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None of the open reading rooms have Nim in them, but they keep searching. Through each room, front, back, sides, checking for hidden…anything. Finally, in the last room at the end of the hall, Caleb senses a pulse of some kind, like the echo of a magic that was.
“It’s got to be in here.”
“Why?”
Sylvan waves his hand in front of him. “I concur.”
They check the walls carefully. When they reach the bookshelf at the rear, there are two books not quite in alignment with the others on the shelf. Maddy runs her hand over the two volumes.
Caleb reaches for her, every sad moment of being apart swelling in his thoughts. “Maddy, don’t—”
She doesn’t listen. Instead, she yanks on the two volumes. Behind the wall, mechanics creak and turn, a soft click pops the bookshelf open, revealing a door which is now ajar. A table rests inside with a volume open in the middle of the rough-hewn surface. Sylvan approaches the book, slowly, cautiously, and he glances at the pages.
“It’s the book,” he says. “The one we need.”
But Nim is nowhere in sight.
Chapter9
Madeleine
Nim’s gone.Gone!
Maddy tugs on the collar of her shirt, grasping at anything other than being portaled to some place far away from where they are. “Maybe someone broke in and kidnapped her.”
Sylvan takes a step toward the table, and Maddy rushes at him, hissing.
“We let you come here with us, but it doesn’t mean we trust you, Sylvan.” Rage pours through her, like all the fury and madness since she’d been turned by Vera has been multiplied. She launches herself at the Fae stranger. What wouldhislifeblood be like?
But Caleb catches her waist in his arms. “No, don’t. It’s the bloodlust, Maddy. It makes your feelings bigger, stronger.”
She pulls away from Caleb.
Sylvan says nothing. He peers at the book on the table, glaring at the pages as though he has some kind of long history with it.
“Something wrong?” Maddy asks the Fae.
“No, nothing.” He eyes them both, but he doesn’t add any additional commentary, and he’s not helpful in any other way.
Maddy begins to circle the room, running her hands over the walls. Caleb’s expression pinches, but he begins examining the walls and the shelves. There aren’t any windows in the square room, no physical way into the space apart from the secret door they stepped through. The floor stones are thick, heavy, and clearly not easily moved. They continue circling the room. Soon, even Maddy has to admit that there’s no evidence of anyone coming in from outside. A vice squeezes in her chest, but she ignores the dawning dread and makes another lap around the room.
“I’m not sure this is…” Caleb’s voice trails away as he comes to a stop.
“But we have to check. What if we led someone to Veritas, and they broke in?”
“Wouldn’t they have taken the book with them? Not just Nim?” Caleb has a point, and Maddy doesn’t have any signs of any other options.
“Now what?” She moves to the table. “Maybe we should read the book to find out where she might have gone.”
“No.”
She reaches for the corner of the volume. “Then we’ll close it.”
Caleb lunges for her elbow and stops her. “No, there’s powerful Faerie magic imbuing it. It’s a portal book, and we don’t have any idea how it all works.”
“So, we just stand here and do nothing?” Maddy rasps.
Her ears prick. Footsteps sound in the corridor outside the room, announcing the arrival of two others.
