Life Reader
Page 35
Raven watched the tides turn, grimly hoping the Oathbreakers would stay true to her orders. All need for the library staff and the emissaries to fight was gone. Their battle was over.
Raven’s father moved to stand next to her. He watched an Oathbreaker footman spear a decayor with glee. “Raven, what’s going on? What have you done?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Rocky asked, covering a wound on his side with his hand. “Your daughter is the kind of librarian that got us into this mess. She’s a Double A.”
“Raven, this ghost army is much larger than the last thing you read to life,” Brannon quietly said, cautiously approaching her. “Do you think you’ll be able to handle it?”
Raven glanced at the bruised boy. “I’ll get to find out,” she said, hesitating. “Would you mind helping me?”
Brannon smiled. “Of course. It would be my honor.”
“So you all knew about this?” Raven’s father asked turning in a circle to darkly eye Raven’s coworkers.
“Don’t blame them, Dad. They found out when Fox attacked the library,” Raven said, watching a ghostly knight terrorize Kraken.
“This is why you wouldn’t read? Raven, why didn’t you tell me?” her dad asked, hurt, disbelief, and some anger lining his voice.
“Correct me if I’m wrong but now doesn’t seem like the best time to discuss this,” Mrs. Conners said, brushing her clothes off.
“This conversation is not over,” Raven’s father warned her before turning away. “Rocky, let’s nab the magic abusers while they’re down.”
“You think they’re getting up after tangling with those things?” Rocky snorted, following Raven’s father through the ethereal chaos to Roland and Kraken.
Raven inhaled as sunlight breached the room again. The Army of the Dead had chased the shadow out, cutting off the decayors’ retreat. Caught by the shadowy army, the decayors screamed.
“You did well,” Aron said as he and Asher approached Raven, their hands in their pockets.
“Of course she did,” Asher snorted. “She’s our triplet.”
“She could have done more than well if she started reading at the beginning of the attack,” Daire said, wincing when his scowl made his blackened skin crinkle.
Alison sighed and shook her head at Daire. “Boy, you are so slow to learn. I pity you.”
“Prefect, shut up,” the director ordered.
Rocky snapped a pair of handcuffs on the motionless Roland. Raven’s father was subduing Kraken—who had fallen into hysterics—as the Oathbreakers attacked the last few decayors.
“Okay, I thought it was bad last time? This time clean up is going to take weeks, even if the janitor goes nuts,” Asher said brushing blood off his eyebrow.
“Libraries are not good places to have battles,” Aron agreed. “What are you doing?” he asked as Raven laid flat on the ground.
“Getting ready,” she tightly replied. Brannon knelt at her side, flexing his hands in preparation.
“For the backlash?” Jeremiah asked, using water to brush black ash off his clothes.
Raven grimly smiled. “Yep.”
She wouldn’t allow herself to complain, or for her army to stick around any longer than necessary. They were called Oathbreakers for a reason.
The Army of Death moved as one solid wave, surrounding Raven now that their quarry had been taken care of.
“Thank you for your help,” Raven said, her breath coming faster in anticipation of the pain. “You are dismissed.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, pain wracked Raven’s body.
Raven screamed.
Her father immediately looked up. “What’s wrong? Raven?” he said, slamming Kraken’s head into the marble floor—instantly knocking the squealing magic abuser out cold. He stood and scrambled to his daughter’s side.
The Oathbreakers dissolved like smoke in the wind, and Brannon started administering his healing magic.
“What’s happening? Raven?” her father demanded.
“Stop! Just make it stop!” she begged as wave after wave of pain gnawed at her body.
Everyone in the room cringed as Raven howled, her cries eerie and ghostly like her army.
Chapter 23
EC backup responding to the initial distress signal arrived minutes later. Raven was immediately attended to by an emergency intensive care unit. The medical operatives deemed it too dangerous to move her while the pain swam through her system.
