Page 5 of Librarian

“No!” My hand slams against the wood of the door. “Ad Arcanaeum! Ad Arcanaeum!Fuck!”

No. She can’t do this. I can help her.

I turn back to the room, looking for another door, only to grimace as I take in the homely kitchen. Where the fuck am I? Fort McKinley? Isn’t that in Scotland?

Fuck. Kyrith and Eddy are literally in another dimension, and I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere.

I take a step towards the only other door, but it bursts open, revealing a middle-aged man wearing nothing but his boxers, with his grimoire out.

“GIT OOT MAH HOOSE YE DAFT CUNT!” he yells.

Behind him, a woman wielding a broom is staring at me with terrified wide eyes. Great. I don’t have time for this.

“I’m fucking trying!” I retort, pummelling the door I came through again. “Ad Arcanae?—”

The door smacks me in the face as it swings open, and two bodies tumble out.

“No!”

“Lass, don’t?—”

Jasper and Lambert fly into the kitchen so hard that they trip and fall. Lambert’s head hits the island with a deafening crack that breaks the marble counter top, but that’s only because his skin is currently transmuted into granite.

Jasper crashes into me, taking me down in a heap of limbs. I shove him the fuck off me, but he’s trying to do the same, and all we end up doing is pushing one another. By the time we untangle, the door is closed again.

The boxer-clad man drops his grimoire. “Jas! What the fuck?—”

But Jasper isn’t listening to his father. He turns and rushes for the door.

“She’s locked us out,” I say, but he’s already rapping on it, mumbling the incantation over and over.

“Ad Arcanaeum.” His voice breaks, alongside my sanity, when it doesn’t budge.

“Boys! Boys!” The woman—who must be the infamous Mama Dee—shoves past her husband, broom abandoned. “You’re going tae break the door!”

“Doesnae matter,” Jasper says. “She’s in trouble?—”

Lambert shoves him aside and bangs on the door with his stone fist. “Ad Arcanaeum!”

The wood cracks under the granite of his skin, splinters flying everywhere.

But it works.

The door opens again. My hope rises, only to come crashing down as Leo slides through. He almost bowls us over again as we charge for the portal. Lambert hops over him with ease, covering the distance like it’s nothing. He’s forced to dodge a large book and a dozen sheets of paper as they zoom through, and mybreath catches as he reaches the threshold, only to be thrown back.

This time the countertop splits in two under his weight, and Mama Dee gasps.

Shit.

“Boys!” His dad steps in. “Enough.”

As if to punctuate his statement, the door snaps shut.

No. Fuck. She didn’t?—

But she did. Kyrith chucked us out.

Lambert’s phone is out before the slam has even finished echoing in my eardrums. The screen cracks before he remembers to release the spell over his skin.