Page 35 of Living Legend

Ariel walked quickly past us to the sentries dutifully guarding the door. He spoke to them in hushed tones before finally turning to us. “I will clear this matter immediately.” The sentries followed him out the door and through the hallway. I waited until I heard their footsteps soften and a door close, telling me they weren’t within earshot.

Reese’s heavy breathing and the ticking of the clock swam in my head. He let out an unnecessarily loud sigh, placing a hand on his chest. “I don’t think that could’ve gone better.”

I circled around Jonah’s desk to the shelves stacked with books the size of my head, examining the collection, while Reese headed to the ones on the far back wall. “I would have to agree with you, except you had to say the southeast woods?”

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, picking through a few of the books.

“That only gives us maybe ten minutes to search for the book, find what we need, and make sure everything is back in place,” I explained in a frustrated voice.

“Ten minutes is plenty of time. Don’t be such a worrywart,” Reese teased, moving to another bookshelf.

I knew the book was of decent size. It was old, so the spine and edges were frayed, and the leather had significant creases. It may have shown wear and tear, but the book was never going to disintegrate; the pages were never going to tear apart. It was bound to Heaven’s Gate by magic. Gold and silver thread decorated the spine, forming wings that spread from top to bottom. The front and back had an outline of a hand with the palm facing outward in gold stitching. The book wasn’t meant to look like anything special, since what was necessary and most important was inside. It made this search more frustrating, since I knew what I was looking for but then again, I didn’t.

“I feel like I’ve looked at every one of these books twice, Nick. I don’t think it’s here.”

“It has to be. There isn’t any other place it could be. This is the most logical place,” I answered, checking the last shelf on another bookcase. The clock’s never-ending ticks and the heat from the fireplace almost made my skin crawl, made my hands start to fidget more than they already were. I was afraid to touch anything else, afraid the shakiness of my hands might cause me to drop something and fuck us entirely.

Reese looked up at the clock, slapping a hand against the solid wood of the bookcase. “You know we aren’t going to get another chance at this, right?”

“You aren’t helping,” I grit out as I leaned against the desk. If I was a book of coveted information, where would I be? Time wasn’t on my side. I felt Reese next to me, hand on my shoulder. I instinctively shrugged him off, knowing he was about to say it was time to call it.

Reese lifted both his arms in a surrender. “Fine, I’ll keep looking for the sake of fucking looking.” He turned around, not realizing a stack of books was right next to his elbow as he collided with them. The books tumbled down, thudding as they connected with the ground. We tried to collect as many as we could as they fell, but our efforts weren’t enough.

“Shit!” I yelled, covering my mouth. We didn’t have time for this.

“I’m sorry, I should have looked,” Reese apologized, getting on his knees to start picking up the fallen books.

I waved him off, getting on the ground with him. They were going to be back in a matter of minutes.

“Umm, Nick…”

I blinked a few times and looked up at Reese, who was waving his hand back and forth, trying to gather my attention. He peered down at a large book in front of him. It sat open with no pages inside. It was hollow, a fake book.

Reese put his hand inside, grabbing a hold of something, a smile plastered on his face. A smile started to form on my own when he pulled out the impossible. The leather was worn. The gold and silver traced wings on the binding were exactly like I imagined. He turned it around for me to see the gold hand on the front, confirming our thoughts.

“Is this what we’re looking for?” he teased, pushing off the ground and placing the book on the desk. I gave the clock above us one last glance, realizing we had less time than I wanted to find what we were looking for, and hoped it was worth it.

“Grab the rest of the books off the ground and I’ll start looking through this.”

Reese nodded, scooping up the rest of the scattered books. I needed to find the days leading up to the invading demon, so I flipped through it, passing anything earlier than this month; I needed the last few weeks at least. When I’d found what I was looking for, I scanned down the pages, noticing names and the portals they used next to them. Portals were used for each of the villages, Limbo, and even Heaven itself, but those were all normal, regulated, and didn’t really need to be accounted for. I let a few pages flip through my fingers, and I noticed Ariel’s name and Purgatory written next to it, from the time he’d scooped up Dani.

I thumbed two pages back and let my eyes glaze over the names. My finger stopped.

Keegan Finley— Purgatory

His name was the only one that fit in the timeline. It was a few weeks before Markus found the demon, so it was spot on. I flipped through each page, looking for his name again, but didn’t find it. I was slightly glad he hadn’t made any more Purgatory trips, but not making any trips at all was odd. His name didn’t show up anywhere and for a messenger, it was weird.

“Does Keegan Finley ring a bell?”

Reese leaned against the desk, tapping his finger on the solid wood. “Yeah, from what I’ve been told, he’s kind of a shitty messenger, but I mean, it’s not really a hard job.”

“He can’t be that shitty if they let him go to Purgatory.”

Reese’s eyes widened. “No way. You’re telling me he has something to do with this?”

I shrugged, pointing to his name in the book. Reese blew out a low whistle. “I don’t know how involved in this he is, but Icantell you he’s completely disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Like gone, gone?”

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