Page 44 of A Dead Man's B-Side
I pulled out a thin and glossy spine before turning the book over. The title readTheChocolate War.I turned it upside down and held out my hand for the inevitable key to fall into my palm, cold and smooth.
I didn’t let myself falter in front of the pair watching me.
“Now for the keyhole. Any guesses?”
My voice was too far for my mind to register but it held strong. As though the words weren’t coming out of my mouth. I tried to ignore the dread seeping into my bones as the quick satisfaction slipped away. The title across the book turned blurry as it trembled in my hands. I tensed my muscles, tightening them under my skin and around the pages to stop the easily detectible tell.
My heartbeat was louder than the voices sounding around me. They didn’t seem to find any of this uncanny, that a stranger knew their favourite novels. But I did, because I never cared for the book. Didn’t like it, didn’t hate it.
And yet it was the first book I’d ever properly read.
Chapter Eight
Alexandr Miroslav
1982
The keyhole, a small uninterrupted circle, was nestled within the wood of the shelves. There were no tumblers or grooves to be discovered, just a perfect gap in the supposed door. At the very center of that circle, however, was a faint, intricate design, a symbol that matched the pattern inside the cylinder of the key. August had found it, connecting the location of the books to the supposed centre. And there it was.
With shaky hands, too shaky to be blamed on anything other than the nerves of what we would be stumbling into, I slipped my rightful key into the hole. It moved in with almost unnatural ease. The design inside the cylinder seemed to align with that of the keyhole, as though two pieces of a puzzle separated for far too long, finally coming together.
There was a distinct click as I turned the key, and none of us dared breathe in, holding our breaths as though even the slightest pressure of air could change the tides in which we now felt we were drowning under.
I gritted my teeth before forcing myself to push against the wood, a weak part of me hoping nothing would come of it.
Only ten minutes remained until nine, but it didn’t matter because when I pressed, it gave.
The wood didn’t creak; it didn’t sound. It slid open, with no difficulty, to reveal a short hall leading into what looked like–
“A parlour,” Wolf breathed out. I jumped at his voice and looked back, a surprise in the long silence we’d been basked in. “I should have known… My father had one in his office.”
August didn’t seem to wait, shoving past and making his way inside as we followed, not willing to loiter where anyone else could see. Except, August didn’t move past the end of the short tunnel built of archaic stone.
My mind was busy forming balls of endless strings leading nowhere but back to each other, tangling, strangling, tightening until I couldn’t breathe. The reality of what I was stumbling into settling in. The small book still in my hand turned into a rolled-up crumple of papers from how tight I’d been trying and failing to ball my fist, and my teeth ached from how hard they’d been pressing against each other.
I contemplated burning it when this was over, but I knew that wouldn’t change anything. I would only be proving myself childish and rash.
I needed a plan.
One that required extensive knowledge of what anyone else I wasn’t privy to knew of me.
Wolf’s hand on my shoulder brought me back to the present, the warmth of his palm quick to seep into my cold bones. “Let’s go.”
He murmured the words, tense from August’s frozen form ahead of us.
I rolled my shoulders back, forcing down my anger like a well-fit muzzle, fastening the straps to avoid any slips. And within a moment, the sheen over my eyes fell vacant.
I shuffled closer to peer over August’s shoulder, and what I found inside were four students, three of whom I recognized.
Rain Atlas Jett.
Paris Vega.
Ajax Vesper.
The fourth was a girl with her head down, looking at her lap and fidgeting with the ends of her skirt. Her head of brown hair wasn’t styled like I was sure the others were, but instead it fell in unruly, wavy locks.
Ajax looked over us lazily, barely batting an eye at my unwonted presence, and moved his gaze to Wolf before motioning to Rain with a subtle tilt of his head, rotating his pointer finger next to his head. The girl in question was ignorant of the gesture, looking over the three of us with a heavily tedious once-over before landing on me.
