Sam walked through the library doors just as the clock struck six. Michelle was sitting at the desk, her head buried in a magazine. Once again the library was vacant of visitors, as it usually was after five during the summer.
“Hey Sam,” Michelle said as Sam approached the desk. She spent a moment looking in Jack’s direction, seeming slightly uncomfortable in his presence. After a moment she smiled at him. “Jack,” she said with a nod.
Jack returned her smile, but didn’t speak to her. He didn’t really talk much to other people, which Sam didn’t understand because he never stopped talking when it was just the two of them. Jack walked away from the desk and over to the bookshelves, still in his corporeal form.
“Hi,” Sam replied and smiled. Today she was in a mood that made smiling feel easy, it was strange because of how long it had been since she’d felt that way, but she was exuding happy gestures as if it was something she did regularly and not something she usually had to force. “I can see it’s very busy today.”
Michelle smiled and looked around. “I know,” she said with the same sarcastic tone Sam had used. “We’ll have no books left for tomorrow.” Sam laughed a little. Michelle closed her magazine. “People hardly ever come here this late during the summer. Did anyone come here yesterday?” she asked.
Sam gave her a small smile, “Yeah, you know Elle came in because you told her I was here.”
Michelle just gazed at Sam for a moment, dumbfounded. “I didn’t—”
“Well then you told Hayley and Hayley sent her to check up on me.” She held up a hand to keep Michelle from interrupting. “I know you did, because she came in specifically to see me the moment I started, and made up some bullshit excuse about having to do a history report.”
“How do you know she doesn’t really have a history report?” Michelle asked defensively.
Sam smiled to herself. Elle had left the library yesterday believing she was an amazing liar and deserved an unrealistic amount of awards for her ‘acting’ skills. But she wasn’t very bright when it came to making a plan. “We’re in the same history class.”
Michelle laughed a little bitterly and shook her head. “I didn’t send anyone to check up on you, but I did let Hayley know you working here. She is your legal guardian after all.” Sam wanted to say something snide in response to that statement, but before she had a chance to, Michelle asked, “Anyone else?”
“Yeah.” Sam thought about Jamie for a moment. Vampires were the type of creatures that liked to keep their existence known only to other non-humans.
Michelle was technically a human.
Though she was a member of the town’s coven, she wasn’t a born Witch, she was just a practicing one. Sam debated whether or not it would be okay to reveal his existence. She sighed, deciding there was no point in not telling her since she probably already knew he was here. “Did you know there’s a Vampire living in town?” she asked.
Michelle’s eyes widened. “He was here?” She sounded panicked. Making Sam think that Michelle had obviously never come into contact with an actual Vampire before.
“So you did know.”
Michelle looked around the library as if she expected Jamie to be hiding behind one of the bookshelves, waiting to jump out and drain her. “He didn’t try to hurt you, did he?” Michelle placed her hands on Sam’s shoulders, frantically pulling at the collar of her t-shirt and flicking her hair away from her shoulder. “You’re okay?”
Sam didn’t back away while Michelle inspected her for bite marks, instead she just rolled her eyes, her lips quirked in an amused smile. “Please, he’s harmless.”
“Vampires can make themselves appear harmless when really—”
“Calm down,” Sam said, placing a hand on Michelle’s shoulder. “I’ve met lots of Vampires. I know how to tell the harmless ones from the dangerous ones. The one that was here was harmless.”
Michelle let a breath and shook her head. “That’s not what Hayley said.”
Again with Hayley . . . the constant repetition of her name made Sam’s blood boil and her hands clench into fists.
“Well she’s wrong,” Sam said through gritted teeth. “Hayley has never met a Vampire before in her life. She wouldn’t know one if he or she were standing right in front of her with its damn fangs on display.”
“Bu—”
“Michelle,” Sam interrupted, putting her hand up to stop her from speaking. “I was raised by Vampires, I think I’d know better than Hayley on this, okay?”
Michelle turned her head to the side slightly, a gesture that made her appear slightly younger than she actually was. “The Jacobs’ weren’t Vampires.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “I lived with Vampires for the first few years of my life,” she clarified. “I know Vampires, most of them are harmless, well . . . to me.” Sam smiled and added, “They only eat humans.”
Michelle gave Sam an unimpressed look as she grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair and put it on. “Speaking of Hayley, are you coming to the coven meeting tonight? We could close the library now, I don’t think anyone would mind.”
Sam gave Michelle a sideways glance. “When have I ever gone to a coven meeting?” she asked rhetorically.
The answer was never.
“You should,” Michelle stated. “Hayley knows a lot about Magic and the supernatural. Maybe you could learn something from her.”
“Please,” Sam scoffed. “I have more knowledge of Magic in the fingernail on my baby finger than Hayley has in her entire brain.”
“Why do you hate her so much?” Michelle asked. “After everything she’s done for you Sam, you should be grateful. Without Hayley you’d be in a foster home on the other side of the country.”
