Immortal Souls (The Immortal Souls: Magic & Chaos)

Chapter 9

The only noise breaking the silence was the continual turning of pages. For the rest of the night no one had entered the library, leaving Sam to spend the entire night reading while pretending she couldn't see the Vampire watching her, while in the back of her mind wishing she really couldn't see the Vampire.

Because his presence meant that she couldn't spend the night investigating every crevice of the building for something suspicious that would give her some insight into what those runes were.

Meaning that she had a sleepless night of wondering to look forward to, which would be followed by a morning and afternoon of anticipation while she awaited another chance to check out the building.

"We're closing in ten minutes," Sam announced, not bothering to look up as she did. She hit the spacebar on the computer multiple times, getting rid of the screen saver so she could legally steal the book she'd been reading. She typed her card information into the computer then ran the book past the scanner. This one was coming home with her. After she managed to get the program to close, which took so long it made her think the computer was so old it was probably made in the Stone Age, she shut down the computer and turned off the main switch.

Sam looked up as she heard a chair scraping against the tiled floor, Jamie stood and closed the book he'd been 'reading' all night.

"You can leave that up here." Sam pointed to her desk, she would put it back in its place tomorrow night, that was if Michelle didn't put it back first.

"Have you ever read this book?" Jamie asked, placing it on the librarian's desk.

Sam looked at the cover of it. The library had two really old books on Vampire mythology. A few years ago she had read through all of the mythology books the library had to offer, so that she could laugh at all of the things they'd gotten wrong. "Uh, is it the one where Vampire is spelled, V-A-M-P-Y-R?" Jamie nodded. "Yeah, I've read it."

"How accurate do you think the information in here is?"

Sam smiled. "I'd say about ten maybe fifteen percent accurate."

"That's not a lot," Jamie said with a frown. "I thought you said there was a difference between myth and fiction."

"There is," Sam stated. "Myths are stories based on facts. Like exaggerated truths. And fiction refers to stories based on myths, so even more exaggerated than the myths are."

"And your guess is that about ten or fifteen percent of this book is fact and the other ninety or eighty-five percent is fiction?"

Sam nodded. "Pretty much. It's tricky to try get accurate information from myths, legends and folklore, because they're different in different places, so you'll never really know which place has more truths. What the people who write these books do is listen to all of the stories in all of the different places and make up their own myths from the pieces of information that overlap in all of the stories. But then all you end up with is a small part of a big story."

Jamie sighed. "So I'm not going to find anything useful in a book," he said sadly. Sam felt a little sorry for him. She knew how difficult it was to be something different, but to have no idea what being 'different' entailed. "How would I find accurate information on Vampires?" Jamie mumbled to himself.

It was loud enough for Sam to hear, so she answered him. "Find a Vampire and ask lots of questions."

Jamie laughed a little. "And how would I find a Vampire?"

Sam thought for a moment, trying to think of a way to give Jamie some helpful information on finding a Vampire without letting him know that she herself wasn't human. "Maybe you should stop thinking about how to find a Vampire."