Ensnare: The Librarian's Lover Box Set Read online

  Chapter 8

  A quarter hour later found me driving home in the dark. I was on the main thoroughfare through the city. The campus lay on my left, and businesses catering to the campus lay on my right. The streets and roads were deserted of pedestrians and other cars, but the nightlife was alive in the off streets as music blared from open windows and people yelled profanities at each other. Sirens were a common noise and I saw more than one student stagger back to their dorm rooms. And all this before ten o'clock.

  My mind was filled with the night's happenings, especially the late-night visitor and my talk with Marvin about the room on the fifth floor. I had this strange feeling seeing Veer again wasn't a coincidence, but there really wasn't anything to connect the two. Well, except for his love of ancient history and that book being old.

  I tilted my head to one side and frowned. That actually was a pretty decent connection. I mean, an ancient history teacher would want to see the Forbidden collection, if only to drool on the ancient books. Hamish had also mentioned he'd helped catalog the books in that collection. It must have been before I started this semester because I didn't remember seeing him around until tonight.

  Unfortunately, Veer's involvement in the theft of the book hinged on my suspicions, and even I didn't think they were worth much. I mean, it could have just been a coincidence that he knew the collection better than Hamish, that a book went missing after he cataloged it, and that he was sneaking around the library like a creepy shadow. Yeah, coincidence. . .

  I shook myself and tightened my grip on the wheel. "You're getting paranoid, Leslie," I muttered to myself. "Soon they'll be fitting a straitjacket to you and giving you a nice, white room all to yourself."

  All this thinking of connections that weren't there was almost as bad as my infatuation with the stolen possessed book at my apartment. Whatever power it had over me had faded over the day, and now all I wondered was how I was going to sneak it back into Hamish's office. I sighed and my eyes wandered over the shops along the road. Most were closed for the night, but their bright signs shown through the darkness like lighthouses atop the cliffs.

  One caught my eye because the word was so familiar. Locksmith. I stomped on the brakes and came to a screeching halt in front of the establishment. Marvin had said something about the thief needing a locksmith to get into the fifth floor room, and here was one across the road from campus. Somebody else could have seen the sign, had a key made, and then snuck into the collection to steal that missing book.

  I wrinkled my nose. "All that trouble for one book?" I mused. It just didn't seem possible. What did seem possible was that I was dead-tired and needed a nice, long sleep. I drove on, but my thoughts stubbornly remained with that locksmith shop.

  I arrived back home at the stroke of ten. I tossed my bag onto the kitchen counter and tossed myself onto the couch. That day had felt like a long week, and I was glad that tomorrow was a day off for me, both from classes and from the library. I lolled my head to one side and glanced over my coffee table. My eyes widened when I saw that the book lay on its surface. I sat up and frowned at the object. It really was the possessed book. I swore I'd left it in my bedroom.

  I reached out, but my fingers paused over the cover. Maybe the thing was alive again. Maybe I could feel those delicious, sensual sensations again. My face drooped and I shook my head. I let my arm drop to my side and lay back down on the couch. "Or maybe you can return this to Hamish tomorrow and explain everything," I muttered. "Maybe she'll only fire me and not press charges." I sighed, closed my eyes, and thought about sleeping in until sunset.

  I don't know when I fell asleep, but at some point I must have because I had that dream again. The first sensation was the touch of something long and soft against my skin. It slid along my arms and down my shirt to the button of my jeans. Once there it unbuttoned my pants and pushed aside the flaps. I languidly opened my eyes and noticed a light emanating from the coffee table. It was the book again, aglow with the golden light that poured forth from its open pages. The light pooled on the floor, and from it emerged those sensual tendrils. They climbed up the couch and slid over me with all the care of a blind man feeling a beautiful marble statue.

  My heartbeat quickened and I felt a distinct strain of my breasts against my bra. The collar of my shirt stretched out and revealed my swollen, heaving breasts, pleading for the delicious touch of those tendrils. The slick arms glided over my stomach and slipped over my sensitive breasts. I shuddered when they pressed against my quivering, pouting buds. A few tendrils slid over my bared breasts and sank into my strained shirt. I gasped and arched my back when they wrapped themselves around my breasts and slowly, carefully massaged them. My hands gripped the couch cushion beneath me and I groaned.

