Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

brIAR

W alking through the bloodsucking door, I enter a large oval room. I'm on the second floor, so I can see the entirety of the breathtaking space.

A giant oval skylight dominates most of the ceiling, and it's ringed by smaller circular ones. Walnut shelves line every wall of the entire four story tall, massive space, which is all one big room. In the center of the oval room are rows of plain dark wood tables. Green banker's lights sit on the bare tabletops, providing additional lighting to study the tomes.

"Holy shit," Bastian breathes as he gets a good look at the room. It's an understandable reaction because this was so not what I pictured when the letter said we needed to look through Dido's family library. I thought it would be something more like my dad's office, not half a freaking football field of books. There's no way this gigantic library fit in the small building we entered without the help of magic.

"How are we going to find what we need?" I ask no one in particular. It could take years to look through the thousands of books in here. We don't have years to waste.

"Why don't we start with the reference desk?" Saint suggests. I look at where he's pointing and see a circular wood-paneled desk directly opposite the landing we're currently on.

"Sure." It can't hurt anything to look there.

Unless it's booby trapped.

Then it would hurt a lot.

Here's hoping there aren't any nasty surprises waiting for us. I follow Saint, and the Wyldharts trail behind me as we make our way down the stairs and across the center of the room. The only sound in the room is our soft footfalls on the blue carpet tiles.

When we arrive at the dark wood paneled desk, Saint goes around back to look at the various papers arranged in neat stacks on the tabletop. I gawk at the room that seems even bigger from the first floor. I can't believe how many books are crammed in here. By their bindings, most of these books are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

"Aha!" Saint holds up a yellowed sheet of paper with flowy cursive writing on it. He brings it over to me, but it's in Latin. Thanks to Dido, I can apparently read Phoenician, but I still can't understand Latin without a dictionary and a lot of time.

Malachi and Saint work together to translate the letter, which only takes a minute or two between them. "A spell will show us areas of the library where what we need could be. If it's okay with you, I'll go ahead and cast the spell." After receiving my nod, Saint chants, " Appare nobis praedicto luparum et Didus ."

Nothing happens for a moment. Then five sections of the library light up the same red color as Saint's magic. Two shelves on the top floor and one on each of the lower three floors illuminate.

"That certainly narrows it down." Xander shoves a hand through his already messy hair as he surveys the library. "You want to take the bottom floor, Briar? Saint can take the second, Malachi the third, and Bastian and I can handle the two on the top floor."

I don't really care what section I look through, so I nod. "Sounds good to me."

We break off and all go to our designated area. Mine is to the left of the reference desk, dead center on the oval's long side. Each of our illuminated sections have six bookshelves with six shelves per bookcase. There are nearly a thousand books per section. While the spell narrowed down where to look, there's still a lot of digging we have to do.

Trying not to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books I have to sift through, I first skim the titles of the books, which are mostly English translations or Phoenician originals. I ignore the books in French, Latin, German, and other languages I can't read. I'll probably have to hand those off to Malachi who knows far more languages than I do.

Grabbing the few from the bottom shelf that stand out as possibly relevant, I take them to the table nearest my section and dig out my headphones. I put on Marshmello and Khalid's "Silence," needing the music to help me concentrate since I'm overwhelmed by what seems like an impossible task. The Wyldharts and Saint also bring books down to other tables in the center to look through them.

For the next five hours, I pore through book after book, not finding anything relevant. Lots of interesting history but nothing about the prophecy. No one else is having any luck either. My eyes are crossing and my vision blurring from how long I've been reading tiny text in old books, and I'm close to giving up for tonight.

I guess we can always come back tomorrow.

Yay.

More reading.

Just what I don't want, which isn't something I ever thought I'd say. But reading isn't super fun when I have a thousand-year-old mystery and the fate of a species weighing on me. Laying my forehead on one of the book stacks, I rest my eyes for just a moment, hoping it'll give me the burst of energy I need to find answers.

"I found something!" I jerk my head up at Bastian's shout, startled awake at the loud noise. I look around the room in confusion for a moment. Then I remember I meant to just take a short break, not fall asleep. By the dark sky and hazy stars that are still overhead, I couldn't have been asleep for long at least. Quickly checking over the books I rested on, I'm relieved that there isn't any drool on the super old tomes.

It finally registers what Bastian yelled, and I hop up. I rush over to him, but he's already crowded by his brothers and Saint. Rather than jostle for a place behind him, I stand directly in front of Bastian. He looks up as I approach and gives me a small smile before pushing a thick book my way. "I think I found the prophecy, but it's not in English."

I grip the worn table edge so tight my knuckles turn white as I stare down at the book like it's a giant, venomous spider. I should be relieved we found something, but part of me hoped this would be a dead end. Whoever thought I was a good choice for savior of the wolf world was so wrong it'd be funny if I weren't petrified by the enormous responsibility.

I can't afford to mess up, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do. The only thing I can do is do my best, and time will tell if that's enough.

Taking a breath because it's better to get it over with, I pick up the book and flip it around. Looking over the four stanzas that make up what might be the prophecy, I realize it's in Phoenician.

Hey, Dido? Can you translate this for me?

There's a long moment of silence when I assume she's reading the passage before she says, "I could translate it, but I know the prophecy by heart, child."

Wait, what? You know the prophecy? I kind of want to bang my head on a table in frustration. Repeatedly. We've gone on a wild goose chase when we could've just asked the ancient queen in my brain. Why didn't you mention that before? Why are we even here if you already know it?

"You did not ask," she informs me simply. I hold back a groan because she has a point. I didn't ever ask her because it never occurred to me that she knew it. "While I know the prophecy, I do not know how to solve female wolves being unable to shift. You need to look for additional directions in this library. Are you ready for the prophecy translation?"

Lemme get a piece of paper and a pen. Jogging over to the circulation desk, I grab a surprisingly modern ballpoint pen and a blank bound notebook that looks older than me. If I could find printer paper, I'd write on that instead, but this will have to do. I'm ready.