Page 11 of Monsters in the Museum (Defenders of the Light #1)

Chapter eleven

T he text on the screen of Nora’s laptop blurred as she tried to work, drafting a manuscript about the discoveries she had made from the sword and spear, frustrated that her findings didn’t sound as impressive as she had anticipated. Adam’s sources and notes had given her many insights, but as she tried to pull her thoughts together, some puzzle pieces seemed to be missing. She had hoped training with Ezra would help her fill in the gaps on how the weapons were wielded, but they had still only worked on hand-to-hand combat, not giving her any information she could apply to her work. All she had to show for her time was a tapestry of bruises, and her chest burned when she thought about how she had let the Eteria distract her from work so much. Two months ago, she would have gotten this manuscript written in a matter of weeks. Now, with all the time she spent at the Sanctuary, and how exhausted she was when she got home, her progress had slowed to a pitiful crawl.

She glared at the pile of Adam’s notebooks and texts to her left, as if they were to blame for her frustration. Staring at them, a memory from Adam’s office echoed in her mind: mentions of a library at the Sanctuary. He had offered to take her there to help with her research.

Her stomach performed a piece of gymnastics somewhere between a flip and a twist at the idea. After her expedition to Adam’s office at Northwestern, she had made a point to avoid him, telling herself she was relieved that he never met her after work or sought her out in the courtyard with Ezra.

She needed to keep her distance, lest she forget that his professor persona was just that. Although, it hadn’t stopped her tired mind from occasionally wandering to some illicit library fantasies when the exhaustion from Ezra’s training got the better of her.

Nora’s desk chair rolled back so hard it clattered into the desk behind her, as she stood with a huff. She would have apologized for the noise, but nobody else was in the office, as it was a Saturday.

She didn’t need Adam to go to the Sanctuary. She could find the library in the Sanctuary without him.

A short while later, Nora marched up the path to the front doors of the Sanctuary, anxious to begin her search for the great library. She wandered the vast halls for a few minutes, wondering if she should start her search near the training courts, or if she should attempt to find her way back over to the area where she had located the armory.

A commotion of some sort around the corner from where she had been walking distracted her from her thoughts. Curious, she followed the sounds and peeked around a pillar toward the source.

In the hallway gathered a small crowd of people, mostly dressed in green but with a flash of blue and purple here and there. She stared in surprise at the sight, realizing that she hadn’t seen anybody else in the Sanctuary before. She had known that other people must live here, but she had only ever seen Thad and Ezra, as well as Adam, Antony, and Seraphina, on that first day.

At the center of the group, she caught a glimpse of two men carrying a stretcher between them. There was a person on the stretcher wearing navy blue, and the men quickly carried it through a door into what she assumed was one of the numerous bedrooms. As she watched, Nora recognized Thad following behind the stretcher, a deep furrow between his brows. The expression struck Nora as especially dire on his normally cheerful visage.

Once the door was closed, Nora examined the other people in the dispersing group and recognized Seraphina. She was in a green peplos as before, and despite the apparent gravity of the current situation, Nora couldn’t help but take a moment to admire the way the fabric effortlessly dripped off the woman, and she could just make out the tattoo encircling her left bicep in the image of a peacock feather. Seraphina had even braided a silver cord into her golden hair. She’d been rude to Nora when they first met, but Nora had to admit that the woman had style.

Nora stepped out from behind the pillar and waved to get Seraphina’s attention.

Seraphina sneered. “Oh, it’s you.” Although she stood a head shorter than Nora, she still somehow managed to look down her nose at her.

Ignoring the hostility in her voice, Nora asked, “What’s going on?”

Seraphina’s perfectly arched brows rose. “What’s going on? We are at war is what is going on.”

“Oh,” Nora stammered, taken aback. She knew the Eteria fought the Shadow, but nobody had put it quite that bluntly.

“Another one of our Defenders was just injured trying to protect your city.” Seraphina made the statement sound accusatory, as if Nora was personally responsible for everything that happened in Chicago.

“Why so many Shadows in Chicago?” Nora asked. While she certainly admitted that she lived in a world-class city, it seemed odd to Nora that the Shadow would be so prevalent there. There must be other cities for the Shadows to terrorize. In superhero movies, villains always seemed to target New York after all.

“It seems that an agent of the Shadow has taken up residence there. Why, we don’t know.”

Nora made a mental note to look up what Seraphina meant by ‘agent of Shadow’ when she got to the library. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Seraphina had turned to leave, but now whirled back to face Nora, her chin raised like a commanding queen. “You can help by staying out of the way.” The words hit Nora like a punch to the gut, but Seraphina continued ruthlessly. “People like you, prancing around thinking they know everything and acting like they can save the world, are what get people like us killed. If you want to help, just go home and leave the world saving to the experts.”

Before Nora could gather her thoughts to respond, Seraphina had turned back around in an elegant swirl of green cloth and marched off down the hallway. The way she held her head as she strode away made it clear why she had chosen a peacock feather as her tattoo.

Nora stood frozen in place for a few moments as she watched Seraphina turn down a side corridor. A slow heat started to pulse in her gut. It spread until her hands trembled, and her heart pounded in her ears so loud she couldn’t hear anything else.