  Other tendrils glided down to my waist and pulled down my pants, but left my underwear. Their hot bodies pressed against mine and heated my skin with hope for their seductive touches. With my legs laid bare they wrapped themselves around me and pressed against my squirming body. Every inch of me that they touched was on fire. I gasped when the tendrils against my breasts tore my shirt and bra in two. The worthless clothes were tossed aside and I lay nearly naked on the couch. All that remained was my soaked underwear.

  My heaving, bare breasts felt heavy atop my chest. I reached up and weighed one in my hand. It was large, and so sensitive that delicious tingles shivered down my body. The tendrils wrapped around my wrists and pulled my arms above my head as they'd done in my last dream. My ankles were also pinned, and I lay stretched out and at the whim of the demands of the tendrils. They pressed and slithered over me, touching my every crevice and crease.

  One of the thick tendrils slipped beneath my wet underwear and into my hot center. I groaned and squirmed as it stretched and pushed against me, fitting itself exactly to my size. It rubbed against my sensitive clit and delicious thrills ran up my body. Then it began the slow, sensual rhythm of love-making. My hips rocked with the movements. I panted and moaned with each reverberating pleasure. We picked up the beat. Each push was harder and faster. I arched my back and the creature pushed me back down. I was in its control, and it wasn't finished with me yet.

  The tendril quickened its pace. It slammed into me, filling me with its thick, hot body. I whipped my head to and fro. My body twitched and tingled, and begged for more. Muscles tightened and my I writhed in its grasp. My orgasm crashed down on me with such intensity that I was blinded by light. I screamed out my delight as the pleasure washed over me.

  I collapsed on the couch cushions, exhausted but with that afterglow of wonderful sex. The tendrils slithered out of me and off me, and joined themselves back into the pool. That shrank back into the book, and before I drifted off into exhausted sleep I saw the cover close on its own and the light go out.

  Chapter 9

  I tossed and turned. I just couldn't get comfortable. My bed felt lumpy and hard, and those damn covers were on the floor again. I flailed my arm around looking for a pillow, and caught the back of something hard. I creaked open an eye and saw that my hand grasped the back of the couch. I sat up and glanced around the room. Everything was as it was before I went to sleep.

  Everything, that is, except my clothes. All but my underwear was gone. I gasped, grabbed a blanket I kept over the opposite arm of the couch, and wrapped it around me. A quick search of the room told me my pants, shirt and bra lay on the floor behind the couch. Memories of my dream flashed before my eyes, and suddenly these not-so-innocent dreams seemed to be not so much dreams as reality.

  There was one other minor difference in the room. The book was gone. I swear I'd seen it laying there on the coffee table before I fell asleep, but it was gone. That book had played an integral part of my maybe-dream, and I wanted to find it. I stood and searched the living room and kitchen. Nothing. My search led me to the bedroom, and I found the book laying on the nightstand where I'd left it that morning. In my eyes the thing didn't look so innocent, and I approached it as one approaches an animal
that could change from cute to vicious in a matter of moments.

  I reached the side of the nightstand and stood over the book. Its empty cover stared back, and I tentatively reached out. My fingers touched the cover, and I felt nothing of the strange tingle that I feared. I flipped open the cover and jumped back, expecting tendrils to burst forth and drag me into the pages. Nothing. I cautiously leaned in and looked over the title page. Even that was blank. The book was as dead as the trees and skin that made it.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but I was almost disappointed. That feeling it had instilled in me when it was alive, that feeling of belonging to something, was still lost. I sank down on my bed with the blanket wrapped around my body and my head very confused.

  "It was a dream, wasn't it?" I asked myself. The book didn't answer. I glanced down at myself. I was definitely naked. That had happened, but what else was true?