Sam sighed.
Technically Michelle did have a point. When her grandfather had died a year ago and the social worker had come to take Sam away, Hayley offered to be Sam’s foster mother. And she was grateful for that, but she also knew that Hayley’s main reason for agreeing to be Sam’s legal guardian was to have some kind of claim on Sam and her Power.
“I don’t hate her,” she explained. “I just . . . I don’t trust her.”
Michelle sighed. “I wish you would. She’s not so bad once you get to know her.” She walked away. “See you tomorrow,” she called over her shoulder.
“Bye,” Sam mumbled.
CHAPTER 14
Sam was sitting at the librarian’s desk, reading the second book in the trilogy she had started yesterday.
“This was the first real book I ever read,” Jack’s voice sounded suddenly as he walked out from among the shelves holding an old, worn copy of ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Stephen King.
“What age were you when you read it?” Sam asked, thinking that maybe she could guess the year he died.
“Twelve,” he answered while flicking through the pages.
Sam was a little surprised. “You read horror at twelve?”
Jack smiled. “I lived horror since the day I was born.” He pointed to himself. “Hunter, remember?”
“So you never got a choice about being a Hunter? You were born into it.”
“I did get a choice,” he stated. “Everyone gets a choice. But when you’ve spent twenty one years studying the supernatural, and training in fighting skills and hunting skills, you tend to stick with what you know. The odd few choose to do other things. More normal things, like a lawyer or a doctor or a shop manager or something. But, the families never approve of that . . . they usually get disowned. It’s quite sad.”
“So you chose to be a Hunter?” Sam asked in shock. She couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to be a Hunter unless they were a murderous psychopath. But Sam knew Jack and he didn’t seem like the type of person who enjoyed hunting and killing things. Sometimes human things.
“Yes,” Jack said simply, then made a face. “Kind of,” he sighed. “I never did the ritual, like the other Hunters did. The immortality ritual. You know, slower to
age and difficult to kill.”
“Why?” Sam asked. She knew of those spells, everyone did. It was a ‘just in case I need to live through something I know will be fatal’ kind of spell. However, there weren’t a lot of creatures out there with the Power to cast it. Only the strong could achieve immortality through Magic.
Sam was one of those creatures which could become immortal if she chose to; though it was something she knew that she would never do.
“I guess I always kind of wanted to do something else. I don’t know what. I just didn’t want to fully commit myself to being a Hunter. I wanted to have the option of leaving.” Jack scratched his head. “I guess, looking back on it, I probably should have done the ritual.” He smiled sadly. “If I had . . . ” He let his sentence drift off, then shook his head. He held the book up and looked at Sam. “I’m taking this on your card.” Then he turned and sat in the chair closest to where he’d been standing.
Sam put down her book for a moment and typed Salem’s Lot into the computer. She looked through the information file on the book, it was published in nineteen-seventy-five. If Jack had been twelve when he read it, assuming it also came out the year he was twelve, then died when he was in his mid-twenties, he would have died sometime in the late eighties. Sam sighed. Math, she thought tiredly. “When did you die?” she asked bluntly, deciding it would be easier than attempting to do calculations in her head.
“Three days after you were born,” he replied without looking up at her.
Sam stared at Jack, slightly stunned by his sudden openness. “How did you die?” she asked slowly. Hoping he wouldn’t notice she was taking advantage of the situation.
Jack smiled as if he knew exactly what she was doing. “Sam.” He gave her the warning tone and the matching look.
“What?” Sam asked innocently.
“You know what.”
Sam looked around the vacant library and sighed. Thinking that right now, while the building was empty would be the perfect time for her to go looking around.
She turned to look over her shoulder where the door to the basement was. Clearly that would be the most obvious place for her to begin her search as Michelle had been so adamant that she not go in there.
But then again, the first time she’d gotten the feeling that there was something not quite right with this place, had been as she stood by the front door.
So perhaps the best thing to do would be to check around the exterior to see just how strange it felt on the outside.
Decided in her plan, Sam stood and declared to Jack, “I’m going to wander around outside the building to check for any more markings like the ones on the desk.”
Jack stayed seated as she walked past him and continued reading his book. Without looking up at her he said, “Okay . . . scream if you see any monsters.”
Sam rolled her eyes and opened the door, peering outside before she left, just to check that there was nobody on their way in, or walking around the general area.
Again, the street surrounding the library was just as empty as it had been the day before. Sam stepped outside and took a deep breath of the fresh air, closing her eyes as she did so. She stood by the door and stretched out her senses, casting a psychic net around the building in an attempt to find anything that didn’t belong.
The building was still, it’s aura even, nothing inside or out seeming even a little out of place.
With a frown, Sam opened her eyes.
She knew she wasn’t going crazy, which meant she was sure there was something to be found.
