Chapter Twenty-Two – Stephanie

 

His mouth fell open like a fish’s, and he blinked slowly at me. Once, two times, three times, as he gripped the shotgun more tightly. “Cat eyes?” he asked after a moment. “How?”

My stomach dropped. He was going to become like one of them. This man I cared about was going to end up turning into some kind of weird creature, unless we could stop this. First Christina and her boyfriend, and now this?

And I’d only just found Ryder. To lose him so quickly?

I put my hand on his forearm, squeezing gently. “I don’t know how,” I said in a soft voice. “Why would I know how? Maybe it’s because you’re from out of town, too? Maybe it’s like what we think she did with the spell on the outskirts of town? You arrived after the hooplah started, didn’t you? Wouldn’t it take longer?”

He nodded. “Yeah, maybe.” He paused, though, and shook his head. “No. We did the circle—that should have protected me.”

“Maybe it wasn’t long enough?” I asked, my eyes traveling past him to the door.

Ryder must have caught the movement of my eyes, because he quickly waved a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t matter what caused it. We know exactly who can fix it. You ready?”

I swallowed hard as I bit my lower lip. “Are you sure?”

He leaned down and kissed me hard, his rough stubble rubbing across my upper lip.

I kissed him right back, my own grip on his arm tightening as the tip of his tongue traced my lips.

He pulled back and looked down into my eyes before things could get too heated between us. “More sure than I have been of anything.”

My breathing labored, I looked up at him as he towered over me.

His eyes, his normal and perfectly human eyes, burned. Burned with rage, and want, and passion. All three seemed to roll off of him like heat from an open fire pit on a cold January night.

Man-cat or not, I wanted him. Still wanted him. We just needed to get through to the other side of this thing. That was all. Just a little bit further, and we’d be done. And then we could move onto whatever there was here, between us. I nodded and squeezed his arm again, just for good measure. “Then, let’s go.”

Ryder went first through the door, shotgun pressed against his shoulder. For the second time that day, I was struck by how smoothly he moved, how quickly he cleared the room.

Inside the door, the carpet covering the floor was worn, and the previously beautiful stained wood of the front desk was worried away by decades of use. The smell of old cloth and mildew hung in the air, and the building was as silent as the grave.

For the second time that day, too, I was struck by how much the Camelot High Street Hotel had changed. This wasn’t the building I knew. This wasn’t the place that had nearly come to be a centerpiece for the town I loved. This place felt wrong, felt almost haunted from years of neglect. Had her magic really covered this all up for so long? Kept us from seeing the wreck it had always been for years and years?

“Clear,” Ryder said in a hushed voice as he swept the barrel of his gun over the lobby, down the hallways.

Careful not to get in his way, I stayed behind him, hovering at his back. “Think she’s here?”

“I don’t know. This place sounds dead.”

A shiver went up my spine as I held back the urge to grab Ryder from behind. “Feels that way, too.”

Ryder stopped, seemed to contemplate our next goal. If Esther wasn’t here, where could she be? “Any idea what’s in the back office?” he asked finally.

I shook my head. “No, no idea. Never been back there. Never really thought about it, but I guess just files and paperwork. What else?”

He glanced back over his shoulder at me, licking his lips in an almost nervous gesture. “Who knows? Let’s find out.”

This time, I did reach up and grab a handful of his shirt. “Ryder,” I said, suddenly wary. “I don’t know about this. This place just seems off.”

“I know,” he said, moving around to the edge of the desk, dragging me right along with him. “That’s why we’re here.”

Before I could do anything, he was at the office door, his hand already on the doorknob.

“Ryder,” I hissed, knowing my words were going to be about as effective as trying to empty the sea with a sand bucket. “Be careful.”

He clenched his jaw tightly, and gave me a little nod. He twisted the knob and pushed the door open a little. Quickly, his shotgun was back up, and he was moving into the room, clearing it.

Knowing I would only get in the way if something did happen, I stayed behind the desk.

“Holy shit,” Ryder said, his words muffled by the wall between us. “Stephanie? Come and look at this.”

Blood rushing in my ears, and my breath coming fast, I joined him in the next room. My breath stopped in a gasp, though, when I saw what was there.

Barely lit by an old, bare incandescent bulb hanging from the middle, the room was larger than I’d imagined. Much larger than a small office. Shelves that sagged under the weight of oversized leather-bound books covered the left and far walls from floor to ceiling. On my right was another set of aluminum shelves, the kind you’d find in a hardware store. They were piled high with stacks and stacks of glassware jars and laboratory equipment. Little sample jars were scattered over the shelf and filled with strange liquids all the colors of the rainbow: reds and oranges, pinks, blues, reds, and, probably most disconcertingly, black.

I stepped quietly into the room, my head like a top as I looked around at everything. I took a deep breath, coughing loudly as I stepped up next to Ryder, who seemed just as shocked as myself.

The smell of chemicals and God only knew what hung in the air, so palpable and thick I could have poured it from a bottle. Pushed back against the wall adjacent to the one with the liquids and glassware was Esther’s work station. A big, heavy lab table covered in jars of all kinds, with a large book open in the middle. In the corner was a lit burner, like you’d see in a mad scientist’s lab, and a flask of some teal liquid bubbling within.

“What in the hell?”

“Definitely a witch’s lab,” Ryder said. “Tabitha’s got one just like it back in St. Louis.”

“Where is she?” I asked, walking up to the desk, my hand extended to the open book.

A hand closed over my shoulder. “Don’t,” Ryder said, a note of warning in his voice. “Be careful in here.”

“But,” I said as I put my hand over his, gently squeezing his fingers, “where is she?”

Ryder didn’t have time to answer, before Esther’s voice cut in from behind us. “Right here, my dear. Where else would I be while I’m working?”