Raven screamed for a full ten minutes as her bones cracked and her magic wrecked havoc on her.
After she grew quiet she was rushed off to a healing facility where a team of healing unicorns waited for her. No one noticed the small fairy that snuck under the blankets of the gurney Raven was loaded onto.
That was the last the Saint Cloud page turners saw Rachel McCellen.
Kraken and Roland were taken into custody. Kraken was jailed, but even the EC didn’t know what to do with Roland. The attack from the Oathbreakers appeared to break his mind. He was rarely lucid. Mostly he screamed at shadows and raved about ghosts and copper haired girls.
Raven, as Rachel McCellen, did not return to school the following Monday, nor did her brother, Adam.
Instead, during an emergency staff meeting a man named Gram spoke to the page turners of Saint Cloud. The blustery man made them take an oath, which promised they would not reveal any information about Macbeth’s Cauldron, or about the odd magic possessed by Rachel McCellen AKA Raven Wishmore.
It was better than a memory wipe, so they accepted it. (The twins grudgingly so.)
The Montamos brothers nursed hopes she would return, but Thanksgiving passed, followed by Christmas, and in the second week of January they abandoned their optimism
After some snooping on the Kingdom Network, Asher and Aron discovered Fox had not been caught, and it was assumed he had separated entirely from the Errësi. His whereabouts were unknown.
The twins suspected Raven was safe from him, and if not she could certainly smite the fire eyed boy if she wished to.
The library moved on. Director Eastgate announced something had to be done with the books. The fiction section of the library went wild after Raven left—books were constantly falling off shelves. Paintings, stonework and the like were freely ambling about the top floor, and some of the gargoyles were starting to talk and function like animated objects.
The library could no longer be ignored. A specialist would have to be brought in.
“I am so sick of shelving books,” Asher groaned, splayed out by the stairs in the fiction floor.
It was the twins’ shift for guard duty of the fiction section. Too many patrons had gotten close enough to the stairs to see a stone lion amble past, or get a book smashed in their face.
The director ordered Saint Cloud page turners to take turns sitting in the fiction floor, essentially babysitting it until the much bragged about specialist arrived.
“This specialist had better be worth all the fuss,” Aron agreed, wheeling a shelving cart past his twin. One of the wheels on the cart squeaked like an out of tune violin. “If she can’t control the library I don’t know what we’re going to do. Do you think the director would shut the whole place down?”
“Nah. He’s got way too much pride for that to happen,” Asher snorted. “Did you take bets from Brannon about the specialist?”
“No. He didn’t want to. He said if she was an archive keeper she must be knowledgeable about library magic,” Aron said, pausing to stretch.
“So? An archive keeper is basically a circulation librarian. Big whoop! Besides, didn’t Eastgate hire her under the title of administrative assistant? I bet you she’s going to slam us with a bunch of rules,” Asher groaned.
“Yeah,” Aron agreed, plucking a book from his cart. “If Rachel were here I bet the director would let her do whatever she wanted in spite of the administrative assistant.”
Asher was silent for a moment. “I miss her.”
“Ray-R
ay? Still? It’s been over two months,” Aron said, reading the back cover.
“I know. She was such a girl,” Asher laughed. His snicker fell flat and he stared up at the skylights, which were dotted with snow.
Aron gave his brother a pitying look. “I miss her too.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Just for absolutely different reasons. I’m off,” Aron said, wheeling his noisy cart away.
Asher stared up at the skylights before slipping on his oversized headphones and turning on his iPod. He blinked a few times before closing his eyes, breathing in the musty but magical scent of the room.
He concentrated on the rhythm and melody of the music, folding his arms behind his head to serve as a pillow.
He could feel the vibrations in the floor as someone climbed the stairs and walked across the marble floor. Aron probably, unless it was that William kid. His apprenticeship was called off thanks to the massive damage sustained by the library. It was supposed to start again shortly, but the small boy hung around the fiction section, enthralled by the wild magic.
