Chapter 15: Aiden

 

 

 

"I thought you knew the passcode!" Rowan yelled with her hands clapped over her ears.

"Just give me a minute!" I snapped back, and I quickly tapped out a series of numbers on the touchpad behind the reception desk. Thankfully, the alarm finally stopped blaring.

Rowan's hands returned to her sides. She continued to wince until the ringing faded from both of our ears. Except for the burbling rock fountain that was displayed in the opposite end of the waiting area, it was completely silent.

"The alarm company isn't sending an alert to the police or anything, right?" she whispered, even though there was no need to.

I shook my head. "It gives us two minutes to put in the code before the alarm really goes off," I said in a normal speaking voice. "Come on. The lab is this way."

"The lab" made it sound more important than it really was. It was the room where Eliza's cronies mixed the various tonics and creams that gave the spa its sterling reputation. Of course, they had witchcraft—and shifter blood—to thank for that.

Having no experience in potion-making or incantations or whatever-it-was they did in there, I'd never set foot in the lab myself. But Rowan's mission now had me wondering if she was really onto something.

Did the witches have some secret operation going on, as the Black Paws seemed to suspect?

I crept down the back hallway, finding my way by the light shining from Rowan's phone. Even though I'd made this same exact walk hundreds of times during working hours, it was definitely eerie without the overhead lights or the presence of my quietly gossiping coworkers.

"It's right back here," I said. Now, I was whispering.

I pushed through a door marked Employees Only, into a second, smaller hallway I rarely ever visited. The storage room was back here, along with the closet where we kept the mop and cleaning supplies. And of course, the lab. It was straight ahead, behind a heavy door, locked with a keypad. The passcode to unlock it was the same one that disarmed the security alarm. Eliza had figured her coven would have an easier time memorizing one passcode rather than two.

My fingers flew over the keypad. A green light blinked on above the doorknob, and I yanked the door open to set foot in the coven's lab for the very first time.

Immediately, a thick sense of unease slid over me, ringing in my blood like iron. Rowan shivered and hugged herself as she trailed in after me. The flashlight of her phone swung in a wide arc around the room.

"Feel that?" she said. "It's the residue of magic. This room has seen a lot of it."

"Is has?" I said, my eyes widening in the dark.

Rowan pushed the door shut and trained the flashlight at it. There were strange carvings there on the other side. At first glance, they reminded me of the pattern that birds' feet made in dry dirt.

"Just as I thought," she said, running her fingers over the carvings. "It's a guarding spell, to keep the magic sealed inside."

Trepidation rose up in my throat, making it draw tight. "Are you sure that's the only thing it's supposed to seal inside the lab?" I croaked.

Frowning, Rowan tried the doorknob, unlatched it, and opened it about two inches. "Yeah," she said, trembling lips fighting down laughter. "Why, are you scared?"

I crossed my arms. "Whatever. Let's just do whatever it is you need to do and get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps."

For good measure, I wedged a rubber doorstop into the opening to keep it propped open two inches, and we began searching the lab.

In the dark, it looked like any ordinary employee break room, with clean countertops, neat cabinets and drawers, and a single, double-basin sink. Rowan began searching the drawers, so I followed her lead.

In the faint glow of her flashlight, I was finding unremarkable and completely expected things. One drawer was full of bags of cotton rounds, another stuffed with brand new office supplies. I opened a cabinet and sneezed as I inhaled a faceful of musty, fragrant dust.

"Herbs," I said, turning away to cough.

"For spellwork," Rowan said, directing her light over my shoulder. The cabinet was stuffed with bundles of dry twigs, leaves, and flowers.

"And skincare," I added. I began to feel impatient all of a sudden. "What exactly are looking for?"

"Anything unusual," Rowan said, and she resumed her hunt. I saw her opening the door of a minifridge to peek inside. "Um…what's this?" She held the bottle aloft.

"Shifter blood," I said immediately.

Rowan's face lit up. "There's gallons of it in here."

