Page 87 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

But I don’t despair when he disappears, too.

Because I know exactly what he means.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I know I don’t have long. And that I am definitely not in any sort of emotional shape to be setting plans in place and trying to retrieve Sten from somewhere I only suspect he is. But I figure if Sten can try to save my shit for a thousand years, this is pretty much the least I can do.

It will be fine, I tell myself as I try not to think that he’s actually dead. It will be fine, I tell myself as I rope Agnatha into my scheme. It will be fine, I tell myself as I stand in front of the secret library door. Though I realize, as I consider the traps that might be in there and the missing limb that will be me without my magic, that I don’t really care. I will die before I’ll let anything separate us again.

I step inside with that thought thrumming through my soul.

And it feels good when nothing immediately kills me.

Of course, nothing immediately helps me, either. There’s no sign of him in the dim and strangely menacing quiet. But there’s still time. I could still be right. I just have to slowly and cautiously search one dark alleyway of shelves at a time. No problem, I think as I step to the one closest to the wall.

Though actually walking down it is a taller order. I can hardly see the end, it’s so pitch-black down there. Everything just seems to fade to nothing—and that impression doesn’t get any smaller as I take my little tense and tremulous steps. It’s like I’m falling into a black hole. I have to remind myself that nobody can make anything like that in here.

And even then I’m sweating by the time I get to the far wall. My hands are shaking; I can hear my own heart beating like a great beast in my chest. Suddenly I wish I’d brought some kind of physical weapon, though I know why I didn’t. You rely too much on magic, my mind whispers.

But my mind has got no room to judge.

It’s the same one that once used a spell to set Maisy’s hair and sort her makeup.

At least I use a brush and a bottle of tinted moisturizer. And I have plans in place, too, when Maisy almost never did. She liked slinking off into the shadows and sexily sipping cocktails until her enemies were distracted. I like getting all my ducks in a row, and grabbing books to hurl at someone’s face.

Or holding up as a shield when something attacks me from behind.

I turn just in time, and instead of getting what looks like a goddamn sword right through my heart, it plunges straight into The Collected Works of Grimorgan the Great. Scraps of paper puff outward from the wound; I briefly feel the razor-sharp tip catch my sweater.

Before I wrench everything to one side and run.

Directly down the second alleyway at first, but once I hear him hot on my heels, I go for the shelves. I get a hand on the nearest one, and haul myself up. Then again when I get my footing. Faster and faster, until I’m almost at the top. I’m almost sort of safe.

And that’s when I feel it.

Something snags my ankle, hard enough that I immediately slip. I lose one handhold, and one foothold, and have essentially no idea how I hold on. It seems like a miracle—and even more so after I’ve shot a frantic look over my shoulder and see him behind me.

I figured I would be fighting a magic-less old man in here.

But he does not seem like an old man anymore.

Apparently, his magic only made him look that way. Underneath he must be some kind of immortal creature—enormously tall, roped with muscle, face like a slab of stone. The same teeth, the same eyes, but everything else so vigorous suddenly. So strong. He barely has to exert any pressure and I’m slipping again.

And I know they’ve not had enough time to do what I asked.

I have to stall, I have to stay alive a little longer.

So I do the only thing I can think of:

I grab a book from the shelf and hurl it at his head. I hurl it hard, every inch of me so filled with loathing for this nightmarish man that it actually makes a dent. Blood wells just above his eyebrow, and he all but snarls at me.

But he lets go.

I get to the top.

And now it’s just a matter of jumping from one set of shelves to the next, and the next. Always searching for Sten as I do, almost screaming with frustration when all I can see is mahogany and leather and nothingness. Though the truth is, I don’t even know where you could stash a six-foot-five-inch vampire in here. I’m not even sure if I’m right.

Maybe he sent him to some void in space-time, I think, and want to cry.