Page 22 of Anarchy
“Ripley, I’m not going out there likethis.I can still change into a cat. You literally asked me to spy on Ravyn’s boyfriend when you were at the academy. I didn’t get caught then. I can sneak out and see if there’s something keeping people away.”
“If you die out there, I’m going to be so mad at you. Reyson might not be able to bring you back.”
“I’m not going to die, Ripley. I need to take a look because there’s a reason no one is coming in. We can’t risk someone wedon’twant coming in here. Reyson had a bad feeling, and he’s not back yet. I don’t like it.”
I grabbed Felix and pulled him into a bear hug. Whatever might be outside the library that was keeping people from coming inside, it wasn’t actually in here with us. The library was a safe place. Whatever was keeping Reyson and the others, I knew they could handle. Most of the retired regulars had been badasses during their day. It would have taken alotto run them off. They loved this place. They would have run in to defend it if someone was threatening the library.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t you dare say that to me, Felix. Everyone says that in horror movies when they go investigate something and end up gutted by the serial killer outside. I’m too horny to be the final girl, Felix. I need all of you alive so we can have more orgies.”
“I’m not dying when I just got my body back, and we’ve only had one threesome, Ripley.”
“You’d better swear on that.”
“I swear, Ripley. Stay inside.”
Felix shrunk until a cat crawled out of his clothes. I didn’t have to open the front doors to let him out and let anything out there know he was roaming—every witch or warlock who was given a familiar went everywhere with them, even the library. Familiars couldn’t exactly use the toilet, and they weren’t making me scoop litter boxes for the entire witching community as part of my librarian duties.
Cats weren’t the only animals who were familiars. They came in almost every form. There were plenty of dogs and birds too. There was a pet door at the side of the library where they could go outside. When he was stuck as a cat, Felix had a litter box, but he found the whole pooping in a box thing offensive, especially if it wasn’t completely pristine. He much preferred pooping in the extensive gardens in the Library of the Profane. I’m sure the grounds crew had opinions about that.
Felix snuck out the pet door like he always did. Our bond worked over a distance, and I heard from him almost instantly.
“This is terrible, Ripley. If Reyson and the others had used the front doors, they would have seen it and stayed.”
“What the fuck did they do to my library?”
“There’s a dead shifter out here. He’s been mutilated. They used his blood and entrails to paint sigils against every supernatural creature on the bricks. They moved one of the marble busts and stuck his head on it. They stuffed aconite in his mouth.”
“Felix, get your ass back in here now.”
Just then, I heard the jingle of bells that the front door was opening. It wasn’t Felix. Felix was super anal about being naked in the library. I now knew every inch of his body without clothes, but he wouldn’t have walked through the front door naked with a dead body out there.
I called my magic to my fingertips and went running. I didn’t know who was here, but I was not in the mood for this shit. Someone was about to learn the hard way not to leave dead bodies on the grounds of my library. Who was going to clean that blood and entrails off the walls? First, I was taking care of this shit, and then I was contacting Kaine.
I didn’t see anyone in the lobby. Dorian was just standing behind the closed front door. How the shit did he get here, and where were Reyson and the guys? I might not be able to kill Dorian without his painting, but I could zap his ass so hard he regretted ever setting foot in my library.
Dorian just smirked at me. He opened the door a crack and threw something on the floor. Dorian gave me this silly little wave, pulled a gas mask from his back pocket, and put it on.
Motherfucker. I knew how to fight the supernatural. All of us relied on our gifts for everything. Dorian used human gas on me, and it worked almost instantly. I fell to the floor, choking.
The last thing I saw before I blacked out was Dorian Gray’s expensive wing-tipped shoes in front of my face.
17
Reyson
Something wasn’t right. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my gut, and I didn’t like it. Was this what fear felt like? I could handle myself and everyone in this room. That wasn’t what was bothering me. My witch was away from me, and I didn’t know what was happening there. There had already been too many surprises so far.
Gabriel and I both called a light to our hand to light the way down the dark passage behind Dorian’s mirror. There was a staircase leading down to who knows what. Wherever Dorian and his henchmen were, they weren’t in this passageway. I couldn’t sense them.
“It reeks of demon in here,” Balthazar said. “Whichever demon betrayed Talvath is with him or someone working with them. I can’t hear their heartbeats, so they aren’t with us.”
The staircase led to another door with a fingerprint scanner. I kicked it in and ended up breaking another mirror. I thought Gabriel was going to faint with all the mirrors I had smashed, but I wasn’t a warlock like him. I’d been alive long before that superstition got started, and I’d been around plenty of broken mirrors. Maybe the bad luck thing didn’t affect me because I wasn’t mortal.
Either way, I’d smash every mirror Dorian Gray used to admire his reflection if it meant destroying him and getting back to my witch. I stepped through the broken glass and looked around.
We were in the apartment just below Dorian’s, and this one wasn’t decorated like a pompous ass lived there. It barely had any furniture at all except a bed and a couch. This wasn’t someone’s residence. Someone used it to sleep when they were in the area.
