CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I borrowed a flashlight from Lalena and made my way over the bridge and up the hill. This time, I didn’t worry about being seen. Sam had made it clear. I was safe.

From the bridge, all of Wilfred spread below me. The trailers on their curious cinder-block platforms, Darla’s tavern and diner and its busy parking lot, the PO Grocery now shut for the night, the lone fire engine waiting in the back lot. Far off to the left was the black mass of the old millpond.

Across the highway, modest houses with roomy yards platted an area that would have made up a mere four square blocks back home. Many windows were warm with light. I envisioned Mrs. Garlington and her son dishing up a crusty-topped casserole and, a few blocks away, the Tohler clan setting its knitting aside for bowls of chili. Beyond them, farmhouses dotted the horizon. It’s true that Wilfred wasn’t the big city, but it had all the conflict and variety of any town fifty times its size.

I turned up the path to the library, toward the thickening woods of the coastal range. Big House was dark. No surprise there. I couldn’t tell if light burned at all in Lyndon’s cottage, thanks to his tightly drawn curtains. The truck was parked out front. And of course the library appeared tucked in for the night, just as I’d wanted it to.

“Rodney?” I called.

No sound of Rodney trotting through the leaves. Maybe he was out prowling the garden. Now that my magic was contained, I’d lost my connection with him. That knowledge drained some of the satisfaction from the FBI’s arrest. I swept the flashlight over the lawn. A black cat wasn’t easy to spot at night.

Seeing the library in the moonlight brought back the creepiness I’d felt the night I’d first arrived. I now knew the library to be a place of warmth, somewhere special, but it looked especially foreboding tonight. I could almost hear the books inside humming a warning.

“Rodney. Here, kitty, kitty,” I said from the kitchen door. Besides the wind in the trees, all was quiet.

Then, a hiss.

“Rodney? Time for dinner. Come on.”

Rodney edged from under the porch. His hiss stretched into a growl.

I froze. Rodney’s eyes—now more citrine than amber—caught the light from my flashlight. “What?”

He didn’t move.

I turned the key in the kitchen door’s lock. As far as I could tell, the house was empty, but my neck prickled. The sound of the books had reached the muffled pitch of a flurry of violins. I knew had I not performed the containment spell, I’d hear nothing else. Yet the house was empty. Or was it?

I glanced at Rodney’s dish. It was nearly full. That was all I needed. I backed out of the house and locked the door, double-speed, behind me. Within seconds I was back at the river trail, willing my body to relax. Whatever it was I’d felt, I wanted it to stay far away.

I stopped behind an old oak and leaned against its mossy trunk, catching my breath. What had gone on back there? I scoured the windows for a trace of light, a hint that someone was there, but the house stared back blankly.

“Looking for something?” came a voice I knew all too well.

I opened my mouth to scream, and a man grabbed me from behind, clapping a gloved hand over my mouth. I stamped at his feet and hit boot leather. It was Richard White, Senator Markham’s aide. I went limp. Something hard—the barrel of a gun—jammed against my back.

“Let’s go inside,” Richard said. “We have some talking to do.”

* * *

“Unlock the door.”

The gun’s barrel rose to press between my shoulder blades. A bullet would pierce my heart.

“Hurry up.” Richard White nudged the gun for emphasis.

With surprising calm, I unlocked the kitchen door and turned on the lights. Richard flipped their switches off and pushed me forward.

“We’ll go to the other side of the building,” he said. Because no one could see the light, he didn’t have to add. I forced myself to breathe evenly.

We passed into the library’s atrium, where Lyndon’s arrangement of dahlias and golden maple boughs nodded.

“In there.” Richard yanked my arm toward the house’s old drawing room. He pushed me into a chair at the reading table and clicked on the side lamp.

I felt, rather than heard, the tension of the volumes of books around us. They tightened the air like metal bands. I had to force my lungs to draw breath. Had my magic been active, I knew I’d hear the books shrieking. I remembered my mother’s vision. There had to be another way out of this.

“What do you want?” I said.

He swung a briefcase onto the table and opened it. A clip of bullets slid to the side. He withdrew a piece of paper and a pen. He wiped the pen with a cotton handkerchief and handed it to me.

“Hold this.”

“Why?” My heartbeat rose.

