Don’t get so attached, you little bastard. I am not raising you. He’s getting fed and dropped off at the nearest orphanage. I do not care if there are side effects. Or how cute he is.
“Come, Stella, we have much to do…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Miriam
Two Months Later.
I can’t make sense of much these days. Not what’s happened to me, not how I found the entire front of my library blown off, and not how empty my heart feels. There’s a void inside me that’s so big and so deep, even the Grand Canyon pales in comparison.
Doesn’t help that my grandmother disappeared again, too, only to be found a few weeks ago inside the freezer of an ice-cream truck in Miami. The police said there was a note pinned to her sweater that read: We’re even now. You’re welcome. –L & A
I just don’t get it. How did she end up there? Who are L & A? What did the note mean? To be honest, my grandma and I were never really close. Growing up, she treated me like one of her Keeper soldiers rather than a granddaughter. Then she would run off on a vampire-hunting mission and disappear for months at a time. I hadn’t seen her in years and thought she was dead. Which is why it shocked me to wake up in my house, completely disoriented, to find her ranting about building a new Keeper army to end vampires once and for all. It pains me to think she died, never truly loving anyone or knowing peace because all she thought about was kill, kill, kill!
What a waste. I shake my head and get to covering one of the shelving units that wasn’t damaged toward the back of my library. As for my books, the smoke and firehoses did quite a number. The insurance money will replace most of what was lost, but some of the books are out of print. You just can’t buy them anymore.
One step at a time, Mir. That’s all you can do. Tomorrow, the construction crew comes in to demo the front of the library and rebuild what was lost in the gas-leak explosion. I still don’t get how it happened, but the city assured me it was an unfortunate fluke, having to do with an old gas line.
“Hello?” a man calls out from the back of the library.
I turn and see a tall guy with thick brown hair. He’s about twenty and wearing a baby sling across his chest. He has a beautiful little blonde girl in tow. I try to ignore how freakin’ gorgeous the man is, because obviously he’s taken. But wow.
Wait. Is that infant dressed in a black leather onesie? Baby fashion is so weird.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but as you can see, we’re closed. There’s another wonderful library across town. Just go left out of the parking lot and—”
“We are not here to check out books,” he says in a deep voice that commands attention.
“No? Then what can I do for you?” It’s odd, but as I stand there staring at him and his adorable children, I feel an itch in the back of my mind, like I know him from somewhere. I just can’t place it. But then again, everything has been a blur these past two months.
When I woke, my agitated grandma said I hit my head and was in a coma for a while. I dreamed I woke up in a lab, surrounded by vampires, but she said it never happened. Anyway, after the heavy mental fog cleared a few days later, she went to the store and never came back.
At first I thought she was upset because after her rant about building an army, I’d told her I didn’t want to be a Keeper anymore. She flipped out. All those years, all that training, and I was hanging up my crossbow already? I didn’t want to disappoint her, but being a librarian is my calling. It’s always been my calling. I just never had the strength to tell her. Or my parents, who, according to her, were off at some retreat in Alaska. I tried to track them down when Granny went missing, and then for the funeral, but it’s like they’ve dropped off the face of the Earth.
Honestly, I know there’s more to the story. I’m not stupid. So many of the pieces don’t fit, and it’s obviously related to the life they all chose as Keepers. Part of me misses them and worries, but another part is angry. I warned them not to get mixed up with that Clive man. He’s bad news. He’s also the reason I refuse to officially become a Keeper. You’d have to be nuts to work for an evil vampire. Which is why I’ve promised myself I won’t do any digging.
I won’t ask why huge chunks of my memories are missing and why I look way younger than I remember. I won’t try to avenge my grandmother’s death—she made her choices. And, wherever my parents are, I hope they’re all right, but if they’re not, at least I know they died doing what they believed in. Even if I’m no longer a Keeper, I still feel that’s what’s most important. You have to spend your time on Earth doing what you believe in.
Me? I’m a librarian. And if I don’t want to end up like my grandma, I have to put all those mysteries behind me, along with the Keepers.
Strange, how I feel like I’ve been here before. This place of having to let go and finding the strength to take my own path in life.
Speaking of odd feelings, I look at the incredibly handsome man and can’t stop feeling a pleasant tingle in my heart.
He smiles, and the way it touches his eyes takes my breath away.
“I’m here
