“What are you doing?” Ed asked as he sidled a little closer, well inside her circle of personal space.
“Just cataloguing.”
“Need any help?”
“No, thank you. Only library staff are allowed to catalogue,” she added, because even though he creeped her out, she couldn’t be rude to him.
“Oh,” he said, still standing way too close for comfort. “I was wondering if, you, uh, wanted to go grab some coffee, maybe have lunch.”
This was what she’d been dreading.
While she had definitely reached a point in her life where she was ready to meet someone and embark on a new relationship, she did not want it with Ed. There was something about him that just didn’t sit right with her. It wasn’t his looks, although his beard was kind of long and scruffy. He was actually pretty attractive, and he obviously worked out a lot, but none of that was enough to wipe away the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that she got every time he came near her.
Although she typically hated to lie, she thought that in these circumstances one teeny tiny little fib couldn’t hurt. “I’m sorry, Ed, I’m a widow.” She pulled out from under her sweater the chain that she wore around her neck every single day that had her engagement and wedding rings hanging on it. “I’m just not ready to date anyone right now. I’m sorry,” she said again.
“No, no.” He shook his head quickly, making his beard swish. “It was my fault. I, uh, I didn’t know, I’m sorry about your husband.”
“Thank you.” She forced a smile.
“Maybe some other time,” he said hopefully.
“Maybe,” she agreed, then mentally kicked herself. She shouldn’t have said that. She shouldn’t be worried about hurting his feelings, and she shouldn’t be leading him on. But she couldn’t make herself say that it was never going to happen between them.
“Sydney.”
She looked over to see one of her colleagues waving at her. Thank you, she thought to herself. “I have to go,” she said to Ed and quickly got to her feet and hurried off.
As she went, she felt his eyes on her.
Staring at her.
It made her hairs stand on end.
Sydney hoped that her turning him down was enough for him to get the message, but she didn’t think that it was, especially since she hadn’t been able to be blunt.
Great, now she had a librarian killer and a creepy stalker, wannabe boyfriend to worry about.
6:57 P.M.
* * *
Looking as nonchalant as it was possible to look, he stood and walked to the shelves, putting the comic book he’d been reading back, then strolling over to the bathroom.
The library was quiet. It was only a couple of minutes until closing time, and almost everyone else had already packed up their things and gone home.
But not him.
He was here, ready and waiting, for the place to close down for the night, and then he was going to make his move.
It was always a risk, of course—not that he would get caught. He never really worried about that, but there was no way to know which of the libraries in the city would have someone stay behind late or be the last to leave and lock up. He could hide out here, only to find that the staff all left in a group, leaving him to walk out of here empty-handed. Or he could wait here only to find that it was a man who was the last to leave, and that was useless to him. He’d rather walk away without making a kill than walk away with a man.
If he was lucky, there would be a woman left here alone after everyone left, then he could strike.
In the bathroom, he walked to the last toilet and went into the stall, leaving the door open. Closing it was a dead giveaway that there was someone in there. Given that it was a library and there was nothing of monetary value here to steal, no one ever gave the place a thorough check to make sure that everyone had left before they locked up, because the thought that someone would still be here had never occurred to them.
With three murders under his belt now, he wasn’t sure that he would still be able to find librarians who were willing to be alone in a library at night anymore. He knew he wouldn’t if he were a librarian and he knew someone was killing off his colleagues. But people were often stupid, and they didn’t do things that made sense, so he was fairly confident that it would take a lot more murders before people started taking their safety more seriously.
He heard footsteps and slowed his breathing so he made the minimal amount of noise possible and waited.
If he happened to be found, he would simply pretend he was just finishing in the bathroom and walk out. Someone might get suspicious and wonder if he was the man who’d been stalking librarians, but he would minimize those suspicions by pretending he’d had a sudden upset stomach, and make a quick exit.
The bathroom door whooshed open and he waited to see what would happen next. He was on pins and needles but not because he was nervous; it was because he was excited.
Footsteps came only about halfway down the bathroom, then they retreated, the light switched off, and the door closed.
Success.
People were so predictable. He was sure that the last person to leave the library was supposed to make sure that there was no one in the bathrooms, that there was no one anywhere in the building before they left.
Lucky for him, most people were complacent. They thought that nothing bad was ever going to happen to them. He had been that way, too, once upon a time.
A long time ago.
A lifetime ago.
Then he had been betrayed and wounded so deeply it had left scars he could never get rid of.
They had made him into this beast.
Shrugging off his backpack, he unzipped it and pulled out the small plastic container that held his beast teeth. He put them on and then slid his hands into his claw gloves, and he finally felt complete again. It was only when he was like this that he felt at peace. When he was forced to be his human self, that was when all of the anger that lived inside him bubbled back up. But his teeth and his gloves were like water to that fiery fury; they doused it, and he was finally able to get some relief. It was like being who he was supposed to be again—the person he would have been if he hadn’t been so badly hurt.
Buzzing with the knowledge of what he would soon be doing, he crept out of the toilet stall and down to the bathroom door. He edged it open and peeped out. The lights were still on, so someone was definitely still here.
Taking that as a sign that tonight would go exactly as planned, he eased through the door and crept to the small kitchen where the staff took their breaks.
Because he had done this three times before, it didn’t take more than a minute to set everything up. Once it was perfect, he went to see who was still here. He hoped he didn’t have a repeat of last time where he’d had to quickly pack up his things and sneak out the back door when he found it was a man.
There were no voices, so he assumed that meant that whoever was here was here alone. At least, they thought they were.
Gliding down the aisle, he spotted her.
A woman of around forty, she had a wild mess of brown frizzy hair and olive skin. She was standing by a row of books, one was in her hands, open, and she was flipping through it. She didn’t seem to know that he was here.
The first time he’d done this, there had been one moment of hesitation as he realized that once he took that next step there would be no going back.