A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(44)

There were several seconds of disorientation, but when everything cleared, I couldn’t help gasping. Kendra was a few feet away, smiling, beneath a sparkling golden archway. With each step I took, the walls seemed to glitter. Like they were encrusted with a billion slivers of glass; they played off the light from the torches around the room.

I picked up the nearest torch and held it close to the wall to get a better look. On closer inspection, the glinting shards appeared to be stones that changed color depending on what angle you looked at them from. “Did you light all these?”

“Nah,” Kendra said. She walked back to me and held her hand over the fire as I started to protest. “They’re not fire in the sense that you’re thinking. It’s magic.”

“Well, bippity, boppity, boo.” We walked forward and stopped just beneath the arch. There was a subtle breeze, and I couldn’t tell which way it was coming from.

She came up beside me. “As far as I know, you’re the first non-coven member to ever walk past this gate.”

A profound sense of gravity settled over me. Honor that she would share this with me, but also fear that I wasn’t worthy. “This is kinda huge, Ken. You sure you don’t want me to wait here? I’d totally get it. Look who you’re talking to. My family has done some pretty insane things to protect our secrets.”

The room ahead was huge, with no visible doors other than the mirror beyond the archway. In the middle, there was a podium with a large book sitting open on the top, the edges of its pages fluttering every now and then, and along the walls, it almost looked like countless rows of drawers.

Kendra took my hand and squeezed, tugging me toward the large room. “There’s no one on this planet that I trust more than you, Jessie.”

My foot crossed the threshold beneath the arch, and a horrific howling filled the air.

I groaned. Was nothing easy? Why couldn’t it ever be as simple as walking into a room to take a peek at an ancient book? “You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Kendra cringed. “Oh…”

The howling didn’t ease up. I covered my ears and yelled, “Oh? That’s really all you have to say?”

“I guess it makes sense. They’ve got magical wards in place to protect things,” she yelled back.

Any second now, my ears were going to start bleeding. “You didn’t stop to think that might be a possibility before we walked in?”

She met my gaze with a glare. “Neither did you. You’re supposed to do this stuff for a living.”

“Breaking into coven storage houses? Um, no,” I said, trying to make myself heard over the noise.

She threw her hands into the air, then dropped them to cover her ears. “You know what I mean. Hang on. Lemme see if I can get it to stop.” She bounded across the room to the middle, where the podium was. Kendra laid her hand against the book and closed her eyes, and a moment later, the shrieking silenced.

“Thank God…” she said, wiping a hand across her brow. She looked from the mirror to me and shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to hang here. I can come back later tonight and check things out myself. Maybe smuggle some books with me. Right now, I think we need to get you out of here.”

I nodded. No arguments from me. The last thing I wanted was for Cassidy to find out I was here. Not only would she eat me alive, but Kendra would be in a world of shit.

She stepped through the mirror, and I followed, not hesitating this time.

I should have.

“Oww!” Instead of moving fluidly through, I smashed into solid glass, smushing my nose and stubbing my big toe. I gasped. The surface shimmered twice, glinting with the same ripple at the center I’d seen when we’d come in. A million things raced through my head. What if the alarm started going off again? What would happen if there was some freaky, witchy Indiana Jones type booby trap about to spring? With a bright flash, the glass turned clear, and I could see Kendra on the other side looking pale and horrified.

She tapped the surface with her index finger, kicked it with her feet, and finally, pounded it with her fist. The actions were soundless on my end. Her mouth moved frantically, but I couldn’t hear a word. If I couldn’t hear her, chances were she wouldn’t be able to hear me, either. I covered my ears and shook my head. “No good,” I mouthed slowly. “Can’t hear.”

“What happened?” she mouthed, frowning.

She was asking me? She was the witch. I held up a hand and backed away from the glass, slipping into the corner where there was just enough shadow to stand in. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on Kendra and the other side of the mirror. I felt myself blend into the darkness, and from the other side, I saw Kendra turn, looking for me, but my location didn’t change.

I tried again.

Still, nothing. I felt the cool relief as I faded into the shadows, but couldn’t leave the room. This was the third time my shadowing had gone wonky. Maybe Dad was right. Use it or lose it.

“Craps,” I cursed, stepping from the darkness. I rushed back to the glass and banged my fist. “Can’t shadow out.”

“Have to get help,” Kendra mouthed. She didn’t look any happier about the idea than I was.

There was nothing left to say. Cassidy was going to implode when she found out about this, but there was no other choice. Kendra didn’t know how to get me out, and even if she went to another coven sister, it wouldn’t stay under wraps. Cassidy ruled the women with an iron fist. None of them would keep this a secret from her.