Page 4 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

Tilting my head back, I squinted at the balcony, its railing barely distinguishable above the rafters. I could hardly make out the furniture upstairs through the murky shadows, let alone discern a potential figure sitting at one of the desks, and I had already turned the lights off.

Nobody can read in the dark. Amelia must have come back for something, I thought. I opened my mouth to call her—

No.

The voice in my head sounded strange.

Get out of here.

I took a deep, steadying breath.

Now!

The floorboards creaked—downstairs. Between the rows of bookcases.

That is not your friend.

Soles of my shoes scuffing against the worn boards, I backed towards the door. Two sharp, heavy steps mimicked me. Another creak came from the far corner of the store.

Inky black shadows filled the spaces between the six long aisles. I couldn’t see anyone standing there. The distinct, crisp sliding of pages had come from above, but the footsteps sounded from the aisles below, and the floorboards only creaked where there was water damage. The leak had been contained along the wall running behind the front counter, where I’d walked moments ago, where I’d left my keys—

Run!

There was more than one other person in the bookstore.

Chapter three

Jonah

Iburst through thefront door, bell clanging behind me, and didn’t wait to hear whether it slammed closed again or not.

The voice in my head had been surreal—an inhuman snarl of warning that chilled my blood, so intense and lifelike that it could have belonged to somebody else.

Boots smacking against the cobblestone, I ran down the street in the direction of my townhouse. At the intersection across the base of the sloping road, I ducked around the corner and pressed my back against the wall of a closed shop.

My breathing was ragged, my heart beating hard and fast.

Forcing myself to think pragmatically, I scanned the river that ran along the border of the shopping precinct, separating it from the residential villages on either side of the bridge leading out of town. The voices of fishermen packing up for the night carried across the whispering rush of the water.

Taking shallow breaths, I waited to hear footsteps behind me.

Belgrave was a small town—a small, quiet town. I’d met most of the people who lived there, and nobody ever did anything that somebody else didn’t know about. Tourists came through for holidays and weekends. The Water Dragon had rooms available for overnight stays, but the vacancy sign was never turned over. We didn’t even have a local police station.

Nothing sinister ever happens in Belgrave out in the open like this…

And yet the bell from Dante’s Bookstore jingled again.

My heart lurched, knees threatening to give out as the echo of the door closing swept down the road.

Throwing my head back, I squeezed my eyes shut against the silhouettes of fruit bats shooting across the evening sky like dark stars. I let my mouth fall open, greedy for air, and tried to think through the haze of my fear.

I left the door unlocked with my keys on the front desk.

Frantically, I patted my pockets and the pockets on my bag, searching for my phone.

I must have left that behind, too.

A string of filthy words rang out in my mind, but the truth was that even if I had my phone, I had no one to call. Amelia wouldn’t answer when she was out drinking. John lived too far out of town. And my mother was at home with my little sister.

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