Page 11 of Safe in Shadow (Pine Ridge Universe #22)

“ E xcuse me. Hi?” Grace walked up to the reference desk and spoke softly, hoping to attract the attention of the woman peering into a box of battered, probably donated books.

“Hi! Can I help you?” She asked, turning.

“Oh. Um. Yes.” Grace tried to collect her thoughts, but her first instinct was that she wished she’d done something with her hair or worn a more feminine blouse.

The buxom Latina librarian at the reference desk looked like a more realistic Jessica Rabbit, or one of those old pin-up girl posters that Grace had found in G-Pop’s old army footlocker.

She wasn’t in the habit of noticing people’s shapes, but sometimes her own figure—described by her oh-so-helpful mother as “flat as a teenage boy’s”—provoked a comparison, especially when she was wearing torn-up jeans, a smudged tank top, and had her frizzy hair up in a messy bun.

“Great,” the librarian said in a patient voice with a warm smile. “What could I help you with?”

“Uh. Yes! Right! I saw on the internet that you have a historical archive for the town here?”

Grace tried to tell herself that she wasn’t here just because she was dying of curiosity about the entity haunting (was that the right word?) Hilltop House. I’m doing research. I’m doing research when I should be on the hunt for more furniture.

But maybe I’ll learn some cool facts about the town to put in the hotel’s brochure. Or when I do my sponsored senior activities, maybe we’ll plan an outing to the library. Yeah. It’s worth an hour or two of “research.”

“Historical archives? Yes. Mortimer Ashcroft,” the woman replied, nodding.

For a minute, Grace was puzzled. The lady’s lanyard bore a tag that said Louisa A. and a shiny pink book sticker that read, “Ask me about my Tbr.”

“I’m sorry?” Grace asked.

“Mortimer Ashcroft. He’s a local historian and author.

He keeps the archives in great shape. You can browse on the second floor if you’d like.

If you want me to help you narrow down something specific, I can put in a call to him.

” The librarian gave her an encouraging smile and pointed up the curving wooden staircase.

“Do you have much information about the town before the 1900s?”

“Oh, my. I think Mr. Ashcroft might be able to help you if the archives can’t. The town really began to expand in the 1920s, with some significant bumps in the 1950s and 1980s.”

“Are you a native?” Grace asked with a smile.

“No, my husband is, though. His family has been here since the 1860s. Anyway, there are some land records and newspaper clippings from the Pine Ridge Gazette . It’s still published today, just had its 150th anniversary.”

“Okay. Thank you.” Grace nodded, awkwardly patted her hair, and realized she should have brought a pen and paper. Maybe the library had some up in the archive area. If not, she could take notes on her phone.

GRACE FOUND HERSELF growing increasingly fond of the little town as she scrolled backward through the microfiche editions of the Pine Ridge Gazette.

Such a charming sense of community. Such a peaceful place.

There was little mention of crime or strife, and she found herself lost in the ‘Golden Age’ of Pine Ridge.

She read about the groundbreaking for the college campus in the sixties, the new movie theater opening in the fifties, the USO canteens, victory gardens, war bond drives, rubber drives, paper drives, and church bazaars in the forties, the paper mill closing down in the late thirties, the town’s paper and lumber boom in the teens and twenties.

.. But there was very little about Hilltop House.

Finally, she found a small mention of the Hilltop House Hospital for tuberculosis patients. Shellshocked soldiers. The microfiche flipped back, and her notes got longer, a giant email draft with hundreds of names and dates that she might ask Nyx about, or tell her clients about.

“Wait.” Grace looked up and noticed with a start that the lights were lowering outside—the sun had shifted to the west. It was late in the afternoon! But that wasn’t the only startling thing. Names and photographs of a few people in particular stood out—because they kept repeating.

Gloria White.

Later, Gloria White-Creighton. She seemed blurry in some photos and not in others, but when Grace could force her eyes to focus, the girl never changed in appearance.

And she’d been killed in an accident at the White Pines Estate back in the 1920s. So how come she was still hosting a weekly book club?

Had to be a granddaughter, Grace thought, trying to calm her sudden spike in breathing.

Manny Finklestein was another one. His machine and bicycle repair shop had opened in 1902.

Now it was an auto shop, a used car dealership, and a car rental place.

And the same hulking figure had been in pictures about the place for years—at the opening of the Rotary Club, the opening of the car lot, spotted at the Fourth of July picnic. ..

Gotta be a grandson. Generations of Whites, Finklesteins, and Minegolds... But they all have the same first name. Never seem to age.

She gulped.

The creepy feeling she had in the woods near her house, the one she got when she was in town the other night, intensified to the point where she rose and paced around the empty room, wondering if she was going insane, or if she should leave this town, this house...

