by Jaymin Eve
I grabbed a few books as I passed that looked interesting—I’d found the fantasy section, tucked back here behind all the reference books—and I had to chuckle at the decent number of supernatural books. I wondered how many of them were written by actual supernaturals and if they were popular among humans who didn’t realize they were not quite fiction.
With two shifter and two witch books in my hands, I finally found the back wall, sinking against it in the cool darkness, closing my eyes to absorb the still silence.
Only … it wasn’t silent.
A thrumming buzz of … energy … was running through the wall behind me. What the hell?
“You shouldn’t be back here.”
I jumped a foot in the air, books flying everywhere as I let out a low screech. My power burst from me, which blew all the books in the four closest shelves right off their perches. I searched for whatever creature owned that low, tinkling voice.
Wings fluttered into view first, and I blinked at the tiny being hovering almost at my eye line. “This is a restricted section. How did you even get through the barrier?”
“What are you?” I asked, ignoring its questions.
Gossamer wings, barely visible in the low light except for a shimmer of gold, moved even faster. “I’m Mab, a … fairy,” it said, and it moved closer so I could make out more details.
Its hair was long and silky, tumbling from its head; it wore a light green dress that was shimmery like the wings. I wondered if the fairy was female or male or gender fluid? Or maybe they didn’t have a pronoun that I would understand.
I decided to ask, because it would be ignorant just to assume.
“I’m female,” she said softly. “I lost my mate many moons ago, and now I live to protect the knowledge of our world. That is all.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, nails digging into my hands as I fought to keep my emotions under control. That was about as triggering as a statement could get to me right now.
“How did you get back here?” she asked.
Her question helped me focus, and I sucked in a deep breath before opening my eyes. “I have no idea. I didn’t feel any sort of barrier. I just kept walking until I hit this wall.”
Mab darted away—she was no bigger than my hand—and in seconds was gone from sight. She returned about three minutes later. “The barrier is intact,” she informed me. Her tiny body flew even closer than she’d been last time, and I noticed that her face was like the most perfect doll you’d ever see, with porcelain cheeks, long dark lashes, and all that golden-blond hair. She was a fairy princess for sure.
“What are you?” she asked, examining me as she flew back and forth.
“I’m Maddi,” I said. “Witch cross fey, and also Atlantean.”
She stopped moving, her stillness so unnatural because in the few minutes I’d spent with her, she had not stopped flittering about at all. Even her wings were still, and I wondered how she was staying aloft.
“Atlantean?” she whispered.
I nodded. “Oh yeah. Just found out myself last year, so it’s a surprise to us both.”
She reached out a hand, and I managed not to flinch as she pressed it to my cheek. The tiny touch should have been barely perceptible, but the surge of power behind it almost knocked me on my ass.
“Holy—” I cut myself off with a gasp, and then everything started to rattle around the room, until I wondered if our power together was causing some sort of seismic activity.
I tried to move back, but it was like we were fused together, and even though she did not hold me in any way, our powers were locked. I could not move. I wasn’t sure if she could move, but she certainly didn’t.
“What are you doing?” I gritted out with a clenched jaw. If the rattling got any worse, I’d be in real trouble of shattering my teeth.
“You’re the one,” the fairy said, not sounding at all like she was in the same physical distress as me. Her voice was light and airy and twinkling all over the fucking place. Meanwhile, my cells were slowly shattering and turning me into an amoeba.
“Close your eyes,” she breathed, and as usual I did the opposite, opening my eyes very wide so I could attempt to yell through lock-jaw. She lifted her free hand and blew across it, twinkles of dust floating across the space and into my face.
My eyes burned—probably my own fault, but I was still blaming Mab—and her hold on me was broken. Unfortunately, so was my hold on gravity as I flew back through the air, toward the wall that closed off the library.
18
I waited for the pain of being slammed against a solid object, only it never came. I kept going and going and going. Time seemed to fade as my mind flashed in shades of blue and green and gold. When I landed, it was on a soft surface that cushioned around me and gave me the slightest sense of safety.
Home.
I’d only felt this particular sensation a few times in my life. With Asher, always. Another time was when we went down to Atlantis—the energy that called to me from inside those walls. And today. Wherever I had just ended up.
For a second, a burst of hope had me wondering if maybe Asher was in here, locked away, and I’d just found him, but I knew in my heart that wasn’t the reason. This had something to do with Atlantis … not Ash.
A truth that would have annihilated my heart if it wasn’t already rubble in my chest.
Mab fluttered in front of my face, and in this very well-lit area I could see every detail of her perfect face. She was beyond stunning. Beyond any creature or supe I had ever seen.
“You’re beautiful,” I breathed.
She smiled broadly, her teeth slightly pointed, but that in no way detracted from her appearance. “You’re a little power drunk,” she said in her shimmery, pretty voice. So, so, pretty.
Mab held a hand out to me, and I chuckled because she looked like she was going to pull me to my feet. My chuckles turned into side-hurting laughter as I shook my head at her. “So tiny … you’re so tiny. You’re never going to be able to lift me.”