With a sigh she moved away from the front door and began walking by the wall, making her way round the building. As she moved she paid extra close attention to every brick she passed, staring at them for more than a few seconds each, hoping that somewhere, there would be etchings like the ones under the desk inside.
By the time she had come back to the door where she had started she had found absolutely nothing.
For a moment, Sam just stood there, taking some time to just think.
There was something there, she knew it, even though she couldn’t really feel it. She moved a step closer to the door, standing in the exact same place she had before and looked around. Gazing up at the stone arch above her head, then over her shoulder at the street beyond the gates, then back at the wooden door.
As she looked at the door her memories returned to the night previous, where she had slammed it shut and locked it in panic, thinking that there were shadows moving within and more than that, that there was something watching her from those vary shadows.
She furrowed her brow in confusion and frustration, wondering how she could have seen such clear evil the night before and yet now there was nothing.
The only difference between now and then was that the Vampire wasn’t with her.
Momentarily she wondered if perhaps the Vampire was the cause. Had he managed to get inside her head and plant images in there in there just to mess with her?
No likely.
Even if he could find a way inside her mind without her noticing, Sam was immune to Vampire mind tricks.
The only other thing she could think of that was different between now and then was that it had been night time before.
Perhaps that was it.
Maybe whatever was hiding within the walls of the building only made itself known at night.
With a whole new theory to test, Sam walked back into the library and walked back to her desk.
Picking up her book and reading as she waited for the sun to set.
CHAPTER 15
The town’s coven was an eclectic mix of people, mostly women, though occasionally there were some males who would attend a meeting.
Michelle had read books on Wicca when she was younger, so when she had first discovered the existence of this coven she had assumed that she had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
But what she expected was not even close to what she found upon her arrival.
The coven in this town was older—far older—than any other documented outside settlement in the country. They had been in the town for over a millennia. Their primary function, the function for which they were founded, was to act as the gatekeepers and protectors of the kingdom.
The floating island that now resided offshore, completely invisible to all but the few who were permitted entrance beyond its gates. And only those who were one hundred percent pure born Witch were permitted that privilege.
Which meant that mere converts—such as one of their younger members whose father was a Warlock, or Michelle who was mostly human but with some minor magical abilities—and all others with similar lineages would never be granted that privilege.
Either way, it didn’t strictly matter as the Elder Witches were no longer in the habit of opening the doors.
Acting as gatekeepers had been the original function of the coven. Its current purpose remained a mystery to most of its members.
Even Michelle, who had been a part of this coven for over a decade, was still not entirely sure of their purpose. In previous years they had all gathered and spent some time discussing their individual dreams and desires, and then worked together to pool their strength and Power in order to help each other to reach their desired goals.
Although the coven did not advertise their presence in the town, they did not hide it either. The women who were members ranged from the elderly to the young and all were there for one reason or another.
Though in recent years, they spent most of their meetings discussing Sam. In one way or another all of the members of the coven would have some interaction with Sam, and therefore between them they would have a complete report on her activities.
Michelle liked to think that they were monitoring Sam in order to keep her protected. It was no secret that she had many enemies who wished her harm. But Michelle didn’t wish harm to anyone, especially not Sam who as far as she was concerned was nothing more than a child.
She wasn’t entirely sure why
they were required to monitor Sam, or where their weekly reports ended up once they had been compiled. Those were questions she never asked, because when it came right down to it, she wasn’t entirely sure she really wanted an answer.
Michelle looked up as the door closed with a bang, Hayley stood by it, one hand on the wooden door, the other turning the key locking everyone inside.
“Alright then,” Hayley said with a smile. “Let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 16
Both Sam and Jack were reading in silence when a hispanic boy with brown hair walked into the library. The second Sam saw him she wished she had time to chant an invisibility spell. Because if she were invisible she wouldn’t have to deal with him . . . again.
“Hey Sam,” he said hesitantly as he approached the librarian’s desk. “I heard you were working here.”
“Only ‘til the end of the summer,” Sam said.
She hated talking to Scott.
It wasn’t just hard for her; she could tell it was difficult for him too. Which is why she wished he would just stop trying to be friends with her. It would be better for them both if he would just move on to something better. Scott stood there chewing his lower lip, staring at his shoes, his hair falling in front of his face. Sam took a breath. “Something you needed?” she asked, and hoped it was books.
It had been two years since she’d broken up with Scott, just after her grandmother was killed. Scott still wasn’t over it, and if Sam were being honest, neither was she. The only reason she had broken up with him then was because she wanted to keep him safe, and the only way she could think of doing that was to stay away from him.
“No,” he said, and looked at her. “Not really. I just wanted to see you.” Sam let her eyes wander in Jack’s direction; he had his back to the librarian’s desk and was politely pretending he couldn’t hear anything. She looked back at Scott.
“I’m going on vacation tomorrow,” he said. “For a month.” Sam nodded along but wasn’t sure why he was telling her. “I’ll be gone for your birthday, so I wanted to give you this now.”