Beautiful Darkness(47)

“What now?” Link found his flashlight and aimed it at the column next to him. A menacing stone griffin's head snarled back. He pulled the flashlight away, and it flickered on a fanged gargoyle. “If this is a library, I'd hate to see a Caster prison.”

I heard the sound of the flames erupting into light. “Wait for it.”

One by one, the torches surrounding the rotunda burst into flame, and we could see the carved colonnade, with rows of fierce mythological creatures, some Caster, some Mortal, snaking around every pedestal.

Link cringed. “This place is messed up. Just sayin’.”

I touched a woman's face twisted into carved agony in stone flames. Link ran his hand over another face, revealing massive rows of canines. “Check out the dog. It looks like Boo.” He looked again and realized the fangs were growing out of a man's head. He yanked his hand away.

There was a swirl of carved rock that appeared to be made of both stone and smoke. A face emerged from the twists and folds of the column, and it looked familiar. It was hard to tell because there was so much rock around it. The face seemed to be fighting the stone, trying to push its way out toward me. For a second, I thought I saw the lips on the face move, as if it was trying to speak.

I backed away. “What the hell is that?”

“What's what?” Link stood next to me, staring at the column, which was just a column swirled with curving waves and spirals again. The face had been swallowed back into the pattern, like a head disappearing under the sea's waves. “The ocean, maybe? Smoke from a fire? Why do you care?”

“Forget it.” I couldn't, even if I didn't understand it. I knew that face in the stone. I had seen it somewhere before. This room was eerie, warning that the Caster world was a Dark place, no matter whose side you were on.

Another torch ignited, and the stacks of old books, manuscripts, and Caster Scrolls revealed themselves. They radiated out from the rotunda in all directions, like spokes on a wheel, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. The last torch burst into flame, and I could see the curving mahogany desk where Marian should have been sitting.

It was empty. Though Marian always said the Lunae Libri was a place of old magic, neither Dark nor Light, without her the whole library felt pretty Dark.

“No one's here.” Link sounded defeated.

I grabbed a torch off the wall and handed it to him, taking another for myself. “They're down here.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

I plowed ahead into the stacks as if I knew where I was going. The air was thick with the smell of the bent and crumbling spines of old books and ancient scrolls, the dusty oak shelves straining under the weight of hundreds of years and centuries of words. I held my torch up to the nearest shelf. “Toes: to Caste Hair on Your Maiden's. Tongues for Binding and Casting. Toffee: Casts Hidden Inside. We must be in the T's.”

“Destruction of Mortal Life, Total. That should be in the D's.” Link reached for the book.

“Don't touch that. It'll burn your hand.” I had learned the hard way, from The Book of Moons.

“Shouldn't we at least hide it or something? Behind the Toffee one?” Link had a point.

We hadn't gone ten feet when I heard a laugh. A girl's laugh, unmistakable, echoing off the carved ceilings. “You hear that?”

“What?” Link waved his torch, almost setting the nearest pile of scrolls on fire.

“Watch it. There's no fire escape down here.”

We reached a crossroads in the stacks. I heard it again, the almost musical laughter. It was beautiful and familiar, and the sound of it made me feel safe, the world I was standing in a little less foreign. “I think it's a girl laughing.”

“Maybe it's Marian. She's a girl.” I looked at him like he was insane, and he shrugged. “Sort of.”

“It's not Marian.” I motioned for him to listen, but the sound was gone. We walked in the direction of the laughter, and the passageway turned until we reached another rotunda, similar to the first.

“You think it's Lena and Ridley?”

“I don't know. This way.” I could barely follow the sound, but I knew who it was. Part of me always suspected I could find Lena no matter where she was. I couldn't explain it, I just knew.

It made sense. If our connection was so strong we could dream the same dreams and speak without speaking, why wouldn't I be able to sense where she was? It's like when you drive home from school, or some place you go every day, and you remember leaving the parking lot, then the next thing you know you're pulling into your driveway and you don't remember how you got there.

She was my destination. I was always on the way to Lena, even when I wasn't. Even when she wasn't on her way to me.

“A little farther.”

The next twist in the passage revealed a corridor covered with ivy. I held up my torch, and a brass lantern lit itself in the middle of the leaves. “Look.” The light from the lantern illuminated the outline of a doorway hidden beneath the vines. I felt along the wall until I found the cold, round iron of the latch. It was in the shape of a crescent. A Caster moon.

I heard it again, laughter. It had to be Lena. There are some things a guy just knows. I knew L. And I knew my heart wouldn't lead me astray.