How dare that woman imply that this was somehow Nora’s fault? Nora had been thrown into this after almost dying in an attack by the Shadows herself. And to suggest that Nora couldn’t help with all her expertise when it was her city that was endangered… While Nora may not have thousands of years’ worth of experience, she was no cowering damsel, and she knew how to grit her teeth and get things done. Nora stomped off with renewed determination, looking for the library.

Turning another corner, Nora found herself staring at a surrealist painting she didn’t recognize. This must be in an area of the Sanctuary she hadn’t come across before. She made her way down the quiet hall and glanced through the open doors she passed. After long minutes, her anger had abated into a mix of curiosity and concern. She began to doubt she would even be able to make it back out of the Sanctuary at this point, let alone find the library. As she peered through the last door in the hallway, she found a wall covered in bookshelves and sighed in relief.

Nora slid inside and was greeted by the scent of ginger and something warm that brought to her a fleeting image of her favorite cozy reading nook for late-night research. As she took a few deep breaths, she glanced around and was struck by the realization that she was not, in fact, in a library, but in a rather eclectically decorated bedroom.

It had been easy to mistake it for a library, with two of the walls completely covered in bookshelves, but the far wall was dominated by a gigantic four-poster bed with navy blue silk curtains. Nora squinted in curiosity as she spotted a cozy art deco-style armchair, upholstered in brown leather, situated next to the bed, as well as a white bearskin rug draped over the polished floor in front of an empty hearth.

Nora told herself that she shouldn’t be poking around in somebody else’s room, but the place just felt so full of personality that she drifted inside a few steps more. The bookshelves drew her further into the room to inspect. She found herself interested in what a person who decorated their room like this might like to read. While the shelves contained a plethora of books, they also housed a wide variety of knick-knacks. A dagger rested on a small cushion, no longer than her hand and simple in its design. On another shelf, she spied a locket, its oval face covered in swirling engravings with the letter “C” at the center.

“May I help you?”

Nora jumped and spun around. Adam stood propped against the doorframe, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, eyebrows raised. His glasses sat crookedly on his face in a way that made her itch to straighten them out.

Nora shifted her weight from foot to foot. He had just caught her snooping in the Sanctuary for the second time.

“I was just looking for the library,” she explained, although she was sure he could tell she was quite aware that this was not the library.

“And your search for the library led you to my bedroom?” Nora was relieved that his tone was teasing instead of angry, but then the content of what he said struck her.

“This is your bedroom?”

“Well, it was when I was younger.” Adam pushed off the doorframe and took a few steps towards her. “And I still come and stay here occasionally, although I mostly live in an apartment in Lincoln Park now.”

A fresh surge of embarrassment took Nora as she processed that it was Adam’s things she had been poking through. She cursed her inner historian who encouraged her to sort through people’s things to put together what their life must look like. Another part of her perked up though, even more curious than before. This felt like her first real glance at the man underneath the facade of the professor—the 2600-year-old sorcerer she knew lived beneath.

Avoiding looking into Adam’s twinkling eyes, she gestured to the room at large. “You have rather interesting taste.”

“I suppose I do. Mostly, this is just a collection of things that I haven’t been able to part with from my various lives.”

“Various lives?” Nora probed.

“I’ve done a lot of different things through my centuries on this earth.” Adam stepped up next to her, and Nora found herself shuffling closer. “Every thirty years or so, when people start to realize I’m not aging, I pick up and move to a different place, changing my name and starting over again. Although I end up being a teacher or librarian more often than not.”

“So, Adam isn’t your real name?” Nora wondered how many other names Adam had answered to in his life.

“It currently is my legal name, but no, that’s not the name I was given when I was born.”

When Nora asked what his first name had been, he hesitated for a long moment before murmuring, “Xander. My name is Xander, although nobody has called me that since… nobody has called me that in a long time.”

“Xander,” Nora repeated. The name suited him. “Is it weird not to have people call you by your real name?”

“It doesn’t bother me.” Adam raised one shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “It’s who I am right now. Adam Scott, English professor, wearer of argyle sweaters, lover of chai tea and the color green. It doesn’t feel like a fake name when people use it.”

Nora glanced at him sidelong. His statement was in exact contrast to how she had found herself imagining him: An immortal sorcerer who simply wore a civilian’s identity for show.

“So you actually create a new life every time? You don’t just make up an identity for show?”

“Of course I do,” Adam said, sounding wounded. “I don’t lie about everything. And I like having a job. For one, my apartment doesn’t just pay for itself, and second, it makes eternity feel like it has a bit more purpose.”

A small tendril of warmth sleeping in her gut reemerged. Perhaps the connection she had imagined to Dr. Adam Scott had not been completely fabricated. Still, Nora stayed silent, trying to put herself in Adam’s shoes and finding it incredibly lonely.

Adam continued softly, as if he could read her mind. “It hasn’t been all that bad. I’ve met a lot of great people and had a lot of great experiences. I even had a drink with J.R.R. Tolkien once.”

Nora’s attention had been fixated on Adam’s knuckles momentarily brushing hers, but that snapped her back to reality. “Really? What was he like?”

