Page 21 of These Unhallowed Halls (Equinox Seasons Duet #2)

Thirteen-The Wheel Of The Year Turns Onward & Time Is Of The Essence

Lizzie

I ’d gotten an IUD in college just in case some creep pulled some shit, and I was so fucking glad I had it right now because I was pretty damn sure without it, Caleb would have actually bred me.

Not that I was mad, far from it. That had been the single hottest thing in my entire life, better than the fantasies, and holy shit, I finally got to kiss Temps.

Got to fuck Temps.

It’d been a few minutes, and we’d all gotten dressed again, as best as we could anyway.

Temps’ bra was fucked, the buttons on her shirt.

I gave her mine, willing to just throw on my uniform jacket and call it a day.

Caleb, which was definitely how I was going to be thinking about him now, sat behind his desk, his stare distant as he rubbed his fingers across his lips.

“So,” I broke the silence, “we should probably get back to the dorm. But hey, there’s apparently a killer on the loose. Think you could walk us?”

Temps walked over to me with a nod, hardly able to make eye contact, but Caleb didn’t answer. Walking over, I waved my hand in front of his face.

“Hey, walk us to the dorm, yeah?”

“Oh, umm, sure.” He stood up from the chair roughly, pulling down on his jacket to straighten it.

Caleb gestured toward the door, clearing his throat. I eyed him for a moment, but then shrugged, letting it be for now. Grabbing my bag and Temps’—which was way heavier than mine—I joined her at the door, and she pulled it open, looking down either side of the hallway before stepping out.

The walk was a silent one. I didn’t like how both Caleb and Temps were clearly feeling ways about what had just happened. That was incredible, and yeah, I wouldn’t be walking comfortably for a while thanks to that pierced, monster cock he was rocking, but I had zero regrets.

Why did they?

We arrived at the dorm quickly enough, and before Caleb could skedaddle, I pulled on his sleeve, getting him to turn back around.

“Hey, I really do think we need to figure out what else is going on with the carnival. I didn’t, umm, well, I wasn’t able to look at everything before we had our fun. Would you come up so that I can finish going through it with both of you? I don’t want to have to repeat everything later.”

Okay, as far as excuses went, mine was a solid six out of ten. But hey, I was doing the best I could with limited resources.

“Lizzie, I—”

“Caleb, she’s right. I found another book, too, and I know there’s something important in there. What if we go to the library, though? It’s open late with professor supervision, correct?”

Well, shit. That was a better argument than I thought.

“The library, yes. Alright. That’s fine. If you truly think there’s something important, it would be stupid to delay things. Besides,” he checked his watch, pushing back the sleeve of his tweed jacket, “it’s only quarter to seven. It’s not that late.”

“Alright,” I perked up, bouncing on my feet as I strode in the direction of the library, which we’d yet to visit, “let’s go.”

T he library was absolutely massive, with dark wood columns of books that stretched up into the enormous vaulted ceilings.

Several floors ringed the room, ladders going up to the higher shelves, and staircases leading to the other floors.

It smelled like old paper, that vanilla musk scent that I always associated with Temps.

And now Caleb.

The books all looked ancient, lit gently by glowing lamps on the tables strewn across the wide wood floors and sconces secured to the wall in various places.

There were stained glass windows, larger and more ornate than the ones in Caleb’s office, and I smiled as Temps gasped and spun around like Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

Standing near an iron staircase that spiraled up to the second floor, Temps put her hand on her chest as she gripped it and leaned out. She was pulling a “Singing in the Rain.”

“This place is marvelous! Oh my gods, I never want to leave.”

Chuckling, Caleb rolled his eyes playfully before wandering closer and holding a finger up to his lips.

“Shh. This is a library.”

Temps brows shot up, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

I walked over to her, slinging my arm over her shoulder, which still made her blush after everything we’d just done.

“I actually get it, Temps. This library is a stunner. Did you see those ladders? You could ride them just like in the movies.”

She laughed, looking up at them. “I couldn’t do that. I mean, they’re like school property and probably centuries old. I wouldn’t dream of—”

“If we have time, Temperance. But I think we should get to the research first.”

Doing her best to contain the squeal, Temps nodded happily, and we all walked over to the nearest table, setting out our stuff to get started.

I glanced around, my eyes drawn to the varying shades of brown and black and even green occasionally from the spines of the books.

They were all leatherbound, and the entire room was very weighty and grounded, a solid foundation infused with knowledge.

I’d seen pictures of the Trinity Library in Dublin, and it had nothing on this place.

“Alright, I’ll go get a few other tomes I want to look at. Temperance, why don’t you go through the book you mentioned, and Lizzie, and you can check on those files about the carnival?”

Temps and I exchanged glances, fighting the urge to laugh. I met Caleb’s eyes and nodded. “So bossy.”

Turning pink, Caleb actually blushed slightly, and if he weren’t glaring at me, it’d be the cutest damn thing.

He clenched his jaw, turning decisively on his heel and taking off toward the stacks.

I pulled out my laptop from my bag, and Temps put her book on the table, angling the light to hit the pages.

And then time melted into something strange as we all went into research mode, something I definitely didn’t do often. Still, clicking away on the computer as I dug through records about the carnival didn’t feel nearly as hard as it would have been to try reading all those cryptic books.

