Page 43 of Monster's Delight

My heart panged at the thought of Aiden.

Would he be all right?

Was there any chance for us as a couple?

I shook my head and started putting away the newspapers, organizing them by date.

Ihadto figure out what happened, because I wouldn’t be able to live knowing that Aiden would suffer a similar fate without me by his side.

“I hope he wants to travel,” I said to myself, tucking the last newspaper back in the box where it belonged. Underneath it was my grimoire.

I scooped it up and glanced at the page it had been open to. Then I took a second look.

The pages looked like extremely filigreed doors. I squinted at the writing in the middle. I vaguely remembered these pages. I’d skipped over them because the writing had seemed nonsensical at first. But it seemed strange that the writing had formed perfectly rectangular shapes on the pages.

“Huh. Weird.” I used the papers I’d been writing my monster notes on as a bookmark so I wouldn’t lose track of the page, and closed the grimoire before getting to my feet.

Putting the old newspaper boxes back was easy, with a delicate flick of my wrist, the heavy boxes floated ahead of me down the aisle to their appropriate storage shelf. I was just about to head back to the main part of the library when a flicker of light at the end of the aisle caught my eye.

“Hello?” I called, taking a cautious step forward. “Anyone else here?”

Silence.

A chill crept over me, but I shook it off. “You are a confident witch. You’re capable of dealing with whoever or whatever is hiding in the dark,” I told myself sternly.

I reached the end of the aisle, turning my head in both directions to look for the light.

There it was, a faint glimmer outlining a door in the wall that I wasn’t sure had been there before.

I stuck my fingernails in the crack in the wall and pulled.

Nothing happened.

I tried pushing, but that didn’t work either.

I huffed, throwing my hair behind my shoulder and lit up the area with a spell, looking for an access button or something hidden by the darkness and shadows.

The light from behind the door wasn’t visible with my bright light, but that didn’t matter. I knew it was there, and I just needed to get in.

It took some time, but I finally found the circle shaped depression in the wall no bigger than the tip of my baby finger. I pushed on it and the door swung toward me slightly, as if I’d popped it open.

I yanked it the rest of the way, expecting to see someone standing behind the door, but instead there was a dimly lit passageway.

Summoning my courage, and my light, I headed down the hallway, the door closing behind me.

A problem for future Siobhan,I thought absentmindedly.

The tunnel twisted and turned, but remained level. There was no dust or dirt on the solid floor, and no cobwebs on the walls or ceiling.

Suddenly, a whoosh of air brushed across my face from the wall and I stopped walking to look at it more closely.

I spotted the hairline crack showing the door almost immediately, although the opening mechanism took a little longer, as it wasn’t in the same place as the one on the earlier door.

It opened in the same way, and I stepped through, instantly forgetting that I had been following someone, because directly across from me was a portrait of my grandfather.

I walked further into the room, getting closer to the portrait. It felt like his eyes were following me.

“No, you’re not Grandfather,” I said to the portrait. “But you’re definitely one of my ancestors.”

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