She tilted her head, watching me like I was an amusing bug. “I’m stronger than I look,” she finally said, and that set me off again, my laughter erupting until moments later tears filled my eyes and overflowed. And then I was sobbing. My sides stopped hurting and my stomach hurt instead as the pain threatened to break me.
“He’s gone,” I sobbed. “Asher is gone. I’ll never have my home again. This is nothing but a poor imitation of the real thing. A brief glimpse of what I lost.”
At this stage, Mab no doubt thought I was fucking insane, even if her expression wasn’t showing that. Instead, she darted forward and used her tiny hands to brush away my tears. “Do not despair, Maddison”—I definitely had not told her my name, but whatever—“you may find your home again in the most unexpected of places.”
I appreciated her attempt at comforting me, but I was pretty certain there was no way that would happen.
“Come on, you don’t have much time and you need to see this.” Mab brought me back to reality, and I noticed that I was still in the beanbag-like cushion, the world flashing a deep turquoise color around me. Mab held her hand out again, and this time I reached forward and wrapped two fingers around it, because I didn’t want to laugh at her again when she was clearly trying to help. My body flew up and out of the soft surface, my feet hitting the ground in the same instant.
“What in the…?” I blinked at the fairy, the vapidness fading from my head as I recovered from being “power drunk,” as she put it. Now it was her turn to chuckle.
“I’m stronger than I look.”
Jesus, she was like an ant on steroids: able to lift four million times her body weight.
“Apparently,” I told her drily before I looked around.
What in the actual fuck? No wonder I’d been seeing only blue and green. I was inside an aquarium. Literally. The walls surrounding me on three sides were filled with water and fish and coral. I hadn’t seen it at first, because in front of all of those
walls were shelves.
Shelves filled with books that were giving off that same buzzing I’d felt when I leaned against the wall.
“What is this place?” I asked softly, daring to hope it might be exactly what I was thinking.
Mab fluttered near my face before moving away from the center of the room, where I’d landed in a huge beanbag-filled reading space. I followed her slowly, climbing up out of the middle of the reading pit and stepping onto a blue tiled floor.
“It’s a library,” Mab said. “The Atlantean library.”
I let out a low squeaking sound, my eyes no doubt huge and about to fall out of my head. “They hid the Atlantean library inside the Academy library?”
That was genius. Talk about hiding in plain sight.
“I’ve been keeping this secret for so many years,” Mab said, wistfully smiling at the shelves and water beyond them. “Feeding the fish. Keeping everything clean and perfect. Waiting for the Atlantean who could walk through the barrier and access these magical stories.”
I snorted, and she whipped her head around to look at me. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about the fact that most of the Atlanteans I know wouldn’t step foot in the library. Axl is the only one who comes in here, and he never makes it past those first few shelves.”
I doubted I was the only one who could have stepped through the barrier. I was just the only one who’d ever walked far enough to even test it.
“Why are we surrounded by water?” I asked.
Mab’s laughter was like bells. “The water helps to preserve the books. Atlantean books require a water source nearby to keep them from turning into dust. And … it’s nice. The previous Atlanteans who used it, loved the feeling of their water around them. Like…”
“Home,” I said softly.
She nodded.
I leveled her with a sad look. “It’s barely that, let me tell you.”
She didn’t reply, both of us stuck for a moment, and I wondered if she too was remembering her lost heart. “So you’ve been here since Asher’s parents?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes. I have followed this library for eight hundred years.”
I gulped. “That’s a long time.”
She shrugged. “To an immortal, it’s barely a blink.”
I gulped even harder. “There are immortals?”
Her lips twitched—it appeared I was amusing her. “Not many left. Technically, we are not immortal. I could die if the right weapon was used on me. But I will not die from age or common illness.”
A few weeks back, I might have remarked at how awesome that was, but today … staring down my eight hundred years alone, I felt nothing but sorrow for her. “Sounds lonely,” I said simply.
Her wings flapped furiously, her face awash in pain for a brief second before she masked it. “It’s the hand I was dealt,” she replied.
Reaching out, I brushed my fingertip across her shoulder in a lame attempt at a hug. She seemed to like it though, wrapping herself inside my palm, the wings tickling across my skin.
When she moved away, I focused on the fact I was inside the freaking library!
“I need to bring my friends here,” I told her, straightening. “We have to leave for Atlantis tomorrow, and there’s no doubt information here that’s important for us to know.”
“You have full and free access to this room now,” she told me. “You will simply be able to walk through the wall.”
That was easy.
I blew her a kiss, and my feet were pounding the pavement as I raced away from the books and back toward the normal library. I didn’t have a phone, so I’d have to haul ass to get out of here and find my friends. When the wall was close, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the fact I was running headfirst for what looked like solid brick. I felt a tingle across my skin as I crossed through it and then I was sprinting along the library aisles, a sliver of guilt hitting me at all the books still scattered on the floor.
