Page 41 of Elven Shadow

Rebecca’s deadpan stare was the perfect catch-all response. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Well, yeah, I mean… I just wouldn’t have expected…you know. Screw it. Come on, hurry up before anyone else sees you.” The witch ushered her through the door, which she had to push open quite a bit more to allow them both room to enter.

Then, with another quick glance up and down the hall, the witch darted inside and pulled the door shut behind her—despite it being one of those heavy, swinging hydraulic doors that would have gently clicked shut on its own anyway.

“Don’t just stand there,” the witch added, looking Rebecca up and down again. “Come on. We’re about to start.”

She reached for the doorknob, tapped it once with an outstretched finger, and sent a burst of electric-yellow light flickering across the whole thing. The locking mechanism turned on its own with a soft click.

Okay, being locked inside the normally empty library with a bunch of Shade operatives clearly up to something had not been on Rebecca’s to-do list when she’d left her room this morning.

But it was now.

The witch scurried past her like she didn’t want to miss a single part of this, ducking and diving around bookshelves and only glancing over her shoulder once to make sure the elf was following.

The urge to fix such a skittish creature with a feral grin was almost overpowering, but Rebecca managed not to terrify the flighty little thing prematurely.

Though, if whatever was happening in here now gave her a reason to act, she now knew exactly which one of them would make the perfect breeding ground for the first seeds of doubt and panic.

Until Rebecca knew what the hell was going on in this library, though, she wouldn’t make a move against anyone.

Somehow, she didn’t think this secret meeting behind the magically locked door of a room hardly anyone ever entered was much of a threat to her right now. She had been openly invited in, after all.

Even if the witch had mistaken her for someone who already knew what was about to go down.

Rebecca could keep playing that role as long as she needed to.

All she had to do was walk toward the tense whispers and murmured voices rising from the back of the library. Even if everyone had kept their mouths shut, she could have followed the thickening tension around her straight to its source, as if this clandestine group had left a literal trail of breadcrumbs.

This might just be a perfect chance to hit a few magical birds with one covert stone.

Now she was curious as hell to see what this secret meeting was allegedly about. Even though she’d come to the library to try sniffing out her new shadow, she still wouldn’t walk away from this empty-handed.

If she found her new spy here in this meeting, whoever it was, she’d have leverage against them afterward. Clearly, no one in this room wanted Aldous to know where they were and what they were doing.

If her anonymous shadow wasn’t here, they’d have no idea what was happening and would most likely try to sneak into the library to keep an eye on Rebecca, as ordered. So if anyone knocked on the locked door or tried to break in, chances were pretty damn good that was the Shade member assigned to stick to her like old skin on a molting Skirra.

Win-win.

A sly smile finally started to lift the corners of her mouth when she rounded the final long, standing shelf stuffed on both sides with magical books from end to end.

Now, though, with nothing else between Rebecca and the gathering of operatives who’d chosen the most unlikely place to hold what felt a lot like the beginning of an insurrection, that tiny bit of a smile disappeared.

She’d thought she might find half a dozen members gathered back here. Maybe twice that, based on the levels of palpable friction in the air.

But only a dozen disgruntled Shade members holding a secret meeting away from the rest of the organization in the back of the library wouldn’t have had to move all the bookshelves away to clear a space this size.

They wouldn’t have made this much noise, either, with all the whispering and crosstalk and muttered voices.

Nor would the sudden silence have been this deafening when far more pairs of eyes than she’d expected all settled on her the second Rebecca appeared around the final bookcase.

It wasn’t just a dozen or even two dozen Shade members huddling back here.

It was damn near all of them. Gathered together in one place.

What the hell was going on?

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