“You shouldn’t have talked to the reporter from the Post. Now you’re going to have to recant your story.”

Upstairs, the telephone rang. Its full-throated bell was only a quiet purr down here. Richard lifted his head but apparently decided it wasn’t a threat. The ringing stopped.

“In fact,” he said, “you’re so sorry for all the lives you’ve ruined that you’ve decided to kill yourself.”

Ice chips coursed through my veins. Rodney sat in the corner staring at me. Every muscle in my body was rigid with fear—fear of Richard and of what would happen if my magic cut loose.

For a second I imagined my body exploding with energy and books flying through the air as if caught in a vicious squall. Windows would shatter, furniture would rocket across the room.

Use it, a voice said. Use your magic. My eyes shot to Marilyn Wilfred’s portrait, just visible outside the door. It was her. She was talking to me.

I screwed my eyes shut and said, “No.”

“You don’t seem to realize you don’t have a choice.”

My eyes flew open to Richard’s voice. “Why? Why would I write what you say if you’re going to kill me, anyway?”

He leaned in, a clump of gelled hair falling forward. “There are lots of ways to die. Some are more painful than others.” He ran a finger down the gun’s muzzle. “I’m not saying I like it. I went to some trouble to hire someone to stop you the first night you were here. She had a nice packet of money to offer you to change your story. Everything could have ended much more pleasantly.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” I said. Lalena’s money. How had it ended up under her trailer?

Richard’s eyes narrowed. “Too late now.”

“The second man, the one from Bondwell. He was a decoy.”

Before Richard could answer, the phone rang again. This time it was the library’s extension in Thurston Wilfred’s old office next door. Someone was trying to reach me.

Rodney’s tail twitched. If I had my magic, I could ask him to knock the phone off the hook. Maybe someone would hear us. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. It was too dangerous.

The ringing stopped.

“Pick up that pen,” Richard said.

I picked it up and pulled the paper in front of me.

“Write what I tell you.”

I refused to speak.

Use your magic, Marilyn told me. Trust it.

There had to be another way. Someone was trying to call me, to warn me. Someone—Sam? Lalena?—knew I was in danger. They’d come soon. They had to.

“We’ll skip the salutation,” Richard said. “Write this. ‘I lied, and I can’t live with it any longer.’”

The phone rang again. Richard spoke over its trill.

“ ‘I never overheard any conversation between Senator Markham’s aide and a lobbyist.’” He waved his gun. “Write faster.”

I had been copying his words deliberately slowly. The longer I took, the more time someone had to find me. Besides, the pressure of the books’ forced silence rushed in my ears like high tide and slowed my fingers.

“I’m shaking,” I said. Writing these words went against everything I stood for. My mother had called me a “truth teller.” Never had I felt this to be so exact.

“As you would if you were in an emotional state and planning to off yourself.”

My mind raced. Marilyn stared me down. I felt like I was in the driver’s seat of a stagecoach pulled by a dozen wild horses, leading me along a thin trail at a cliff’s edge. The reins were slipping, and there was nothing I could do. If I let loose, we’d all die.

The phone rang again—the fourth time. Someone was frantic to get through. Richard abruptly stood, keeping his gun fixed on me. He backed into Thurston Wilfred’s library.

“I’m taking the phone off the hook.”

This is it, Marilyn said. You can do it. Use your power to seal the doors. Trap him.

Rodney heard the words, too. He mouthed a silent meow.

Even if I wanted to use my magic now, I didn’t have time to release the spell. There had to be another way. I’d untangled Darla and Duke’s lies tonight. Surely I could handle this. I leapt to my feet and grabbed the briefcase and stood hidden by a bookshelf just as Richard ran into the room. You can do it, Josie, I told myself. Your own power is enough.

I swung the briefcase. And missed him. It bounced off the wall and dropped with a thud.

Just then, siren screaming, a car spun gravel up the driveway.

Richard leveled the gun at me, his finger on the trigger. The slam of a car door seemed to change his mind, and he ran toward the kitchen.

The sheriff burst into the atrium. “Josie! Are you all right?”

“The back door. He went through the kitchen,” I gasped.

The sheriff said something into his radio while running for the kitchen.

Richard White got away. He got away, and I could have stopped him. But I hadn’t.