What if it wasn’t a book?
What if I had overlooked something when I’d targeted decorations and fixtures? Could it be a hidden latch in the stone wyrm coiled around the fireplace? What if it were something smaller? An antique fixed to a mantle or shelf, or even one of the adamere bricks in the wall?
I was running out of time, and my breathing became panicked gasps. I fell back against the bookshelf. What was I going to do? Maybe I should run? Maybe I should head straight to the tower where Jett couldn’t follow and hold up there until Graysen came home. My terror was all-consuming, a wicked tornado that tore through my thoughts, scattering them wide.
It was the shift in sunlight on the spiral staircase. A rainbow of bright hues glancing off black wrought iron. My gaze snapped upward and honed in on the mezzanine level, where Tabitha’s romance books lined the walls of the cozy little nook.
Hope, desperate hope, coursed through my veins.
As yet, I hadn’t checked up there.
I sprinted to the bottom of the corkscrew staircase. Latticework of cool metal met my feet as I ran up the steps,and the library filled with the raucous clatter of my panic-ridden climb. The messenger bag thumped wildly against my hip as I spun upward, round and round, all the way to the upper level.
I came to a skittering halt. Paperbacks lined Tabitha’s reading nook wall to wall. There was even a wooden ladder set to the side to help get to the high-up, out-of-reach shelves.
Hope diminished as my gaze whipped about all the books. Tabitha owned so many.
Which book?
Where do I start?
Dodging around the coffee table, I trampled over beanbags and sheepskin rugs to get to a random wall. My fingers pulled at the novels frantically. I dragged each one of them out, letting them spill haphazardly to the ground as I moved to the next.
Too late, too late…
A storm of footfall and the library door crashed open.
I heard my name being called down below.
“Wychthorn…”
Horror exploded inside my chest.
Oh gods. Jett was already here. Five minutes had flown by.
I scrambled faster, casting book after book onto the floor, hoping that my fingers would latch onto one that wouldn’t budge easily. That I’d hear an audible click. Or a door would mysteriously appear.
There were too many books.
I froze, as did the oxygen in my lungs, crystallizing into abject terror. Down below came an ear-piercing sound of a blade being dragged along the stone floor. A scraping-sparking noise that hackled the fine hair on my body. Lazy footfall made metal creak before a low, goading voice spun through the air. “Time’s up, Wychthorn. Here I come, ready or not.”
Mindless panic seized me. I fumbled with more books. More and more novels were flung to the floor. I scrambled throughthe shelves. Higher. Lower. I didn’t know. My gaze bounced sideways to all the remaining shelves. My stomach pitched into a dizzy freefall.
It was impossible.
I’d never get them all checked in time.
Yet as impossible as the task was, my sight landed on a collection of books on the shelf next to this one. Why, in all the chaos, the panic, my feet sliding and slipping upon the discarded books piled on the floor, that my eye would catch one in particular?
But I did.
No.
Yes.
Surely not.
Anticipation coiled tightly around my heart, quickening every beat.
