For what felt like the millionth time that day, Elspeth checked the time on her phone before setting it back in her lap. It was eleven o'clock and Mr. Grimmlich would have locked up hours ago, but Elspeth was still sitting in his chair waiting for him to walk through the door. Since Derek had left, Elspeth had been alone in the store with nothing but the book she'd been given to distract her.
Expecting him to have returned by now, Elspeth had already turned off all the lights but those at the front of the store in preparation of closing. Sitting there alone in the little lighting that remained, Elspeth found herself growing more uncomfortable by the second. Apart from her brush with madness a few days earlier, she'd never been so uneasy before in the bookstore. It had always been like coming to visit an old friend. Right now though, it felt anything but friendly.
The endless silence had made Elspeth tense and hyperaware of the faintest noise so, when her phone buzzed in her lap from an incoming text, she screeched for the second time that day as it startled her. Breathing hard and with her hand on her chest as if trying to keep her heart from beating its way out of her body, Elspeth tried to calm down before checking the message.
It was from her brother, Farren: You're not usually out this late, what's going on?
Elspeth sighed, she'd like to know that answer to that herself. What was going on?
At the bookstore. Just waiting for Mr. Grimmlich to get back before locking up. She texted back. Hopefully, that would satisfy him, but, if she knew her brother, she'd have to call it quits pretty soon and get home or he was going to come looking for her.
She waited for another half hour before finally locking down the store and going home.
~...~...~...~...~...~
Elspeth was too preoccupied with her worries about Mr. Grimmlich to pay any attention to the faceless voices she heard as she walked down the darkened streets that would take her home. On any other day, she would feel like her world was imploding, but, right now, all she could think about was what might have happened to keep her bookloving friend from attending to the books he treated as children and seeing to it they were tucked in for the night, safe and secure on their shelves.
It just wasn't like him. Assuming that he knew he wouldn't be coming back later that night, why hadn't he called? There was a knot tying itself in her stomach, and Elspeth prayed that it was for nothing.
“Maybe he simply forgot?” she whispered aloud to herself as her the silhouette of her house started to come into view, but it sounded weak even to her own ears.
Despite the grey hair on his head, his mind was still as sharp as it ever had been, especially when it came to his beloved books. He could quote down to the page number of almost every book in his collection. It didn't seem likely a man like that would simply forget he'd not locked up his store before leaving or leave Elspeth hanging as to when to expect him back.
Elspeth sighed, “at least wait until tomorrow before you start imagining the worst.”
~...~...~...~...~...~
The house was dark and eerily quiet when Elspeth entered. It was a strange contrast to what she was used to. Usually, it was Maelyn or Farren who would be coming in this late and not her.
Trying not to make too much noise, Elspeth made her way to the kitchen in search of something to eat. Apart from a partially smashed granola bar that she'd had in her backpack, Elspeth hadn't eaten anything since the lunch she'd had at school. A fact that her stomach was now reminding her off with a vengeance.
Turning on the light as she entered the kitchen, Elspeth saw a pizza box sitting on the kitchen island with a note laying on top of it. There's ice cream in the freezer.
“Mae thought you might need it.”
Elspeth jumped at the unexpected voice, and turned around to find Farren leaning against the door frame she'd just come through.
“Goodness, Farren, don't startle me like that!” Elspeth said with sigh when she saw it was only him.
Her brother frowned at the reaction, his forehead creasing as he studied his sister's frazzled state.
“What's going on, Els?” Farren asked, concern eating at him, “you've been behaving oddly all week.”
“I'm just worried about Mr. Grimmlich. That's all,” she told him, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
As usual, he saw through her facade and, with no audience to hold him back, wasn't going to let it drop that easily.
Pushing off of the door frame, he walked over to Elspeth who was busily trying to distract herself with reheating a plate full of leftover pizza in the microwave.
“That may explain tonight, but not for the other days. Seriously, Els, what is going on?” he asked again before lowering his voice and adding, “are you seeing them again?”
Elspeth froze. Apart from the tail she could have sworn she saw disappearing around a bookcase at Mr. Grimmlich's store, she hadn't exactly seen anything..., but she had heard plenty.
“Would you think less of me if I were?” her voice small as she gave her noncommittal reply.
Arms wrapped around her from behind and Elspeth felt her brother's head come to rest on top of hers. Closing her eyes, she leaned back into his comforting embrace.
“Of course not, Els,” she heard him whisper, “you know I love you no matter what.”
“Even though everyone thinks I'm crazy?”
She felt his shoulders move as he shrugged, but he didn't break the hug.
“Eh, everyone's got a little bit of crazy in them, this world's a crazy place,” he replied, hoping to lighten her self-deprecating melancholy.
“Not quite the same, Farren, and you know it,” Elspeth argued. She'd didn't have to go all that far back in her memory to recall her classmates reaction. They used to lock people up for her kind of crazy.
She felt cold as Farren pulled back from her, missing his comfort. Next thing she knew, he was turning her around to face him and his hand was under her chin to lift her eyes to his.
“What I know, Elspeth, is that there are some very inexplicable things in this world, even in our own town, so who am I to say that you're crazy? Maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but crazy or not you are still my sister and I love you just the same. Now eat your pizza before it gets cold and you have to reheat it all over again. I'll meet you in the living room.”