“Okay, this is something. I got a name. Jebediah Paine. Junior. His dad was some big preacher guy in the Appalachian area before he vanished during a sermon. No one knows what exactly happened to him, but the son, Jeb Jr., had a rather rocky life with his mother before she passed, and it looks like he started the carnival as soon as he turned eighteen. That was fourteen years ago.”

“Jebedian Paine, why does that name sound familiar?” Caleb furrowed his brow, staring into the middle distance as he held his fingers between the pages of the book he was reading.

“Probably because he made the news. After his death, a bunch of people came forward and accused him of molesting them when they were kids. The cops dug around the house since it was empty, Junior having abandoned it, and they found bodies, too.”

“Oh my gods. Bodies? That’s awful.” Temps reeled back, looking sick to her stomach.

“Yup, that’s it. Fuck, I remember the news report on that asshole. I was traveling then. That was six years after I lost my parents.” I reached across the table, squeezing Caleb’s hand. He smiled and shrugged, refocusing. “What else does it say about Junior in this case?”

Turning back to the screen, I read off the rest of what I’d found in the public criminal records.

“The carnival has had its fair share of complaints. People have accused them of stealing, abduction, but nothing has ever been found, so it didn’t go anywhere.

If you cross-reference their tour dates with missing persons reports, though, it gets pretty fishy. They’re definitely up to something.”

“Holy shit.” Temperance cut in.

“I mean, it’s something, but—” I glanced over at her, and Temps was looking down at a book. “Oh, you’re reading. Great.”

“Sorry, but I can’t believe what I just found. I was trying to see if there was anything about the Paines in the ancestry records the school keeps.”

“And is there?” Caleb asked, beating me to the question.

“No. They’re not in this. But…I am. At least my family, going back decades, and Lizzie, your mom went to school here.”

“What?” Shoving my computer out of the way, I looked at where Temps was pointing. “Holy shit.”

“See! She was a student. The other morrighan.”

My brain swirled, so many feelings coming up from the past that I didn’t know what to do with them. My mother went to school here. She’d probably told me about it at some point when I was little, and I couldn’t remember. My mom. And I was following in her footsteps.

A tear slipped down my face, and I hurried to wipe it away. Temps took my hands, and I let myself be anchored to the present through her touch.

“What, umm,” I had to clear my throat, “what does it say about your family?”

“Lizzie, do you need a minute. I can—”

“It’s fine.” I offered her a tight smile. “I need the distraction.”

Temps nodded. “Okay. Well, my family goes back to witches and shamans from the earliest days of America. It looks like the line has been dormant until me. No one from my family has gone to school here since another woman named Temperance, of all things, and that was in the 15th century, when Europe was just starting to colonize.”

“Her name was Temperance?” I looked down at the page, seeing the asterisk near her name. “Wow. What’s with the asterisk, though?”

“Usually, that means there’s more information. She is probably referenced in a different text.” Caleb tilted his head at us when we looked up at him.

“Goody, more homework.” I moaned, rolling my eyes to the sound of dual chuckles.

Temps elbowed me. “But look, it found her mother, too. A woman named Bethany Ashdown. That’s where it begins, I guess. So cool. And weird, but cool.”

“Bethany Ashdown?” Caleb leaned forward, his brows up to his hairline.

“That’s not—Holy shit, indeed. That woman was responsible for the idea of a magic school.

That’s essentially our founder. Her most famous quote is, ‘I do this not for me, but for Temperance. To be as tempered as steel, in her mother’s name. ’”

“Wait, so she wasn’t Temperance’s mother?” Temps shook her head, trying to process as I fell back in my chair.

Talk about information overload.

“She raised her yes, but the ‘legend’, as it were—the rumor, myth, what have you that Bethany herself circulated—was that her birth mother was a witch from a realm of Eternal Winter. Someone called ‘Wren,’ according to Bethany. There’s not much about her, though.

Unfortunately, there are just a few clippings from Bethany’s diary and an old news report of sorts from that same era, which stated, ‘Merchant Trumaine found dead. Slave, Wren, likely to blame.’”

“Gods, the fuck was going on back then?” I furrowed my brow as I slumped in my chair, the physical drain of running on all cylinders all day catching up with me.

“You’re welcome to research more about your ancestors,” Caleb said, standing up from his seat at the table as he closed the book in front of him and began to clean off his glasses. “I need to return to my apartment, though. I will continue to look over the things I can from there.”

“Well, here take mine,” I slid the book I’d been reading across the table toward his stack, “cuz it didn’t make much sense to me anyway.”

“Unfortunately, books are not permitted to leave the library. You’ll have to come back.”

“Everyone is really making this homework shit drag on, huh?” I shrugged, looking over at Temps, who’d started to pack up. “Alright.”

It didn’t take us long to gather stuff up and put it back on the claims desk to be filed away later. Caleb and Temps could hardly look at each other, or me, and I stared between them, waiting for someone to just grow a spine already.

“I will see you both in class tomorrow.” Caleb nodded, his posture stiff as a damn board. “And we say leave all talk about what occurred in the past. It’s better for all of us to move on.”

“Speak for yourself, teach.”

I was going for the tease, but Caleb was obviously worked up, so after that, I just let the guy wander off. He’d be back. Yeah, we’d see him in class tomorrow, but I knew we weren’t done. And when I looked at Temps, watching her follow him with her eyes, I had a feeling she knew it, too.