I forced myself not to look out the window when I heard a bird chirping. Emma needed help figuring this whole thing out, and I was not going to let her down. Taking the first book off the top, I released a slow breath. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, but had a feeling I’d know it when I saw it.
It took a little while of thumbing through the pages before something stuck out to me. Taking a magnifying glass out of my purse, I laid out all the books on the pages in question and studied the images carefully, my heart racing. It was such a small thing, and yet, it felt significant. Emma’s parents and Daniel’s wife all had a pin on their lapels. It was an equal sign.
Weird. Maybe there was some math club. But I combed through that yearbook and found nothing.
I felt a little stupid obsessing about the symbol, but I had this strange feeling at the back of my neck that this was important. A clue connecting all of them. I jotted down the symbol on a piece of paper, and put a question mark next to it. Without any other ideas, I went back through my graduating year and looked to see if anyone had that pin on.
Another bird chirped and sat on the window outside the library. I gave it one longing look, then forced myself to keep looking at our yearbook. My eyes were beginning to hurt as I squinted at one person after another, running my gaze over them to see any sign of the symbol.
And then, I froze.
What the heck?Louisa was wearing the same pin and so was Jackson. That was a pretty big coincidence. But it also made me wonder if we were even on the right track. There’s no way Jackson, the fast-talking brownie, was in on something sinister. Louisa? Yeah, that lady seemed like the type who went looking for trouble.
Still, this couldn’t just be ignored.
“Hey, Glynda,” I called.
After a minute, she appeared at the end of the shelves of books that I was seated by. “Yes?”
“Have you ever heard of a math club that’s got an equal sign as their logo?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, but there is one book over in the math section with an equal sign as the title. What a pain to file in the card catalog!”
Oh! That’s officially a lead!
I jumped up. “Thanks, Glynda!”
Sure enough, I skimmed the titles of all the books about geometry and algebra and all that other number stuff I was terrible at. And there it was. A book with an equal sign.
I flipped it open and to my surprise found it was handwritten. Had nobody ever actually looked inside this thing?
Mystic Hollow needed more math geniuses, it seemed.
I took it back to my table and started reading. That crawling feeling along my skin was instantly back as I took in the words. This book had nothing to do with math, and everything to do with the supernatural world. It was all about shifters and humans being unequal. They wanted to find a way to be as powerful as the paranormals. This was a club where humans were trying to gain power.Holy crap!
It ended with information about a way to bind power from the “after” but it would require a powerful supernatural person on earth. It listed possibilities.
Karma was on the list. Double crap.
I thumbed through it again, reading more. It wasn’t just humans involved in this whole thing though. The supernatural who took part in this club said they believed in equality and they wanted to tell the school the truth. They wanted all restrictions to be removed and be able to live their lives out in the open, without hiding their special abilities.
What a disaster that would be! There was a reason we hid what we are from humans. One thing that history had shown is that humans desired power above all else, and were willing to ignore ethics to get it and hurt those that had it.
I grabbed my phone and texted my girls pictures of these pages. Moving quickly, I grabbed the yearbook with Emma’s parents in it, the equality book, and turned to check them out from Glynda.
But someone stood right behind me. Disappointment and anger warring in their eyes. I gasped and fear and dropped everything in my hands. “You?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Emma
I couldn’t hold my sneeze in any longer. I managed to roll away from Daniel and sneeze in the opposite direction, at least. A cloud of dirt flew up from the ground at the force of it and I was left sputtering and coughing afterward.
The crawlspace under my childhood home wasn’t a place I’d ever imagined I’d be digging in, but here we were crawling like prisoners escaping from jail. And when I said crawl, I really meant,crawl. I was on my hands and knees, while Daniel was stuck practically shimmying his bulky form through the space. It highlighted the difference between our builds and I wasn't mad about it. He was a bear so I expected him to be big, and snuggling with him last night had only given me a taste of that, and seeing him now, working so hard, I wanted more.
Okay, maybe I should focus. Daniel was the one doing the digging and I was holding the light, but I was just as covered in dirt as he was. That meant I was putting in work too, right? How he was able to get enough leverage to actually dig under here when he couldn't even get on his hands and knees was a mystery, one I was happy to leave alone.
“Oh,” Daniel said, startling me from openly staring at him. “Something is here.”
