Leaves and dirt slid down the wooden door as it creaked open. Once the door collapsed against the earth, a cyclone of bats blasted through the opening, throwing Phoenix backward with a high-pitched scream. I pressed my lips together, holding in my amusement.
All our eyes fixed on Phoenix as he calmed himself down with a chuckle. “Come on, none of us were expecting that.”
“Whatever you say.” I stepped down first.
“You know who screams like that? Girls,” Beck stated, following behind me. “Girls scream like that, Nix.”
“And those douchebags from the Eastside,” I pointed out.
“Which are the same,” Zeph added.
We all filed in and down the narrow staircase that led underground. Phoenix’s torch lit from the back, and a soft yellow glow cascaded down the stone walls in front of me as I led the way. Water dripped from the cracked stone and slid down the rough edges of the pentagram tunnel our ancestors had carved out. Underground, it stayed at fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit year-round, no matter the weather conditions on the surface.
Different passageways branched out, leading to separate caverns, one where an underground spring laid, crystal clear waters. Tonight, there was no time for swimming. We needed to get to the Chambers’ bibliotheca—a book repository that held the journals from the original families.
We walked for over half a mile, listening to the drip, drip, drip of the water seeping through the cracks of the cold, wet stone and landing in small puddles lining the tunnel. Metal bars blocked our entrance once we were about three-quarters of the way in, and I clutched the iron bars in my fists and rocked them back and forth. They weren’t budging—no locks to break through either.
“I knew it wouldn’t be easy,” Beck mumbled beside me.
Phoenix cursed under his breath and shouldered his way between Beck and me, then kicked the metal gate. A loud zang! rang out through the tunnel.
“Control yourself,” I gritted out, laying a hand over his shoulder to pull him back. “You think you can get through it?”
“I’ll need your help to control it,” Phoenix admitted, dropping the torch against the wall.
We both stood in front of the bars. I glanced over to Phoenix, whose hand reached out for the fire from the torch. The flames spread over his hand and danced on his fingertips. Beck and Zeph stepped back as Phoenix brought his hand out in front of him, and the other snatched my wrist for my energy. He chanted a verse. I followed suit, tranced by the fire in his hand, and submitting to the heat as it fanned across our skin.
Then the fire was swallowed up as Phoenix’s fingers curled into a fist. The jolt of a searing hot flame rocketed through his arm to where we were linked, down to my fingertips. I felt the fire inside me, and together, we swiped a finger across the bars, slicing the iron as if by a sweltering blade.
The iron bars fell to the ground with a loud bang!
“Well, hot damn, boys,” Beck clapped, pushing past us and rubbing his hands together, “that was adorable.”
I stepped over the bars after him. “Let’s just get the books and get out.”
After another quarter of the way down, past the cell of the Wiccan prison, we reached the wooden door to the Chamber. I popped open the lock, no time to waste.
“Just the journals,” I instructed. “We’re only taking what we need.” I didn’t tell them I wanted the Cantini book too. The Cantini’s held the secrets of Weeping Hollow. It had the answers as to why Fallon’s father would force her to join Sacred Sea if she returned, and for some masochistic reason, I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I wanted confirmation it was because Tobias didn’t want Fallon anywhere near us because of the curse. That there was no other reason. I turned and found Beck’s blue eyes. “You watch the exit. I’ll grab the Book of Parish.”
He nodded and fell back against the stone wall.
The door opened, and we walked under the curved frame into the Chamber from the back. I’d been here more times than the rest of them, and I pointed down the hall and to the left where the library was.
“This place always gives me the creeps,” Phoenix whispered as shadows moved across the walls that were not our own. The watchful eyes of our ancestors.
In dusty glass cases, skulls, a bag of bones, stones, and artifacts from the past made up the shelves. I gravitated toward the wall of books and blew against the spines. Clouds of dust parted, and foiled letters appeared, gleaming against the blaze of Phoenix’s torch. I tilted my head back to see Zephyr busy, flipping through pictures from an old box and Phoenix standing by the doorway, watching the halls. My eyes roamed over the Book of Parish, Goody, and Wildes. Only three of what we needed were here. The Book of Danvers was missing, along with the Book of Cantini and … mine—the Book of Blackwell. Where was the Book of Blackwell?
I swiped over more spines as my eager eyes read greedily. Blackwell, Blackwell, Blackwell.
All my eyes crossed were dates, names, 11/22/63, and so on. I walked over to Phoenix, snatched the torch, and returned to the wall of books, holding the torch high, silently begging for our family’s silver foil to bounce off the fire. “Where are you?” My eyes darted across spines, rows, and columns. It wasn’t here.
“Zeph,” I called out in a loud whisper, grabbing the three available books. Phoenix cocked his head at us, and my eyes slid to Zephyr, who dropped the photos and walked toward me. “Danvers and Blackwell aren’t here.” I didn’t tell him that I was also looking for the Book of Cantini. It was only a few weeks ago I’d seen the missing books during the meeting with the Order. “It has to still be at the altar.”
“We have enough,” Zeph stated, reminding me of his opinion: “The Blackwells are stained with dark spots and insanity.” Meaning, the Book of Blackwell was useless. “We don’t need Danvers either. They’ve been dead for over a century.” But the answers to the curse could be in either of these books. In all five of these books. And the confirmation I needed about Fallon would be in the Book of Cantini, the ones who held the secrets. These books were reasons I risked everything to come here.
“The Danvers were here when the curse began,” I pointed out, impatient.
Zeph tilted his head. “The fifth family was weak and worthless.”
I leveled my glowering gaze. “I’m not leaving without all the books.”
I dropped the three books in his arms and walked past Phoenix and down the hall to the same place I’d stood before the Order, to the same place Augustine Pruitt had given Kane everything. This wasn’t only a mission to find the answers we needed to break the Curse of the Hollow Heathens. I was determined to know why Fallon’s father would force her to a coven, to understand why, for the first time, the Order forbade me to be near someone. “It’s only one girl,” Agatha had stated, but it wasn’t only one girl, it was the girl, and I couldn’t let this go.
I needed all the books. I needed all the answers. I needed her.
My boots clambered up the steps to the long table, and my eyes roamed over the surface desperately.
The table was empty. I twisted around, scanning the entire room.
The books were gone. Someone else, someone other than us, had stolen from the Chamber.