“I told him how it wasn’t on purpose, and how you and Bazzy got rid of the body. And he said not to tell you he was here, and took my phone. Are we in trouble?”
Not so much in trouble as dead. Sebastian had told me not to protect Faraday. Gertie warned me not to hide my failures.
Hendrik Wolvaardt had put it best:We may not all survive.
“Stay put. Sebastian and I will be there soon.” I hung up before she could reply. “We have to go.”
Sebastian pulled on his shirt. “My place?”
“No,” I said, checking the key on the silver chain around my neck. “The other side of Albany. The family knows we lied about Crystal.”
67
We ran up the basement stairs half dressed, having retrieved two knives and a burner phone from a cache in 001.944 (monsters and related phenomena).
I threw my family phone into a dark corner.
Faraday’s text had come twenty-three minutes ago, when she’d spotted Orrin. A few minutes for her to work up the nerve to go outside, then a few minutes of disaster.
Next, Orrin would call Grandmother for orders—and for the location of my blue dot. Faraday’s house was at least a fifteen-minute walk from here, but Orrin never went anywhere without a car.
Which meant he’d be outside the library…five minutes ago.
“We’re not coming back,” Sebastian was saying. “No more Helshire. No more family. You understand that, right, Jess?”
“Yes,” I said, texting Aaliyah to throw my borrowed laptop in the lake. The family would search our rooms.
He smiled. “Okay. We run.”
At the top of the stairs, we turned toward the main entrance. Ancient tapestries hung on either side, capturing the echoes of our footsteps.
We skidded to a halt in the front hall, listening. The library was dark and quiet around us.
My shoes were still in my hand, so I went ahead, padding to the marble-floored entrance, the empty card catalogs hulking on either side.
There was no one outside the glass double doors.
“Maybe he’s waiting for us at Faraday’s,” I whispered.
Sebastian shook his head. “When’s the last time they sent Uncle Orrin out alone?”
I sat down and laced my shoes tight.
We crept toward the entrance, crouching as we passed the checkout desk. I crawled between the sensors, under the turnstiles that kept students from walking out with an unchecked book.
No one was outside. Maybe my estimates were off.
“Come on,” I said, standing up.
As Sebastian stepped over a turnstile, I reached for the push bar on the doors.
Then I saw it—a ripple of shadow on the stairs outside. Someone pressed flat against the wall beside the door.
I pulled back, but Cyrus must have heard us. He stepped into the light and tapped on the glass door.
“Open up, Jessica. We need to talk.”
I looked into his eyes.