Emmett steps outside and is back a few minutes later. “It’s behind this wall.”
“Do you think she has a secret room? It would totally make sense.”
We quickly go through and rip everything off the shelves, looking for hidden levers, switches or buttons, but find nothing. “Well, that sucked,” I pout.
“Just because we haven’t found it yet, doesn’t mean we won’t. Let’s think through Samara and who she is. Get in her mind.”
Heaving, I mumble out, “No thank you.”
“She had the ability to shapeshift and turn into smoke. So, what looks like that?”
“What if you just use your vampire strength?”
“I don’t want to destroy this place if we don’t have to.”
I was trying not to be impatient, but I don’t think he understands. They’ve all been able to still use their gifts to some extent. But me, the closest I came, was in the pool for only a few minutes. Without my skin, I’m land bound. No ocean, no water. Now I have the chance to get it back, and any second without it is a second too long.
Emmett knocks along the back wall on the right side of the room, so I do the same on the left. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I hope I’ll know when I see it- or hear it.
There’s a knock on the door and we both freeze, looking at the mess on the floor. Before we can move, the door swings open and Harlow is standing there.
“One more-” She stops and looks at us, then the stuff on the floor.
“We can explain!” I blurt.
“I don’t know if I want you to.” She turns out of the room, then stops and lets out a sigh. “Fuck.”
“What?”
“Look. Something has seemed weird for the last several days. She’s been… just more. And then you all today. She never goes away and then this… Tell me. Is she gone?”
Emmett and I look at each other, not sure how to answer.
“Of course she’s gone, or else you wouldn’t be in here destroying her office. I don’t need to know the details, but,” she lets out another sigh. “It seems like you’re looking for something… important. And… maybe others are looking for it too.”
Is she hinting that she knows something?
“And maybe one time someone saw something they definitely shouldn’t have, but has been too scared to… see… if what they saw led to… what they’re looking for.”
“Would anyone care to share whattheymay or may not have seen? Hypothetically, of course. And would it make this person feel safer if they were told that Samara wouldn’t be a problem for the foreseeable future?”
Harlow relaxes her shoulders and stares at us for a moment. “Fuck it!” She runs across the room and grabs the large hourglass with black sand off the floor, flips it over and sits it in the middle of the desk. She grabs the golden lion statue off the floor and sits it in the middle of the bookshelf, facing the hourglass.
“What the fuckkkk is this nonsense? Do we have to wait the entire hour?”
“No. Just… give it a second.”
A red laser shoots out of the lion’s eyes and through the hourglass. As soon as the sand filters low enough, the laser shoots through the glass to the opposite side of the wall. A lock clicks behind us and the entire bookshelf rotates.
“You just happened to stumble across this?”
She shrugs her shoulders as Emmett pulls the large door open. “Oh my…” his words drop off and Harlow and I both hurry to see.
“Oh, shit.” In front of us is a room way larger than the blueprints allow for. We step through the door and feel the temperature change significantly. “Did we just walk through some sort of portal?”
“I don’t want to know… do I?” Harlow asks.
There are shelves upon shelves of glass jars. Hundreds. Thousands.
