Page 62 of She is the Darke

Hollow Rock Town Library. Even the sign was impressive.

Stacia had chosen a sexy mad scientist costume, complete with a white sequined lab coat, pocket protectors, a pencil behind her ear, and she’d even worn a pair of oversized glasses that didn’t have any prescription in the lenses.

She was ready to uncover town mysteries. And really, ever since Wendell had talked about the town curse and the Ashbrock story, she’d been desperate to get her grubby little fingers on some old historic literature.

She loved this stuff. Gah, she felt like Harriet the Spy as she marched up the steps and into the front door. She’d even brought a notebook and two colors of pens, purple and pink, because prepared spies packed extra office supplies. She gave a private snort to herself. That rhymed.

Time.

Crime.

Sixty-nine.

Poontang and limes—oof! She ran smack dab into the barrel chest of a giant man.

“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out.

He put his finger to his lips and shushed her. “Oh my God, are you the librarian here?” She grabbed his huge arm and squeezed it. “You’re a giant.”

“Madam, unhand me,” the man whispered, then yanked his tree trunk limb out of her grasp. His nametag readBurt.

“Burt?”Squirt. Butthurt. Stop it, brain!“Um, could you point me in the direction of the old historical documents about the beginnings of this town?”

His heavyset dark eyebrows drew down to rest directly over his glasses. “Why do you want to see those?”

“Personal reasons,” she said nonchalantly. Oh hang it, this was too exciting to not spill the beans. “I’m doing research because it’s always been my dream to come to this town and Halloween is my favorite and do you want to do a mystery adventure with me?”

“No.” The man pointed up the stairs. “Up there. Follow the signs.”

“Oh. Okay, thank you for your help, Mr. Burt.”

“It’s just Burt,” he said in an annoyed tone as he walked away. Gads, that man was quiet when he walked. She probably shouldn’t have worn white glittery high heels.

Clack. Clack clack. Clack clack clack clack.

“Shhhhhh!” Burt said from behind her.

“Well, this is your fault for allowing them to put tile in a library instead of carpet!”Clack, clack, clack, clickety clack clack…she reached the stairs and huffed a sigh in relief. She turned to smile triumphantly at Burt, but realized her purple pen had fallen from her notebook and sat in the middle of the floor in a sea of tile.

“Absolutely not,” Burt said from behind his desk.

Geez, he was really grumpy. “I wasn’t going to,” she whisper-screamed, but it was a bold-faced lie. She was totally thinking of clickety clacking back to save her second favorite pen. Hopefully it would still be there when she got back, or Burt owed her a pen.

At least the stairs and the second floor had carpet. Stacia straightened up her bedazzled lab coat and made sure both teets were still enclosed in her revealing corset. Nerds were sexy. Shoving her glasses more securely up her nose, she made her way up the stairwell, and only rolled her ankle twice. At the top of the stairs, there was a directory with a list of genres and arrows pointing this way and that. There were rows and rows of books on either side of the hallway, but the section she needed was the one at the very bottom of the list.

Historical Documents, Room 210.

Bingo bango, who wants to tango?

She jogged awkwardly to the correct door and opened it to a dark room. The light switch was right beside the door, and she narrowed her eyes once she flipped it, hoping to adjust to the dim lighting. Maybe they had only the single lightbulb in this room to protect the old texts?

She made her way to a computer monitor and read the directions on how to log in. It was one of those old-school numbers that took fourteen years to scroll through each page, so she gave up quickly and explored the room.

Along the back wall were rows of newspapers, each page flattened between plastic sheets and hung on tracks. There were thousands of them in order by date.

She went straight to the oldest first. She flipped through a few more. Nothing interesting. Horses for sale. Someone shot someone in a duel, blah blah, aha! She stopped on one because a name in the title had jumped out at her.Ashbrock.

She lifted the paper from the rack and took it to a sprawling table right under the single lightbulb, and then she scoured it. “Cal and Alexia Ashbrock broke ground on the town’s second building, a general store, on October 30, 1722. Whoa. Today was October 30. Cool. Callum and Alex must’ve been named for their ancestors.

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