to convince my stubborn librarian that she needed to accept my protection.
She sputtered as if I’d just said something ridiculous. “This doesn’t feel like an invitation; it feels like a demand. Why? We’re not exactly friends, are we?” She gave me a look that was about as fierce as a kitten’s but bold all the same. Her foot had hooked behind a curling floorboard, providing just enough resistance that pulling her farther along might hurt her.
I stopped walking, the frustration simmering under my ribs, nearly boiling over. I didn’t have the time to explain this mystical, dangerous Galamut threat, or Thorne’s ward, or why the thought of anything happening to her made something ancient and irrational inside me bare its teeth. So, instead, I exhaled very slowly. “Friendship,” I drawled, “is vastly overrated.”
Before she could fire back, because she would, I slid a hand up her spine, tipped her backward in a smooth dip, and kissed her. Her gasp sparked against my lips, a jolt of surprise that melted almost instantly. She tasted like mint tea and stubbornness. Her fingers curled into the front of my shirt. The world narrowed to her mouth, the soft surrender of it, the little sound she made when I coaxed her lips open.
Gwen’s shocked little squeak hit my ears, but I firmly ignored her. When I finally lifted my head, Jade looked dazed, eyes wide and unfocused, breath unsteady. She looked beautifully undone by me. I smirked in smug satisfaction, even though I knew that would needle my feisty mate.
Gwen and Jackson, predictably, had vanished. They were not gone, of course. I could hear Jackson’s very unsubtle shifting of weight behind a nearby shelf and Gwen’s suppressed giggle. They were giving us the illusion of privacy. How considerate. Jackson had to know I knew he was there, but at least the gesture meant Jade wouldn’t feel embarrassed.
Jade didn’t protest this time when I guided her toward the door, still blinking, still breathless. She couldn’t mistake any of my intentions now that we’d gotten that out of the way, and I was very pleased with myself. I should have done that this morning, heck, I should have done that yesterday.
“Sheriff,” I called over my shoulder, “when you’re ready to leave, turn off the lights and lock up, will you?” A grunt of acknowledgment came from somewhere behind the biography section. Good enough.
