I arrived to find its exterior metal doors still closed, smoke and dust seeping from the busted seam, the bent crack showing only darkness within.
Before I could surge forward to try to wrangle those doors like I’d seen my now-two-time rescuer do, something cold and hard seized me by the upper arm.
Then a second skeletal hand went to cover my mouth before my captor drew me backward, out of the dust clouds, away from the elevator, and into the tall stacks of YA books.
This time, for whatever reason, I didn’t scream at being handled by him.
He must have feared I would bolt given the chance, because as soon as he had me between the shelves and out of sight of the figures rushing for the stairs, the bony hand on my arm tightened its grip.
Strangely, I had no urge to screamorrun—not even with the outline of his bottommost ribs digging into my upper back.
Not that I wasn’t afraid. I was.
My heart scampered hard in my chest, and my breath came fast, but my curiosity, which had only been fed and stoked by the information in that book Hunter had found for me, overrode my fear.
Obviously, whoever this being truly was, killing me wasn’t in his plans.
Well, at least it wasn’tyet.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked, my whole frame going rigid as that black-as-night voice rumbledthroughme, officially, inexplicably, and somewhat disturbingly, well, apparently… turning me on.
“Um,” I managed when, with a click of bones—literal bones—his hand uncoiled from my mouth.
I blinked several times at that settling and now-thinning screen of dust and debris, the logic department of my brain trying to compute the question he’d asked me while the lizard portion sent a zing of interest through my limbs and, maybe, other places.
Oh, wow.Thiswas new.
Probably just a symptom of my nearly getting squashed. Had to be, right?
Except hehadalso kind of just rescued me with tattooed arms?
Focus, Helena. Don’t be rude. The nice undead doom-voiced skeleton man asked you a question.
“I came… to check on you?” I whispered as, somewhere in the distance, sirens kicked up, their screams joining in with the droning blare of the fire alarm.
“What?”
The faintest of growls underscored that already-gravelly one-word question, his incredulous tone betraying just how stupid he thought my answer was. But how wasIsupposed to know he was okay? Maybe he was the Grim Reaper—the real Grim Reaper—but I didn’t know how that worked. In my world, falling elevators smooshed their occupants, no matter who or what those passengers happened to be.
“Areyou okay?” I pressed.
That hand on my arm flexed just a bit tighter, though only for a second, as if something about my question made him flinch.
He didn’t answer, but after a beat, he raised his free hand to point toward the elevator in a gesture reminiscent of Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, tatty sleeve draping and fuming and everything. “That man. Do you see him?”
I blinked several times. Man?
There—in the clearing smoke—he materialized.
A tall figure garbed in fastidious black strode into the evacuated area. Since he faced the elevator doors, he had his back to us, his white-blond hair just a shade lighter than the haze that enshrouded him.
“I see him,” I whispered.
That skeleton hand released me, and he stepped around to my side, an action that had me flattening my spine to those of the books, hands splaying against their plastic-wrapped bindings. Again, he swiveled that hooded gaze my way, the unfathomable darkness within funneling its full attention on me as he raised a bony finger between us.
“Do not let him see you,” that voice commanded. “Do not engage with him. And if you see him again…hide.”
Hide? Why? What in the Hades is going on?
