I should have been in England. I should have been finishing my degree at Oxford. And I wanted to be with my established friends, who I didn’t need to mask around. Never in my life did I think I would genuinely miss my dorm. Yet there I was, plastered on the floor like roadkill and pouting over the life I missed.
Eyes cinched shut, I gently probed my hipbone and immediately winced. Then I grimaced, before venting an exasperated sigh.
Get it together, Ophelia. You’re better than this.
After a dramatically extended groan, I opened my eyes. A hint of faded green snagged my attention. From the floor, I was partially angled to see the underside of my grandfather’s desk.
A tingle ran across my skin. My chin wobbled, and my throat closed. For a moment I stayed frozen, heart pumping steadily as I registered what I was seeing. My eyes fixed on that scrap of green peeking out of a crevice in the underside of the mahogany. Unfurling from the floor, I tentatively reached out as curiosity bloomed within me.
Nothing terribly interesting had been left behind on the desk when I arrived. Grandfather’s documents and notes had been filed away shortly after his passing. But underneath the glossy wooden surface, tucked away in the nooks and crannies of drawers, the corner of a book jutted out.
It must have come loose when I bumped the desk.
My fingers brushed it, and a rush of electricity sparked through my fingers and up my arm. A small gasp breached my lips, but I snagged the cover and managed to jiggle the book out.
Faded forest green, inlaid with gilt symbols. I couldn’t make them out, but there was something familiar about them. Circles and triangles overlapped, with stars and crescent shapes marking certain junctions. It had a distinctly occult look that didn’t fit with the rest of a language professor’s collection. What an odd thing for my grandfather to have.
“What is this?”
Why was it hidden in the desk?
I crossed my legs and opened the book in my lap. There were hundreds of pages, slightly yellowed with age but remarkably pristine. It must have been a journal because everything was written by hand. There was line after line of symbols and an ancient language I couldn’t read. The script was elegant with swooping curls I recognized as my grandfather’s handwriting.
I flipped to the front of the book, and his name stared back. Confirmation it had been my grandfather’s.
Hunter Ashcroft.
It didn’t read like an ordinary journal. There was something strange about it. He knew so many languages, but even this seemed like utter nonsense.
“Grandpa, what the hell were you into?” Pages fluttered under my fingers and a burgeoning tide of curiosity swelled under my skin. It grew and grew until my eyes widened and my jaw dropped.
A distinct shape sketched between the pages stopped me. A tremor ran through my fingers as I turned back a couple of pages.
Was that a wing?
My blood ran cold, and a gasp choked me. I stumbled back, dropping the book as if it had been a venomous snake ready tostrike. Even with my eyes clamped shut, the image of the owl monster was seared into the wounded meat of my brain.
Stunned and leaning away, my grandfather’s journal sat open on the floor across from me. I clutched my hands together, afraid of picking it up despite my respect and admiration for my grandfather and his belongings. The thought of touching the book again evoked sudden visions of feathered demons in a forest prowling in the dark and dragging me into the unknown. Dread made me shaky, and my persistent exhaustion made me stupid.
An abrupt trilling made me flinch like a rabbit spooked by a fox.
I stood silently, swallowing hard as I forced my limbs into motion. Blindly smacking the desk’s surface, my palm finally landed on my vibrating cell phone. I couldn’t tear my eyes off the journal as I pulled the phone down. Several long moments passed before I sucked in a reassuring breath.
A message from Moth flashed across the screen.
Drinks in 30.
I deflated instantly, slumping against the leg of the desk. Wiping at my eyes, I exhaled the uncoiling thread of tension in my chest. Then I looked toward the window and the dreary light angling through the slip in the heavy velvet drapes.
“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I said weakly, staring at the windows and not at his handwritten mystery journal. “But I gotta get the fuck out of here.”
15
My headlights cut through the fog on the road like a hot blade through ice. It wasn’t yet dusk, but darkness pressed on the car windows. Anxiety settled in my chest, filled my lungs, barely escaping through every thin exhale. Nocturnal beasts lurking in the trees surrounding the road watched from the skeletal boughs. Flash after flash of yellow eyes smeared in my periphery.
I second guessed myself from the parking lot as I did every time we met up. But the thought of staying home alone killed me. I just couldn’t do it. Agreeing to drinks gave me something to look forward to—alcohol, and an attempt to create some semblance of normalcy.
A night owl screeched overhead, swooping low and circling the square on silent wings.