“We didn’t talk that much. I just ran into him at a bar once when he was a professor. I had no idea the legend he was going to become at the time. I thought he was just a guy with a really weird fixation on elves.” Adam chuckled wryly, “Actually, that is how a lot of it has been. I didn’t realize when important things were happening until long after they happened.”

“But you must know so much about history,” Nora argued. “You are a walking primary source! You could solve so many disputes, unravel so many mysteries.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t really think I could. I lived through the birth of Jesus Christ, and I missed the whole thing because I was screwing around trying to teach myself how to sail on the Mediterranean Sea. Unsuccessfully, I might add.”

Maybe that was the way of the world. Life threw important things at you when you were least expecting them.

“It doesn’t bother me, though,” Adam continued thoughtfully, “The best part of living forever is all the great people you get to meet, and most of those people don’t end up in history books.”

It was a more positive outlook than Nora would have predicted from somebody who had watched everybody they had ever cared for grow old and die. It made her wonder how close he had become to the people he had met, if he’d ever fallen in love with any of them.

Turning from that train of thought, Nora asked, “Why didn’t you just stay here at the Sanctuary like the rest of the Eteria?”

“The people who have stayed here throughout the centuries tend to get callous. I never wanted to be like that.” There was a long pause where Adam seemed to debate whether he should continue. “I suppose I was also searching for something… someone. I didn’t want to spend all my time on this earth alone.”

Nora met his eyes and found that it was an oddly relatable sentiment from somebody who had seen more of life than she could imagine.

Realizing she had been staring for far too long, Nora broke the silence with a frustrated huff. “I get what you mean when you say that people get callous. All the time away from humanity hasn’t done anything to soften Seraphina’s temperament.”

Adam brushed his hand through his already tousled mop of curls. “Oh, don’t let her get to you. She hasn’t always been so… high-strung.”

“Really?” Nora snorted in disbelief. “Because she seems to have some sort of vendetta against me.”

Adam became very interested in inspecting his loafers as he responded, “Seraphina has experienced a lot of loss in her life, and she’s had a long time to sit with her grief. It’s made her unusually bitter.”

Knowing it was probably rude to ask, but also unable to curb her natural curiosity, Nora asked, “What happened to her?”

Adam scuffed a toe against the polished floor as he responded, “She lost her husband in the Defeat. She was pregnant at the time and lost the baby soon after. The loss of the connection to the Light—it made it impossible for any children to be born into the Eteria.”

Nora found herself also looking at the floor. A soft “oh” was all she could manage in response, as she contemplated Seraphina’s tragedy. She might not have had many maternal instincts herself, but her heart still clenched in sympathy.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

Adam’s non-sequitur caught Nora off guard.

“I don’t suppose you have any coffee?”

Adam mimed himself retching enthusiastically. “I would never keep something so vile in my own room. But I have any type of tea you could want.”

“Then I’ll take English breakfast if you have it.”

Adam motioned her toward the leather armchair she had noticed earlier. As she sat down, he busied himself with the tea. Nora took the opportunity when his back was turned to breathe in her fill of the intoxicating scent of chai tea and books that clung to the chair. Adam picked up an electric kettle from its place on a cart near the fireplace and carried it into an adjoining bathroom to fill it up.

“I’m surprised to see you have electricity and indoor plumbing here. Wasn’t this place built before that sort of thing?” Nora commented, her tone teasing but her question legitimate.

He gave her a boyish grin as he returned. “It was, but I convinced everybody to put it in a while back. I consider it my personal responsibility to keep these old fogey’s up with the times.”

Once their tea was made, Adam took a seat at the foot of the massive bed and Nora settled back into the armchair, the teacup nestled between her hands, the warm steam caressing her face.

They sat in amicable silence for a while before Nora asked, “You must know all of the Greek myths really well if you were around when they were first being told.”

When Adam nodded in confirmation, Nora asked, “Could you tell me some of them? The way they were told when you were young?”

Adam gave her a soft smile before he obliged and launched into the tale of Hades and Persephone. Adam’s voice drew her in, soft and melodious. Nora experienced the familiar myths in a way she never had before. She blinked back tears when Adam told the tale of Eros and Psyche and found herself holding her breath during the tense moments in the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts. Adam was a master storyteller, pausing at all the right places, letting his voice rise and fall gently like the tides, sending tingles up Nora’s spine.

Later, Nora was roused by Adam’s knuckles brushing her face. For a moment, Adam continued stroking her cheek, and Nora allowed herself to imagine that he was enjoying touching her before her consciousness returned fully. She pulled herself upright and thanked her lucky stars that she had not started drooling when she dozed off.

“It’s late,” he murmured, “I can take you back to the city if you want, or you can sleep in the room you were in when you came here the first time. It’s just across the hall.”

Feeling particularly cozy at the moment, Nora was not enthused by the idea of a cold bus ride across the city.

“I’ll stay the night, if that’s ok.”

Nora pushed herself up from the chair and padded to the door. Before she entered the hallway, though, she looked over her shoulder.

“Thank you for the tea, and goodnight.”

“Goodnight to you too, Nora. Dream good dreams.”