Asher yawned like a cat in the sunlight as the steps drew closer, stopping next to him.
“That was fast,” Asher started before he opened his eyes and stared.
Leaning over him was a smiling girl and a fairy.
The fairy radiated yellow light, and wore a dress constructed by a single leaf. The girl had hair that was the darkest, brunette shade of russet red he had ever seen. It was stick straight and fell over her shoulder in a sleek waterfall. She wore dark jeans and a green hoodie. She had boots—not fashion winter boots but black, leather boots. Asher had never before seen a girl like her, but the second he stared at her smiling face he knew her.
“RAY!” he shouted throwing himself into a standing position as he tore off his headphones. He picked Raven off the ground and swung her around before setting her down.
Even after her feet were planted on the ground he wouldn’t let go of her. Instead his arms clamped around her in a tight hug. “You’re back. You’re really back!” he laughed.
“I am,” she acknowledged, securing her arms around his neck.
“For real?”
“Yep. As myself: Raven Wishmore. And Tinker Bell is my entourage,” she grinned at the fairy that floated above their heads.
“Are you going to work here again?”
“The director didn’t say anything? I’m his new administrative assistant.”
“WHAT?” Asher yelped, releasing her and stepping backwards.
“I knew he was hiding something. The director is always hiding something. He’s a suspicious guy. Hello beautiful,” Aron grinned before he also picked Raven up and twirled her around with a whoop.
“We knew you would come back,” Asher said, regaining some of his equilibrium.
Raven nodded. “Of course. Triplets will always reunite,” she smiled.
“What took you so long?” Aron asked.
Raven blanched. “My father. Adam—Nate’s his real name—squealed about Darkmoor Park in our debriefing session. That with the addition of hiding my Double A magic did not put me in his good graces. I was grounded. For a long time. Plus do you know how many classes I had to take to get to the level of archive keeper? We had to wait until I turned 16 to make it legal.”
“You’re back, and that’s all that matters,” Aron said.
“Your name really is Raven? I hadn’t pegged you as a bird girl,” Asher said, recollecting his headphones.
“Hah-hah. Thank you, Adrianna,” Raven said.
High above the fiction floor, Air Synasfel watched the page turners. He snorted as he looked around his library. The building’s magic was already humming with glee. It was maddening. Didn’t anyone realize this girl was going to be tracked for the rest of her life? She was nothing but a target for magic abusers.
“I didn’t want her back here,” he muttered, unable to keep a pout out of his words. “She’s going to attract trouble.”
Other books by K.M. Shea
Life Reader
My Life at the MBRC
Red Rope of Fate
Princess Ahira
Beauty and the Beast
Robyn Hood:
A Girl’s Tale
Fight for Freedom
King Arthur and Her Knights:
Enthroned
Enchanted
Embittered
Coming Soon
The Wild Swans: Since she was chosen as a foster child by the royal family of Arcainia, Elise has done her best to be the ideal princess. She is the head of the Treasury Department, a celebrated flutist, and an experienced rider, but some of her foster brothers still refuse to refer to her as their sister. It doesn’t matter, though, because all of Elise’s royal accomplishments prove to be worthless when a witch ensnares her foster father with an enchantment and curses her brothers, changing them into swans. To break her foster brothers’ curse, Elise must knit them shirts of stinging nettles. The already dire situation turns disastrous when a prince finds Elise and starts trying to woo her, to the grave displeasure of Elise’s foster brothers. Elise thought her life as a princess would be perfect, but between defying a witch and freeing her brothers it is anything but.
About the Author
K.M. Shea is a book lover, champion web surfer, and all around geek. She’s been writing for over ten years and has worked as librarian and a newspaper reporter. K.M. lives in the quaint countryside with her pets: Perfect Dog and Fat Cat.
Follow K.M. Shea on Twitter: KM_Shea
Visit her blog: www.kmshea.com
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