Cursed to the Bone

22. He's a Keeper

"Great!" Naomi leaped to her feet and linked arms with Rhett. "We'll go in first. Wait like, ten seconds, and then you come in."

Reluctantly, I followed them to the door with Nix. Neither of us spoke as they entered the building. The paper crinkled as I folded it the best I could with a book in hand. Then Nix stole it.

"You're too loud. I'll hold it. Let's go." He yanked the door open and entered. I scurried in after him and we both paused at the end of the hall where a circular room began. There was a desk in the middle in a half-circle shape, and two archways with stairways vanishing around the wall. One went up and the other went down.

"Up," Nix whispered, grabbing my arm. He crouched low and tugged me with him.

I watched the desk as we scrambled by. Naomi and Rhett had the attendant's full attention. It felt too easy. Was that all the security they had? Really?

Once inside the stairwell, Nix stood upright and smirked as he released my arm. "Hard part done. Come on." He started the climb.

As I followed, hand tight around the rail, I wondered how he developed this skill. He seemed entirely too at-ease, like he'd done it before. It was definitely a question for later, though.

At the top, Nix unfolded the map and we emerged onto a railed balcony that skirted the inner edges of the second floor. The first floor, below, was quite a ways down, and the shelves rose so high they had sliding ladders with carts. Even on the second floor, the shelves rose as high as the start of the glass dome.

The countless shelves and pillars between us and the walls made it easy to go unseen. We snuck along the shelves to a small stair. The door at the top was open. Before I could charge through, Nix grabbed me by my coat and yanked me back. As I shot him a look, he held a finger to his lips.

Fair enough. We had no idea who was in there, and running in blindly could get us caught. I crept to the door, hands on the steps above me, and poked my head in.

It looked pretty much as expected. Scroll cabinets took up the walls, all waist-high and wide. Under a lamp, and at a table, there were two figures. The standing woman, I realized, was Lauvet. The other sat in a chair with a hooded cloak over a school coat. A student, for sure. The only thing I could see of her was the black hair that poked around the edge of her hood.

Nix set his hand close to mine and peered in above me.

Leaning closer, I whispered, "She's the one trying to control me."

Nix's body went rigid. He jerked his chin in a nod and held a finger to his mouth.

"I didn't raise you to be foolish, girl!" Lauvet said, shoulders heaving as she dragged a finger across a scroll, her nail tipped in black. Smoke rose from the paper and curled under the lamp. "What were you thinking?"

A wretched sob filled the air. "It's not fair, mother! It should be me."

I nearly gasped, leaning a bit closer. Mother? That would make it way easier to figure out. Surely there weren't many students who happened to be vampires.

"What if they'd learned your name?" Lauvet said, exasperatedly running a hand through her short locks. "I told you to wait. When it's all over, you can have—"

The door creaked. Oops!

Nix reeled back and tugged me away, his hand tight around my wrist. He dragged me down the steps and around the corner as the door slammed into the wall behind us. I didn't dare to look back. We raced between two walls of shelves, crouched low enough to avoid the explosion that sent books in all directions.

"Stop them, Mother! I'll head back," the girl cried. In the chaos, I couldn't place her voice, but it was familiar. I caught a glimpse of her cloaked figure between breaks in the shelves just as she vanished into thin air.

Nix pushed me into a dark corner and held a hand up. "Stay."

Then he was off. He sprinted on quiet feet, darting out of sight just a little way down. I shrank as far into my hiding spot as I could, sliding into a ball.

Lauvet walked nearby with deliberately slow steps. "I can smell you, brats. I know you're close."

A slam came from the other direction that ended with the catastrophic clatter of a bookshelf falling. Growling, Lauvet sped in that direction, her steps echoing after her.

As much as I wanted to stay put, I couldn't. I returned to the room on quiet feet, hoping to get the information before it was gone. I slid through the doorway, careful of the door, and approached the table. The scroll she marked was a keeper record, and only one line had been altered. They were names, specifically, that had been crossed off. All but one. Lucien Lacroix.

A distant yell echoed from the chamber below. Nix. By the sounds of things, he was in trouble.

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