“He’s going to get himself killed anyway,” I say, pounding against Maddox’s back.
And it’s going to be my fault, I don’t say, thinking of the book tucked into the back of my trousers. The scribe had helped me leave before it was too late, but had I read the books in the order it gave them to me, I could have read the book on the Youngest Sister first, then immediately left after reading the book on the library’s history.
The scribe was trying to help me, and I’d been too stupid to see that.
The scribe was trying to help me.
My mind flits back to the scribe’s last words to me. I don’t remember them exactly, but it was something about the serpent being blind and deaf. Surely it was the serpent the scribe had to be referring to.
Yet the serpent had not indicated any such thing. I watch now as it strikes at my husband, who rolls out of the way just in time. Charlie fires a shot, but the serpent senses the device as soon as it makes a sound, rearing back and dodging her bullet.
“Its tongue,” I scream. “It senses everything with its tongue.” My stomach sinks, because neither Nolan nor Charlie seems to hear me.
Maddox comes to a halt, groans, then turns around before setting me on the ground. “You run back to the ship.”
“No, I?—”
“Wendy,” Maddox snaps. “This is not the time to be insubordinate. You want to save Nolan? Well, assuming you found what you were looking for in that library, you’re the only person in the world who knows how to do that. Meaning you need to live.”
I’m left, jaw agape with a response I don’t have as Maddox sprints off toward the fight. For a moment, my feet don’t move. But then, against my back, the book grows cold. Almost like it knows it’s leaving its home. I pull the book out and stare at it, the way the moonlight makes its bony surface glow.
“I want to go back home,”a voice that is not mine whispers inside my head.
I turn for the ship and run.
I make it three steps before, beneath me, the ground shakes. I’m thrown off balance, and as it’s between letting the book go flying and throwing my hands out to catch myself, I hit the earth face-first. Spewing dirt, I go to stand back up, but something slithers at my feet.
A scream breaks out from my throat. A glance down reveals a root spiraling around my ankle. It crawls up my leg, and in seconds, it’s compressing my thigh, cutting off my circulation.
Pain ripples through me, and distantly, I hear Nolan let out an angry shout.
Fearful I distracted him with my scream, I bite my tongue and try to pry the roots away with my fingers, but the more I struggle, the tighter it becomes.
“It wants its book,” says a voice—a wraith, forming just beyond me, watching on as if bored. “You could avoid my fate, you know, if you just gave it back.”
“Yes,” says another, forming to my right. “The serpent doesn’t kill its prey before it eats you. It shouldn’t be its teeth you fear, but the acid in its stomach, being crushed, over and over, by its musculature.”
“Just give the library its book back,” whispers another wraith, this one a woman. “It’s not worth whatever you can sell it for.”
“Get away from me,” I gasp.
“We’re not trying to hurt you. We just want to help,” say the wraiths in unison.
The roots squeeze harder, and I let out a cry without being able to hold it in. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse another root emerge from the ground. Whether this one will wrap around my neck or go straight for the book, I don’t know.
I don’t give it a chance to do either.
I open the book and rip out the title page.
Below me, the ground itself seems to shrink. The root to my right rears back, and the one around my leg quakes.
“Let me go, or I keep ripping,” I say.
There’s a moment of hesitation.
I rip out the index.
The ground screeches as the roots retreat back to their home in the earth.
