“Looks like they’re coming this way,” Naomi noted, which proved true as the emergency vehicles made a sharp turn onto the entry road, which led to the Forum.
Only, the fire engine braked a short distance up the side road, its lights strobing, its siren still screaming.
Tag pointed his cane. “Is that smoke?”
Lit by the emergency vehicles, a thick black column rose from a neighboring building. A ruddy glow shone from several of its windows. One of them shattered and cast out a gout of flames that licked across the brick façade.
“The Old Library,” Naomi said.
Tag lowered his cane and leaned toward Sharyn. “Weren’t you over there this afternoon?”
Sharyn backed up a step, as if trying to deny what was happening. She remembered Professor Wright’s warning:It’s not safe here.
Tag stared at her with those darkly painted eyes.
“We... we must get home,” she gasped out. “Now.”
6
11:27 p.m.
Sharyn stopped her friends at the edge of a dark park. Across the street, a line of brick rowhouses formed a continual barricade. “Hold here.”
Naomi crowded next to her. “When are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
Sharyn simply shook her head. Back at the Forum, their group had retreated inside the hall and exited out its north side, away from the smoke, flames, and sirens. There, they had ordered an Uber. Sharyn had the driver drop them off on the far side of the park. Her father had instilled in her a healthy (or perhaps unhealthy) level of paranoia.
She studied the houses. Their apartment was a third-floor walk-up at the top of the rowhouse across the street. She spotted nothing untoward or suspicious. Their flat’s lights remained dark.
“Okay,” she said and headed quickly across the street.
The other two kept at her heels, clearly responding to the tension exuding from her. Still, they trusted her enough to not press her further.
At least, for now.
She climbed the steps and tapped in the code for the lock, but a shadow swept into view on the far side of the entry door. Sharyn stumbled back. But it was only Mrs. Kenworthy, the middle-aged caretaker who kept a small flat on the ground floor. She opened the door and waved them inside. A chair sat outside her door with a tub next to it, shaped like a cauldron and half full of candy. Her apartment door had been propped open, and a television droned inside.
“You’re all home early, aren’t you?” she said. “I was about to lock the place up.”
“Thank you,” Sharyn said. “But we may be headed out again.”
Tag cast Sharyn a quizzical look.
Mrs. Kenworthy only smiled with a knowing wink. “Of course. How foolish of me. Something tells me you’re just getting started.”
Sharyn prayed that wasn’t true. She wanted all of this to end.
Their group climbed the three flights to their floor, which they shared with four other flats. Once inside their own, Sharyn took a breath, while leaning on the door.
Naomi pointed a finger at Sharyn’s chest. “You need to tell us what’s going on. Why are you in such a fright?”
Sharyn swallowed, pushed off the door, and came to a decision. “I’ll show you.”
While Professor Wright’s warning still burned inside her—tell no one—she could not stomach keeping this secret any longer. She trusted her friends and wanted their counsel. The fire at the Old Library could not be a mere coincidence.
Something had gone wrong.
Buthowwrong remained to be seen.
