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Well, this wasn’t great at all. How was I to get back inside if it was all sealed off?
Shadow coiled herself around my legs, brushing against the wall.
The minute her shadows connected with the wall, the outline of the door reappeared and shadows spread across it, some coiling together to form a doorknob.
As Shadow looped around me, her shadows disconnecting from the wall, the door disappeared again.
Interesting. Step back, Shadow, I’m going to see if my shadows can call it forth.
She settled on her haunches and watched as I dissolved my right hand into shadows and reached for the wall.
The moment I touched it, the doorway began to form.
I spun to face Shadow.This is fabulous. We’ll be able to come back whenever we want, do as much research as we want and we won’t have to ask Mr. Brecken for permission. Let’s go read some books, shall we?
CHAPTER8
It turnedout that Shadow and I beat Jasmine and Mikaela back to our suite by a couple hours.
I have the best roommates.
They wanted to give me as much opportunity as possible to do what research I could and also to escape the archive room, so they spent hours in that room with Mr. Brecken, asking him questions and exploring the stacks.
“We actually learned a lot,” Mikaela said. “Just not about shadow monsters. They weren’t mentioned in a single monster book we looked at.”
“The Varulvka were though,” Jasmine said.
“I took a lot of notes,” Mikaela said. “Jahrdran wasn’t kidding when he said they were exceptional hunters.” She looked down and read from her spiral notebook, “‘The Varulvka are elite hunters, only called upon when every other attempt has failed. They have a one hundred percent success rate. Whether that’s accurate or simply because no one ever talks about their failures, is anyone’s guess.’”
“Well, they had to have failed at some point,” I said, “because I’m here and I’m only twenty-two years old.”
“Your origin story is completely intriguing,” Jasmine said. “So did you find anything when you were in there by yourself?”
I grinned. “I found an entire secret room, only accessible to shadow monsters and their shadow-cats.” I then proceeded to tell them everything we’d discovered in that room and where it led.
“The locker room?” Jasmine exclaimed incredulously.
“Yep, straight into the larger stall at the end. We were lucky no one was in it at the time. Next time, I’ll go in that way and lock the stall behind me.”
“Does that mean you’re going to have to swim every time you visit the shadow-room?” Jasmine asked.
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “I’ll wear workout clothes and if anyone sees me, I’ll pretend I’m going to work out in the gym.”
“So what books did you bring back?” Mikaela asked.
We spent the next several hours exploring the books I’d brought back with me and making a plan for our next steps.
Over the next several weeks, I made multiple trips to the shadow-room, bringing up more and more books for us to go through.
Jasmine and Mikaela helped me with the reading and the three of us became experts on all things shadow related.
I had a moment of misgiving in the beginning, wondering if I should be guarding Shadow-secrets from anyone not born of the shadows, but then I decided I desperately needed the help. Otherwise, it would take me ten years, bare minimum, to make it through the entire collection inside the shadow-room.
Instead, with Mikaela on my team (she was quite the speed-reader), we were making amazing progress.
We learned alotabout the ancient history of shadow monsters and about the shadow realm—so much so, in fact, that I found myself hesitating before stepping back into the shadows.
For a couple weeks, I became quite hesitant and I didn’t like it.