“Never mind those, I can clean them in an instant,” Mab said near my ear. Somehow she’d caught up to me. “Just keep running.”
“I’m glad I met you,” I told her truthfully.
“Me too,” Mab said, the chiming sound of her words tickling my ears. “And I promise, we will be seeing a lot more of each other. Now that the library has been freed, I am also relieved of some responsibility and could leave these walls. I might even check out Atlantis.”
I felt deep in my gut that meeting Mab was one of those predestined things. She left me when I made it to the main part of the library, and then I was heading for the front doors. The librarian shouted as I breezed past, but I didn’t bother to stop.
Once I was outside, I decided to hit the commons first, having no idea what time of day it was or where anyone would be.
“Maddison James!”
The growling voice was barely recognizable, and I was snatched up into Jesse’s arms before I could even turn my head. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I puffed in and out to catch my breath. “In the library,” I said swiftly. “Were you looking for me?”
Jesse had grabbed me from between two pillars near the commons. Within a minute, Axl, Rone, Calen, Larissa, and Ilia surrounded us. “Were you all looking for me?” I asked, confused.
Rone’s fangs were fully out as he lunged for me, snatching me from Jesse’s arms. For a second I didn’t think the lion shifter was going to let me go, but he must have decided it was easier than ripping me into two. Rone held me tight, his arms trembling, and I found my eyes heating at the slashes of panic and pain bleeding from the vamp. “You disappeared,” he rumbled close to my ear.
I pulled back as much as I could in his strong arms. “What do you mean? I said that I needed some alone time.”
Axl’s eyes were red-rimmed, and he leaned in closer, brushing a thumb across my cheek. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered. “My tracking locator on you went dark. Just … gone. Your energy wasn’t here. Nothing was here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I’ve been in the library this entire…” I trailed off, before my eyes went very wide. “The Atlantean library. It must block energy so that no one knows it’s there.”
“What?” Calen asked, squinting at me. “Did you just say Atlantean library?”
I nodded roughly. “Yes. Yes, I found it, and that must have been where my energy disappeared. I came to find you all immediately because we should start researching before heading to Atlantis.”
Rone still hadn’t let me go, and now that I’d had a minute to really look at them all, I realized there was deep-seated grief written across their faces. “I’m so sorry that I worried you all,” I said softly. “I know after Asher, it would have been…” I cleared my throat. “You might have guessed I would choose to join him. I’m really fucking sorry.”
Axl’s eyes were shiny; he wiped roughly at his nose. “All good, you didn’t know that would happen. We’re just really happy you’re okay.”
Rone finally let me drop, almost reluctantly, and I ended up between Ilia and Larissa. Both of them were silently crying, and I started doing the same, the three of us wrapped around each other.
“Don’t ever fucking do that to me again,” Ilia finally said, all but blowing her nose on my shirt. “You deserve that,” she added with a hoarse laugh.
I just shook my head. “Yeah, I did.”
When we got all of that out of the way, I straightened. “Okay, we have about fifteen hours until we have to leave for Atlantis. We need to gather whatever intel we can before we go. We need to know about the gods, what the royal families really did to cause the destruction of Atlantis, who I am … who Asher was…?”
Nods all around, and then I led them back to the library. “How did you figure out where it was?” Axl asked, his brow furrowed.
“Disappointed you weren’t the one to find it?” I asked with a small laugh.
He shrugged. “I thought I had the location calculated so many
times, but I never expected it was in the Academy library. I’m excited about exploring new information though.”
Probably an understatement. “It was hidden in plain sight,” I told him. “And since it’s in the library, you were probably the only other one who might have found it.”
Calen snorted. “I doubt that. You’re the strongest of us all. You were no doubt drawn to the energy, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.”
He might have been right about that. There was something that kept pulling me into the library. I thought it was escape, but maybe it was fate.
I wasn’t sure fate and I were copacetic these days, because that meant the fates set the path in motion for me to lose Asher. And if that was the case, I would be hunting them down and I would not stop until they paid.
19
When we entered the library, we drew quite a lot of attention. Wasn’t every day the Atlanteans came in here, especially in the wake of Asher. No one stopped or questioned us, and I was relieved when we made it through the first shelves and into the back section. Just like me, Axl started to run his fingers across spines almost absentmindedly.
“Are you okay?” Jesse asked, and I shook my head.
“No. Not even a tiny bit. But I’m glad I can focus on this right now. I can’t cry anymore.”
He nodded like he understood. This time I noticed the invisible barrier that barred this back section from the rest of the library. There was an obvious change in temperature as well. All of the Atlanteans walked through without worry, but Ilia and Larissa were both stopped, their faces screwed up like they couldn’t see us any longer.
“Maddi?” Ilia whisper yelled.
“Wait here,” I said to the guys before I stepped back to the other side. Ilia jumped a foot. “Holy fuck me,” she gasped.
I snorted before turning to stare at the same thing she was. All I could see was the guys standing there waiting for me. “What do you see?” I asked.
