Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
My running shoes squeak on the floors as I step down the long corridor, the faint light at the end getting bigger.
I stop at the end, spinning my flashlight to the hallway to my right and back again to the room that spreads before me.
All at once, everything looms—the expanse of the massive space. The ceiling as high as three floors, bigger and taller than my parents’ foyer. The high windows, wet with rain. The rusted, spiral staircase to the far-left corner, leading to a door in the ceiling. The kitchen with half-eaten bags of chips on the counter, and the living room beyond with the massive TV, couches, PlayStation, and liquor bottles on the coffee table. I run my eyes over some Latin words drawn in thick white paint on the back wall. Vivamus moriendum, est.
‘Let us live, since we must die.’
It’s an inscription on some statue at City Hall. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere else too.
There’s also some diagram with documents, pictures, and writing posted on the brick. Yarn links one idea to the other, creating a web, as if mapping a story.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but it must only be about four seconds because I press my foot to the floor, realizing I stopped mid-step.
But still, I take all that in, fire spitting from my eyes. “Little. Shits.”
They’ve been crashing here.
Hiding out to party and drink and have sex, and they were doing it in high school! I charge into the kitchen, whip open the fridge, seeing all the food. Sandwich stuff, condiments, leftover pizza, beer…
In a matter of minutes, I walk down the hallway, through the workout room and the two bedrooms, seeing clothes, a tube of Aro’s red lipstick in one room and one of Kade’s baseball caps in another. Not to mention a nightstand with at least five empty condom wrappers. I cringe. “Goddammit!”
Barreling out of the room and charging back into the great room, I head up the spiral staircase, open the hatch, and peek out onto my roof.
Or Rivertown’s, I don’t know. I need to find blueprints and see who actually owns this hideout.
I take in the scope of the space and the escape routes, and I descend the stairs, noticing another door. I peek inside, taking in another hallway. At the end is more light, and I make out Rivertown Bar & Grill through a window that I know before I even get there is another mirror just like the one in my shop.
So…
There are three entrances. Two mirrors and a roof hatch.
Is only my family using this space, then? They moved in the exercise equipment, the beds, and the TV. I recognize most of this stuff.
Heading back out to the great room, I scan the event map-slash-timeline they’re puzzling together.
Carnival Tower…
Rivalry Week…
Winslet MacCreary…
I knew Hawke was researching the urban legends. This must be home base. I shake my head, turning my eyes away.
I start to walk out. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. My gut wants to react. Call them all and start screaming, but then what?
I pass the kitchen counter, heading to the hallway that leads back to my shop, but I put my hand on the cover of a book I don’t remember seeing when I passed by here just a minute ago.
The brown leather is soft and flimsy, like a journal, and I can tell before I open it that the paper is old. The edges are yellowed and tattered. I pick it up, seeing a thin gap inside, as if something is stuck between the pages.
I look around the hideout again. I remember smoothing my hand over this counter when I came in. Was this sitting here then? Shit, I don’t remember. I was high on adrenaline.
“Hello?” I call out. “Hello?”
No answer.
Flipping it open, the pages immediately spread to where a photograph sits. I lift it out, staring at a young blonde. She sits on the edge of a bed, I think. The headboard rests behind her, her bare arms stretched in front of her, just covering her naked torso. I can’t see anything else of her. Long locks drape in her eyes, and a pink neon light casts a glow on her hair from somewhere behind.
I narrow my eyes, studying her. She kind of looks like me.
I turn the picture over.
Don’t look at me like that. You make me wanna die.
-M
Who’s M? Not Madoc.
I fan through the pages, looking for a name, but there’s so much writing, it’s so small, and I can’t make out anything. The writing looks different in the journal versus on the back of the picture, though.
I stick the photo back inside, but her eyes catch me before I close the book. I stop, gazing at her hair too long until I feel my own tickling my cheek. And the soft lips as if they’re mine, swollen from a thousand kisses.