~...~...~...~...~...~
“Shouldn't you be in bed by now? It's almost one in the morning,” Elspeth asked as she flopped down beside him on the couch.
“Not all that tired, besides, you weren't home yet.”
Elspeth groaned in pleasure as she took a bite of her pizza, she had had to reheat it again as it turned out.
“You didn't have to wait for me you know,” she said between mouthfuls.
“I know.”
As silence fell between them, Elspeth expected him to bring back up his question from the kitchen – she hadn't exactly answered him, instead avoiding it with a question of a hypothetical nature – , but he didn't.
“Granny O'Rourke thinks that trolls are after her chickens again,” Farren said, breaking the silence.
Elspeth laughed. Of everything he could have said, that was not even close to what she would have thought he'd choose. It wasn't a mocking statement either, which she appreciated given her own situation, just a casual statement of fact delivered as matter-of-factly as if they were discussing the weather.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked with a laugh.
Her brother feigned indignation, “I work for the newspaper, Els, or don't you remember? I know everything in this town!”
The dramatic deliverance of the last part of his reply made her laugh so hard she snorted her drink and started coughing when the carbonation went up her nose.
“You work in the print room! You're not a reporter,” she exclaimed when she could speak again.
“Mere details, it's still the newspaper,” he replied, dismissing her points with a shrug, “As such, I still get to see everything that's being published. Granny put an ad in the classifieds asking that, if any church in the area has recently replaced their bells, if they would please contact her. She'd like to buy one to set it up as a troll deterrent.”
“How exactly does that work?” Elspeth wondered out loud, making a note to check the book Mr. Grimmlich had given her.
“Beats me,” Farren said with a shrug.
The room went quiet again with Elspeth just shaking her head laughing to herself as to what sort of reaction Fiona O'Rourke, or Granny as she was affectionately called by even those who didn't know her from Adam, was going to elicit when her ad was published.
“That's more like it,” she heard Farren say from beside her.
Looking over at him, she saw a soft smile on his face as he just watched her.
“What?” she asked bemused and mildly suspicious of her brother's statement.
“The smile on your face as you were thinking about Granny's ad. I just think it's a great improvement over your expression from the last few days,” he gently replied.
Elspeth gave him a grateful smile before returning her attention to her food.
“On a more serious note though, I wasn't joking around when I said that there were unusual things going on in this town. It's part of why I was anxious to see you got home alright,” Farren told her grimly, all signs of his earlier joviality gone from his face.
Deciding that knowing what her brother was talking about was more important than the topping smothered pizza that still beckoned to her, Elspeth paused stuffing her face to turn again to her brother, and, though she had the horrible idea that she really didn't want to know, she asked anyway.
“What do you mean?”
Unease crept up similar to what she'd felt listening outside the door of Mrs. Hythe's office and, then again, at the bookstore with Derek.
She frowned to see her brother's hesitation. Was he second guessing telling her or just looking for how best to say it? Regardless of why the hesitation, Elspeth found herself having to pull down the blanket from across the back of the couch and wrap it around her body to stave off the sudden chill she felt.
“I'm probably not supposed to be telling you any of this, but... there's been a series of strange break-ins around town,” he told her at last.
“Break-ins? Where?” Elspeth asked with a frown she hadn't heard about any break-ins until now, but then, as a general rule, she did try not to pay any attention to whatever gossip was going around the town grapevines. Past experience had trained her to expect the worst of it, being as she had been the center of it more than once.
“Antique stores mostly, but some homes were also broken into, and, I know that's not really all that odd – they get broken into all the time –, but libraries?”
“The library? Which one?”
“All of them.”
Elspeth starred at her brother in stunned silence. her jaw falling open a little at his reply.
All of them? One library being broken into was odd enough, but it could be dismissed easily enough as just some weird, random break-in. Two was concerning, but there was still a chance it was only coincidence. Three libraries though? Three showed a definite pattern, however bizarre it might be, and she was beginning to understand what Farren had been getting at earlier and what he meant by wanting to make sure she got home alright.
“I was afraid the bookstore might be next and, with only you there at the time...” his voice trailed off, but Elspeth knew what he was saying. “Seriously though, who breaks into a library? I can't get out of them fast enough!”
“You're just saying that because of all the time you spent in detention in the school library,” she teased him.
“Yes, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.”
Elspeth smiled and mouthed a silent I know. She hadn't forgotten just why he'd spent so many hours in detention. Normally being among the goofiest people you'd ever meet, he wasn't the type to pick a fight. However, he'd gotten into it more times than she could remember with the kids at school over what he'd heard some of them say about her. At his graduation, much to Elspeth's embarrassment, he'd turned to Kieran and told him it was up to him now, and he was counting him to look out for Elspeth. It was a charge Kieran had taken to heart.
“If you happen to hear more about the break-ins or anything else weird, would you tell me?” Elspeth asked.
“Think it has anything to do with Mr. Grimmlich?”
“I don't know. Maybe,” she answered before refocusing her attention to her now long-since-gone-cold pizza.
Thinking to herself but not daring to say aloud for fear her brother would go into overprotective mode, she added, but I sure intend to find out.