  I stood and strode from the bedroom straight to the discarded clothes. The pants were crumpled, but intact. The shirt and bra, however, were torn straight down the middle. Something had ripped through them and tossed them aside, something like those tendrils in my wet dream. I picked up the clothes, looked over them, and turned my eyes to the bedroom doorway. The realization dawned on me that perhaps the book hadn't lost its powers. It was only hiding them.

  I draped my clothes over the back of the couch and walked over to the doorway of the bedroom. The book sat on the nightstand in all its false innocence. I didn't believe it. It might have come from some innate belief, or it might have been because the cover, which I had earlier opened, was now shut. I crept over and quickly tapped on the closed cover. Nothing. Another quick tap and still nothing. It was dead, or sleeping. Maybe the sexual romps with me exhausted its strange and wonderful magic, and it slept until ready to seduce me again.

  "You're nuts." The voice was mine, but I didn't realize what my brain was telling me until it actually spoke. "Maybe, but this nuts girl is going to get to the bottom of this book," I shot back. I stiffened and blinked. I'd just caught my brain arguing with my own heart.

  I slowly sat down on the bed and clutched my head in one hand. My life had come to this crazy point where one half of me was arguing with the other. A light caught my eye, and I glanced at the nightstand. The book lay there with a soft glow over its cover. I straightened up, and watched in shock and awe as the cover opened itself. A beam of light shot from the pages and cast itself on the ceiling. The brilliance shifted like the tendrils and formed words. I read them aloud to tell myself I wasn't insane.

  "Follow the trail and find me." The letters blurred and reformed into the beam of light. The beam sank back into the book and the cover closed. I was alone, and very confused. "Follow the trail and find me," I repeated. I frowned. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I furrowed my brow and thought about a trail. The only one I had was the one with the locksmith, Veer, and the Forbidden collection with that missing book.

  "You want me to see the locksmith?" I asked the book. It just laid there. I sighed and ran my hand through my frazzled hair. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, a god-awful time for a college student, but I shrugged and stood. "Guess I have no choice. Time to do some investigating."

  With some trouble I slipped into some new clothes. The bra and shirt felt extra tight, and the pants were very snug over my smooth hips. Then I drove down the boulevard to the locksmith shop. It was open, and when I walked inside a cute bell chimed above me. The walls were covered in dusty locks and there was a doorway in the back that led to the rear of the building. In front of the doorway sat a counter, and behind the counter stood an elderly man. His head was bent down and his attention was on a small lock on the counter.

  I walked up to the counter and he raised his head to show one eye had a jeweler's lens in one eye. That was one of those mini telescopes that allowed jewelers, and apparently locksmiths, see the tiny machines in watches and cuts in a diamond. This man had a lock torn apart with its guts strewn about the counter. "A bike lock or a house key?" he gruffly asked me.

  "Huh?" was my brilliant reply.

  "Which one do you need fixed?" he rephrased.

  "Oh, no, I didn't come here to get anything fixed. I came here to, um, to find out how easy it is to get a mold for an old door. Say for the college library." Smooth. Real smooth.

  The man raised an eyebrow. "What would you want to do that for?" he wondered.

  "Oh, well, I work there and-well, the head librarian only has one set of keys for the Forbidden collection, and I thought that was kind of stupid," I told him.

  I hit a helpful nerve with that story because he softened and gave a fervent nod of his head. "I see you there. It's awful stupid how some people insist on keeping only one set of keys when it's so simple to have another made."

  "So do people come in here a lot getting spare keys made for old doors?" I asked him.

  He shrugged. "I get a lot of emergency calls to open the doors, but getting replicas made for old doors is a little more rare."

  "And you make the new key by taking the one they bring in and making a copy of that?" I guessed.

  "If they have it," he replied.

  Here was the angle I wanted. "What if they don't have it?"

  "Then they have to bring me a mold of the lock, but those are very rare cases. They happen maybe once in a couple of months." He paused and stroked his chin. "But now that you mention it, there was a man in here a few weeks back with a mold. Said he owned one of the older houses in town and never changed the doors, and lost the key to one of them."

  "Can I get that mold?" I pleaded.