"Don't look so excited. It's for the spa's signature facial. Shifter blood has reparative properties, or didn't you know that?" I said.

"Oh," Rowan said, clearly disappointed. She put the bottle back in the fridge and closed it.

The sense of unease seemed to grow stronger as Rowan and I worked our way from opposite sides of the room, finding nothing unusual enough for Rowan's taste. By the time we met each other at the sink, I was so anxious, I felt like I was choking.

"Go ahead," I said, gesturing to the cabinet under the sink.

Rowan bent down, and I held my breath. I expected to see Windex and bleach, maybe a pair of rubber gloves. Instead, when Rowan flung the doors wide, what greeted us were stacks of carved, wooden boxes.

They were plain boxes of knotty pine, barely large enough to hold six eggs, with hinged lids like jewelry boxes. Each one was marked with a length of white masking tape. I counted sixteen of them.

For some reason, seeing them disturbed me.

"All these boxes have names on them," Rowan remarked.

Suddenly, the flashlight jumped in her hand. She pointed to one of the boxes near the bottom of the second stack.

I stooped down beside her to look, and I froze when I read what was written above her almond-shaped fingernail.

Aiden Wheeler.

This box had my name on it. Why did this box have my name on it?

"We have to see what's inside your box, Aiden," Rowan said.

"No! Don't!" I said.

Rowan's head swiveled so hard her ponytail whipped her opposite cheek as she looked at me with disbelief.

"I…I have a bad feeling," I said in a small voice. I stood up and backed away, still feeling unsettled in spite of the distance I'd put between myself and the boxes.

Rowan sighed. "Okay."

I sighed, too. "Good. Well, we looked at everyth—"

"I'll open this one instead," Rowan said perkily.

Before I could even stop her, she plucked a random box from the top and opened the lid.

AH-WOOOOOOOO!

The sound screeched out of the opening, as if the box itself were a disembodied mouth. Something white and huge flew out, startling Rowan so much that she dropped the box. It clattered forgotten at her feet as both of us leapt into each other's arms.

"What the fuck is that—" she hissed in my ear.

The howling sound was now bouncing around the room, and it was coming from that white thing. That huge, fast thing. It zipped around the room with the frenzy of a fly caught in a jar. The howling filled the room and made my guts shake, it was just so horrible.

The white thing flew at the door and bounced away from it with a horrifying shriek. It abruptly stopped its feverish streaking and came to rest in the middle of the room. Now that it was still, I could see clearly that it actually wasn't just a formless streak at all.

It was a wolf.

Rowan's arms fell off of my shoulders. Speechless and dumb, I began inching away until I backed right into the sink.

The wolf was unlike any wolf I'd ever seen. It was downright unnatural. It was completely white, and its empty, soulless eyes were even whiter still. Looking into them was like looking into the yawning mouth of death, a void of empty eternity. The opposite of a black hole, because black holes were still something. Its eyes were two white holes of nothingness.

It stood on four feet, head held high as it regarded us. Even though I could see it clearly in front of me, I knew that it wasn't alive.

Somewhere to my left, Rowan gave a dry sob. Hearing her voice finally broke me out of my trance. I moved my foot and felt my toe nudging up against the box. Moving instinctively, I bent down to pick it up, and I opened the lid.

The wolf blinked slowly, much, much slower than any natural wolf. Then, it gave a high wail, and it jumped at me.

No—it jumped at the box.

I felt the jerk of its weight in my hands and flung the lid shut.

Rowan gasped loudly, as if she'd been holding her breath the whole time. She probably had been doing just that, actually.

"What—what," she kept blubbering.

"I don't know," I said, shaking my head helplessly.

Rowan was staring at the box in my hands. "Beatrice De la Paz," she uttered, and it took me an embarrassingly long moment to realize she was reading the name that was on the box.

Trying not to shake too much, I put the box back with the others and shuttered the cabinet.

"Let's fucking get out of here," I said.

"Agreed," Rowan said.

We raced each other out of the room.