Page 12

TWELVE

Fiona

I stood in the stacks, surrounded by the scent of old paper, happy in the bubble of Reed’s warmth. The sensation of our fingers intertwined was my anchor, holding me steady as I closed my eyes, preparing to lean into the unknown.

It was mildly terrifying; a quiet kind of panic. What if it worked? What if it didn’t ? There was no way to tell in the sea of emotions which I was hoping for. So I leaned back, letting my back just barely skim Reed’s firm chest, and tried to relax.

Then, I let all my expectations go, and just… felt.

At first, there was nothing. Blackness behind my eyelids, my feet on the ground. The slight nip in the air, the stone walls not keeping out the cold as well as you’d think. But after a while, more began to filter in.

A brightness here, a buzz there. Little sparks of sensation that I couldn’t quite grab hold of. And when I tried, they petered out.

And then, right when frustration was starting to build, I heard a new sound that drowned it out.

Raindrops on the roof.

The patter of rain took all the sting, all the struggle away. My breathing deepened, growing even and slow, deep as the earth’s heartbeat pulsing beneath my feet.

And that was when I felt it. The pull . I stepped forward, eyes still closed, a shimmering blue tendril dragging me out of Reed’s arms and into the unknown.

My right hand trailed over the books in the case, none of them speaking to me—except one here or there that actually repulsed me, leaving a strange slithering sensation on my skin as I quickly skated past—until I stopped, rooted to the spot.

The shimmer was brighter, almost painfully so, but high overhead. I opened my eyes on a gasp, the blinding light fading quickly as the real light from the wall sconces poured in.

I was on my tiptoes, with the barest edge of my fingertips resting on the bottom of a book’s spine. The spine was black, with strange symbols down the length of it.

“This one. It’s this one.”

Reed’s larger hand came over mine, sliding the book down into my waiting grip. The tome buzzed under my palms as I held it, sending me rocking back on my heels with a hiss.

“Are you okay?” Reed asked, giving me space but hovering at the same time.

“I think so, it’s just… strange. I couldn’t sense anything until it started raining.”

“Uh, hate to break it to you, short stack, but it’s not raining.” Galyna pointed to the window behind us, which was completely dry.

“I don’t know, I swear I heard raindrops. Like it started storming out.”

Everyone shared glances, but nobody offered an explanation.

Shay was the one who finally broke the silence. “Magic works in strange ways sometimes. If it led you to the book, it doesn’t really matter how it works.” She shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go see what’s in that book.”

I felt a bit like a sideshow as we all tramped back to our table, with everyone watching me stand there holding a mystery book.

The cover was blank; not exactly promising, given the weird shapes on the spine. “Does anybody know what alphabet these are from?” I pointed the spine toward them so they could all see.

When everybody shook their heads or shrugged, I set it down on the table and slid into my chair.

The cover opened easily, not a creak or puff of dust to indicate how long it had been undisturbed on the shelf.

There were more unreadable symbols on the first page, but when I tried to flip past it, see if the inside held any answers, the pages might as well have been made of concrete. They were immovable, a solid mass.

Even the back cover was stuck.

“Well, that was a bit anticlimactic,” Leigh muttered, abandoning the group to go get another bowl of stew off the other table.

Brielle rolled her eyes at Leigh’s impatience, making me smile. “Give her a minute, y’all. Maybe she’s supposed to do something.”

“Ignore them,” Reed murmured, leaning down over my shoulder. “If you need to, close your eyes again. Your power led you to the book. Maybe it can show you how to open it.”

“I’m not sure it matters if it opens, I can’t read these random symbols.” Frustration was rising as I tried again to peel back the first page, digging my fingernail into the corner, as if I could just find the right spot…

But no, all I got was an unpleasant shock, making me yank my hand back on reflex.

“It zapped me!”

“I don’t think it likes you trying to force it open,” Olivia said, squinting and leaning closer from across the table. She brushed one fingertip over the top of the cover, and yelped, snatching her hand away. “It feels like stinging nettle, but electrified. Angry .”

“Okay, so, nobody but Fi can touch the book. That’s something.” Elodie grinned, her enthusiasm undampened by my failure to read it or do anything with it.

I angrily closed my eyes again, willing the book to tell me what to do.

As if it were sentient, which was utterly stupid. This wasn’t Harry Potter . Books weren’t alive like the sorting hat. Although …

I bracketed the book with my hands, focusing all my attention on it. There was something other to it, something… aware?

What do you want from me? I thought as hard as I could, hoping the book would answer, or maybe the blue shimmer would come back and show me what to do.

Nothing happened.

But I kept trying.

Tell me how to open you .

Nada. Zip. Zilch.

I took a steadying breath, rolling my shoulders back. Brute force clearly wasn’t doing anything, and when I found the book, I had been calm. Zen . I stopped trying to communicate with it directly, focusing inward instead.

It took a bit, with the muffled sounds of the other pack mates settling into their chairs around the table, going back to reading, turning pages. But eventually, I found it. Reed’s hand on my shoulder, warmth spreading down from the point of contact. That sensation of life below, the slowly pulsing beat. And then it came again—the rain on the rooftop.

I sighed, leaning into the feeling. Rain had always been my favorite. I knew people hated it, called it bad weather whenever there was a storm, but I lived for rainy days. I had a big chair back in my apartment by my biggest window. Any time there was a real storm, I’d pull the curtains all the way back and revel in the force of it, trace the droplets racing down my window for hours.

Usually, I fell asleep in that chair, waking up some time with the dawn when the storm had blown out its last sigh of fury.

The rain picked up its pace, the wind howling eerily in my mind.

Touch me .

The voice nearly startled me from the peace of the moment. It was barely audible over the raging storm in my mind, whispery and fine—ancient.

I have touched you.

An image came to mind, somewhat indignant if thinly printed over the black of my eyelids, like a sheer sheet of vellum. My palm pressed flat to the blank space inside the front cover.

I kept my eyes closed, working by feel. I traced my fingertip over the cover—then paused. Not the marked hand. I didn’t know how, but I knew it didn’t want the hand that was marked with the omega seal, a different sort of power than the book possessed. I dropped my left hand back to my lap, then gently opened the cover with my right.

There was no zap, no anger from the book now. I tried hard to focus on the rain, to keep myself in the zone as I placed my hand flat over the inside cover.

A feeling of warmth and deep acceptance flooded me then, and I had to resist the urge to melt forward, drape myself over the book. I wanted to suck that feeling down, hold it inside me forever. It was life, it was power .

“Holy shit.” Reed’s words were soft but stunned.

And when I opened my eyes, I saw why.

My right arm, from the tips of my fingers to where my sleeve lay across my biceps, was blue .