  The man shook his head. "I usually destroy the molds I'm given, but this man took his back."

  "Can you at least give me his name?"

  The man stroked his chin. "I don't know about that. Doesn't seem right to start giving customer names out. Why do you want it?"

  "I'm-well, I'm interested in old locks and I'm doing this-um, this project in one of my classes about the history of them. That's why I was looking into the library locks, especially the one on the fifth floor. You know, the Forbidden Collection. I thought I'd see about any old locks around town, and this guy sounds like he's got one I'd like to look at."

  Both his eyebrows raised. "You're from the school? Why didn't you say so earlier? This guy works for the school, or at least gave me a work phone number that belongs there."

  "So you'll give me his name?" I asked him.

  "Sure thing. Just don't mention where you got it," he added with a wink.

  I smiled and winked back. "No problem."

  The shopkeeper turned and grabbed an old book from off a nearby shelf. He plopped it down on the counter and flipped through the pages until he hit the right entry. "Here it is." He turned the book so the entries faced me and pointed at the name. "This guy."

  My eyes widened when I saw Jonathan Veer's name written in the entry. "You're sure it's this guy?" I asked the old man.

  "Positive. I thought his name was a little funny, and it's rare to have the client want the mold back," the man insisted.

  I was stunned, but not stupefied. "Did he give his address so I can look at his house?"

  The man shut the ledger and shook his head. "That's all you're getting from me, but you can look up his house at the Auditor's website. Just type in his name and presto! Everything comes up about what property he owns."

  "Thanks so much. You've been a great help." I dashed out of there, jumped into my car, and drove back to apartment where the internet awaited my searches. After a few dizzying directions on the county website I managed to find the Auditor website and its search function. A few clickity-clacks later and I had Mr. Veer's home address.

  Now I had to decide what to do with it. To stalk him, or not to stalk him? I didn't have much choice. He was my only lead in this strange treasure hunt for clues. I noted the address, typed it into Google maps, and saw that it did indeed sit on a street filled with old houses. So far the story he gave to the locksmith
checked out, but his taking of the mold was a little suspicious, along with the timing of the book's disappearance shortly after he had the key made.

  I had plenty of free time on my hands, so I decided to walk to his house and get a view of the front. It was a nice fall afternoon when I started out on my short journey through the campus and out onto the streets of the college town. Leaves crunched beneath my feet and a sweet-scented wind blew by me. The small, sad-looking houses around campus, rented out to college students, gave way to larger houses with ancient trees and shrubs that towered above anyone who walked along the sidewalks.

  Veer's home was at the far corner of a long, quiet street. By the time I reached it the sun was low in the sky and my feet were sore. I stopped in front of a couple of steps that led through a green lawn along a path to the stone porch. Old trees stood around the porch like sentinels frozen in place. Connected to the porch was the house itself, a stone and wood construction with two floors and a full attic beneath the high-peaked roof.

  The tall, wide windows on the front of the house stared back at me with their soulless gazes, and I shuddered when a cold autumn breeze swept by me. There was something otherworldly about the place, like it was stuck in another time and if you walked inside you would be, too. This brief view was all I needed to know about the place, at least for now, so I turned away only to collide with a firm chest.

  I nearly toppled over backwards, but a pair of strong hands caught my shoulders and steadied me. I glanced up into the smiling face of Jonathon Veers. "What a surprise to see you in my neighborhood," he greeted me.

  I blushed and ducked my head down. "I was just-um, just enjoying the houses," I stuttered.

  He chuckled and leaned down so his nose nearly brushed against my forehead. "These are nice houses, but I think we both know why you're here," he whispered. I snapped my head up and my large, terrified eyes looked into his own dark, steady ones. He winked and pulled away from me. I was free of his hands, yet I still felt trapped. It was a terrifying yet freeing feeling to be under the power, the control of someone else. All worries and cares were lifted from my shoulders, yet I felt uneasy about being in the hands of someone I hardly knew nor trusted. "But if it's a tour you're really wanting I'd be glad to guide you through the neighborhood or my house," he offered.