Page 104 of Howl You Doin?
A breath leaves me on a heavy sigh and my shoulders slump.
Dear god, do I have it bad or what? But the idea that he could somehow now be repulsed by me makes me ill. Just the thought has my stomach seizing.
A month ago, I was so ready to get this job over with so I could go home and buy my bakery. Now I have no idea what I’m doing.
If he doesn’t want me, will he try to force me to leave?
Just as I’m admiring a pretty candlestick, I sense someone with a strange, charged energy behind me. My fur crawls along my forearms, my heartbeat thunders in my ears, and even my hair wigs out, threatening my poor hair tie again.
I’ve been so on edge as of late, hiding from Connor and now sneaking around in the library, that I don’t even register what I’m doing.
My hand tightens around the ornate metal candlestick as I turn... and throw it as hard as I can at the poor unsuspecting person who has snuck up on me. It’s not their fault, but my brain and body are so haywire these days that nothing seems to make sense with me.
At the sound of fingers snapping, a bright light appears a foot in front of my face, and the candlestick comes to a grinding halt in the air.
I gasp and freeze in place at the sight of Odette looking furious, her rainbow gaze swirling ominously.
“Oh my god! I almost took you out. Whoops!” I paste an apologetic smile on my lips. Relief floods me that I didn’t manage to smack her with the candlestick, and then again when I realize she hasn’t left the castle yet and I can ask some questions.
Her nose wrinkles, and the rainbows fade back to her normal dark-brown irises as she looks at me like I’m a few crayons shy of a full box.
“What?” I blurt, my face heating when she uses her magic to return my useless weapon to where it belongs.
“You have claws now, so why are you wielding a candlestick?” she retorts, and goes back to what she was doing.
A little orb of light floats close to her head, illuminating her black hair and bronzed skin. Although it’s daytime, she obviously prefers the additional light, especially as she enters a dimly lit area. She then bends over a cabinet filled with index cards cataloging the library’s contents, I assume.
“I keep forgetting.” I flex my claws, watching them make terrifying shadow shapes around the room with the brightness of her magical orb thing. “What are you doing?”
I glance down at her new outfit, a long-sleeved navy-blue jumpsuit and cream-colored shoes that I would break my neck trying to walk in, even with my new reflexes.
“Looking for something.”
Her fingers begin to race through the cards in front of her at an alarmingly inhuman speed. She cocks her hip and lifts a brow, then her hands go to her hips as the index cards still flap noisily in the background.
“Am I allowed to know what that something is?” I ask, my tone revealing my annoyance at how evasive she’s trying to be.
“An old book my sister left here, but I doubt Vlad and Doyle have been keeping good records.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and a chair materializes behind her, catching her as she throws herself into it and hangs her head over the back of it with a dramatic flare. “Men are infuriating.”
A glass manifests in her hand and an olive appears on a stick.
“Tell me about it,” I respond, before thinking better of it.
She tips the glass into her mouth and cocks her head at me. “You have it better than most with Connor, believe me.”
Odette gets to her feet and waves a hand, flicking her fingers oddly. My jaw drops at what I’m seeing. She’s out of her chair with her back to me, her hand waving in front of a bookshelf... that isn’t a bookshelf at all.
I take a step closer to get a better look. “Wow,” I breathe, and jostle her from behind.
She tsks with disapproval as I make my way around her and into the small hidden room that wasn’t there a moment ago.
“What is this place?” I ask, marveling at the exposed brick and intricate metal spiral staircase that continues upstairs, and at the many bookshelves lining the space.
“One neither of us should be in,” Odette says as she saunters into the dimly lit hidden library without care. “But I know a certain powerful maid that should have a grimoire I want hidden inside here, even if she would blow a gasket if she found me rifling through her stuff. I trust you’ll keep this as our little secret, otherwise I’ll turn you into a rodent or a frog or something.”
I pin her with a glare and cross my arms over my chest. “Tell me what I want to know, and I will forget this cozy little reading room exists,” I whisper.
She raises an elegant brow, and a slow, calculating smile curls the corners of her mouth up. Suddenly I feel like a baitfish in a shark tank.