Oddly enough, she wanted to go back to Nyx, and she wanted to find something of his human life, a present of sorts to make him more... human.

He’ll never be human, Grace.

But he took on a more human shape the longer we talked. And he can write. Maybe he can speak if he gets better.

He’s dead. He’s not going to get better. Maybe he could... Crossover? Is that the term they use?

God, I don’t know .

Grace sat back down at the microfiche reader and kept turning the knob, working backwards through time.

I know I feel less scared with him in the house than I do here, in this library, where time seems to loop, and I have evidence to prove it. Where it feels like someone is watching me.

Grace suddenly jerked her neck around. She could have sworn she saw a translucent gray shape sliding from the room. As she rose, a book fell from one of the shelves.

With shaking legs, she stood up again, telling herself the shivers were just from the fact that the archival room was set to sixty-eight degrees and she was wearing a tank top and jeans that were fifty percent hole.

As her skin became a sheet of goosebumps, she picked up the cracked red leather album and tried to see where it had fallen from.

As she did, she took a quick look inside.

Land deeds and property maps. Transfer of titles and records, all seeming to be the original documents.

The inside of the book bore a small white card, now yellowed with age, that explained that these old records were now obsolete and that more accurate, current records were in the digital archives maintained by the Broome County Courthouse.

Grace flipped through a few pages, and then the pages flipped ahead on their own.

The vents must have kicked on, she thought, trying not to scream.

Hilltop. Reclaimed by Broome County in 1901 after the death of James and Cynthia Cameron.

“Holy shit,” Grace whispered, and looked around, eyes scanning for telltale gray mist, the fleeting edge of a shadowy arm.

There was none this time, but the more she read, the more she was convinced that this page was meant for her.

Now she finally knew Nyx’s name and, apparently, that of his young wife.

A small clipping on the back of the page explained that Cynthia Cameron had died in the woods of Hilltop, thrown from her horse into a ravine.

And that’s why Nyx—I mean James, has never left. I bet he died of a broken heart after she had her accident in the woods. That must be why the woods feel so strange, too.

Oh. Oh my God... What if Cynthia is still out there in the woods, waiting for him, and he’s trapped in the house?

Fuck, did I just commit ghost adultery?

With a groan, she shut the book, shoved it back in the only gap on the shelves, and turned off the microfiche reader.

Maybe he doesn’t remember.

Does that make it better or worse?

“It makes it a hell of a lot more awkward,” Grace sighed, trotting down the staircase.

Louisa spun around at the reference desk as one of the other librarians or volunteers scooted away with an armful of books. The librarian smiled and looked up at her. “Did you have a productive day?” she asked.

“I sure did.” A creepy, productive, fascinating day. How can I love this place and be so freaked out by it at the same time? Grace rubbed her forehead.

“Headache?”

Long time squinting into the reader, but I couldn’t stop myself. History is addictive.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“Yeah. I might come back some—” Grace froze as she caught sight of the man with the stack of books emerging from the other side of the office, a slender figure in blacks and creams, now pushing a cart full of children’s books. “Is that Mr. Minegold? Mr. Jakob Minegold?”

Louisa looked startled. “Oh, you know him? He volunteers here several afternoons and evenings each week. He’s a great one for the children’s story hour. I suddenly want to be back in preschool whenever he cracks open a storybook.”

“He... Does he have sons?” No, no, is he a son? Was his dad also Jakob Minegold? That’s what I meant to ask.

“Uhh. Yes. Jesse Smith and Robbie—” Louisa’s face suddenly paled. “Well. Um. You could say they’re more like adopted family. Sorry, do you know the family?”

“I saw him in the paper. A lot. Several decades in a row,” Grace said, a stiff smile on her face, her eyes roving nervously around the library, trying to track Mr. Minegold—and keep an eye on the exit.

“Oh. You saw that? You’re very observant.”

What’s that supposed to mean?

That’s the question, isn’t it? What does it mean?

“I bet you have questions. Would you like to speak to him?” Louisa rose, her smile shaky.

“I—”

“Jakob!” Louisa hissed in a stage whisper.

To Grace’s shock, the man turned.

He heard her whisper from halfway across the library.

“Yes, dear?” Mr. Minegold asked, his voice beautiful and smooth, lilting with a trace of some European accent. When he turned and focused on her, his smile was the perfect mix of curiosity and courtesy—and his eyes glinted red.

Just a trick of the light.

Right?

“That’s okay,” Grace squeaked. “I was only supposed to be here for a few hours. I have to go!”

She turned and bolted for her car, heart flying, making her feel as though a hummingbird had taken up residence in her chest.

Oddly enough, the “humans” in town frightened her more than the strange, shadowy being haunting the halls of her home.